The musical journey actually started on Thursday — similar to it did for the Grateful Useless itself some 60 years in the past — within the San Francisco Bay Space.
But, the scene wasn’t the band’s precise origin location on the Peninsula (Palo Alto and Menlo Park, to be precise) or the primary place underneath the identify of the Grateful Useless (San Jose), however relatively within the spot that it’s mostly related to — Haight-Ashbury.
The musicians labored in entrance of a towering graphic of 710 Ashbury St. — the home the place the Useless as soon as famously lived — after which viewpoint started to slowly and steadily change, as we have been rocketed off into sky, peering down in any respect of San Francisco, then the entire Bay Space and, ultimately, leaving earth’s orbit solely and settling off into house.
It was a massively impactful technique to kick off Useless & Firm’s 18-show run on the Sphere, marking the Grateful Useless offshoot’s second annual residency on the much-buzzed-about Las Vegas venue.
Useless & Firm carry out at The Sphere in Las Vegas on March 20, 2025. (Jim Harrington, Bay Space Information Group).
It was the identical means that the group — consisting of former Grateful Useless members Bob Weir (guitar and vocals) and Mickey Hart (drums) in addition to John Mayer (guitar and vocals), Oteil Burbridge (bass), Jeff Chimenti (keyboards) and Jay Lane (drums) — kicked off their exhibits throughout their first run on the almost 18,000-capacity, $2.3 billion venue in 2024. Certainly, the phase now seems to be Useless & Co.’s signature for the Sphere and I’d count on it to maintain displaying up so long as the band retains enjoying the Sphere — which, judging by ticket demand, may very well be for a few years to come back.
The a lot of the remainder of the graphic results, proven in glowing readability and mammoth dimension on a 16-Ok wraparound LED screens that run from flooring to ceiling within the 366-feet-tall constructing, have been new/totally different from what I noticed once I attended two exhibits early in final 12 months’s residency. There have been a pair holdovers, however the expertise — basically — felt very recent.
In different phrases, for those who noticed the Useless & Co. Sphere exhibits in 2024 then you definately nonetheless suppose very severely about seeing these exhibits once more this 12 months. In fact, I’m little question preaching to the choir, on condition that many Deadheads (or no matter Useless & Co. followers name themselves) in all probability have bought tickets for a number of weekends because the group continues its stand by way of mid-Might.
Useless & Firm carry out at The Sphere in Las Vegas on March 20, 2025. (Jim Harrington, Bay Space Information Group).
This Evening 1 turned out to be form of a sleepy affair for the band, because it form of simply glided its means by way of many of the songs and saved issues comparatively mellow. A few of that needed to do with the setlist, because the group loaded up on softer materials, nevertheless it additionally went past simply that.
Mainly every thing about this present — from the preparations to the micro-jams to the solos — felt a bit tentative, just like the Useless & Co. guys have been easing into the run, testing the water and kicking off the cobwebs throughout what’s going to possible (hopefully?) be remembered as a lukewarm begin to an in any other case smoking-hot Sphere run.
The group kicked off its 3 1/2-hour plus present (together with the usual intermission, after all) with the Useless cowl favourite “Gimmie Some Lovin’, which reportedly marked the first time that Dead & Company had performed this Spencer Davis Group favorite. It was a pretty straightforward opener and the party wouldn’t really get started until the big graphics kicked with the Haight-Ashbury segment, which was set to a soundtrack of “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo.”
Useless & Firm carry out at The Sphere in Las Vegas on March 20, 2025. (Jim Harrington, Bay Space Information Group).
The graphics continued to take centerstage because the present progressed, with the group’s famed Dancing Bears mascots making their first (of many) appearances throughout “Bertha,” first in relatively sizable type and however then rising ever smaller, as they multiplied past what may very well be simply counted, till they turned like pixels that started to type the pictures of the musicians on the backing display screen.
Among the best graphics from 2024 reappeared throughout “Brown-Eyed Women,” the place previous posters/tickets/handbills for Grateful Useless exhibits — Dec 30, 1983 on the San Francisco Civic; April 27-28, 1991 on the Silver Bowl in Las Vegas (with Santana opening); June 4, 1995 at Shoreline Amphitheatre at Mountain View, and so forth. — blanked the huge display screen behind the band.
The primary set was comparatively quick — clocking in at proper round an hour — however Useless & Co. would return from an intermission with a extra beneficiant second serving to, clicking in proper across the two-hour mark. Sadly, the music didn’t enhance a lot in the beginning of the nightcap as they limped by way of a relatively unimpressive “Feel Like a Stranger” after which supplied up what actually has to rank among the many most boring renditions of “Scarlet Begonias” on report.
Issues began to enhance with “Fire on the Mountain,” which featured vocals from Weir, Mayer, Burbridge and Hart, which led properly into the always-epic “Terrapin Station.”
The tune of the night time was the slow-burning “Standing on the Moon,” the only monitor from the Grateful Useless’s last studio album — 1989’s “Built to Last” — which might be included in a listing of the band’s total finest songs. Weir actually put his all into the tune on this night time, displaying a depth of emotion in his vocals that we actually see from him on the stay stage.
After a topnotch tackle the standard “Going Down the Road Feeling Bad,” that includes some actually cool graphics with the Useless’s iconic Uncle Sam determine, we discovered ourselves as soon as once more in outer house, wanting down on the planet Earth, because the band latched onto a canopy of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” Then we started our regular descent, with our residence planet rising ever larger earlier than us on the screens.
First, we have been in a position to make up the form of North America, then the U.S., then California and, lastly, the Bay Space itself. However we saved proper on going, circling in on San Francisco and Golden Gate Park, descending ever nearer till we landed proper again the place we began — Haight-Ashbury.
We’d hear the voice of Phil Lesh — the legendary bassist for the Grateful Useless who died in October on the age of 84 — and see a silhouette of him enjoying in an upstairs window of the band’s previous residence of 710 Ashbury.
We had come full circle, in dramatic style, and all that was left to do was for the band to ship us residence in superb style with a robust nearer of the anthem “Touch of Grey.”
Useless & Firm carry out at The Sphere in Las Vegas on March 20, 2025. (Jim Harrington, Bay Space Information Group).
Useless & Firm March 20, 2025 setlist:Set 11. “Gimme Some Lovin’”2. “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo”3. “Bertha”4. “New Speedway Boogie”5. “Brown-Eyed Women”6. “Good Lovin’”7. “Don’t Ease Me In”Set 2:8. “Feel Like a Stranger”9. “Scarlet Begonias”10. “Fire on the Mountain”11. “Terrapin Station”12. “Drums”13. “Space”14. “Standing on the Moon”15. “Althea”16. “Going Down the Road Feeling Bad”17. “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”18. “Touch of Grey”
