Well, they did it. Dead & Company completed their “Dead Forever” run of 30 shows from May to August 2024 at the incomparable Sphere, that big lightball of fun and henceforth the beating heart of Las Vegas.
Sphere is a venue like no other, with technology seemingly from the future enabling immersive concert experiences previously unimagined. But while the tech itself is nothing less than mind-blowing, we can’t help but feel that it has now been humanized by what Dead & Company brought to it, in a way that previous residents U2 and even Phish perhaps didn’t quite manage, wonderful as they are.
Is it the deep roots and engrained culture that continue to support the Grateful Dead and its newer branches? Is it the wild juxtaposition of that culture meeting and reveling in the greatest LED-and-steel expression of commercialism human and machine has yet to unleash? Is it the profound joy that the community of Deadheads brings with it, regardless of venue?
Maybe it’s all three. Maybe more than that. And let’s not forget that the Dead weren’t ones to shy away from technology, at least in pursuit of a purer listening experience for their fans. But still, there was a continuous vibe of anticipation, excitement and elation throughout the extended run that felt like, well, love.
As writer Chris Willman recently noted, “You don’t have to look up setlist.fm or research what the video content changes are on Reddit to get in on that feeling that the thrill is on.” (Right, except going on Setlist only elevates the thrill, man.)
That thrill extended from the opening night (about which we gushed) through to the end of the run on Saturday, 8/10, with 112 different songs and evolving, ever-awe-inspiring immersive video throughout.
By all accounts, the latter shows—one on what would have been Jerry Garcia’s 82nd birthday (8/1), one on the 29th anniversary of his death (8/9), and a couple of Days Between—were increasingly amazing, right up to when the band punctuated the last one with a bonus “Ripple” that brought on the communal waterworks in a moment of bittersweet, cathartic joy.
Did the Doo-Dah Man once tell them they had to play their hand? Why yes, yes he did. And play their hand they did, with love and commitment, every night, night after night. For thirty nights.
Speaking of hands, John Mayer—whose sensitivity and brilliance are beyond question, but who apparently can have a mishap just like the rest of us—showed up for the August shows one finger shy of a full hand after crushing his left index finger in a truck door. The “tribute to Jerry?” posts are out there, but this was serious, given the finger is what Mayer called “the team captain of my fretting hand.”
So, what did he do? He showed up, played without the captain, and still made the magic happen. Yes, Dead & Company’s Las Vegas residency was epic in many ways.
What were the odds? So glad you asked!
As we mentioned, they played 112 different songs over the 30 shows (leaving out Drums and Space, because they are CONSTANTS). They played 479 non-D/S songs total, meaning they would have had to play each song 4.28 times to fill out the run. But of course that’s not what they did. They played some songs more, some less. Let’s take a look:
At a given show, you had a 1-in-3 chance of hearing a grip of favorites, 10 in all, each played 10 times, including “Althea,” “Bertha,” “Brown-Eyed Women,” “China Cat Sunflower/I Know You Rider,” “Eyes of the World,” “Franklin’s Tower,” “Scarlet Begonias,” “St. Stephen,” and “Terrapin Station.”
On the other hand, you had a 1-in-30 chance of hearing any of the 25 songs they played just once; anything from “Here Comes Sunshine” to Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried,” to Marvin Gaye’s “How Sweet it Is (to Be Loved by You).” Of these 25 one-fers, 15 were non-Dead covers, including 5 from Bob Dylan.
If you fancied a 3-in-10 shot, you might get “U.S. Blues,” “Sugaree,” or “Cold Rain and Snow.”
The 7-in-30 club included “Truckin’” and “One More Saturday Night,” while 3-in-15 entries included “Sugar Magnolia,” “Ramble on Rose,” Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and the Rascal’s “Good Lovin’.”
“Touch of Grey” got aired out just twice, as did “Alabama Getaway.” Little wonder, with all this variety.
(Please note that these figures do not include Dead & Company’s 6/18 one-set Sphere gig for HP, which was a private event. That set appears correctly in Setlist for the tour and in the tour statistics, but for present purposes we’re only talking about what the people could dig.)
Interestingly, the band entered and exited “Dark Star” a total of eight times, placing it at 4-in-15 odds, along with “Uncle John’s Band,” “Deal,” and “Casey Jones,” among others. More interesting still is that they chose to open set two with it twice (show 26 on 8/2 and show 29 on 8/9). And just once (show 15, 6/15), it served as the “coming home song,” during which the show is visually brought back to earth.
The “coming home” slot, the second-to-last song in all but the last show, was most often filled by “Morning Dew” (7x), “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” (6x), “Throwing Stones” (6x), and “Brokedown Palace” (6x).
The “Cycle Sam” song, coming third-to-last and arguably the climax of each show’s trip, was most often “U.S. Blues” (9x, all the times it was played). You’d expect this, since that’s the song that accompanied Sam’s debut in the animated opening to the Grateful Dead movie back in 1977. The next most likely tune for this slot was “Hell in a Bucket” (5x, also all occurrences).
The final song of each show, which served as a tribute to the Grateful Dead generally and Jerry specifically, was most often “Not Fade Away” (9x), “Casey Jones” (5x), “Turn on Your Love Light” (4x), and “One More Saturday Night” (4x). “Ripple” got the nod three times, including the very last song of the very last show, while “Sugar Magnolia,” “Fire on the Mountain,” and Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” each took the honor once.
Wow, that’s a lot of songs, and that’s just a sampling of how they spread ’em out. By our calculations, Dead & Company didn’t repeat a song in any given week of three shows for the 10 weeks of the residency. (Sue us if we missed a dupe, but we don’t see it.) What a statement.
You know, way back when in 1970, when the Grateful Dead recorded and released the road song that lyricist Robert Hunter suggested they write, “Truckin’” described a band that had already logged many miles and seen many things. If the line “what a long, strange trip it’s been” was apt at the time, it got even apter over the next 25 years. But who could have imagined that nearly 30 years later still, the trip would still be getting longer and much, much stranger?
Really, the band playing in a surreal, freakishly high-tech Buckyball in the desert, taking audiences on their own virtual trips every show, taking off to explore inner and outer space and landing right where they started each time—whoda thunk it?
But here we are. And now that it’s over, are we left Going Down the Road Feeling Bad (4x), now that the wonder of 30 Dead & Company Sphere shows is in the past? Not so fast.
The likelihood of a second Sphere residency has been dangled, and at this point there appears to be some hope that our communal wish will come true. In the meantime, it’s worth a moment more to savor the beauty of what the Dead and Dead & Company have already given us.
Inside the Sphere, audiences were invited to contemplate the sphere we stand or fall on throughout the course of our complicated, individually important lifespans, as the virtual ship of the Dead rose from the ground in front of the band house at 710 Ashbury Street and departed our home planet for most of three-hours-plus of glorious sound and vision. It was more than just a meta-play on the venue; it offered perspective, and what seems a truly compassionate take on lives lived, careers worked, music made: We really are all part of something bigger.
Given the growing strife of our trying end-times, you might have found yourself asking, "Is there room for subtlety anymore? Is there room for beauty, even? Real beauty?” Well, perhaps the greatest gift that Dead & Co have given us, in Sphere or any venue, is proof that both still exist, and hope that the music will never stop. Theirs is an unfashionably subtle expression of music and lyrics with a positive energy focused on beauty. Real American Beauty.
When "they" say jazz is the only uniquely American art form, ask yourself: Did they even consider this music? Did they see the culture that grew up around it? The music of the Grateful Dead, brought to life so subtly and beautifully for current generations by Dead & Company, is worthy of consideration as a uniquely American mainstay and treasure.
This music, combining elements on the folk > blues > jazz spectrum, created a one-of-one synthesis, an alt Great American Songbook (The Hippie Verses?) that is every bit as revered on its own merits as the jazz that Jerry loved so well. The same jazz that Bobby Weir, John Mayer, Jeff Chimenti, Oteil Burbridge, Mickey Hart and Jay Lane have discovered nightly while freaking out capacity crowds with deep explorations around the beloved songs they have continued to nurture.
Will this music never stop? We’ll have to see. But regardless of what may happen next, let us celebrate now what is and has been, and the recent Spherical memories still resonating in our heads. Because in the end, no matter the size or sophistication of any spectacle we may take part in, is not each of us but a ripple in still water? Might have to think on that one for a good long while.
Read our opening night review here.
