Loud, Louder, Standing Next To A Jet Engine | Tragic Comedy

A few nights ago, Brenda and I took the girls to Baltimore for a follow-up appointment for Olivia at Johns Hopkins Medical Center. She is treated at their Epilepsy clinic because of seizures. The appointment went well enough that we decided to take advantage of being in Baltimore by having dinner at the Hard Rock Café there.

There was a thirty minute wait for a table but we had some time and there was a giant Barnes & Noble next door so we agreed to wait. They also text you when your table is ready which is kind of cool.

When we received our text, we returned and found that live music was planned for that night. Normally, I would have been pretty excited about that. Unfortunately, part of Olivia's autism profile is a sensitivity to loud noises. We have a habit of carrying headphones for noise reduction whenever we take Olivia anywhere. The restaurant was hosting a "battle of the bands" type of contest. This was only one round of an ongoing series of rounds in which the winners would ultimately face each other and then face the winner of another city's Hard Rock. Three bands played during dinner and besides being "hard rock" bands, the only thing they had in common was loudness.

I asked the hostess to sit us at a table furthest from the stage to try and get a little noise reduction. Her reply was, "It's pretty loud everywhere." In sitcom fashion, our table turned out to be right next to the stage. I mean, we were sitting so close to the bass player that you could almost catch his venereal diseases from his sweat flinging. I was having a great time after we became certain that Olivia was tolerating the noise with use of her headphones combined with the occasional fingers in the ears.

The first band was named (no lie) Fat Man Cat Bite. There's apparently an interesting story behind the genesis of their name that I never gathered. They were dressed in white shirts and skinny black ties reminiscent of The Knack. One great thing about the contest was that each band was required to play original music. These guys could play. Each band was being judged by a panel of four judges who actually had music backgrounds. The guitarist from Jimmie's Chicken Shack, I think, and a rep from the local Horseshoe casino and two others. Judging was based on stage presence, musical ability, best haircuts maybe and other stuff. The first band began as we sat and the last of three bands concluded as we were asking for the check so it was a dinner full of drumbeats and guitar riffs.

All in all - a great night. The food was good BTW which I guess was the point in going in the first place.

One Reply to Loud, Louder, Standing Next To A Jet Engine

Scott Hardie | March 18, 2015
You were lucky to wind up being able to enjoy it in the end. We (especially Kelly) dislike loud restaurants and we'd have been out of there as soon as we heard "battle of the bands," probably even as soon as we heard "live music." :-)

We're going to a comedy show at the Hard Rock Cafe at Universal Studios in May (my anniversary gift to Kelly), but I have no idea if we'll try to eat dinner there. It has a longstanding reputation for being overpriced and sub-par, but also iconic and touristy so people go there anyway, and perhaps we'll fit it in for that reason.

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