Tap built a set for their song, Stonehenge, but of course things went wackily awry: the crew built Stonehenge too small and it was famously in danger of being trod upon by a dwarf.
The Grateful Dead also built a Stonehenge, the difference being that they made it out of the largest speakers on Earth and it weighed 85 trillion tons. (I am estimating that precise tonnage.) In ’74, something called the Wall of Sound came into existence. This happened because the Dead’s policy of nearly spending themselves bankrupt on obviously retarded shit was a sacred one. This band policy was taken even more seriously than other Dead policies such as, “Please wear the most comfortable clothes you own at all times no matter how absurd you look,” and, “Only hire criminals to look after the payroll.”
In high school bio class, my friends and I would play a game to see who could break the most glassware during the period without it becoming obvious that this was the intention. It required timing–you couldn’t just break a smash a beaker every two minutes, it would be obvious. You couldn’t smash too many things or it would become apparent that you were destroying things that other people were trying to use to better themselves on purpose. Too few…well, what’s the point? The men who put together the Wall of Sound were clearly playing this game.
“So, how many speakers do we need?
“400,000. Plus, they must be the most expensive, heaviest speakers ever built. If they are not heavy enough, we will fill them with concrete. It must be such that it requires more man-hours to prepare to rock Cleveland than it did to conquer Poland.”
“So, 400,000 speakers, then?
“Well, if we’re being precise: 800,000. Because it’s so ass-kickingly heavy and complicated, we’re going to build two so we can play on one while the other’s being set up. In fact, we might very well build three and just set the third on fire for no reason whatsoever.”
“This sounds like a plan! What do you call this thing?”
“The Wall of Sound.”
“Brilliant! It’s not as if one of the defining characteristics of a wall is that it stays in one place no matter what. One question, though: will it be so electronically complex that keeping it running for more than an hour straight will defy the very laws of physics?”
“What do you think?”
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