The Grateful Dead's Wall Of Sound

 I can across this page recently about the incredibly innovative "Wall of Sound" sound system used by the Grateful Dead for their 1974 tour. Since the band only used the system briefly, not many people know about it, but it certainly was very forward thinking in so many ways.

For as good as recording was in the 60's and 70's, live sound system technology had really only started and lagged far behind. The systems were tiny by today's standards, with a lot of non-matching components used by PA owners just to be able to cover the audience. Plus, on-stage monitoring was still in its infancy, so every artist had a difficult time hearing themselves. This is what prompted the Dead's sound crew and Alembic to come up with a way for the band to not only hear themselves, but to give the audience the best possible listening experience as well.

The "Wall of Sound" was actually comprised of 11 independent sound systems, as you can see from the picture on the left. There was one system for the vocals placed in the center, one for each guitar, one for each string of Phil Lesh's bass (yes, you read that correctly), one for the piano, one for both drummer's bass drum, and one each for the rest of each drummer's kit. Each system was placed behind the player so they could hear it, and since each system was made up of multiple speaker cabinets, could be directed so that most of the sound was aimed directly at the audience instead of bouncing around the venue. The individual systems were powered by 300 watt per channel McIntosh amps, which were always noted for excellent sound and about the most powerful amp that you could get at the time.

The crew came up with an innovative idea for vocal miking using differential mics that really made the whole thing work however. They put two directional mics out-of-phase with each other and spaced them 60mm apart as on the left. This meant that anything coming into the mic other than a vocal sung very close to one mic would cancel out, so you'd only hear the vocal in its particular sound system and nothing else from off the stage.

The reports were that the system sounded incredible and was insanely loud and clean for the time, so it garnered nothing but raves.

Back then this system was light years ahead of any other sound system on the planet, and in many ways, it's never been duplicated. The Dead only used it for a single tour because it was unusually costly to transport and very labor-intensive to set up, but it's something to marvel at even today. You can read more about it here and here, which has mostly the same info but different pictures. The pictures were taken by Richard Pechner, and you can view more images of The Grateful Dead and their Wall of Sound on his website.

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Prince's $2100 Tour Book And iPod

After the news that the Grateful Dead is making a tour book available from blurb.com and even picking up the custom cover charge for their fans for a limited time, we find that the kind-hearted Prince will make available his "21 Nights Opus Package for a mere $2100."

The tour book is leather bound in a velvet case and the 280 pages are made of 200gsm silk engraved with metallic gold. The box set also contains a custom purple iPod loaded with 40 minutes of "exclusive" footage along with a live soundtrack from Indigo Nights and preloaded with a variety of Prince songs. Only 950 will be available.

If $2100 is not rich enough for you, you can also participate in a private auction for Number One in the series, which comes with a special alligator binding and an iPod encrusted with 5 "rare purple diamonds" and 21 "round brilliant cut diamonds."

Sounds opulent and ostentatious, but that's just me. I actually have no objections to these kinds of offerings aimed at superfans, as long as the rest of your fans are also taken care of, which I'm not so sure Prince did in this case.

I'm sure Prince will sell this package out in no time and good for him, but it just feels a bit smarmy as compared to similar offerings from Trent Reznor and Josh Freese. It seems that some artists are all about their fans while others are all about themselves.

The Grateful Dead's Tourbook

Another piece of brilliant marketing that will probably be a big seller is the tour book that the Grateful Dead will publish for their upcoming tour.

What's particularly innovative about this particular tour book is the fact that there will be a different one for each of the 17 shows that the band plays.

How can any band, let alone the Dead, pull this off? They're using the on-demand book printing services provided by blurb.com, something that any band, or anybody with pictures, can also do. Blurb offers a number of professional templates that allow you to make a single book to as many as you want, but the Dead is the first band to take advantage of it, to my knowledge.

In addition to photos of the particular concert that they attend, Dead Heads can create personalized covers by using their own photograph on the cover in place of the standard image. The Dead are even covering the $5 per-book fee for personal covers if purchased by June 30th. Books from each show will be available at www.blurb.com/thedead within 72 hours of each show.

"The band wanted to enable the Dead Heads to visually experience the show in a totally new way," said Jay Blakesberg, photographer for the upcoming Dead tour. "Extending the concert experience via personalized, professional-quality photography books, available within days following each show, is unlike any band merchandising I've ever seen. The speed of Blurb's publishing platform meant we could create books with unique content for every tour stop."

Obviously not every act is worthy of a tour book, but then again, if you have only one fan that wants one, you can now make it available to them without any upfront money out of your pocket for printing.