Dark Star Orchestra announced more details about their two night Philly New Year’s Eve celebration at the Electric Factory, taking place on Dec. 30 and 31. A two-day admission deal offers fans a pass for both nights for only $59.95, which includes some perks on the New Year’s Eve including catering, a special commemorative poster, and a complete multi-media journey featuring cirque performers throughout the performance. DSO has also joined forces with the legendary West Coast festival design team at Peak Experience Productions.
The evening's “Let It Shine!” theme, which politely demands a little bit of audience participation, is a key part of the celebration. Dark Star Orchestra wants to know what you are grateful for and what you want to shine some love and light on in 2016. The next part of the plan is to actually include each fan’s thoughts and wishes as part of the New Year’s show. Concertgoers on the Dec. 31 are also encouraged to participate in a costume contest.
Peak Experience Productions producer Johnny Dwork applies his mentor’s core philosophy to every event his team works their magic on. That mentor is legendary concert impresario Bill Graham, and his basic philosophy is that event-goers are more than just a source of revenue.
Peak Experience Productions' mission states: "We believe that each and every one of our event attendees deserves safe, respectful community celebrations that offer nothing less than genuinely profound inspiration and deep, healing joy. Through our audience-participatory activities we strive to help our event attendees be 'the Hero in the movies of their lives.' Our overall goal is to offer a sense of intelligent, spirited, highly creative adventure that is largely missing from the status quo concerts being produced these days...".
These will not be status quo concerts. November 18th this year marked Dark Star Orchestra's 2500th live performance. It's notable that Dark Star Orchestra surpassed the 2,318 show marker, which is the number that the Grateful Dead reached during their own 30-year career. DSO is still in full swing, so it’s hard to say how high they’ll climb and thus how many people they’ll reach. And well those numbers seem like a whole lot of shows, both bands are far out-gigged by the heaviest hitters of them all: The Beach Boys, weighing in with an impressive 5,545 career performances.
Performance tallies aside, this has been a historic year for the Grateful Dead, the band whose music and scene Dark Star Orchestra so eloquently recreates at each and every one of their performances. Throughout 2015 the Grateful Dead continue to celebrate 50 long, strange years since the band's inception, as well a Grammy Hall of Fame induction for their 1970 album American Beauty. Dark Star Orchestra will once again honor the Dead's tradition of ringing in the New Year with a bang this December 31.
More details are available at ElectricFactory.Info, and tickets are available now at ticketmaster.com.
