Sphere Of Sound: What A Time To Be A Sonic Vibe & Listen To The Music Play
The more Dead Forever Sphere concerts we attend, the more we fully realize & remember how the headyHead experience was always about that crystal clear good ol' Grateful Dead golden music in our ears..
Existence is a joke, death is a myth & it’s truly a pranksters’ world. So leave it to a time traveling hip cat from the 1960’s to perfectly sum up our ultra modern 2024 cutting edge tech concert-going experience, distilling in one sentence what thousands of face-stolen Dead Heads have been trying to put into words since mid-May, when Bob Weir & Co. started rocking out in the brand new Vegas monolith behemoth music venue called simply ‘Sphere’.
“It’s like your inside the Wall Of Sound” said Jack The Tripper on a glorious Venice Beach day, as we shared a dooby and I prodded him with questions about how he felt after his recent time in Vegas galivanting, communing & above all dancing with that time-honored time-tested counter culture Americana outlaw institution, The Grateful Dead extended family. I wanted real honest opinions, and once I was finally able to finesse him away from complaints about Sphere staff battling hippies eager to get to the sphloor (GA dance floor) and close to the stage and band (an ancient nightly yin yang relationship duet dance sacred ritual between hippy citizen customers & corporate state security that shall go on as long as there live music shows, for low-tech/ no tech Jedi chess moves are half the fun when you’re living one show at a time on the run… use the sphorce! ) young Tripper found the elemental platinum truth nugget at the center of the whole psychedelia circus extravaganza: the musical sound quality was literally unmatched, exquisite, divine, like nothing we have ever heard. Sure, the 12K resolution screens & variety of galactic travel imagery worlds are also astounding & amazing, but we come to the Dead for the sonic energy aesthetic, the musical airwaves, the healing vibes that our ears & now whole bodies can feel, hear, savor, engage with, fully inhabit.
The Wall Of Sound was a gargantuan DIY speaker system Frankenstein wall that the Grateful Dead hauled around to shows in the mid-seventies, and now we are fortunate enough to be dancing within it, a massive temple, church, monastery, if you will, erected to support us in our devotional dancing spinning service to the healing medicinal music of Jerry Garcia & Pigpen Ron’s all-American hybrid rock blues folk country fusion jam band, man! Lucky us, fam.
Art culture historians will look back ages from now from their deep space cyborg planets and announce with calm certainty that organic humanoid concert quality took quite the big leap that year in the scalding desert, 2024. Once you go Sphere, you never go back. You’ve been Tip Of The Spheared, your face is in your lap, your body is one giant satellite receiver ear drum and you are infinitely changed for the better, reminded why you like music & art in the first place. It is life affirming, we feel not just alive but as though there is purpose to this whole crazy never-ending self-perpetuating mosaic mandala of thoughts, feelings, expression. Sphere aftershow afterglow is one that rings clearly: Optimism Is High, and all encompassing, in all realms of time & space and everything in between. The heart of gold band has already won. So many levels to go, infinite abundance to uncover, decode, celebrate.
The members of Dead & Company know they are jamming in rarefied extreme circumstances of divine planning, synchrodestiny, if you will. A global limelight emanates from a huge metal globe, eyes from all realms focused upon it, collectively guessing what the next classic song will be, a Jerry / Robert Hunter? An old timey standard cover, or maybe a Bobby / John Barlow collab? Yes, the current band is grateful to have made it this far, to a special summer that feels like the Dead Head Super Bowl combined with All Star Summer Camp. At a venue that somehow feels like it could stand shoulder to shoulder with the legendary 1978 Egypt Eclipse Pyramid GD shows, as highly heady blasphemy as that may sound!
So visceral is the potency of Sphere’s high level alien supertech, it seems safe to say the band knows who the star is… they can relax, and let Sphere work it’s trickster shape shifter magic (yes, we attentive heads think the floor and stage sometimes move during the show, super trippy yo… also, the metal panels making up the sphloor seem to be residing over a giant portal, ancient alien base perhaps?)
On first entrance to the venue, the shear noble regal size of the Sphere’s innards, the main stage wall and the side screens are the initial attention grabber, and then, once we’ve settle in and screwed our faces back on, a couple songs into the first set, that immaculate one-of-a-kind sound makes itself known. For our beloved Sphere is a guru, a teacher, a prankster, transformed in spirit from its daily donning of the Grateful Dead Stealie skull lightning bolt logo on its external face… residual heady run-off, we become what we pretend to be, and every mask ever created has its own personality, masks age like people, the natives have taught us, do not underestimate a mask once cosmic life has been breathed into it. Sphere is alive with the Grateful Dead Spirit. Spheal Your Sphace. Stay frosty, on point & on your toes always, whenever you are within or nearby Sphere. No rest for wicked west coast warlocks when encountering the latest unlocked level in the Here We Are matrix IRL video game.
Just look & notice how many layers of trippy there are for the human brain to try to comprehend; the most crisp clear absolutely alive music we’ve ever heard pouring over us while the eyes try to compute & contemplate how there are no visible speakers in sight..? Just a band on a stage, man… like at a high school talent show. But then it dawns on us… we are all INSIDE the Speaker… one giant living Spheaker, if you will. Resonating, pulsing, altering our internal & external energies as all energy & beings within the Sphere unite, synchronize, become one grateful vibration of peace and love, kindness and compassion, joy and bliss. Putty in the music’s golden palm.
The Dead & Co musicians know they have their work cut out for them, but they look as free and loose as ever up on the naked Sphere stage, empowered by a sacred duty to raise their efforts higher than ever, to match the capabilities of their gargantuan superbeing host ( which is supposedly so far only playing shows at 30% of its potential volume output). OG Maestro Bob Weir has never looked happier, smiling away and singing profoundly, with deep wizardly gusto & gravitas. John Slayer Mayer continues to one-up himself night after night, ascending the ranks of guitar greats as he effortlessly converts naysayers to believers, one lava flow solo at a time… resistance is futile and Captain Trips Jerry would certainly approve of the hardworking kid & all the fresh artistic force he’s brought to the Dead Head train as it keeps chugging along, bound for eternal glory, good vibes music here to stay & slay.
We know Slayer Mayer studies Jerry’s equipment and guitar licks, a master painter studying the Picassos & Basquiats & Fridas that came before him, a student of his craft if nothing else, an artist possessed by his calling. Mayer was the middleman go-between connecting Dead & Co with the Sphere tech team, a modern rockstar sherpa tirelessly working out all the technical aspects of the show, and for that alone we far out heads owe him our bottomless gratitude. All the savage medicinal peaking guitar shredding is a rainbow wavy gravy train cherry on top, thank you kindly Dr. Mayer !!!!
Bob Weir is right there with Dr. Slayer, pushing himself nightly like an Olympic athlete going to the brink, determined to find new depths & heights in the classic Dead songbook. And the other side, the spirit realm of the mythical grateful dead band from which the Bay Area warlock boys named the band, is apparently right there with him, eager to lift the veil to create & vibe, to jam & collaborate.
“Bobby was glitching out as he was playing, I saw his face twitching, it was like our boy Billy, he was obviously channeling” Jack The Tripper explained about a particularly inspired version of Casey Jones he’d witnessed in person at Sphere, comparing it to our psychedelic bluegrass guitar virtuoso hero Billy Strings, who we’d often seen at shows appear to become a vibrating vessel of golden fluctuating light during several of his other worldly guitar solos, losing himself in the notes as fresh downloads flowed in from a higher source, an experimental creatrix superhighway guiding face melting improvisational patterns to explosive landings on Dr. Strings’s fiery fingers & threads. All serious artists hope to be pushed to ever greater unknown heights, via either self-propulsion or outside forces, whatever means can get them there.. & Sphere certainly seems like a powerful enough entity to facilitate and assist ol’ warlock Weir with some freshly cooked alchemy to make his bro Jerry smile.
Such collaborative high vibe fusions between humans & supertech are what the sci-fi future is all about, a far cry & yet somehow full circle from the 1960’s GD experience when it was just the band blasting out trippy chunky wavy music at top volume in a bar, ballroom or rented hall with a jug of electric Kool-Aid on the table. There’s a palpable intimacy at Sphere that one would not expect for a shiny new venue of 20,000 humans, and it’s that very feeling of being with our tribe & house band that keeps us coming back. The fans are there, the family, the boys on the stage… a simple distillation of that timeless summer of love classic recipe for a real good time. Play the hits & get the people moving & grooving. Listen to the music play. Live in the moment, take it all in, bask in the magic with twenty thousand like-minded brethren. We keep coming back to Dead shows because we crave that comfy blend of nostalgia which at the same time can be counted on to go searing scorching blazing into new uncharted until now sonic territories, the players’ instruments ascending together as one unstoppable light beam spaceship, gaining speed as both boogying Dead Heads and mercurial stoic Sphere encourage them to keep going, growing, glowing, flowing…
We could go on & on, dime-a-dozen urban psychedelic gonzo shamans attempting to articulate & quantify the mystical & ethereal, but by now we trust that you grasp the simple concept that Sphere’s priceless sound must be heard by your own ears, nothing else compares… a microcosm of life, get your own kicks… if you like music & love the Grateful Dead, or vice versa, please treat yourself to this immaculate experience.. for this moment in time & in Grateful Dead Head history is precisely the high vibes next level stimulus stuff we were looking for when we signed up to come to Mothership eARTh !!!
For one does not simply second-hand comprehend Mickey Hart’s magnum opus Drums / Space on the healing Sphere vibration by reading fancy words & meditating on some premium YouTube vids (thank you tapers). We could try to tell you how the ancient pounding drums can be felt deep in your human exoskeleton space suit bone marrow, undoubtedly cleansing eons of cross-dimensional inherited generational angst & trauma.. and you would listen rapt, really wanting to believe. But life must be lived by the living and Sound must be heard & felt by the hearing, in person, in the flesh & bone.
To be one with Sphere’s Sound is to KNOW. That music is high medicine, that life is beautiful and that the universe’s divine design is all around us all the time. We must trust it & marinate in it. We are the light, and we the light Really LOVE Sound. All is one, and We & It are all Energy.. when something resonates positively and lights us up, we instinctively lean into it, we go deeper. We must seek, show up & GO to truly know… must listen clearly and deeply to truly live in flow, trusting our gut to guide us down the universal river, always Paying Attention like Bill Walton said, so we can see & follow the signs.. There is a reason Dead Heads keep returning to Vegas, one more pilgrimage to the big show. The graphics get us there the first time and even continue to wow us tech jaded & cynical hippies on inevitable repeat viewings, but at day’s end it is the futuristic Kubrick Asimov masterpiece-level sonic buffet that really keeps us coming back, spending all our hard earned Uncle Sams for another three hour chance to experience the unexplainable.
So say what you will about highfalutin technology snobs and the false idol of passive nostalgic consumerism, reliving the good ol’ days in the digital age, but sometimes, more often than not, here on Spaceship eARTh things have a way of all coming together right on time, groovy ideas transforming into glittering solid-ish matter, when the mass hive mind zeitgeist sticks the quantum realm instant manifestation landing and we lucky humans get treated to a piping hot, fresh out the wood-fired brick oven paradigm-liquifying transcendent next level nailed-it experience like Dead & Company at Sphere, where whole new dimensions & timelines unfold & reveal themselves to us, the innumerable humble tie-dyed masses eager to cook up some dance floor magic just one more time, like the good ol’ days at The Matrix or Golden Gate Park, Deer Creek or Shoreline, be it the beginning or the end… it’s a obviously a divine Spheracle we made it this far, so no chomping please and see you on the dance sphloor, heady neon dayglo terrapin heroes !!!!
And if In The End all the cosmic jargon & hyperbole is a bit too much, we do apologize.. let’s not let the sacred message of Listen To The Music Play be lost because the messenger medium was a hyped-up spunion, Jones-ing for just one more frolicking super jam in the left side upper middle mushroom stew dance sphloor, aka Jeff’s Back Pocket … but then again, that’s what the psychedelic prankster trip was always supposed to be all about, wasn’t it? All ways always, being so Out There that you’re actually Right Here; a reminder to keep an open mind about everything all the time and kill the ego gently, to let go of the mainstream personality hang ups as each & every individual allows their previous mindset & persona the freedom to expand, evolve, grow & ascend… and then notices how the physical world around them quickly reconfigures to reflect the new elevated visionary mental vibration we’re collectively cruising on. Further, indeed…
Yes, we heads must always maintain a rigorous vigilance, taking great care to be a constant menace to square society, if only because that is our duty here, that is the golden holy work, to rise & awaken, and we know that by doing so, by shaking up the established societal archetype orders, we shall in fact continue to set square society free one by one, two by brunch and three by lunch, the world our shared classroom & playground, they come to realize, this sparkling existence a juicy oyster to munch. Lucky us to know how the game works. Team family tribe evolves as One, all go up Together. Let us play the game & shine the light. Thank you, Jerry! Thank you Pigpen Ron, Robert Hunter, Bill Graham, Keith, Brent, Vince… every member of the heart of gold band that did their part in delivering us to this present sparkling red, white & blue jewel of a moment in the unforgiving yet beautiful desert sun.
Just yesterday I asked Harry Perry, Grateful Dead Head shakedown street parking lot party singer & guitarist tour veteran t-shirt hawking icon, as he jammed away as always on Venice Beach boardwalk while Dead Forever takes the week off, if he was returning to the mind melting desert heat of Spin City Las Vegas for July 4th. Good Ol’ Harry didn’t even have to think about it, his clear sparkling eyes unblinking. “Oh, definitely… it’s where all the action is, it’s so great.. the people, the money, and most of all, the music.” Just spin, baby! 😎🌀🐢⚡
much thanks to Grateful Dead & Company and Sphere for their generous hospitality
photos property of Dead & Company… via @terrapin_nation on twitter X.com