The $2.3billion venue comes with the rather simple tagline: “Experience unparalleled entertainment at Sphere in Las Vegas. A revolutionary venue to enjoy immersive shows, concerts, and events like never before.” In some ways, this is understating it. It is as incomparable to your average arena as a penny farthing is to Apollo 11 when it comes to modes of transport.
The wraparound displays of the 18,600-seat auditorium are so mind-bending that they leave you miffed at humanity’s remarkable capacity to pull off the unthinkable while those we somehow elect to lead us are incapable of simple tasks like not getting their hands stuck in Pringles tubes, for instance. And thankfully, the sound quality is a force to behold in itself, so this place is far from a gimmick.
However, like all great leaps, the Sphere has also proved very divisive. Thus, we decided to cook up a one-act play covering both sides of the great debate surrounding the Las Vegas oddity. With U2 currently embarking on the opening 25-show residency, where tickets have retailed at a range from $400 to $1,495, we muse over what the Sphere might bring our way beyond the confines of a Las Vegas car park.
Will it be the saviour of live music, or is it a portent harbouring the death of culture? Well, see below whether you side with the cynic or the optimist.
The Optimist: “Two years ago, I went to see Coldplay turn bullshit into cash at an arena that sounded like music being made in a tin can, and the closest you got to any theatrics that justified the $120 entrance fee was a confetti cannon fired once prior to the encore, the same confetti cannon I saw the last time I was there to boot. So from where I’m standing, an extra $300 for a once-in-a-lifetime experience that lays waste to the 3/10 rip-off venues of the past is a giant leap forward that can only change live music for the better.”
The Cynic: “My problem is that culture shouldn’t be a once-in-a-lifetime experience; it should be an everyday part of our lives. If the Sphere is the future of music, then charging anywhere between $400 to $1,495 for a ticket instantly precludes the possibility of making live music a common part of your lifestyle for most people. It reverts culture back to the elitist days of Mozart in gold-clad concert halls. Is one ‘awesome’ moment for the privileged few really better than a lifetime supply of inspiration and cultural hubs for a reasonable fee that everyone can afford?”
The Optimist: “Ah, but the Sphere is the first of its kind. Affordability will surely be brought in line once this flagship has its fair share of competition. If anything, it is great news for the consumer. It stops all the shitty venues where big bands currently play from running away with rampant profits for such poor experiences. They’ll have to either up their game or lower their prices, and the same will be true for the Sphere when similar beasts pop up in New York, Madrid, or, most likely, Dubai. Besides, playing mind-bending places like this should also surely inspire bands to pioneer further developments in music too, so I highly doubt inspiration will be at a deficit because of the Sphere.”
The Cynics: “But what bands will play it? U2? A group who have been around since 1976 and have pretty much seen diminishing returns on their artistry for 90% of their existence? The Sphere turns the public face of the pinnacle of live music into a precession of legacy acts, rattling off par sets in a novelty venue for ludicrous fees before the buzz of being able to stare at the ceiling while a band play subsides and you’ve not got any money left to go and see the next unsigned Nina Simone play a local town hall on the brink of closure.”
The Optimist: “Apples and oranges. Saying this will impact the grassroots scene is like saying a summer holiday in Spain puts going out to the town centre on the weekend out of business. I’m not saying that suddenly, the local live indie club is a waste of space until it can turn its corrugated iron roof into some sort of interactive LED melon-twisting orb that projects the very essence of hope and desire. There’s different strokes for different folks. I’m merely saying that a pioneering new venue that is unquestionably unparalleled in an age where many big arenas are sub-par and overpriced is a huge win that presents a bright new future for popular music.”
The Cynic: “Yeah, while also furthering the divide to non-commercially-inclined culture too. It’ll be unobtainable for the next U2 to form now and reach that Sphere stage in a similar fashion of building a piecemeal following from the strength of their art. The venue is an anti-cultural mutant, and we should be working towards the antithesis of the Sphere rather than celebrating it. Society thrives when artistry is booming; a $500 ticket in the middle of a tourist-ified desert seeing artists of fading cultural relevance is simply not that. Meanwhile, grassroots venues are in crisis, and they’re playing ball in the same industry, like a 16 from the local racket club going up against a genetically engineered cyborg incarnation of Roger Federer.”
The Optimist: “Granted, the grassroots crisis is a huge problem, but culture has grown so expansive and layered that I really don’t think it exists amid the same argument as the Sphere; Friday night’s Deliveroo has not put the Pot Noodle out of business. And when it comes to art, I have no doubt that the Sphere will be a huge catalyst for imaginative advancements. Look, I was at the U2 show, and it was utterly extraordinary. Surely that counts for something? As David Byrne said: ‘In a sense, the space, the platform, and the software ‘makes’ the art, the music, or whatever. After something succeeds, more venues of a similar size and shape are built to accommodate more production of the same. After a while, the form of the work that predominates in these spaces is taken for granted—of course, we mainly hear symphonies in symphony halls’. So, what on earth will we begin to hear when places like the Sphere are utilised to their full capacity? God knows, but I’m excited to hear it.”
The Cynic: “You’ll probably hear The Rolling Stones next, and seeing as though they’re 120 and it’ll be their last tour before Keith Richards’ crippled fingers literally crumble off, it’ll probably cost $600. Then to break up the white male barrage, you’ll probably hear Taylor Swift, and that’ll cost $700 simply because she can charge what she wants. Meanwhile, the divide between your independent venues and your Spheres of the world gets bigger and bigger so that the innovative art that Byrne refers to never gets the chance to play beyond a room of 20 people because the leap between progressive art and the mainstream is a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon because the powers that be have strong-armed the whole industry towards a set-up whereby they can consistently orchestrate these ‘once in a lifetime’ shows from the same clutch of acts that prints them a billion dollars per residency run. Meanwhile, working-class people are starved of culture because all the artists they can actually afford to see no longer have anywhere to play or any money to be able to practice.”
The Optimist: “Look, I was at the U2 show and it was one of the greatest concerts I have ever seen. In an age of bad news, the sheer feat of it was humbling and life-affirming. So, my point is this: for those who’ve been to a gig at the Sphere, it’s so enjoyable that they’ll be racing out to see more live music in a heartbeat. In that sense, the buzz should trickle down to all venues. Live music is back at its best. The Sphere has defibrillated the industry. Things were getting boring. There was no modern-day Beatlemania to be seen. Now, there is a truly innovative work of art in itself, shining like a beacon of hope from the future in the desert, creating excitement about live music once again.”
The Cynic: “It’s interesting that you still say ‘one of’ the best concerts you’ve seen regardless. But I’m not surprised; it’s always the case, no matter who you speak to, that the greatest concert that you have ever been to is the one where you stumble into a dive bar, not expecting much, in 1962, and see a pre-fame Bob Dylan blow your mind to such an extent that you decided to pursue art and it turns out, you were, in fact, Joni Mitchell. Or you cram into a 150-capacity club with 200 people and see a band you heard about in passing on a pirate radio station called the Sex Pistols, and it turns out you’re either Mark E. Smith, John Cooper Clarke or one of the other greats who were inspired to perpetuate artistic brilliance that night”.
“Pop culture at its best has been a curve towards inclusive grassroots innovation. The Sphere is evidence of the bottom-line triumphing: commerciality for the benefit of the big wigs. This money-printing space will set the economics of the industry off-kilter and turn art back into an elitist enterprise, precluding widespread public access to uniting, humanising, progressive culture. And that’s the most American thing I can think of. As Frank Zappa said, ‘We are culturally nothing. We mean nothing we’re only interested in the bottom line […] I think that a country that doesn’t do something to sustain its culture, whatever it is, doesn’t invest in it and doesn’t keep it happening, isn’t proud of it, well, maybe they just shouldn’t exist because it’s the culture and the beautiful things that a society produces that should survive for thousands of years, not the designer jeans’. In my view, the Sphere is just a profitable pair of designer jeans. A new fad to print fresh money while the true culture flounders because people would rather have a new shiny money machine than a culturally historic workshop that has fuelled a progressive production line of beautiful art.”
The Optimist: “I think you maybe just don’t like U2 now. Go and see a band play the Sphere that you have loved for years and tell me that it isn’t the future of music. The Carnegie Hall was new too once y’know. And I’m sure in the modern age, seeing Glastonbury on the TV has inspired just as many kids to start bands as seeing, I don’t know, Poly Styrene in an abandoned mine shaft or whatever, even if it isn’t imbued with the daft romanticism. For me, the best venue that modern music has ever seen being presented to the people at just over double the price of your average stadium ticket can’t be a bad thing. In fact, it can only be a great thing. It can only be the future. The Sphere is the next beautiful thing.”
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This content was originally published here.