Fans of the Grateful Dead and its offshoot Dead & Company will have multiple ways to access the latter group’s upcoming weekend of 60th-anniversary-commemorating shows at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, as it turns out. On top of the already revealed plan to livestream the final night to Imax screens, it’s now been revealed that all three concerts will be livestreamed in their entirety for home viewing, via the Nugs.net platform.
Accessing all three shows won’t necessarily come cheap, although it will be a whole lot less expensive than a road trip to San Francisco and a virtual stop-off at StubHub. A home viewing of any of the Aug. 1-3 concerts will cost $39.99 for HD or $49.99 for 4K, individually. A bundle of all three shows will come in at $99.99 for HD or $129.99 for the full 4K.
The PPVs include the full performances that night by Dead & Company — which usually run to three and a half hours, including a 20-minute intermission — plus the opening acts. Billy Strings will pave the way for the headliner on Aug. 1, followed by Sturgill Simpson (aka Johnny Blue Skies) on Aug. 2 and the Trey Anastasio Band on the 3rd.
These showings do come with a bonus: Anyone purchasing a pay-per-view of one or all of the shows will get two months of unlimited access to the Nugs archives, which include plenty more concerts from Dead & Company and the Grateful Dead.
The news about the Nugs PPVs comes on the heels of Monday’s announcement that the closing show on Aug. 3 will be streamed to Imax theaters across the country. However, the number of theaters it it set to be seen in — at least for now — is surprisingly limited, and a spot check shows that many of the Imax showings are already sold out or have only front rows remaining. (The one-night Imax showings, where tickets are still available, cost $40 plus fees.)
Imax showings may count as the premium way of catching this engagement, short of being there. But since Dead & Company is famous for not repeating any songs over a three-day engagement (like the ones they’ve recently had at Las Vegas’ Sphere), putting in for all three shows on Nugs offers the only certainty of catching more than a third of the band’s most beloved songs. Of course, some remote viewers will undoubtedly end up putting their money down to watch the first two shows at home and hitting the theater for the engagement’s climax.
Dead & Company’s plans beyond the 60th anniversary celebration in San Francisco are unknown, so many fans will catch the shows with the possibility in mind that this could be the end of the road for the band, which retired from the touring circuit at the end of summer 2023. There remains a high expectation, or at least hope, though, that the group will return to Sphere next year for a third annual residency.
