Five Bullets 3.29.24
The Wall of Sound, Richard Serra, Gowanus Canal & more
Good Morning & Happy Friday!
I’m back this week with another Five Bullets. Last week I had some much needed rest and relaxation in the beautiful country of Belize. I learned a lot about this small country in Central America located on the Carribbean Sea. Perhaps I’ll write a future Five Bullets on Belize.
I hope you are all well and keeping busy and enjoying Spring!
Here’s some things I found interesting over the past two weeks.
This week’s Five Bullets:
Art: Sculptor Richard Serra passed away earlier this week. Serra’s giant steel sculptures are on view at Dia Beacon. The massive, curving panels resemble the walls of a canyon as you pass through the spirals, making your way to the center. Here’s more on Serra’s process.
Music: The Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound turned 50 this week. First introduced on March 23, 1974 at San Francisco’s Cow Palace, the Dead’s Wall of Sound revolutionized live music. The band needed bigger and better sound for increasingly larger shows and enlisted the helf of their sound engineer Owsley "Bear" Stanley. The system included 600 speakers and 48 amplifiers and was able to project distortion-free sound up to a quarter-mile distance. Due to the size and cost of using the Wall of Sound the band discontinued its use at the end of their 1974 tour.
News: A container ship struck Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge on Tuesday causing the bridge to completely collapse. The ship Dali experienced power failure before colliding with the bridge. Six construction workers died in the collapse. According to this table of measurements, the force required to slow down the ship seconds before it collided with the bridge might have been more than the thrust produced by a Saturn V rocket launch.
NYC: The New Yorker spoke with Brad Vogel, Gowanus resident, poet and canal canoer. Vogel is a member of The Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club who canoe the polluted Gowanus Canal. The canal was designated a superfund site in 2010 and Vogel has seen changes to the neighborhood in a way few have.
TV: Apple TV’s new miniseries Manhunt is based on James L. Swanson's 2006 book Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer. The series follows the 12 day search for John Wilkes Booth after Booth assassinates President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theater in 1865. I read the book a while ago but I recall it was one of the first interesting and exciting nonfiction books I’d read at the time - it reads like a thriller. I’m looking forward to checking the series out.
Have you seen the Mini Wall of Sound ?
Looking forward to Manhunt, the book was amazing.