Why I like my home system better than live music

Everybody,
Okay, I know I'm rather late to this party, but I agree with Elizabeth and some others of you about not wanting to subject myself to painful SPL's at live rock concerts. I've taken to attending rock and pop concerts toting these Day-Glo orange, foam rubber ear inserts, which will certainly protect my hearing somewhat but which also screw up the sound, at which point, why bother? But I absolutely hate waking up in the middle of the night after a concert with my ears humming and buzzing. Hey, I'm in my early 50s, and I'm just paranoid about screwing up my hearing and accelerating the inveitable loss of sensitivity to high frequencies.
The last concert I attended where the volume was literally painful was Steely Dan in Dallas during the "Two Against Nature" Tour. The music was wonderful, but in my humble opinion, there is NO BLOODY REASON that the music has to be so freaking loud... or maybe I've just become an old fart... ;-)
The most recent pop concert I attended was James Taylor at Bass Concert Hall here in Austin. The sound was okay, but again, why so loud? In fact, if what I'm basically hearing is 2-channel amplified sound, other than the spontaneity of the musicians and the interaction with the audience -- which does have considerable value, I'll admit -- how much different is the experience than listening to my stereo -- except that, in the latter instance, the sound quality is probably actually better? By the way, hearing poorly amplified singers at Broadway musicals also ticks me off...
[END CURMUDGEON MODE]

I know that this comment is slightly off topic but for what it's worth, I've stopped asking whether my rig captures the "Absolute Sound" of live, unamplified, acoustic instruments, and shifted instead to asking how well my rig reproduces what the recording engineer intended. Dark Side Of The Moon, for example, isn't about the Absolute Sound, but (in part) about whether all the phase manipulation stuff that Alan Parsons did in mixing down the album gives me the creeps in the way that he (presumably) intended it to do.

As for live music, I agree that the SPL's of pop concerts has killed a lot of the enjoyment for me.

I've been to two rock/pop concerts in the past 10 years. One was the Steely Dan "Two Against Nature" tour in Dallas. The experience of hearing Bodhisattva live, played at an insanely fast tempo, was ecstatic and I'm glad I was there. But waking up at 4 a.m. with my head buzzing, unable to hear anything else, increased my paranoia about middle-age hearing loss and made me resolve to bring ear plugs to my next amplified concert.

Then, a year or so ago, we heard James Taylor at Bass Concert Hall, very fine venue on the University Of Texas at Austin campus. The show was good, but again, pointlessly, abusively loud.

I'll close by just saying that to me, listening to music at home and in concert are two different kinds of experiences.