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Dead & Company Mark Bob Dylan’s Birthday With “Maggie’s Farm” Bust-Out At Sphere [Videos/Audio]

May 26, 2024

Dead & Company continued the second weekend of their Dead Forever residency at Sphere on Saturday night with the run’s fifth overall show. In addition to adding “Dancin’ In The Street” to the Sphere setlist rotation, the Grateful Dead offshoot took some time during set one to pay tribute to Bob Dylan, who celebrated his 83rd birthday on Friday, with a rendition of Dylan classic “Maggie’s Farm” marking the second-ever Dead & Co take on the song (and first since 2016).

While the band didn’t reference Dylan during the show on his actual birthday, Bob Weir offered his belated well wishes to his one-time tour partner early in the day on Saturday on social media. As Weir noted in his post, tagging Dylan, “Yo, Happy Birthday – a little late, but f**k it.” The belated birthday wishes carried over to Dead & Co’s performance a few hours later when Bobby led the band through “Maggie’s Farm” ahead of a first set-closing “Deal”.

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A post shared by Bobby Weir (@bobweir)

Leading into the Dead Forever residency—comprised of smaller, three-night runs each weekend—many fans expected the setlists from weekend to weekend to remain largely the same (i.e. “It’s expensive to create each set of visuals, so the setlist rotation will likely remain tight). Those expectations became clouded on the second night of the residency, when fans were greeted with largely similar from night one visuals to go along with a new setlist. While the repeated visuals caused some grumbles among fans, they also opened up a significant amount of musical possibility for the extended residency: The visual motifs may get recycled, but if each one isn’t tied to a particular song, that leaves the door open for the setlist to expand and change more than we previously thought was feasible under these novel Dead & Co conditions.

The setlist freedom afforded by non-song-specific visuals was quickly apparent on Friday night when the band started the residency’s second weekend with six straight songs not heard on weekend one (“I Need A Miracle”, “The Music Never Stopped”, “They Love Each Other”, “The Weight”, “Cassidy”, “Mama Tried”) then added “Playing In The Band”, “Dark Star”, “Let It Grow”, “Days Between”, “Dear Mr. Fantasy”/”Hey Jude”, “Sugar Magnolia”, and “Brokedown Palace” to the rotation during set two ahead of a “Touch of Grey” Sphere debut in the encore slot.

With no official video stream, it’s hard to tell from afar exactly how much the visuals from weekend two have compared to weekend one, but it appears from fan posts that the band has continued to add some new video elements to the mix each night, as well. One such new look came during “Black Peter” on Saturday, during which actual footage of the evening’s full moon captured by a camera on the venue’s roof was projected on the interior dome of the venue (photo below). Other songs, like “Good Lovin’”, which appeared during the first weekend as well as on Saturday, May 25th, have featured different visual accompaniment for their weekend two appearances (the rendition during weekend one featured tie-dye visuals, while the weekend two performance was accompanied by imagery inspired by the Grateful Dead’s famous trip to Egypt in 1978).

[Photo: Chloe Weir – Dead & Company at Sphere, 5/24/24 – “Black Peter”]

Dead & Company – “Good Lovin’” – 5/25/24
[Video: Ellen Cook]

Okay, so the visuals are being reused… but if we’re just talking music, it looks like the Dead & Company Sphere residency setlists might look more like an actual “tour” than most observers initially expected. It’s gonna be an interesting summer in Las Vegas…

Below, listen to fan-recorded audio, check out a selection of photos and videos, and few photos from Friday and Saturday night’s Dead & Company shows at Las Vegas, NV’s Sphere. Revisit our full, on-the-ground coverage of the residency’s opening weekend here: Night 1 | Night 2 | Night 3.

Dead & Company return to Sphere on Sunday to round out Dead Forever‘s second weekend. Fans hoping to get in on the action can find tons of face-value tickets for the entire run via CashorTrade. By choosing CashorTrade over other sites you are supporting real fans, not brokers trying to offload inventory. Unlike other platforms, you may even stumble upon a miracle. Browse what’s available on the side here.

Setlist: Dead & Company | Sphere | Las Vegas, NV | 5/24/24
Set One: I Need A Miracle, The Music Never Stopped, They Love Each Other, The Weight (The Band), Cassidy, Mama Tried (Merle Haggard), Althea
Set Two: Playing In The Band > Dark Star > St. Stephen > Let It Grow > Drums > Space > Days Between > Dear Mr. Fantasy (Traffic) > Hey Jude (The Beatles) > Sugar Magnolia, Brokedown Palace
Encore: Touch of Grey

Setlist: Dead & Company | Sphere | Las Vegas, NV | 5/25/24
Set One: Bertha, Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo, Dancin’ In The Street (Martha and the Vandellas), Good Lovin’ ( Rudy Clark/Arthur Resnick), Maggie’s Farm (Bob Dylan), Deal
Set Two: Shakedown Street, China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider, Eyes of the World > Drums > Space > Black Peter, Brown-Eyed Woman > Hell in a Bucket, Throwing Stones
Encore: Casey Jones

Dead & Company – Sphere – 5/24/24 – Full Audio

[Taper: Rainbowtoez; Transfer: Hunter S]

Dead & Company – Sphere – 5/25/24 – Full Audio

[Taper: Rainbowtoez; Transfer: Hunter S]