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My wife and I attended an Eagles concert in The Sphere last Saturday night. To say I was blown away is an understatement.
The best way to describe it that I can come up with is, it seems very close to one of those VR headsets, except you're not wearing a headset. The screen fills your entire field of vision and then some -- you can look up, down, left and right. The only thing that "gives it away" is the audience in front of you. When you first walk in, the screen is showing a huge outdoor scene and you actually feel like you must be outside.
The song "Hotel California" contained a highway effect where the camera was cruising down the highway left and right and it absolutely felt like we were in a moving vehicle. Then all of a sudden it went down a steep hill and it just seemed like the entire building was rolling. It was amazing.
The concert was almost secondary. As a guy in the elevator told me beforehand, "There'll be times you forget to listen to the music, you'll be so busy looking at the visuals." He was right about that.
Don Henley stated in onstage remarks that they are still making adjustments to the show, and that was kind of apparent. There were notable pauses between some of the songs, and a couple of them had very limited visuals compared to the others. But the ones that were "finished" were outstanding.
One thing I really liked was, when they would show video of the musicians, it wasn't just rectangular blocks like you usually see at concerts. The images would be integrated with the rest of the visuals. For example, on one song, the background was showing dozens of strips of old beat-up camera film (looking like it was hanging up during the developing process) and images of the band members was appearing within the film frames. Sometimes they would be integrated within clouds, etc. etc. It was very creative.
The sound was downright amazing. The venue has over 160,000 speakers, not one of which were visible. They're all behind and above the screen. It was the cleanest concert setup I've ever seen -- no amplifiers or any other equipment was onstage, just the musicians and their instruments. There was no overbearing echo or reverb the way you usually get in concerts -- the sound was crystal clear, not too loud, about as perfect as you could expect in a room that's this large. Every lyric or spoken word was understandable and crisp.
If I had any criticisms, I guess it would be that the playing was almost TOO perfect. They could have been playing to tracks. Every single lick from the original arrangements was there, down to the tiniest details. If not for the live endings, I might have suspected that they WERE playing to tracks, but I know the material well enough to know that it was a real live show. All of the Eagles (well, except the ones who are dead) are still in fine voice. The only one who's getting a little rough around the edges is Joe Walsh, who was hilarious and tried hard, but his singing is getting sketchy. Don Henley and Vince Gill sounded fantastic, as did Deacon Frey, son of the now-deceased Glenn Frey -- he and Gill covered Frey's songs. It was all hits and no filler, no guitar or drum solos or any of that nonsense. Just a stack of great songs. (I would have liked to hear more stage remarks, for sure.)
The video quality was also tremendous. We had splurged for some of the best seats, which were very close to dead-center. If this was a regular concert I'd have been pissed that our seats were so far from the stage -- we were probably at least 250 feet from the band. But I knew the show would be more about the visuals, so that didn't matter. The screen apparetly achieves 16K, and it looked it. Brightness was great, and there was a little geometric distortion from where we were, but it wasn't usually noticable. I would hate, however, to ever sit anywhere other than in the middle third of the place. I imagine the view from the corners is horrible.
The venue itself is a high tech marvel. The numbers associated with it are wild -- the roof is a 10,000 ton slab of concrete. There are 18,500 seats. The video runs on 150 computer systems. I already mentioned the 164,000 speakers. There are lots more statistics on the venue's Wikipedia page.
I'll include a couple of pictures here, but they absolutely do not do it justice. The bottom pic is what you see when you walk in. The one with the mountains is, of course, from Joe Walsh's song "Rocky Mountain Way." The contrast was much better than these pics show (it's currently almost 1:00 AM and I'm too tired to adjust them right now!)
I'm looking forward to seeing another show there, although I have my doubts that any of my personal list of "must see" acts will be there. I guess we'll see.
Will this thing ever be a financial success? Given what they're charging for tickets, if they can continue to draw crowds, maybe it will. But I don't envision going to LOTS of shows here -- it'll take something major to make me want to spend the money that's necessary to get the good seats in the middle.Screenshot 2024-10-02 004632.png Screenshot 2024-10-02 004522.png Screenshot 2024-10-02 004456.png
The best way to describe it that I can come up with is, it seems very close to one of those VR headsets, except you're not wearing a headset. The screen fills your entire field of vision and then some -- you can look up, down, left and right. The only thing that "gives it away" is the audience in front of you. When you first walk in, the screen is showing a huge outdoor scene and you actually feel like you must be outside.
The song "Hotel California" contained a highway effect where the camera was cruising down the highway left and right and it absolutely felt like we were in a moving vehicle. Then all of a sudden it went down a steep hill and it just seemed like the entire building was rolling. It was amazing.
The concert was almost secondary. As a guy in the elevator told me beforehand, "There'll be times you forget to listen to the music, you'll be so busy looking at the visuals." He was right about that.
Don Henley stated in onstage remarks that they are still making adjustments to the show, and that was kind of apparent. There were notable pauses between some of the songs, and a couple of them had very limited visuals compared to the others. But the ones that were "finished" were outstanding.
One thing I really liked was, when they would show video of the musicians, it wasn't just rectangular blocks like you usually see at concerts. The images would be integrated with the rest of the visuals. For example, on one song, the background was showing dozens of strips of old beat-up camera film (looking like it was hanging up during the developing process) and images of the band members was appearing within the film frames. Sometimes they would be integrated within clouds, etc. etc. It was very creative.
The sound was downright amazing. The venue has over 160,000 speakers, not one of which were visible. They're all behind and above the screen. It was the cleanest concert setup I've ever seen -- no amplifiers or any other equipment was onstage, just the musicians and their instruments. There was no overbearing echo or reverb the way you usually get in concerts -- the sound was crystal clear, not too loud, about as perfect as you could expect in a room that's this large. Every lyric or spoken word was understandable and crisp.
If I had any criticisms, I guess it would be that the playing was almost TOO perfect. They could have been playing to tracks. Every single lick from the original arrangements was there, down to the tiniest details. If not for the live endings, I might have suspected that they WERE playing to tracks, but I know the material well enough to know that it was a real live show. All of the Eagles (well, except the ones who are dead) are still in fine voice. The only one who's getting a little rough around the edges is Joe Walsh, who was hilarious and tried hard, but his singing is getting sketchy. Don Henley and Vince Gill sounded fantastic, as did Deacon Frey, son of the now-deceased Glenn Frey -- he and Gill covered Frey's songs. It was all hits and no filler, no guitar or drum solos or any of that nonsense. Just a stack of great songs. (I would have liked to hear more stage remarks, for sure.)
The video quality was also tremendous. We had splurged for some of the best seats, which were very close to dead-center. If this was a regular concert I'd have been pissed that our seats were so far from the stage -- we were probably at least 250 feet from the band. But I knew the show would be more about the visuals, so that didn't matter. The screen apparetly achieves 16K, and it looked it. Brightness was great, and there was a little geometric distortion from where we were, but it wasn't usually noticable. I would hate, however, to ever sit anywhere other than in the middle third of the place. I imagine the view from the corners is horrible.
The venue itself is a high tech marvel. The numbers associated with it are wild -- the roof is a 10,000 ton slab of concrete. There are 18,500 seats. The video runs on 150 computer systems. I already mentioned the 164,000 speakers. There are lots more statistics on the venue's Wikipedia page.
I'll include a couple of pictures here, but they absolutely do not do it justice. The bottom pic is what you see when you walk in. The one with the mountains is, of course, from Joe Walsh's song "Rocky Mountain Way." The contrast was much better than these pics show (it's currently almost 1:00 AM and I'm too tired to adjust them right now!)
I'm looking forward to seeing another show there, although I have my doubts that any of my personal list of "must see" acts will be there. I guess we'll see.
Will this thing ever be a financial success? Given what they're charging for tickets, if they can continue to draw crowds, maybe it will. But I don't envision going to LOTS of shows here -- it'll take something major to make me want to spend the money that's necessary to get the good seats in the middle.Screenshot 2024-10-02 004632.png Screenshot 2024-10-02 004522.png Screenshot 2024-10-02 004456.png
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