I'm really glad you posted this, Tim. I'm not the best at remembering to bring them, either.

I also think that more clubs and concert venues need to do a better job of making earplugs available (although I've never really had any problems getting them at the Croc, Showbox, Neumo's or Chop Suey). When I was at the Stooges show last week I asked at the bars and merch table and a concession stand if they had any earplugs and treated me as if I asked if anyone just saw that UFO.

When I was in Austin there were a bunch of clubs that had small packages of earplugs sitting on tables with someone's logo on them. I wish some more companies would see that as a means for infiltrating this scene.

at least all ages venues like ground zero tend to be good about providing them!

Etymotic dot com has some really great hifi ear plugs. I got mine back in December and like you, kept forgetting to use them. I finally started a couple weeks ago -- huge improvement and the music still sounds great. I'd argue that it sounds better actually, due to the lack of pain in my head.

i've had intermittent tinnitus for quite a few years now. i finally started wearing earplugs towards the end of college (even bought a box of 500 pairs from a manufacturing safety catalog) & moved up to molded ones last year- cut the db's, lose none of the sound.

pshearing.com is a great place if you go the latter route.