A Little Bit Louder, Please

Kathy Peck has some great memories of her days playing bass and singing with The Contractions, an all-female punk band. The San Francisco group developed a loyal following as it played hundreds of shows, and released two singles and an album between 1979 and 1985. Their music was fun, fast and loud. Too loud, as it turned out. After The Contractions opened for Duran Duran in front of thousands of screaming teeny-boppers at the Oakland Coliseum in 1984, Peck's ears were ringing for days. Then her hearing gradually deteriorated. "It got to the point where I couldn't hear conversations," says Peck, now in her 50s. "People's lips would move and there was no sound. I was totally freaked out."

Peck the punk rocker lived out one of her generation's musical fantasies two decades ago; Peck the hearing-impaired has been living out one of its fears ...