You sound a bit more sensitive to noise than average, but I agree that it can be difficult to concentrate on "brain work" in a noisy working environment. Open-plan offices are a nightmare in this respect, although not as bad as one place I worked: I had a short contract doing some bug fixes to a system in a banking call centre, and the only PC I could use was right in the middle of the call centre with about 200 phone operators busy answering calls all around me. It was like working in a battery
chicken farm.
I think the problem is that a lot of people's jobs are about "communication" i.e. talking in person or on the phone, going to meetings etc. IMO, a lot of this "communication" is just displacement activity i.e. a substitute for doing something. I have a lot of colleagues who seem to think if they just hold enough meetings about a problem, they've somehow solved the problem without actually doing anything.
The "communicators" often don't understand that some people's work - like developers - requires us to stop and think hard about what we're doing, and you just can't do that very well in a noisy environment. When I did my DSDM course years ago, they recommended a "quiet room" for the team i.e. a place where you could actually hear yourself think. Unfortunately, most managers are "communicators", so it's hard to persuade them to see the problem.
Working a couple of days a week from home could be a good solution - I do this now. I can get a lot of work done at home without all the distractions, noise and meetings that fill my usual working day. Then I can schedule meetings and other BS tasks for the days when I'm in the office and wouldn't expect to get any real work done anyway. Music also works for me, but Bach or Tallis is usually more effective than the Pixies!