The Grateful Dead (L to R: Bill Kreutzmann, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh) perform on at Santa Barbara Stadium in Santa Barbara, California, wearing an earlier version of their Wall of Sound.Īfter the success of the first model, Coscia went on to build a fully functional fourth last summer three of which are currently in existence. “ they probably weren’t even born at the time the ‘Wall’ was being used.” “I had no doubt that the community would embrace the project, but I think I misunderstood how big the community is,” Coscia said. However, the little model, which became known as “Le Petit Mur De Son” (which roughly translates to “The Little Wall of Sound”), quickly garnered national attention and garnered coverage in the Wall Street Journal and InsideHook.Ĭoscia, a luthier who specializes in making guitars and guitar cabinets in the vein of Grateful Dead instruments, expected his fellow gear-focused Deadheads to latch onto the build, but what surprised him was the thousands of fans who were to follow his builds on social networks. That version was essentially “a two-channel stereo” which, according to Coscia, was more like “a toy” in that “no speaker cost more than $1”. “When they did something, they did it because it was a direction that they just wanted to explore in order to produce the best product or explore new limits.”Ĭoscia started their original model in early 2021, which was a short range version of the “Wall”. It was the physical representation of the metaphysical Dead,” said Coscia.
“To me, the ‘Wall of Sound’ was essentially the spirit of the Grateful Dead.
Nearly 50 years later, Coscia, a Southbury and Deadhead resident who saw the band several times between 19, is on a mission to slowly build a fully functional full-size replica of the “Wall of Sound” – a model. “They just kept going until it burned out naturally,”
I don’t think they thought much about the price of gasoline in 19,” said Anthony Coscia. “I don’t think it necessarily crossed their minds that it would almost bankrupt them, which it did. The Des Moines 'Eyes of the World' is simply definitive, and the Louisville medley of 'Weather Report Suite'/'Jam'/'The Other One'/'It's a Sin Jam'/'Stella Blue' is one-of-a-kind.The equipment, which in its heyday included 600 individual loudspeakers and took a whole day to build, would be quickly retired by the end of the year, as the costs associated with maintaining the “Wall” made it virtually impossible to keep it on the road. But it was truly a singular sonic achievement, one that, as McNally puts it, 'allowed the band to go places they'd only dreamed of.' The two shows excerpted on this 2-CD set, 6/16/74 at the State Fairgrounds in Des Moines and 6/18/74 at Freedom Hall in Louisville, beautifully illustrate the point: with a PA this loud, the band could play softer, freeing them to mesh ever more subtly and intricately.
#Wall of sound grateful dead free#
Dead chronicler Dennis McNally's liner notes to this Road Trip are a must-read, succinctly expounding upon how Bear's vision of creating a sound system free of distortion morphed into a 641-speaker monster (there's a great picture of it inside the booklet) that required three trucks to transport and five hours to set up, almost bankrupting the band and causing them to retire from the road for almost two years.
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