Sphere Las Vegas, NV
tour
notes

Farmhouse featured Trey on acoustic guitar, and the scene was of the outside of the Barn at night, with aurorae overhead. Before The Horse, Trey announced it was his favorite part of the night, and that Mike would now "invert," while Mike turned his coat inside out to a Fish drumroll. Among the visuals for Julius was a large, dragon-like creature rendered in neon lines, which swam behind the band at the song's peak. Frankenstein featured Page on keytar. My Friend, My Friend did not feature the "myfe" ending. The scene at the end of Wading in the Velvet Sea was a giant wall of concert photos.

The visuals for Sample In a Jar went inside a temple filled with stained glass windows, explored it, then exited before the song ended and the temple crumbled. Mound was played for the first time since September 2, 2023 (113 shows). Tela was played for the first time since December 31, 2023 (100 shows). Plasma was unfinished. Mike teased Mound in Crosseyed and Painless and teased Seven Below in Pillow Jets and Sand. During I Didn't Know, Trey introduced Fish as "the 500 Foot-Tall Man" and "the Thunder from Down Under," then as "Moses Brown, Moses Heaps, and Moses DeWitt" after the song. I Saw It Again then featured Fish on vacuum and Trey on drums. After the song, Trey gave Fish the same introductions, and added that he was "sucking for you! We saw him again!"

As the show began, the view was from inside a cabin with windows on all four walls. The room began to spin, and accompanied by recorded sound effects, the visuals eventually blurred into multicolored streaks, finally resolving into a turntable. Once the needle dropped on the record, Trey began The Wedge. Among the visuals for Halfway to the Moon was the Colosseum, but built out of port-a-potties. During Golgi Apparatus, a camerman came on stage for close-ups of each band member as they played, projecting the image as a kaleidoscope across the dome. Trey teased The Secret of Life (The Dead Milkmen) in A Wave of Hope. The scene for Runaway Jim began by looking out at Las Vegas and the Sphere. Turning upside down and zooming in on a "Phish Hotel," the view passed through the peephole of the front door and into a surreal museum and library filled with odd sculptures, flying bowling pins, and toilets. After passing through several rooms, the view reached a door which opened and closed to reveal a variety of scenes, until finally backing out of the museum and returning to the Las Vegas strip. The Sloth contained alternate lyrics referencing the three songs (Fee, The Sloth, and Punch You In the Eye) which reference nipple slicing, all of which had been played during the Sphere run, and during none of which did Trey appear to have sung the traditional "nipple" lyrics. For the outro to The Squirming Coil, the view was a drive-in theater with video of the band playing as the movie. When the song reached the final chorus, suddenly only four cars remained. As each band member stopped playing and walked off stage, a corresponding car drove away.

For Timber (Jerry the Mule), the view became a tunnel made of forest, with the sky as the light at the end. Trey used alternate lyrics during Axilla (Part II) that referenced the visuals, saying, "Don't shine that hot dog in my face...grind it, grind it..." Chalk Dust Torture was unfinished. For First Tube, the scene was a virtual fireworks display.

Before The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday, the view of The Barn in Vermont (which had been the pre-show backdrop) was submerged in a flash flood. The Lizards was then accompanied by Gamehendge-centric animation. Following Vultures, Trey remarked that he could listen to Fish do the ending "all night," to which Fish replied, "I hate my job."

The visuals during Maze began with the giant wall of framed poster art before focusing on a print showing a close-up of the sleeping man on the cover of Rift. During the jam, the perspective entered the picture and explored the room, before pulling back out of the frame to the view of the entire wall, which eventually added framed live video of each band member. Brian and Robert featured Trey on acoustic guitar. After the show ended, Trey asked for the jam out of Fuego prior to Golden Age to be called "Dark Puddle." Dark Puddle featured Fish on Marimba Lumina and a Fuego quote from Mike. The visuals for Possum were from inside a network of neurons that pulsed and flashed with light. Fee featured Trey on megaphone.

Trey teased Streets of Cairo in Buried Alive. Colonel Forbin's Ascent and Fly Famous Mockingbird featured elaborate Gamehendge-focused animation, including depictions of Icculus, the Lizards, Tela, and a multi-beast. During Sigma Oasis, perspective shifted to a view from inside a bird egg, which eventually hatched to join two baby birds in a nest with a majestic mountain view beind them. After a short time, a parent arrived with a meal, with great approval from the babies. As the jam reached a peak, the view followed the young birds as they jumped from the nest and soared through the valley. Before playing Walk Away, Trey acknowledged Joe Walsh, who was in attendance, and told him that his music was some of the first songs the band members ever played and "the basis for everything that we do is you." During Tweezer, the perspective began by following a car on an amusement park ride as it entered a giant mouth and was swallowed. Eventually the view reached the "stomach" where pipes and waterfalls emptied into a central pool containing several rubber ducks. Later in the jam, the scene reached a large room encircled with fans, and a breathing set of lungs suspended from the center. Ultimately the view returned to the mouth, lingering on the tongue which was set with furniture, before a wrecking ball outside shattered the teeth as the jam concluded. During Run Like an Antelope, viewers were taken inside a honeycomb hanging on a tree, passing through corridors to a chamber with honey dripping from the ceiling into a honey lake below. Fish performed the second set and encore wearing a hot pink wig.

 

This show featured the Phish debut of Brief Time. Prior to the start of the show, the backdrop showed a dark forest setting with an outhouse bearing the crescent moon and star from the cover of Farmhouse. As the show began, the door swung open, revealing a vast landscape of buildings and bridges, all made out of port-a-potties, with hundreds of other port-a-potties floating in the air. Martian Monster's imagery was a nod to October 31, 2014's Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House Halloween set with the haunted house reappearing and opening up to reveal the band playing within its walls. During Divided Sky, the scene became blue sky and fluffy clouds above a mountainous terrain; following the pause, the images became fractalized and began to move. Trey teased Your Pet Cat in Mull. The backdrop for Suzy Greenberg became an 80's-style video game called "Tube Raider," appearing to be played in the night sky over Las Vegas. At the end of the song, the screen displayed "Game Over" along with video game avatars of the band. For Mike's Song, the background showed a lakeshore in front of a mountain range, with lighted, moving sculptures reflecting off the water's surface. During I Am Hydrogen, the view changed to a lush valley with a waterfall centered behind the band, then returned to focus on the lighted sculptures again during Weekapaug Groove. The backdrop for Beneath a Sea of Stars Part 1 was a dark forest at night, populated by animals with glowing eyes, as well as glowing fish swimming through the trees, and eventually glowing pink jellyfish which rose into the sky during the jam segment. Eventually the view returned to the forest, where peacocks displayed glowing tails amid numerous fish, until the entire perspective was swallowed by a whale.

The backdrop for Evolve was a truck driving across America animated as a giant, elaborate diorama presented by hands animated in the same style. Trey teased Tweezer Reprise in Wolfman's Brother which provided visuals of the scene becoming a journey through an MC Escher-esque landscape of surreal "rooms" that ranged from a cozy fireplace to a giant cat peering in through the window, ultimately emerging in Las Vegas. Page teased the Theme from Speed Racer in Foam. The perspective for Theme from the Bottom shifted to the earth beneath a forest, a scene made up of tiny dots which glowed and pulsed together. As the jam for Theme progressed, furniture and rooms began to appear in the forest, with the scene ultimately morphing into an image of the band. Rift culmiated in a recreation of David Welker's cover art for the album. Trey teased Over the Rainbow in Scents and Sublte Sounds. The scene for Split Open and Melt began with giant, sneaker-clad legs running in different directions while stepping on piles of goo on the ground, sticking to their shoes. This became a world with both aquatic and surface aspects, with stars and fish, plant and animal life, some of whom developed goo bubbles and started to rise. The entire scene ultimately melted back into a puddle with a confused face. You Enjoy Myself saw the return of the licking dog (from April 19, 2024) during the vocal jam, followed by a jam against an ocean of dogs swimming in sudsy water with goggles on, and finally wiener dogs in hot dog costumes. Also Sprach Zarathustra continued the hot dog theme by flying through a warehouse floor full of hot dogs to a hot dog rocket ship, which blasted into an outer space littered with donuts and other snack foods. The ship ultimately found a planet with a hot dog population worshiping a giant monolith-like hot dog with a volcano erupting in the distance. Space Oddity was played for the first time since July 19, 2022 (168 shows). Harry Hood culminated in a virtual fireworks display.

The band took the stage while pre-recorded music similar to Plasma played, before beginning the song. During Ghost, the neon-colored outlines of three giant robots appeared to tower over the band, with their facial expressions varying and their arms and bodies swaying slowly. The three robots were then replaced by one massive robot, with spotlights utilized to make it appear as if beams of light were coming from the robot's eyes, before the original three robots returned for the remainder of the jam. During Divided Sky, the dome became a view of a sea of clouds, with patches of blue sky above. As the clouds moved, their appearance varied from purple sunset hues to dark and stormy, with the movement stopping and all of the color fading during the pause before returning for the rest of the song. Page teased Linus and Lucy at the end of Divided Sky. Trey began Shade on acoustic guitar. During Shade, an eclipsed star was shown behind the band, with its corona of changing colors visible and a silhouette of the band in the center. During Sea of Stars, the dome became filled with a curtain of gold-colored four-point stars, which twinkled and waved in front of roiling clouds. During 2001, the dome became a starfield before being illuminated by replicated images of the stage lights. Mike teased Plasma during Light. During Ether Edge, a string of umbrellas with colored drops trailing beneath were raised to either side of the stage. The umbrellas were lowered again during Piper. During First Tube, the dome again became a starfield, this time with a ring of stars centered above the stage slowly swirling. As the second "verse" of First Tube began, a white vortex appeared in this area. As the stars in its orbit began to become multicolored, the vortex pulled in their light and created flowing, rainbow-hued ribbons that grew as the jam progressed. Prior to More, Trey thanked the production team behind the Sphere shows, and said that he thinks the band will return to the venue. After Slave, the band gathered at the front of the stage to take bows and have a picture taken in front of the crowd. This show was connected to the other three with each night's setlist tied into a state of matter. This performance's matter type was plasma.

During Tube, the dome seemed to fill with soap bubbles which reflected the venue and drifted in front of a nebula of changing colors. During Pillow Jets, the view became that of a grassy path through a grove of trees under a starlit sky. Travelling down the path as the jam progressed, the grass and trees became tinged with glowing, multi-colored light, which periodically intensified and erupted from the ground through the branches, creating a firework effect. Mike and Trey teased Manteca during Steam. During Mountains in the Mist, the dome made it appear as if the venue was nestled in an evergreen-covered mountain range, with mist shrouding the sky from view. During Taste, the entire dome appeared to become covered in turning rings of Jim Pollock illustrations from the covers of the Live Phish CD releases, rendered in gold and black. During Sigma Oasis, the dome became a cloudscape, with trees, birds and sea creatures made out of bubbling clouds. During Fuego, a spotlight was used to create a silhouette of the band, with the image then recreated across the dome with effects added to make the band appear as flaming shadow people. During Twist, the dome became filled with multicolored letters tumbling before a backdrop of pulsing red circles. I Am Hydrogen was performed in a show without Mike's Song and Weekapaug Groove for the first time since October 31, 1987 (2,024 shows). A Life Beyond The Dream featured Trey on acoustic guitar. During Tweezer Reprise, the dome again displayed images of cars, this time tumbling into the distance. This show was connected to the other three with each night's setlist tied into a state of matter. This performance's matter type was gas.

The band took the stage while pre-show music similar to a Free jam played, which continued until they began the song and waterfalls of colored light suddenly cascaded from the top of the dome. During Moma, a moving, 360-degree live shot of the crowd and band was displayed, with psychedelic colors and effects. During Mercy, the dome displayed an overhead view of a sparkling ocean, with small birds in pastel colors flying over the water. During Gin, the entire dome became an overhead view of a large wave pool, filled with hundreds of people on food-shaped inflatables drifting and spinning. During the Gin jam, the images of the bathers became blurred and abstract, forming a neon kaleidoscope effect. During Theme, the entire dome became an underwater seascape, with kelp forest, fish, human swimmers, and light from the surface shining down from the top. Theme also contained a DEG tease from Trey. At the start of ASIHTOS, jellyfish puppets were raised on each side of the stage, while the dome remained dark. Once the jam began, the light on the dome came up to reveal another underwater seascape, whose plants and fish became luminous as the rest of the light dimmed again. During Caspian, this seascape changed to a view from within the columns and arches of a sunken monument. As YEM began, the entire dome became the view from inside of a car as it entered a "Tunnel of Luv" car wash, with the stage appearing to sit on top of the middle of the dashboard. The car progressed through the wash as YEM continued, with Trey's solo during the wax and wheel scrub, and the bass and drums as the car was dried and exited the wash. Suddenly the car view was gone, and it appeared that the dome was clear, with a puppy licking it from the outside, in slow-motion, for the duration of the vocal jam. During Velvet Sea, the dome appeared to be covered in flowing red velvet, with photographs of the band throughout the years appearing and disappearing among the fabric. By the end of the song, the entire dome was covered in photos. Trey teased The Secret of Life (The Dead Milkmen) in Hood. This show was connected to the other three with each night's setlist tied into a state of matter. This performance's matter type was liquid.

The band took the stage while the pre-show electronic music continued. During Back on the Train, psychedelic images of passing countryside were displayed behind and above the band, rotating in opposite directions in different sections of the dome. Trey teased Mercy, Mercy, Mercy in Wolfman's Brother. During Maze, psychedelic live images of each band member appeared, stacked on top of each other. These images then fragmented and spread out, dancing and turning throughout the jam. During Leaves, several giant paper lanterns appeared, flanking the stage, while the dome showed a multitude of paper lanterns floating over water, with the moon shining above. During Life Saving Gun, the dome displayed stacks of old-style televisions with rabbit ears, with each television showing a live shot of one of the band members. These TVs moved and rotated as the jam progressed. After the song, Trey said that he "loves any song with a Jon Fishman percussion rinse," and told the crowd they should see the Sphere from the stage. During Dirt, the dome showed a forest view, looking upwards through trees at a purple-hued sky. During Tweezer, a field of multi-colored cars appeared behind the band, changing in size and shape and with their headlights blinking on and off in patterns, while other cars drove past overhead. My Friend, My Friend included live spotlight silhouettes of the band members projected across the entire dome and Egg in a Hole quotes from Mike and did not contain the "Myfe" ending. The projections during Mike's Song made it seem as if the venue was outdoors, with the band playing in front of a body of water with a rotating sculpture on the far shore. During Lifeboy, the sun went down and a number of other rotating sculptures lit up in the sky, creating a golden star-scape. The sun then rose again during Weekapaug. Blaze On's lyrics were changed to "dancing in the Sphere." Farmhouse began and ended with Trey on acoustic guitar, as well as images of a farmhouse in a field under a night sky filled with stars and aurorae. This show was connected to the other three with each night's setlist tied into a state of matter. This performance's matter type was solid.