Dead & Company at Sphere Las Vegas

Seeing my favorite band at the most technologically advanced music venue in the world was an exhilarating, fascinating, exciting, and just a little frustrating experience. Bobby Weir and Mickey Hart are cementing their legacy by continuing to innovate while performing a Grateful Dead songbook that was mostly written over 50 years ago.

Imagine a super high-resolution video on the largest screen in the world synched to live music from your favorite band via the best sound system in the world. Then imagine band and production team working together to push you towards a weird combination of brain orgasm plus a subtle queasiness in the pit of your stomach from vertigo. And then, before you climax or barf, they pull back on the jam and the visuals to let you rest before doing it all over again. Tension and release, tension and release. That’s kind of what Dead & Company at Sphere was like.

For many people, the most common reaction to the remarkable two-song opening sequence is laughter. WTF IS THIS! Then they want to soak it up. Then they want to describe it but can’t. Then they want to see it again.

My friends and I loved experiencing something brand new together from our favorite band.

I had wanted to write about Dead & Company at Sphere back in May after my first weekend of three shows. However, the events were so overwhelming, I decided to go to three more shows before I wrote. Even then I needed a few weeks to process the experience.

The shows were too unique and exciting to roll out the tired "but it's not the Grateful Dead with Jerry Garcia" cliché that some old Deadheads fall back on. Jerry’s gone and nothin's gonna bring him back. Bobby and Mickey are alive and innovating, showing us all the eyes of the world and you can still see them live.

Sphere Las Vegas

The sheer size and scope of Sphere and its technology is difficult to explain, but superlatives help. The entire domed ceiling is a single 160,000-foot screen. For contrast, an American football field is 48,000 square feet. The world’s best sound system includes 1,586 loudspeakers, 300 mobile speaker modules, and “butt kickers” to amplify low-frequency bass in each of the 17,600 seats.

Of the six shows I went to, two were in the seats and four in the 3,000-person general admission section down front.

Hearing the crystal-clear Sphere sound system for the first time I was reminded of the transition several decades ago from analog recorded music including vinyl and tape to digital recordings on CDs. Sphere sound is a major step up from the normal speaker arrays on the sides of the stage at large shows. The sound is super sharp no matter where in the venue you are.

The amazing sound even extends to the hallways and bathrooms, so making a pee run means you don't miss as much of the show.

However, it’s the visuals that make a Sphere show utterly different than anything else in entertainment. If you’ve been to an IMAX movie, imagine that screen but thirty times larger wrapped all the way around you in a dome so that you see nothing but screen in your peripheral vision.

Oh, so can we talk about Las Vegas in July? Yikes! At 117 degrees during the July days, I felt like I was living on Mars. I stayed at the Venetian which is connected to Sphere by an air-conditioned walkway. That meant it was possible to stay inside for three full days, making your way from your Mars sleeping pod (hotel room) to the Mars food pod (restaurant), to the Mars entertainment pod (Sphere), all within one climate-controlled bubble. Don’t go outside, it’s not safe!

A Las Vegas Residency

I’ve seen the Grateful Dead or its various offshoots of the original band members like Dead & Company well over 100 times since 1979. I’ve seen them in theaters, hockey arenas, festivals, epic venues like Red Rocks, and stadiums.

Until Sphere, the band toured - traveling to fans in cities around the country. Now the fans come to them in Las Vegas.

Super successful musical acts that have built a legacy like Dead & Company can transform their live show schedule with a residency. Band and production staff develop a routine, allowing them more rest to focus on delivering a fabulous show. 

Artists who have built such a legacy including Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and Elton John and all three have all done successful residencies in Las Vegas over the decades. Dead & Company have taken over Sphere Las Vegas for a 30-show residency of three shows per weekend for ten weeks, following U2 and Phish residencies at the venue earlier in the year.

Speaking of legacy, last week it was announced the Grateful Dead (Mickey Hart, Billy Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, and Bobby Weir); will receive the 47th Kennedy Center Honors this year along with Oscar-winning director Francis Ford Coppola; Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Bonnie Raitt; jazz musician Arturo Sandoval; and the Apollo theater.

Making Sphere technology work

Dead & Company wisely chose to have a combination of whiz-bang exciting visuals for some songs but for others the video component was much more subtle and low-key.

It would have been easy to have a big production with each song, but that would get overwhelming and would fail to inspire after a while. Just like the song choice moving from up-tempo to ballad makes the overall experience better, having a variety of videos worked well.

I liked that the show had a loose theme showcasing the history of the Grateful Dead from its founding in 1965 in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco to present day. There were images of the various members of the band over the years, the historic venues they played, photos of fans, and Grateful Dead iconography like their “Stealie” logo and dancing bears.

I had an opportunity to speak with people at the shows who weren’t Grateful Dead fans before. They were just going out to a Las Vegas show, and they chose Dead & Company at Sphere over, say, Cirque du Soleil or Penn & Teller. Every single person absolutely loved the show, so for the band the residency is also creating new fans.

And for grizzled Grateful Dead veterans, the band made sure to mix things up and be unpredictable. During each three-day weekend, they played nearly 60 songs with no repeats. During the entire residency, they’ve played over 100 songs, so I heard ones my second weekend that weren’t played during the first.

And they mixed up the visuals too. While there were some set pieces they showed every night, each show included new visuals I hadn’t seen before.

The band’s connection to the audience

For the first several shows I went to, I was in the seats. This was ideal to get used to the venue because there is a much better view of the screen from the seats. Like everybody’s first time, I was wowed by the Sphere at my first show. However, with the second I found myself focused a little too much on the visuals. There were a few times where I was looking up for ten minutes or so and then realized hey, my favorite band is down there and I’m not even watching them!

Fortunately, I was in the general admission “pit” for the remaining four shows, and for several I arrived super early to get a spot right up front, about 30 feet from the stage, close enough to see individual guitar strings. I always love watching the interplay between band members when up close.

The stage is tiny compared to the venue. It’s sparse with just the band members - former Grateful Dead members Bob Weir and Mickey Hart, with John Mayer, Oteil Burbridge, Jeff Chimenti, and Jay Lane – and their instruments on stage. Most of the amplifiers are hidden under the stage, the cameras and lights are all remotely operated, and there are no photographers allowed on or in front of the stage.

For the two shows when I was very close, the entire stage took up my field of view. This allowed me to really focus on the band. I could look up and see visuals, but I preferred to focus on the band. When facing the minimalist stage way up front, it felt like a club show! Imagine that! Dead & Company in a club!

But if I turned around and faced backwards, wham! - it was like 18,000 people were looking directly at me.

Sphere seating is sort of like the end of football stadium but inverted with the most seats per row at the bottom going to fewest seats per row up top due to the spherical shape of the room. The seats all face the stage creating a weird energy vortex centered on exactly where I was standing for two of the shows I went to. I could feel the collective human power in the room – the energy coming off the stage from the nearby band members and the energy from the nearly 20,000 fans all facing me dead center just a few dozen feet from the stage.

As amazing as Sphere is in so many ways, there are downsides. Yet Sphere is so different an experience from a normal show, that my several negative reactions are minor in comparison to all the great aspects of the new venue.

Like the digital sound of a CD compared to a warm analog system or a Disney World theme restaurant vs an outdoor clam shack on the ocean, the “Mars entertainment pod” is almost too perfect. I prefer the sweat of a hot outdoor summer show more than the temperature-controlled Sphere.  A passing rain shower at a summer festival can be magical, as memorable a part of the experience as any song the band plays. Heck, I even prefer a grungy men’s room that makes me think of hundreds of past concerts to the modern and clean restrooms that felt like they belonged in the Cathay Pacific lounge at Hong Kong International Airport.

Still, those frustrations are minor. I’m excited to return to Sphere because I want to feel that energy again! Hopefully the band will book more dates next year.

As I write this, you still have time to catch the show. There are two more weekends of three shows each – August 1, 2, 3 and August 8, 9, 10.

If you’re on the fence: GO!

Photos: David Meerman Scott at Sphere by Brian Halligan. Others by David Meerman Scott