Posted by I woke up at 8:15am on May 17th, 2024 more than halfway through a whirlwind fifty-eight hour trip to Las Vegas. I walked to the nearby Speedee Mart (why can’t anybody spell their damn name right in the US?) and brought back coffees and a muffin. Drank ‘em and went back for more. M’lady and I had the whole morning to kill before our lunch reservation at some fancy-schmancy Thai place a couple of Vegas-sized blocks away from our room in the off-strip el-cheapo Mardi Gras Hotel & Casino, and we killed most of it at the small but Dead social pool area.
(The Mardi Gras Hotel & Casino barely had a casino and the hotel wasn’t much to write home about either, but at least their name was spelt rite.)
The restaurant was called Lotus of Siam and it was pretty good. Everything we ordered was notably tasty but nothing came close to the big fat chicken wing starter, which was nothing short of amaze-balls. The whole shebang cost us $130US which is a bit crazy, but like I say, it was a good meal. I spilled some crispy duck curry on my new white Dead & Co. shirt which was extremely lame but m’lady got it washed out good as new back at the room later.
After lunch we hailed a cab to the Venetian so we could check out a Grateful Dead exhibit that was on display for the duration of Dead & Co.’s thirty-show Vegas run. When we got in the taxi the driver was fully engaged a loud, animated conversation on her phone/headset. She didn’t say a word to us for the entire ride – it was like we weren’t even there – and I thought it was hilarious.
The Dead Forever Experience (an ironic name for a temporary exhibit) took up two floors of a sizeable wing in the opulent edifice (unlike the lowly Mardi Gras, the Venetian is indeed a grandiose Vegas hotel and casino) and it was quite cool, if a little short on artifacts. The main floor was almost entirely taken up with a large merch area chock-a-block with GD everything, including a very-hard-to-resist poster gallery. Upstairs they had a nice photo display and a few other things but most interesting (to me, anyway) was Dead archivist Dave Lemieux’s tape collection.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, but Dave is an olde-school Ottawa Deadhead, and though I didn’t really know him I do recall meeting him at my friend Corey’s place. Even back in the early ’90’s his goal was to work in the Grateful Dead archives, and when I met him he was enrolled in Library Studies at Ottawa U., a degree he earned specifically in order to help achieve this goal.
As I gaped at the massive cassette collection I tried to recognize familiar handwriting. Surely several of those very tapes were given to him by Corey or my buddy Dave or some other Ottawa friends. If so, I think it’s hilarious that they ended up in a quasi-museum. What a long, strange trip indeed.
When we finished with the Dead Forever Experience I made a conscious, preplanned effort to sit down for a little bit of blackjack. After all, this was Vegas. I found a table, lost eight straight hands to the tune of $200 and got out of there in a hurry.
(The taxi drivers in Vegas sure can be weird sometimes. On the way back to the hotel our cabbie asked my if m’lady was doing drugs; she was eating a gelato.)
Geez, what’s with all this preamble?!? Like, get to the show already…am I right? Who cares about what I had for lunch or the cab rides we took? Who cares if we spent the rest of the afternoon sitting around the hotel pool? Who really needs to read that on our way to the Sphere we stopped at McD’s for two iced coffees and after waiting a full half-hour we spoke to the manager who chose to give us our money back instead of just pouring the damn coffees…
I mean, sure, I care, but is this supposed to be a personal diary or a word-salad intended for a general (if idiosyncratic) audience? I suppose we’ll find out after the editing process.
Yes, I edit. Hard to believe, I know.
Just like the previous night, getting into the Sphere was easy-peasy, although I did see (from an uncomfortably close vantage point) a security guy confiscating a tin of freshly-purchased gummies, which struck me as odd in THC-legal Vegas. Ah well, there were still drinks. Expensive drinks, but at least they were legal for onsite consumption.
We were sitting up in the 400 levels for this one and it was simply fantastic up there. Sure, it had been great standing on the floor just a few dozen feet from the band on opening night but in the Sphere the incredible visuals and the immaculate sound and the amazing extra-sensory features are unquestionably aimed at the seats. It was a truly astounding concert experience.
M’lady and I were shocked when the images on the screen turned out to be exactly the same as the night before. Like, we couldn’t believe it. There was one song in the first set with different visuals, where the screen turned into a 160,000-square-foot swirl of tie dye psychedelia, and a couple more new ones in second set (the one that turned the room into a virtual parade of classic venues including Barton Hall, the Fillmore, Winterland, and Red Rocks was supercool) but these fresh backdrops were so great that they ended up making me that much more disappointed with all the repeats.
Though I did enjoy watching for crowd reactions during a few specific surprises that I knew were coming, like when the camera lifts off from Haight-Ashbury or the satellite whizzes by while we are floating peacefully in outer space.
I mentioned that the video screens were designed to be viewed from the seats rather than the floor and how the sound – aided by a row of sixty+ speakers just above and behind our seats that seemed inaudible but certainly weren’t – was simply astounding from up there in the way-up (and again not very loud), and I even alluded to the scent and wind technology (yes, the Sphere is outfitted with such wonders) that worked brilliantly from high up on the edge of the chasm-like room, but probably the biggest thing that we had missed out on when we were standing on the floor was the seat rumbling.
The rumbles were cool, man. The subtle-but-effective physical jarring of the seats themselves rose to an intense and decidedly unsubtle rattling during the Drums/Space section, which was just better all-around at this second show. The visuals featured a psychotomimetic kaleidoscope of skiers cascade down and around an immense, snowy mountain, which was much cooler than the Windows 95 graphics they used during Drums/Space on night one.
I can’t overstate how good the sound is in the Sphere. From the upper level you really get a feel for how massive the room is – I swear you could park the USS Enterprise inside the Sphere and not touch the walls – and yet the sound is pin-drop perfect, with nary a sound baffle anywhere to be seen. No hanging speakers either, except those ones behind me, and yet I could hear every single note coming from every single instrument on the stage. The sound was somehow better than live, even though it was live sound. The sound was so good that it was almost a bit…is creepy the right word? Weird, for sure. It’s almost like they transfer three-dimensional sound into a two-dimensional sonic landscape that utilizes 167,000 targeted speakers to perfectly deliver a re-3D’ed hi-def wash of sound directly to each individual seat.
I swear, the sound was so targeted that merely standing up was enough to significantly diminish the quality of the mix. Most people seemed to also notice this, and swaths of the crowd started sitting down halfway into the first set, a rare sight at a Dead show indeed.
But for all that, I think I would take floors again. There’s just something about being close, and standing up too; I really like standing at a show. But it is a moot point, for there would be no more Dead & Co. Sphere shows for me; two were all we’d allotted for on this trip. Staying for a third night would have been much better, but the overwhelming spectacle of the Sphere helped make two enough.
Almost.
Gawd, I almost fell asleep after Drums/Space. The time change and the general whirlwind and and and finally started to catch up to me just as the band settled into a string of slow songs. However, slow or not the playing was great throughout, with special mention to John Mayer. I mean dude was exceptional. After these two nights I became totally sold on the guy. In fact, I would have to say that aside from Fare Thee Well this was the best iteration of post-Jerry Dead I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen quite a few.
After the show we walked straight back to our hotel where we relaxed over a couple of in-room beers before crawling into bed at 1am with the alarm set early enough to catch a 5:30am taxi to the airport.
Which is pretty early.
Todd Man Out 