A few years ago we told you about the Wall of Sound. Not the one cre­at­ed in the stu­dio by Phil Spec­tor, but the one cre­at­ed by Grate­ful Dead tech engi­neer Owsley “Bear” Stan­ley out of over 600 speak­ers. Before the Dead worked to rev­o­lu­tion­ize how rock con­certs could sound, the speak­ers at live shows were tre­bly, under­pow­ered things, hav­ing not been designed for the sud­den change in musi­cal tex­ture and sound dur­ing the 1960s. In the ear­ly days, speak­ers were most­ly used to make sure the drums didn’t drown out the oth­er band mem­bers. Stanley’s three-sto­ry, 28,800-watt mas­sive wall, with columns of speak­ers ded­i­cat­ed to each musi­cian, promised crisp fideli­ty more so than pure loud­ness. In devel­op­ing the set-up, Stan­ley and his fel­low engi­neers helped intro­duce ideas still being used in live sound today.

For all that, how­ev­er, the Wall only got used for sev­en months of tour­ing in 1974. It took hours and hours to assem­ble and dis­as­sem­ble. For those who heard it, the sys­tem lived up to its hype. And it was immor­tal­ized in the Win­ter­land, San Fran­cis­co shows filmed for The Grate­ful Dead Movie (watch it online).

Now, near­ly 50 years lat­er a ded­i­cat­ed fan has rebuilt the wall as a 1/6th scale mod­el in his base­ment. While some of us took up bak­ing dur­ing 2020’s COVID lock­down, Antho­ny Cos­cia began to work four hours a day, every day, for two months, on this mod­el. He post­ed his progress on Insta­gram and Dead­heads, most of which hadn’t seen the real thing in per­son, lost their minds. (See this video to get a good taste of things.) Cos­cia also had nev­er seen the fabled Wall in real life—he would have been a tod­dler at the time. But he made up for it lat­er in the late ‘80s, see­ing the band 35 times, and the Jer­ry Gar­cia Band 25 times.

An archi­tect by day, Cos­cia insist­ed on the small­est details being repli­cat­ed, urged on by social media. The fin­ished mod­el is 6 foot, 8 inch­es tall and 10 feet wide, and fea­tures 390 work­ing speak­ers. It pumps out a not-exact­ly-Win­ter­land-wor­thy 800 watts.

“It’s a mas­sive glo­ri­fied clock radio but it sounds bet­ter than I thought,” he told the Wall Street Jour­nal.

And although he spent $2,000 in total, he’s already been offered $100,000 for it from an anony­mous donor.

The obses­sion with the band con­tin­ues a half-cen­tu­ry lat­er. A just announced series of shows by Bob Weir’s Dead & Com­pa­ny in Jan­u­ary 2022—in Can­cun, of course, where it’s warm—have sold out.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Grate­ful Dead Slip Past Secu­ri­ty & Play a Gig at Colum­bia University’s Anti-Viet­nam Protest (1968)

Take a Long, Strange Trip and Stream a 346-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Live Grate­ful Dead Per­for­mances (1966–1995)

The Grate­ful Dead Movie: Watch It Free Online

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

Image by Herb Greene, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“Once we’re done with it, the audi­ence can have it.” — Jer­ry Gar­cia

It so hap­pens that one of the great­est things about the Inter­net is also one of the not-so-great­est things: you hard­ly ever have to leave the house any­more. Of course, for traders and col­lec­tors of bootlegs, this has been a major boon. Obscure tapes a fan might spend years track­ing down in pre­vi­ous times can now be searched, found, and down­loaded with ease. And — as a spe­cial added bonus — their qual­i­ty won’t degrade with every copy.

For Dead­heads, espe­cial­ly, such easy online access has been crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant in main­tain­ing a com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple who love the Grate­ful Dead, when there hasn’t been a Grate­ful Dead show in years. That’s enough time for new gen­er­a­tions of Dead­heads to emerge, and to dis­cov­er and grow up with a resource their elders could only dream about: the Inter­net Archive’s Grate­ful Dead col­lec­tion, which cur­rent­ly fea­tures over 15,000 record­ings (most­ly com­plete con­certs) and con­tin­ues to expand as more are added.

Sure, it’s not quite com­pen­sa­tion for nev­er get­ting to see, and tape, the band in per­son, but these days, such a thing would prob­a­bly be impos­si­ble in any case, even if Jer­ry Gar­cia hadn’t died in 1995. (Last year, to keep fans’ spir­its up, band mem­bers Mick­ey Hart, Bob Weir, and Don­na Jean God­chaux wel­comed famous spe­cial guests on YouTube and broad­cast unre­leased filmed con­certs in the week­ly “Shake­down Stream.”) For those raised on Dead tapes, the archive must feel like com­ing home. For oth­ers, it can be a bewil­der­ing col­lec­tion of dates, venues, and loca­tions.

How to nav­i­gate the thou­sands of record­ings of the esti­mat­ed 2,200 con­certs cap­tured on tape by the band and their fans over the course of decades? A few years back, one fan made a list of the “10 Essential/Best Grate­ful Dead Shows,” all of which you can down­load and/or stream and pore over to your heart’s con­tent.

“I am not an old Dead Head, or a mem­ber of the 4‑decade club,” he admits. “In fact, I nev­er saw a show, see­ing as I was born in 2001.” It’s not his fault, but he’s entered an are­na where fun­da­men­tal dis­agree­ment about such things is a mat­ter of course.

1. 09–21-72, The Spec­trum, Philadel­phia, PA
2. 05–08-77, Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty, Itha­ca, NY
3. 02–27-69, Fill­more West, San Fran­cis­co, CA
4. 05–02-70, Harpur Col­lege, Bing­ham­ton, NY
5. 08–27-72, Vene­ta, OR
6. 07–07-89, JFK Sta­di­um, Philadel­phia, PA
7. 05–26-72, The Strand Lyceum, Lon­don, Eng­land
8. 12–31-78, Win­ter­land Are­na, San Fran­cis­co, CA
9. 11–08-69, Fill­more The­ater, San Fran­cis­co, CA
10. 12–06-73, Cleve­land Pub­lic Hall, Cleve­land, OH
11. 06–26-74, Prov­i­dence Civic Cen­ter, Prov­i­dence, RI

See the top ten list above (includ­ing links to shows), find hon­or­able men­tions here, a short­er list by Mike Mineo here, and add your own picks in the com­ments. And con­sid­er the fact that a band who devot­ed more time to tour­ing than any­thing else “had just one Top Forty hit in thir­ty years,” Nick Paum­garten writes at The New York­er (though “not for lack of try­ing”). They more than their share of ter­ri­ble nights onstage (by their own admis­sion) but still inspire peo­ple who will nev­er see them play.

“Each tape seemed to have its own par­tic­u­lar note of decay, like the taste of the barn­yard in a wine or a cheese,” writes Paum­garten of learn­ing to savor these con­certs: “You came to love each one, as you might a three-legged dog.” For Dead­heads, it can be hard to pick favorites, espe­cial­ly if you haven’t heard them all yet. Immerse your­self in live Dead now at the Inter­net Archive’s Grate­ful Dead Col­lec­tion here. Browse by the year of the record­ings here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Grate­ful Dead Movie: Watch It Free Online

How the Grate­ful Dead’s “Wall of Sound”–a Mon­ster, 600-Speak­er Sound System–Changed Rock Con­certs & Live Music For­ev­er

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Rip­ple” Played By Musi­cians Around the World (with Cameos by David Cros­by, Jim­my Buf­fett & Bill Kreutz­mann)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

“That one was the gift of God… of Ja actually—the god of mar­i­jua­na, right? So Ja gave me that one.”

The Bea­t­les 1966 Revolver, a mini-mas­ter­piece, con­tains all the ele­ments that would inform the band’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary late-60s sound on Sgt. Pepper’s, Abbey Road, The White Album, and Let it Be. The album’s first track, “Tax­man,” announced “a sweep­ing shift in the essen­tial nature of the Bea­t­les’ sound,” writes music his­to­ri­an Ken­neth Wom­ack. Its ulti­mate track, “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows,” was “the great­est leap into the future” up to that point in their career, argues pop cul­ture writer Robert Rodriguez, who lit­er­al­ly wrote the book, or a book, on the sea change that was Revolver.

Crit­i­cal to dis­cus­sion of this peri­od, how­ev­er, is a sin­gle that appeared at the same time, and proved just as impor­tant to the Bea­t­les’, and thus pop music’s, evo­lu­tion. Though not espe­cial­ly inno­v­a­tive musi­cal­ly or lyri­cal­ly, “Paper­back Writer” was the first Bea­t­les’ record­ing to bring Paul McCartney’s bass for­ward in the mix, show­cas­ing the utter­ly dis­tinc­tive play­ing that would lat­er form the back­bone of songs like “Come Togeth­er.” The record’s B‑side, “Rain,” more­over, is the first Bea­t­les song to use back­wards tape, a sta­ple of psy­che­del­ic music there­after.

In fact,  “Rain” was “the first back­wards tape on any record any­where. Before Hen­drix, before The Who, before any f*cker,” John Lennon bragged. (He con­ced­ed that the nov­el­ty hit “They’re Com­ing to Take Me Away, Ha Haaa!” got there a lit­tle ear­li­er, “but it’s not the same thing.”). Lennon claimed the song as his, although McCart­ney lat­er claimed co-author­ship. But Lennon gave cred­it for the back­wards voic­es and gui­tars to “Ja,” telling Play­boy in 1980:

I got home from the stu­dio and I was stoned out of my mind on mar­i­jua­na… and, as I usu­al­ly do, I lis­tened to what I’d record­ed that day. Some­how it got on back­wards and I sat there, trans­fixed, with the ear­phones on, with a big hash joint.

There’s much more to the sto­ry of “Rain,” as you’ll hear in the You Can’t Unhear This video above. The track came out of “what would arguably be the most rev­o­lu­tion­ary week of their record­ing career… work­ing close­ly with their beloved pro­duc­er George Mar­tin and an eager young EMI engi­neer named Geoff Emer­ick.” In “Rain,” specif­i­cal­ly, they took full advan­tage of a dis­cov­ery made on “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows” — the impact of slow­ing down record­ings.

The band “played the rhythm track real­ly fast,” dur­ing record­ing, “so that when the tape was played back at nor­mal speed every­thing would be so much slow­er, chang­ing the tex­ture,” remem­bered Emer­ick. This led to what McCart­ney would call a “big omi­nous noise”:

The drums became a giant drum kit. If you slow down a foot­step it becomes a giant’s foot­step, it adds a few tones to the weight of the per­son. So we got a big, pon­der­ous, thun­der­ous back­ing and then we worked on top of that as nor­mal. 

Ringo called it the great­est per­for­mance of his musi­cal career: “I think I just played amaz­ing… I think it was the first time I used this trick of start­ing a break by hit­ting the hi-hat first instead of going direct­ly to a drum off the hi-hat.”

Con­trar­i­ans love takes about icon­ic artists like the Bea­t­les that over­state the impor­tance of deep cuts and minor record­ings. But in the case of “Rain” — the B‑side of a 1966 sin­gle that didn’t appear on the album that changed rock and roll and the coun­ter­cul­ture that same year– believe the hype. The Bea­t­les them­selves sin­gle out the song as sem­i­nal­ly impor­tant to their musi­cal devel­op­ment for good rea­son. Or as Sir Paul recalls, “It was nice, I real­ly enjoyed that one.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er” Con­tains “the Cra­zi­est Edit” in Bea­t­les His­to­ry

Hear the Beau­ti­ful Iso­lat­ed Vocal Har­monies from the Bea­t­les’ “Some­thing”

Lennon or McCart­ney? Sci­en­tists Use Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence to Fig­ure Out Who Wrote Icon­ic Bea­t­les Songs

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness