The worlds of Swifties and Deadheads might not seem to have a great deal in common. There may not be that many music fans who’ve registered equal numbers of spins on their Spotify playlists for “Shakedown Street” and “Cornelia Street,” or “St. Stephen” and “Hey Stephen,” or “Althea” and “Dorothea.
” Yet there’s reason to fantasize that these two audiences were really separated at birth, even if their average age of Taylor Swift and Grateful Dead concert attendees wouldn’t automatically suggest that these are identical-twin fandoms. What they share is a powerful and abiding interest in the power of live . And it’s not just about catching one show.
Differently scaled as they are, Swift’s two-year Eras Tour and Dead & Company’s three-month residency at Las Vegas’ Sphere stand out out as the two most transfixing concert phenomena of the moment for similar reasons: because each gig in these respective runs is so stamped as its own individual, one-of-a-kind occasion that, for true fans, FOMO is literally a nightly thing. If you’re a true believer but can’t attend very many of either artist’s shows (and who, short of a trust-fund baby, can?), you’re still logging in obsessively to watch fan-generated livestreams or clips, or at least keep abreast of the variations in setlists, maybe even in real time. It’s not just the tour, or residency, that bears event status; it’s the sensation that every single gig is gripping, and will go down i.