The Greatest American Revival Is In 'Sin City' (Part 4) The Tent Is A Giant Sphere, The Pulpit A Turntable, And The Salvation Is Real
Bullet To Blue Sky
Our direct flight to Las Vegas arrived early/mid afternoon on Wednesday, December 6. A much anticipated and needed pilgrimage to Sin City was a welcome wrap up to an electric year that included perhaps too much travel, too much frolic, too much death. Our batteries were low and needed a recharge, and neither myself or Shannon had been to Las Vegas for quite a long time. We had not been to Vegas together, and a trip to this desert city of lights seemed a perfect venue for a December respite. Plus, the time would be a nice entry into the Christmas season which would find us hosting our kids later that month back in Alabama.
After a smooth stop at the luggage carousel at Harry Reid International, we headed to the easy flowing taxi line to get a car straight to Caesars Palace. The early December weather was perfect, not the blistering hell imagined for a typical Nevada day, but a nice breezy 70-ish degrees blue sky day. We were not on the road three minutes before our cab abruptly halted in a sea of cars. We sat, our dear eastern-European driver quiet, with nothing unordinary happening. After all who hasn’t sat in big city traffic? Patience learned is stress endured.
With the windows down to give our lungs a shot of fresh air, I noticed two helicopters circling. These were police copters, I thought to myself. Something didn’t seem right. These weren’t traffic copters covering the arrival of Mariah Carey or the Garth Brooks concert. Shaking my consciousness into the actual reality of the moment I noticed the drivers of other cars around us. Stress, concern. It was at that moment when the driver next to us shared words that have all too clanging ring of familiarity in our conflicted land of liberty: “Shooting on campus.” We arrived in Las Vegas as the latest American mass shooting was taking place on the campus of the University of Nevada Las Vegas. That day, three people would lose their lives as a result of senseless violence. Another injured, the shooter dead and two police officers injured. We would not move for close to three hours as the perimeter of the UNLV campus was on lockdown. In our world of instant information, we knew little except that there were bigger things going on than our hotel check in and we needed to be patient.
This shooting, along with the unrelated deaths of two Nevada state troopers, killed by a drunk driver just days prior, would permeate the atmosphere of the city throughout our visit. I noticed it, in the signs, lights and media. I tried to make myself notice it simply because Vegas is a big ‘pill’ to help you forget things. The Buddhist in me needed to stay present, in the moment. As anesthetized as we have become to violence and death, there is a part of me that wants to avoid the numbness, the dumbness of it all. I don’t want to be the guy who just thinks this is the way things are, even if that is exactly the case.
The sense that traffic is about to roll: You see folks getting into their cars, brake lights blinking, and finally, the car moves. It was obvious that traffic was being rerouted, and we were in for a scenic drive, the back way around Las Vegas. With the sense of uneasiness, the need to hit ‘send’ on texts to friends sharing that we were in the middle of a shooting area, maybe making things out to be bigger than they were. After all, this happens all the time, right? No one will really care that much. Our now steady drive put our minds more on the fact that no one in Las Vegas seems to have grass, the curtains in the houses we pass are black, and the glitz of the lights is good cover for the reality of what seem like countless desert tenement apartment complexes. “Damn! Gas is expensive here.”
Though unfamiliar with the terrain, I sensed us going back toward the airport and around the city, the back way. We hit a highway. We were finally about to see the desert skyline famous for its impersonation of other places like Paris and New York City, but in the back of my mind I thought, ‘Where is it?’ Almost like a necromancer conjuring a demon at a witch party, I looked up to my right and there it was. The black sphere in real life. Huge. Daunting, sitting in its place provided by a desert once home to dinosaurs. A behemoth of modern times, monolithic, whose mere presence answers the question, “What’s next?” The saturation of social media has been quite successful at robbing us of the type of mystery and awe I had the first time we rounded that bend of I-70 and Royals Stadium appeared to me during my childhood. This current experience was awesome, but tempered. I would see this wonderful ball again, in a bit, in all its glory.
Sphere’s construction was announced and begun in 2018, within a pre-COVID world. As construction neared completion in 2023, what would be the world’s largest spherical object was still not quite top of mind in the entertainment world. The ‘pop of the cork’ had yet to happen. The bang of Vegas publicity had yet to ignite like Evel Knievel crashing through the fountains at Caesars Palace. But, it was coming. On February 12th, 2023, during Super Bowl LVII the first advertisement for U2’s upcoming “UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere” concerts appeared. That was the cork shooting out of the bottle like a rocket. Now, not only was there a shiny new toy in the desert to garner attention for millions of tourists, but an entire generation’s biggest band was going to hole up and do a christening string of shows within it. In the matter of a moment, there was reason to check this place out, perhaps a pilgrimage would be in order. Little did I understand that the cones and rods within that ball would soon enough be shooting into my soul and helping me untie many of the wrangled knots that have bound me to decades of conflictions, contradictions. The Calvinism which I thought was galvanizing my soul during the period of U2’s original Zoo TV tour in the 90’s hadn’t worn well, and the string of my kite had frayed away from its navigating flyer.
Being an expert ticket purchaser (note: I am not at all that. I simply survived the Taylor Swift Ticketmaster debacle with passes in hand and then spent months being pissed at the entire concert industry, even after selling those T. Swift tickets for a handsome profit.), I got in line, that is, I began the pursuit of getting tickets to a U2 show at Sphere. Our number did come up, and we received tickets for the Saturday, December 9, 2023 concert. Flights and hotels were instantly booked and we were on our way.
I was not purposely walking into a rock concert expecting to find revival. Nor do I want to pretend that I was saved by holy water or that I made some sort of ritualistic decision just because of a band. Those kind of spiritual accoutrements took me down a river for decades, bashing me against the shorelines and thrashing me back into the rapids. It took me years of reassembling myself into some semblance of a reasonable soul. Whether it was the feeling of abandonment at age six during a Bill Glass crusade when my parents left me in the arena so they could do their ‘public profession of faith’, being the last in line in my family or Sunday school class to walk the aisle of a Southern Baptist Church at age eleven, the rollercoaster of adopting a new doctrine in the Nazarene Church during high school through college, or the multiple changes of churches throughout the coming years, none of it worked. None of that was real, and no matter how much nightmare fuel those past demons had pumped through my spiritual veins, I was not willing to throw it all away. Nor, was I willing to kiss the ring of the political systems freely breeding spiritual cancer through the American evangelical complex. Not any longer. Confliction.
I digress. I simply wanted to see U2. Two full days of Las Vegas activities, some amazingly good food, being awed by the sites which included visits to the Mob Museum, The Fremont District, and the heroically themed Evel Pie flowed very well for us. But, it was the Saturday night U2 show we were there for.
Sphere is a part of the Venetian Resort. It is not an arena where your Uber drops you off at the front and you just walk in, get a huge beer and swagger to your seats. Our journey began at one of the Venetian’s main entrances, weaving through shopping centers, restaurants and of course, the casino floor. I was focused on getting to the main show, Sphere! We had already taken a gondola ride, purchased U2 tour shirts at the pop up shop located in the 21st century version of what a mall is. We aren’t big gamblers, as evidenced by our attraction not to slots, roulette or poker, but to the Nokami horse racing game that has actual little plastic horses rolling around a derby track. Hell, we got two hours of great entertainment out of that game and didn’t spend over $15. Once through the dizzying array of resort offerings, we were in a long hallway, obviously the convention/business wing of the Venetian, and we walked, and I sensed that things were changing.
Every few steps the lighting and signage slightly changed, and then that sound, that unmistakable fuzzy sound. Edge’s first strum of ‘Zoo Station.’ ‘Achtung Baby’ has sold 18 million albums since its 1997 release. It is hard to imagine that any popular music fan who was alive at that time has not come across the opening of the band’s second biggest selling album. Hearing those notes come from whatever unearthly realm they were beaming from shocked me back to Legion Field in Birmingham when I witnessed the first version of ‘Zoo TV’ live. The strums continued in an ethereal soundtrack that may have been merged with the oxygen we were breathing. The hallway became more crowded as we seemed to be getting to a destination. “Was Jesus preaching ahead? If so, I hope his fish and loaves are cheaper than the chicken fingers at that Guy Fieri place back at Caesars Palace’s food court.”
We arrived into the open air space that seemed more like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Logan’s Run more than a concert hall lobby, taking in the scene, the people. This was not a gaggle of liquored up concert goers looking to party. It seemed more reminiscent of people pilgrimaging to a revival, something with a message. Hopeful, happy, anticipating. Some were there to simply give thanks and celebrate. Others were there for intervention, help, healing.
As we took our seats, we peered down on my favorite musical device, a turntable. There is absolutely no describing the concert to come. Wasted are the letters trying to promote the giant stage, the amazing spatial sound system (the biggest in the world), or the soul-bending production of every single song that makes anything in the world pale in comparison (i.e. Broadway, T. Swift, anything). It is impossible to describe.
What is possible, is sharing that from the first strum of ‘Zoo Station’ until the last notes of ‘Beautiful Day’, what I experienced seemed much more like a revival than a concert. The backdrop of Las Vegas seemed even more appropriate. Every beat, note, visual, lyric had meaning. Everything sewn into the fabric of a place shared with the richest of rich, greediest of greedy, poorest of poor, and the most honorable of honorable. I was a part of a big creation, problems and fixes, belief and non-belief, with the ability to embrace or walk away, to engage or drop out. I stayed. Each time, and there were many, the white flag of surrender appeared in the sky, I felt welcome; with all my fault, all my frailty and anger, all of the damage I have done, yet the efforts I have attempted to make right, I felt like I didn’t deserve to belong, but here I was safe and welcome. I should feel bad about my sins, but I was among friends. And, maybe that was all I needed to walk forward. We witnessed the shiny lights of Vegas disappear down to the desert it once was. We witnessed every endangered species of the desert appear around us, and all the splendor of Vegas with Elvis, Jesus, and an ace of spades. U2 was imperfectly perfect. The band was perfectly human, a little raspier, yet sharper in style, musicality, wit.
Was the concert absolute perfection? No. Will something come along to knock Sphere down a notch? Yes. Just think about how NRG Stadium in Houston looks compared to the Astrodome. The once ‘biggest’, the miraculous, is always destined for an appointment with ‘Outdone’. I remember walking out of the show, down the same corridor where we entered, the hum of The Edge’s guitar still alive in the air. A young lady walking next to us, ecstatic about what was just witnessed, sharing that exuberance with her partner. Like a sledge hammer, the ‘partner’ responded, “I have some criticisms.” My first thought was, “Man, I bet she has some criticisms too!”
“And I'd join the movement
If there was one I could believe in
Yeah I'd break bread and wine
If there was a church I could receive in
'Cause I need it now”1
For the first time in a long time, I had no criticisms. My dirty lungs felt alive with clean air, and my soul felt light. For the first time in 58 years, I felt the confliction of spiritual things lift, and I must say that I haven’t had any dreams of being dragged to a literal hell since. Revival.
As for the pastor of my youth, the one who made us take U2 out of the VCR during our youth group party way back in 1983? His light is going out in this world. I have no idea what his circumstances are except for the fact that time is coming to an end for him. I am positive he doesn’t remember that night. But, I do. While I can’t say that he was just trying to do his best back then, I can say that without that incident, my path to a simple concert in Las Vegas, circa 2023, may have never happened. Safe travels pastor, I hope the show you are about to enter is every bit as spectacular as The Sphere.
Monday came, and so did our trip back to Harry Reid International, this time with no incident, no shootings, no back roads, no signs of turmoil. Just blue skies and the strum of The Edge’s guitar rolling through my ears.
‘Acrobat’ by U2, from ‘Achtung Baby’ Songwriters: Adam Clayton / Dave Evans / Larry Mullen / Paul Hewson Acrobat lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group