I read the wikipedia page on it and im still confused on how it is made and what exactly was so good about it. Im not familiar with music production but ive seen people mention Spector and how he contributed to music and the “wall of sound” is always something i see people mention. But i never know what exactly that is
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Obligatory Deadhead interjection : the “Wall of Sound” was also the name of an innovative speaker system developed by the Grateful Dead’s tech branch Alembic in 1973-1974. A 30-foot-high wall of speakers behind the band did the job of both monitors and house PA: the band heard exactly what the audience heard, and vocal-mic feedback was eliminated by the use of double-microphones: they sang into the top one and whatever sound hit both mics at once (ie what was coming from the speakers) was cancelled out.
The instrumental sound was amazing but the vocals sounded tinny. It looked very impressive on stage but it was too big for some venues, and it was so time-consuming to set up that two sets of scaffolding would sometimes have to leapfrog venue to venue, requiring extra trucks, drivers and tech crew. The Grateful Dead Movie (filmed Oct 74) has a whole sequence where they set the thing up.
The whole touring operation became too big by 74. Too expensive (the Arab oil embargo didn’t help), with too many extra hangers on, too many shows. They took a hiatus in late 74 and when they came back they used a conventional system. Parts of the speaker array survived/were recycled by Garcia Band and some other SF bands.
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