Phish Turns Sphere Into Gamehendge At 1st Weekend Finale In Las Vegas

On Saturday, Phish closed out the first of its three consecutive weekends at Las Vegas’ Sphere with a show that included some of the finest improvisation, visuals and song-selection of the run. The band paid tribute to a musical legend who was in the audience, and seemed to be inspired by his presence for the remainder of the evening, treating the fans to an exceptional night of audiovisual entertainment.

As they did the first two nights, the band took the stage to a backdrop of The Barn, their Vermont recording studio. As they launched into “Buried Alive,” some windows began to light up, and soon, the Barn itself disappeared from the landscape, as the screen was covered with windows, which flew around, toggling on and off.

The audience was then transported to a light show in the forest, soundtracked by “AC/DC Bag.” The song broke out of its usual structure briefly, keeping the show’s first-quarter energy very high. The foursome kept the hits coming with “Reba,” which was backed solely by the four-dimensional lights that Chris Kuroda has projected on the giant screen for several songs each night of this run. The “Reba” jam reached a gorgeous peak before the band closed it out with some whistling.

Next up was the first major surprise of the night: the rarity “Colonel Forbin’s Ascent” > “Fly Famous Mockingbird,” which provided the second stunning visual representation of Gamehendge in just over two years — the first, of course, being the 12/31/23 staged production of Trey Anastasio’s entire senior thesis.

The beginning of “Forbin’s” featured a swirling cartoon spiral, with a Helping Friendly Book in the middle. Pages of the book flew all around, and we were taken through a door, where a castle stood on one island, lizards on another and the book hovering at the top of the screen. As the band invoked Icculus, the god himself showed up, looking wizardly. The landscape then shifted to a vista of Gamehendge, with dancing lizards and flowers. As the band segued into “Mockingbird,” the screen showed a door, with water flowing through it and trees dancing on either side. Then a mockingbird flew into the sky.

But the bird imagery was just getting started. As the band launched into “Sigma Oasis,” shadows of two chicks appeared inside of an egg. Cracks slowly formed, and suddenly we found ourselves in a nest with the two chicks. Soon, the mother showed up with a worm. As the song reached its jam, the birds left the screen. From there, it was all about the music: the jam became darker, and so did the music; the landscape shifted from day to night, and back. The quartet settled on an open, spacy segment and the birds returned to the screen. As the jam peaked, the birds took flight, soaring over the alpine landscape.

At the conclusion of “Sigma Oasis,” Trey took the mic, and announced that Joe Walsh was in the audience, calling the legend “the basis” of Phish. He added that, though many people knew Walsh from The Eagles, the band thought of him as a member of “the baddest band in the land”: The James Gang. The band then paid tribute to Walsh and the Gang with a ripping “Walk Away.”

The exclamation point on an excellent first set came in the form of a huge “Bathtub Gin.” With lava lamp-style visuals lighting the way, the set — which had opened with a barn — closed with a barn-burner jam.

The second-set-opening “Oblivion” ushered in a familiar character from 2024’s Sphere shows: the line-art ghost who shoots beams of light at the audience from its eyes. But this time, the ghost had friends. And soon, we were in an open landscape crisscrossed by power lines, with millions of these ghostly characters serving as the transmission towers holding the electrical wires up. As the camera seemed to float above this eerie landscape, the jam went deep into space, before finally returning to the song’s refrain.

“Simple” started a bit rough: after playing in the wrong key for quite a bit of the first verse, Trey said “my bad.” But the jam more than made up for it, stretching across 25 minutes, in which it shifted from antigravity bliss, through a funky corridor, to a driving groove powered by Mike Gordon’s hard staccato punches, which led to a huge peak. Chris Kuroda provided the visual accompaniment — the second time of the night in which his lighting backed some of the concert’s strongest improvisation.

While “Simple” was all about the music, the visuals in “Tweezer” stole the show, despite the fantastic winding, guitar-led jam. The setting was a dental procedure — but not your ordinary one. This took place in some kind of outdoor factory of dentistry, all operating on a deconstructed face with no head. Down the throat we went, and into the innards, ending up in a sewer dotted with sad-looking detritus from some of the weekend’s earlier visuals, like rubber ducks and flying hotdogs. The image was rather hilarious. We wound through a few more regions of the body, including a fan-lined chamber where lung-like canvas sacks inflated and deflated as spacesuits floated around. Finally, we ended up back in the mouth where we started, looking out, as a wrecking ball swung out and back, demolishing a few teeth with each trip, before the mouth shut and the jam ended. A truly bizarre band.

A beautiful “Waste” followed, in a hazy forest whose leaves turned iridescent, fluttering almost firework-like. Next was “Twist,” whose jam mostly stayed in a wide-open psychedelic zone, while its visuals toured a suite of different geometric spaces: an abyss filled with some kind of foam macaroni; a series of chutes through which fluorescent balls rolled; checkered hills; a desert with a rising sun.

“Run Like an Antelope” began in a sunlit forest clearing, a beehive hanging from a tree branch. As the song got moving, we entered the hive, traveling through hexagon-lined tunnels before we reached the epicenter, a giant pool of honey, fed by drips from the honey ceiling.

The band encored with the Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus.” The cover included a distorted, kaleidoscopic rendering of the band. Closing out the evening was “Tweezer Reprise,” which was performed of, perhaps, the mainframe of the musical machine that powers Phish, which flashed and spun as the band brought weekend one to a close.

Phish second of three Sphere weekends begins on Thursday, April 23. Livestreams of all nine Phish Sphere shows are available to purchase through nugs and LivePhish.

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