yeah, i highly doubt a venue will allow 125dB of spl. that's painful and dangerous.
marc
Back in 1979, I took an acoustics engineering course at the University of Kansas. Part of our coursework was to take a sound pressure level meter to a live concert and monitor the SPLs. I took it to a Cheap Trick show at Allen Fieldhouse where I was able to get within about 30 yards of the main stacks and about 10 yards to the left side of the left stack. At that position, I was getting nearly constant readings of 123 to 124 dB on the C weighted slow scale. I saw a couple of readings on that setting at 126. On the A weighted fast scale, I saw 128. Had I been able to get closer to the stacks, I probably would have had higher readings yet. I thought I was going to turn in the record SPLs for the semester, but someone else went to the Molly Hachet show at Hoch Auditorium and came back with readings in excess of 136 dB on the C weighted slow scale (Yikes!). He was not wearing ear protection and his ears were ringing for over a month afterwards. Even that was not the all-time record. Two semesters previous to that, someone went to the Yes concert at Hoch Auditorium and came back with readings of 142. The rumor was that they were running a PA system that was capable of 200 kW total output power and that they kept blowing fuses during soundcheck, but hooked into their own trailer-mounted generator for the main show.
So, yes... Some shows are dangerously loud. 125 dB is generally accepted as the threshold of pain. FWIW, I always wear earplugs unless I can comfortably talk with people at a socially acceptable distance (3 or 4 feet). I'm guessing that I never hear a show at greater than 100 dB without earplugs.