Lately I seem to keep reading a lot in the paper about local live music events being opposed by killjoy neighbours who want to close them down.

Popular community events such as the Peregian Originals and the Pomona Hotel community jams are in danger of being silenced by small cliques of residents. These opponents of local music make more noise complaining to anybody and everybody in authority than the music they are determined to silence.

It's not as if either event is an amped-up aural attack on the area. These are not large-scale events like Woodford or the Gympie Muster which attract tens of thousands of people and which resonate with rhythm and blare on and on for several days and nights.

This is local music, with maybe a few hundred people gathering on a Sunday afternoon for a pleasant, low-key social occasion. Hardly a haven for headbangers or hoons!

Yet there are some people who behave as if anything at all that happens within cooee of their precious castle means that they are being beseiged by the outside world. Something happening in their precinct might (shock! horror!) lower their property values and endanger their investment.

Wherever I've lived, I have always enjoyed listening to and watching local musicians and performers, many of whom offer a high quality of original, well-crafted and entertaining songs.

The music that they create also gives me some insight into the character and the culture of each city or town I've lived in.

What I can't stand is the cacophony you get subjected to by pre-recorded formats of music. The omni-persistent soundtrack of supermarkets steering you and your trolley to overload with every item you don't need, and the confusing and overwhelming sonic collision of every shop in a mall blasting you with different music all at once until it piles up all around you like aural junk mail.

Cafes, bars and restaurants where the staff insist on adding decibel after decibel to the background music until it's squatting full-frontal across your table, rattling the rafters and forcing everybody to either pick up a megaphone or to use sign language to have a conversation.

Then there's the petrol-heads whose revved-up cars seem to be fuelled and propelled by high-octane hip-hop or turbo-charged rap at a volume that can be mistaken by seismologists for earthquakes on mag wheels!

Not to forget the open-plan offices where someone insists on the whole workplace enduring the most cretinous talkback commercial radio complete with every forgettable pop song and obnoxious ad ever compiled in one wavelength.

Oh, and the auditory overland of music in waiting rooms, transit centres, on hold on the telephone, and wherever else it can be deposited to distract you towards whatever is being sold to you by sound.

Compared to such noise pollution, real music performed in the right local setting is a sheer relief and often an ear-opening surprise!

Most of us live in built-up burgs and have to tolerate the everyday reality of each-other's tones and pitches.

Live music needs to be nurtured and not outlawed. So let it take up appropriate venues at suitable times!

Music is an essential element that helps any peopled place to express itself and become a little friendlier to be around.

Yet some people would have the whole world (with the exception of their own personal preferences) sealed, tamed, silenced, straitlaced, purified, sterilised, pulped, preset, banned, locked down, controlled, regulated, regimented, paved over and put down.

If you really can't stand the music, has anyone suggested ear plugs?

Here's hoping we can keep on enjoying the live music and local entertainment that comprises and composes this part of the world.

Do you like going to live music gigs or are you one of the people who wants the volume turned down? What's your view on the Coast's live music scene?

Hamish has two MySpace websites. On one he writes about poetry, writing, music and other interests such as performing, reading, history and archaeology link to site, while the other focuses on amalgamation and other local issues link to site.