For a band who blows minds for a living, Phish became turbo powered when amplified by the sights and sounds of The Sphere in Las Vegas.
The trippy quartet from Vermont have been jamming together since the mid '80s with only one personnel change just a few years into their history, when the keyboard player wanted to pursue a life of playing religious music.
When Trey Anastasio, Jon Fishman, and Mike Gordon agreed to replace Jeff Holdsworth with Page McConnell in 1985, the band was locked in.
Many of its fans would say experiencing a Phish show is a deeper religious experience than even the best Sunday in church.
Drew Carey was so blown away, he tweeted something we probably shouldn't embed in it's entirety but it ended with, "Bro I met God tonight for real. I feel like I just got saved by Jesus no lie."
A fellow Phish fan named Seth, in Drew's section, agreed about the dual psychedelic attack of the tens of thousands of speakers and revolutionary video technology.
Mikael Wood of the LA Times was also mightily impressed. He wrote, "at one point in the nearly four-hour gig, the 160,000-square-foot screen — said to be the highest-resolution in the world — became a starry night sky so crisply rendered that you could almost believe the roof had retracted; at another point, Sphere transformed into an underwater kelp forest with sunlight streaming down from the top of the dome. The venue’s sound system was just as impressive, with a finely detailed mix and seatback haptics that allowed you literally to feel the oomph of bassist Mike Gordon’s low notes."
The band, who worked with Abigail Rosen Holmes, a former Disney Imagineer, to create the visuals, have posted several of them on their YouTube channel.
“We came in really wanting to do a show that was a great Phish show,” she told the Associated Press. One of her goals was to utilize the one-of-a-kind capabilities of the Sphere to see “what can we do for Phish that we maybe couldn’t do for any other artist?”
One thing that stands out: there was a different visual presentation for each night to match the unique sets the group played every evening.
The main reasons Phish hesitates from committing to a longer residency than just four nights (you may recall the last band who rocked that glorious globe was U2 who did 40 shows), is they pride themselves in never playing the same show twice.
That would be very tough to do if they also wanted detailed visuals that matched the songs and contained Phish Easter eggs to truly trip out the fans.
Two of the visual highlights came during Friday night (show #2) during the end of the second set where the audience felt itself being taken through a dayglo carwash during "Prince Caspian" and then having the screen(s) licked by a good doggie while the band noodled way through "You Enjoy Myself."
They say some people go to these shows under the influence. One can only imagine one's senses being barraged by so many different styles and speeds of imagery for over two hours only to have your vehicle cleaned and then your face baptized by a precious pooch.
All of this was an excellent second chapter for the trailblazing venue whose audiences were mesmerized by U2's graphics and sounds, only to be seemingly topped by this.
Could next month's performers, Dead & Co., top it? Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, John Mayer and the others in the company are playing two dozen shows from May 16 to July 13, 2024.
Tickets are available for many of the dates. Grab them on Dead & Co.'s website.
