The “scary” Dark Star approaches. I was also curious if Miami is the longest one we have left. According to the timings list on Grateful Dead Guide: Dark Star Graph it looks like it is although 9/20/90 and 4/1/91 come close.
187. 1989-10-26 147766 Miami 26:41 First verse at 2:10. Second verse at 13:58. Goes into Drums. If the Brendan Byrne show proved that Dark Star wasn’t to be a one-off this time, the third rendition in a month made the future look quite bright. When the Dead returned after Garcia’s coma in late 1986, there was a new optimism and energy in the sound, and a feeling that a new beginning was underway. In retrospect, the common narrative at the time—that the band had become hidebound and erratic, but the coma put the fear of God into them and set their feet back on a musically righteous path—is at the very least overly simplistic, if not flat wrong. The mid-80s offer some great and highly energetic music, and late 1986 through 1988 are not beyond criticism by any means. One such criticism would be that the band wasn’t really stretching out much. But by mid-to-late 1989 that had begun to change, and the return of Dark Star was a big factor in that. The version under consideration here is a well-regarded—even legendary—rendition; at this point, at least as much as, and possibly more so than, the Hampton version. Dick Latvala once famously insisted it is the best version ever. Did he go overboard? I don’t think it would be productive to litigate his claim; I’m not sure there is one best Dark Star, in any case, and if there were it would probably not be this one. But that’s not to say that it’s not worthy in its own right, and I of course won’t shy away from making evaluative claims about it here, even if they are less definitive than those of the late archivist. The audience sounds quite pleased when they start the song, as one might expect. Nobody was taking Dark Star for granted at this point. The vibe at the outset is confident but suitably mysterious, and I kind of like the Brent factor at this point (although this does not seem to be the consensus). He seems comfortable with his role, and in this era he has even shown himself capable of improvising convincingly, albeit in a somewhat modest way. Approaching the two-minute mark Lesh stakes out the theme, although Garcia doesn’t play the melody, and we go right to the verse, which leaves plenty of territory for the middle jam. A few seconds after the post-verse intro lick (which is now the standard procedure) Garcia kicks on the MIDI. Once again, it sort of surrounds his cleaner guitar tone, which is sort of a cool effect. It’s hard to define exactly what the MIDI sound is here, it’s just a sort of trippy halo around the guitar line. The band seems to be feeling things out, but in this era that means they keep a steady groove going while doing so. Garcia, Lesh, and Mydland trade lines, with Weir in more of an accompanist role. At 5:38 Jerry launches a Sputnik type thing, while Weir gets a rock riff going. The latter is quickly joined by Lesh, but it only lasts a few seconds! This seems to bode well, though, as they’re exploring rather than settling in, and Weir’s cadence is mirrored a few times by the other instruments as it’s transmogrified and they move on. Garcia slathers on more MIDI. Weir gets a little flute-ish for his part, and comes back to his little lick from time to time—it seems to function as a theme that they don’t overdo, but use as an anchoring point or callback from time to time. Jerry is also playing the flute now (I’m at 8:30). He goes back to guitar, dipping in and out of the effects regime. At 9:20 there’s a swell as they come together a bit, and at the same time disperse. I realize this doesn’t make much sense, but they seem in command tonight, and they’re stretching my descriptive powers. At 10:10 Weir is again chiming his lick on the flute, then he plays some high guitar notes, and at 10:34 Jerry has a steel drum/flute hybrid thing on. Brent is choosing to mirror this sound a little bit, and they are tinkling along in space. It gets stranger and stranger. Weir is playing a xylophone now. Lesh is very active, although he still isn’t quite taking the lead the way he once did. Garcia is altering his effects several times in the course of a minute, but not abruptly or in a jarring way; it’s rather a masterful performance, in fact. At 12:37 Lesh hints at the theme, and they seem to drift earthward from here. At 13:18 Weir hits the theme chords, and then Lesh starts the theme up in earnest, and they all fall in line, although again Garcia doesn’t play the melody. In fact, the accompanying part he plays on the theme parts is becoming common, so maybe I should redefine what gets identified as “main theme.” It can get confusing trying to track the recurring parts… Jerry’s voice is quite croak-y tonight, but another central feature of this era is that he’s learned to put his vocals across regardless of what’s happening with his voice (although he may be more successful at this during other parts of the show, as his range has clearly moved away from Dark Star). At 15:07 Garcia gives a desultory nod to the fragments of the intro lick being dutifully performed elsewhere on the stage—they give it a perfunctory nod and head back into space. They seem not have considered capping it after the middle jam: now they’re going to really get weird. The groove that they had been stuck in for the late 70s and 80s is gone. Jerry has a brass effect that is quite electronic-sounding at the same time. Weir is getting seriously strange with the MIDI stuff. And Brent really shines here; he seems less apt at structured melodic improvisation, insofar as he stays to close to home, but he’s happy to go along when they they go whole hog. I suppose I mean that he’s good on both extremes, with structured and very free playing, but doesn’t offer as much in the middle. Again, Lesh is playing a lot, and his lines are creative and important to the jams, but he’s still not as much of a force in determining their direction as he once was, for some reason. Garcia and (to a lesser but still crucial extent) Weir are now the main drivers. At 21:00 we’re still going out, but there are some bouncy riffs bubbling around the edges. Brent gets into a one-note rhythmic thing, and pretty soon there are electronic drums. By 21:35 or so Garcia sounds entirely like a keyboard—I think! It’s getting hard to identify the instruments. This is some of the wildest space rock ever played, just magnificent. At 23:19 Garcia gets in with some spacey brass, and I can pick him out again. But it may be beside the point here to try to identify the individual players; it may be better to just dig the gestalt. By about 24:40 things seem to be winding down, and the center has unraveled, which makes me realize how remarkable it is that a kind of center has heretofore held amongst all this chaos. Whatever one may think of the codified space segment, the band has gotten really good at this kind of improvising, and those wont to spend that segment in the bathroom (or fast forwarding) may have been surprised at the intensity and counter-intuitive coherence of the unadulterated free jamming going on here. This is without a doubt one of the craziest and most powerful pieces of music the band ever played. Anyone who thought the spirit of 1973-12-02 was long gone would surely have to reconsider after this night. This the greatest Dark Star since 1974 and, whether or not you think Latvala went overboard, it certainly deserves a place in the canon.
9/20 is sort of a special case. It comes out of space, but in a meaningful way space (10 minutes) is part of the Dark Star. Of course, you could make a similar claim for the Playing jam on 10/16, for instance, or Seastones at Winterland, but I think the preceding space jam is a more integral part of the whole Dark Star trip on 9/20 than even those.
I haven't heard 10/26/89 in a while but I seem to remember one of Jerry's MIDI patches sounded like a child's roller toy. Will listen again soon.
1989-10-26. First off, even if you're just listening to the Dark Star I'd recommend starting with the couple minutes of space after Blow Away. It's not quite random noodlings, it sounds like an actual ambient piece of music, or even an intentional prelude to Dark Star. Sets the mood nicely. Jerry suddenly begins Dark Star, and the band pushes off. Jerry's playing sounds kind of uncertain, almost introspective, while the rest of the band lays down a thick backing. Once again the opening jam is as brief as can be: Phil plays the theme at 2m, and Jerry croaks out the verse right away, clearly straining. Jerry turns on the midi-sparkle after the verse, but the volume varies from line to line; after a while he gets back to a more normal tone. There's a lot of space between Jerry's lines: not so much a constant flow but a phrase, a pause, another phrase... Ah, at 5:40 a brief flash of Sputnik, then things start getting weirder as more MIDI creeps in. Brent clangs, the drummers randomly bang their drums. (The drummers keep busy in this Dark Star, lots of percussion.) Jerry gets fully midi-fied after 6:40, trying out different settings, first one, then another, then another.... Bob & Brent are also changing their sounds, while Phil remains a constant bass & a stable presence. Phil's playing is active & supportive but kind of laid-back, not really prodding like he used to. The jam has a drifting feel, like they're surfing on the waves, going wherever the tides take them. After 11m one of the drummers chimes in on a xylophone-sounding thing (it's not Bob, who's playing chords). After 12m they slowly return to the main theme, reaching it at 13:30, a calming effect after the strangeness. Jerry can barely groan the second verse, his voice gone, and they come to a dead stop before "through..." They mangle the riff after the verse. But now....the true weirdness begins. MIDI everywhere, seemingly more instruments than players. (I don't know who's making the piano sounds, but not Brent?) For a while it sounds like lounge music in some alien cantina, but in a swell after 18m the tension rises. It gets hard to identify what everyone's doing; it's like some different synth band has substituted for the Dead, or like various recordings are being layered on each other. There's a lull by 19-20m; electro-drums are coming in, and the band's apparently quieting down and giving way to Drums. But then Brent keeps banging away, Bob's still working at it, Jerry's doing I don't know what, noise samples jab in punchy rhythms. After 22:30 it's a bit like someone has opened the Ark and ancient angry spirits are pouring out. Sound effects hurtle back & forth across the stage in stereo while piano & tuba careen in abandon. After a couple frenzied minutes of madness it calms down a bit; by 24:30 it's still a chaos of semi-musical noises but not as frantic. (I can't even tell for sure just when Jerry leaves, he hasn't been identifiable for several minutes.) Dark Star doesn't so much "end" as slowly bleed away; the drone & swooshing noises continue for a couple minutes into the Drums track. Still, Drums is almost a quiet soothing break after all that mayhem. The rest of Drums is fairly uneventful, but finally a drone & ghostly wailings usher the band back in. Space starts out like a particularly creepy New Age track ("Haunting Sounds to Keep You Awake at Night"). It's mostly Jerry & Bob playing a duet over a drone; Bob has a distinctive feedbacky tremolo tone, while Jerry keeps going from one MIDI setting to another. The mood is calmer than Dark Star had been, but there's a certain continuity here. Phil shows up in the last minute to add some deep bass tones, then pushes the band toward the melodic strains of the Wheel. This was an unsettling Dark Star. It's virtually created by MIDI; there's little "normal" playing here, just increasing sheets of weirdness. A Dark Star like this would have been impossible before 1989. But they use MIDI to open a Pandora's box of demons & gremlins who take over with cackling glee, like an orchestra from hell. (One bonus is that Brent's much better being weird than he is at regular Dark Star jamming.) I remembered this as being a lot more assaultive than 10/9/89, but 10/9 is pretty aggressive & freaky too; this takes an extra step into the twilight zone, but isn't all that different in approach. Both follow the pattern of Dark Star>Space>Drums>Space, in which Space is more a continuation than a separate piece. But I didn't feel like the mood here was really dark or abrasive; it was more like a pure psychedelic frenzy whose effect depends on your state of mind. I was also struck that the Dead didn't seem to be "in control," in the sense that this Dark Star felt like it was going its own way without intention, or like it was playing itself. Which is the Dead's highest achievement. I haven't compared Miller's tape to the 30 Trips release, which has a different mix. There are a couple different audience tapes which sound about the same; though they're good they don't really offer a different perspective. I'm noticing that while the audience tapes of earlier years could have very different mixes than what's heard on the sbd tapes, these '89 auds are more or less identical in the mix. In comparing the '89 versions, Garcia doesn't really use the regular "theme line" he did before the verses previously, he varies it each time now and plays some different variation. Here before the second verse, he kind of echoes Phil's line. But he also plays a little riff at 13:40 (for less than 10 seconds) that struck me as familiar, something from the old days....then it struck me....he's playing Pigpen's old riff!
#187 10/26/89 Miami: 27:59 – 30 Trips They start with the riff and settle into a relaxed Dark Star groove. The drums are panned in the system as usual and it really brings out the flams. Jerry heads off with mid-tempo noodles against cascades from the keys. Phil is sort of digging into the down beats, keeping a pretty root-centric bass going on. Verse almost immediately at 2 minutes in. Lines are punctuated by key cascades, Jerry sounds pinched and ragged. They head to the refrain and allow a fermata. Keys cover the melody lines and they build the outro riff into the next section start, with rhythm section back chugging along. Jerry adds a midi-follower sound that adds sparkly reverb to his guitar. Keys are still doing falling arpeggios and cascades between things, Jerry eddies out for a bit and gets into some melodic tidbits that he needs to explore. At 5min, he’s in fast modal runs world, punctuated by pull offs. The band sounds like they are moving into a new groove as Jerry plays a sputnik at 5:44, just for a bit. FM bells strike at 6 min. Oh, early digital synthesis. Jerry winds around things. At 6:50, they bring it to a standstill, Jerry adds a midi voice of an oboe or something, and begins his journey stepping through presets for a doubling voice. Bobby starts some stabs, the drums and bass are doing wilder things, exploring a bit. At 8min, we get bass alone on some strong notes, Jerry with a flute sound, the drums start to come back in, they build it a bit, keys still doing falling figures, Bobby still with stabbed odd (and very compressed) chords. A minute later they almost have normal sounds again, guitar and (very bright) electric piano. Jerry starts weaving a series of figures, the band leave some more space for the eddies. Brent starts playing with his pitch bend on the keyboard, Bobby find some little riffs. At 10:45, Jerry steps through to an odd echoey percussive preset for a bit and then wanes to more tonal sparkly sounds, they start to go off the rails, mode-wise. Now Mickey has a tuned percussion thing but instead of ceding to a drums/space thing yet, they almost bring it back to a Dark Star -style groove, though with some odd sounds still on the guitar. Back to a mellow groove in the 12th minute, relaxed soloing, though the mbira or whatever is still going and Brent is still playing with his pitch bender. Mickey starts playing something with a lot of reverb, maybe a garage door spring. The band heads back to the pre-verse groove for a while. Verse 2 at 14 minutes. Jerry still sounding raspy and ragged and almost silent by “Shall we go”. A long tail to the first line of the refrain with ritard on drums. Second line elicits the outro lines in a shambles, and the band heads to spaciness! Outside modalities, odd sounds, atonal wandering, arhythmic. Some small feedbacks, distorted tones, atonal choral things from Bob. The piano starts crashing around, Jerry plays a fake bass patch for a bit, weird digital trumpet tones playing odd licks. Crashing wild piano bits in between. Back to a flutey sound. Keys go into a synthy pulse and then sweeps. An eddy occurs in minute 18, I think Bill has stepped offstage to pee, Mickey is playing a tuned percussion thing. Bobby finds an arpeggio to stick to for a bit in between chords, Jerry goes for FM-string sounds, stepping through presets still off to something else. Brent starts his pulse chords again, maybe that’s a built-in patch also. They bring up a slow set of half-tones against a lot of digital noises from keys and now drums. Arhythmic stabs from people. Stupid syndrum sounds and more digital noise from drum pads. Keys and guitars respond with atonal sounds and stabs. Bigger piles of noise start to happen, more freneticism. 23:30 a midi trombone starts making notes loudly against a sea of syndrums and scraped keys, chromatic bass. Big sweeps follow, and giant orchestral stabs. Noise bursts. It tails off in the next minute, keyboard filigree with quieter bursts from percussion and guitars. Mickey back at his percussion thing. The guitars all are quiet and relatively atonal. Cascades from keys and percussion and more noise burst lead this track into “Drums” as if that were a separate thing (?) I sort of feel like the drums/space coming out of this jam are essentially part of it. The drums have wide stereo weirdness tremoloing and echoing with odd noises speeding up and down. Very weird. Drumming emerges, but cedes to the odd pulse from a mic’ed and treated percussion instrument of some sort. Drumming finds a pulse and starts the kick and then comes in for drum solo from Bill with Mickey playing bells and shakers. It’s a pretty mellow drum area, but nice. Mickey picks up a talking drum, it’s mic signal is still panning about in the stereo field. Sounds like they both go for hand percussion after a while, it’s a little tripped out by the effects, but fairly solid while being slightly mellow. They roll around and roll it on, on the big toms or kettle drums or whatever they have these days. Distortion comes in on one of the rolling toms at about 8:30 into this track, as if that were normal. They give way to clicking edges of drums, and a low drone comes in and this track give way to “Space”. Key pad sounds come in, and Jerry is back with his midi-guitar business. The lick he plays at :40 in sounds like a Dark Star lick! The guitars have odd tone, but they are playing like guitars mostly. Low drone comes back in. They play around with some modal chord shapes and slow melodic lines. At 3min in Jerry is back to fluting it up. It’s mostly just the guitars with the flute sound and then and oboe sound, Bobby on pinched chords looking for some high feedback, and that drone in this space. At 5 min, they start playing with two chords, but it doesn’t last long, and then the thing all sort of fritters away as the bass comes in with walking lines. This gives way to a Jerry wind-up lick and then he heads into a mellow tonal lead area that eventually The Wheel. ---------------------- Well, I guess it’s a lot of weirdness for a big arena in the latter 80s, and that’s cool. And long! But man, those midi-tracked synth sounds are still awful. Even the DX7 or whatever Brent is playing is awful. Yuck, the 80s really sucked ass tone-wise, for everybody: guitars with over-abundant rack gear, FM-synthesis keyboards, syndrums. I don’t blame Garcia for having fun doing a pitch-follower and having it play bad synth tones, but the just-stepping-through-preset-sounds thing is irritating. If he actually spent the time to develop some specific sounds that were decent and used them in different places rather than just clicking through bad orchestral models, it might have been better. Though the quality of the available timbres is still pretty bad during this period. Jerry’s singing is really ragged. He barely makes notes above the rasp. In this sequence, I do feel like the drums and space sections were a literal outcome of the Dark Star improv, they really stretched out the odd jam here to over a half an hour! (Plus, to add an argument to this end, on 3/29/90, the same sequence happens, with a few minutes of actual Dark Star between the end of “Space” and the beginning of “The Wheel”.) As one of my friends said, “So cool that they do Space and Drums so you can make to the bathroom and back at a big show!”
He does spend quite a bit of time poking through different settings in this version, never settling on one for long. It does sacrifice the flow somewhat -- in a lot of his pauses, you just know he's futzing around finding the next sound. On the other hand, I felt it contributed to the hectic restless mood here. And even Brent became less annoying when everyone else in the band was also diving into the '80s synth tones with gleeful abandon. Or maybe it's just that, after a few '89 performances, I've already become numb to the '80s digital glitz....
#187 1989-10-26 There's a bit of a preamble at the end of Blow Away kind of like they're limbering up for what they expect to be a long journey. And then the notes ring out to crowd applause and they're off. There is a mellow, relaxed vibe initially as they take a pleasant stroll through the opening. It doesn't last for long however as by 2:10 they're already into the first verse. Jerry's vocal sounds weary and strained. After the verse they restate the introductory notes and Jerry quickly moves into MIDI, wandering out on a pleasant line with varying synthetic sounds. Phil works his own line underneath with Brent adding lots of color. The drummers are prominent as well and Bob's textures come in intermittently. There's kind of a dreamy feel as they continue to saunter along. Jerry wanders high and low casting out sheets of sound that are appealing. There's a touch of Sputnik at 5:40 that is nice to hear and it blends in well. Bob then jumps in with a suggestion of his own and it sounds like it might lead to a pivot in the jam but they quickly let it go. Things start to get a little oozier and more surreal with various slightly weird sounds blending in. Jerry gets into some fast moving repeating notes and then after a brief lull moves deeper into MIDI. Things get more synthetic now and they wander forth with changing instrument sounds yet still loosely following the groove. Around 8:00 Phil comes forth with some prominent bass notes while Jerry works MIDI flute. They wind around this and the energy builds a little and it feels like something is gathering. It eases however and they continue to interweave with all of the players present in the mix. Jerry finds his way back to more typical guitar sounds and there's some sparkly sheets of sound again and then they are quickly reabsorbed into electronica. There's still a sense of melodic groove woven throughout however that provides a general direction to the proceedings. Things get xylophone-y for a spell as noted by Mr. Rain and the kaleidoscopic saunter continues. Then after 12:35 they start working their way back to the theme before moving on to the second verse at 13:58. Jerry's voice is still very rough when he tries to go high. After the verse they briefly reset and then immediately descend into freaky MIDI-ville. Things get weird and spacey and raspy and edgy. There's a cacophony of electronic sounds as they bounce around and explore this new territory that they've found themselves in. The energy starts to build after 18:00 and things feel a little more ominous although I wouldn't say scary. And then start to ease into something a little more mellow. Lots of spaceship-like sounds but there's also some ambient electronic music stuff going on and even a bit of tribal-ish percussion at times. By 20:40 or so the energy is building again although there's kind of an '80s Alex F. thing happening too. Weird! Things start getting somewhat freakier and there are intermittent electronic sounds and the weirdness builds and it's very MIDI-fied. Around 22:33 a strong, otherworldly sound surges out! The intensity rises and it's like they've teleported into some other dimension or maybe they're careening through a wormhole. Things ebb briefly and then the electronic cacophony resumes and it's very spaceship-y. They continue to freakout and then things start to ease up after 24:35 although there's still a final surge. Things stay weird and get a little more intense again and then slowly Dark Star gives way to Drums. Drums provides a tonic of sorts before transitioning to a relatively mellow and somewhat gentle Space that in turns creates a nice launch pad for The Wheel. It's a cool and noteworthy version and certainly their most ambitious performance since the hiatus. The first half is relatively mellow with a dreamy and melodic feel. It gets freakier as it goes along but still fits within a loose Dark Star groove. And then after the second verse basically anything goes. It's freaky and intense but I'm not sure that the "scary" moniker is the most apt. Nonetheless it is weird and otherworldly and sometimes bizarre. They dive head first into their MIDI toy box with varying degrees of success but the spirit of exploration and experimentation is alive and well.
Probably more scary in person! And I wouldn't discount the effect of surprise, since people wouldn't have expected something like this. How often in '89 had the Dead done a big freaky space outside of Space?
188. 1989-12-31 154970 Oakland 14:46 First verse at 6:31. Goes into Drums. Victim or the Crime had become a space-faring event in its own right by this point; tonight they follow it with Dark Star. Everything has a little bit of a digital sheen at this point, even with Garcia otherwise sounding remarkably organic at first; Weir has some kind of flute-like thing going right away. Musically, though, this starts out in a pretty straightforward polyphonic pocket. At 2:30 they settle into what passes for the main theme these days, but then Jerry turns into a flute and they continue jamming. There’s a nice peak starting right after the four minute mark. Coming off the other side, Garcia becomes more guitar-like again. It seems like there’s always some sort of MIDI tinge around the edges, though. They keep dropping back into the pocket, as at 5:10, but they head out again—though not too far out, this is still a jam on the basic chord pattern of Dark Star. Finally, at 6:20, we reach the theme again and get to the verse. Based on the placement in the set, the timing, and the last version, we would expect a freakout here, but they go right back to the groove, although the MIDI is ramped up a bit. After a couple of minutes the center starts to distort, and weirdness begins to hold sway; this is sort of a wind-down into the drum section, rather than a full-fledged excursion, but one’s grip on the mundane is pleasingly shaken a bit in the process. Anyone who had heard the Miami version could be forgiven for thinking they were on the way somewhere rather special at around 11:30 when things are starting to fly a bit, but we are already almost at the end. At around 13:10 it gets really good, with Garcia’s bassoon bleating along and the drums striking a fast and exciting beat. Short as this post-verse segment turns out to be, they don’t phone it in. But this is a last blast, and pretty soon it has all subsided into tonight’s drum segment. Here we have one of those “good but not earth-shattering” Dark Stars, mostly because the brevity of it and the relative conservatism of the pre-verse material preclude any extended exploration.
The 80s and 90s reveal that Dark Star had a shelf life. Garcia's midi is like a swig of curdled milk. Not even a shadow of the ghost of Keith to make it matter.
#188 1989-12-31 The last couple minutes of Victim Or The Crime get pretty freaky while still maintaining a thread of the melody. Jerry's MIDI trumpet seems to herald that something grander is on the way. As the outro runs its course there's a brief pause and then the opening notes to Dark Star are greeted with another enthusiastic crowd response. There's a light feel initially as they saunter along. Jerry adds some fuzzy raspiness but then quickly shifts to his normal tone. Phil works a mellow line underneath. The drums are fairly prominent in the mix but not overbearing. Brent dances around adding relatively subtle accents. Jerry flirts with MIDI for a moment at 1:45 but then holds off. Bob blends in this textures and is already dabbling in electronic sounds. It moves along nicely enough in pretty typical fashion. They gently touch back on the theme at 2:30 and then Jerry moves to MIDI flute. The overall feel gets more subtle and delicate and then they start to slowly build some momentum. Phil continues to work a bouncy, repeating line. Bob now seems to be going for some kind of tropical sound. They collectively interweave and rise to a small peak starting around 4:00. As it subsides Jerry shifts back to mostly normal guitar which is welcome. They carry forth, winding out but never venturing too far from thematic territory as noted by bzfgt. Things start to ebb and then around 6:05 Jerry inserts some snappy, punctuating notes after which they ease their way into the first verse. Jerry sings gently although still sounds strained. After the verse they reset and then resume the groove with Phil, Bob and Brent semi-treading water initially. Jerry comes in a bit later so he may have been futzing with something. The overall feel gets more dreamy and then slowly starts to become more spacey and weird. It stays pretty mellow initially but then they begin to ramp it up. At this point they are essentially spinning up general spaciness but to some degree it feels like a cauldron is brewing. After 10:53 Jerry switches to a raspier tone that brings some more edge to the proceedings. His guitar wails out into the night while Bob adds frantic textures and Brent colors as well. Its starts to get more electronic again and it feels like they may let it rip but then they ease up. Around 12:00 Jerry starts a low, repeating thing like a revving motor and they gather around that for a bit. Jerry gets freakier and Phil works a fairly quick moving line. It's kind of a cool although its starts to get more electronic again which alters the feel a bit. Nonetheless they're in a freaky hall of mirrors now and after 13:00 they take it up a notch with the drummers adding a more pronounced beat along with the general mayhem. More MIDI bizarreness and then by 14:10 or so they start to let it go. From that point it becomes an on-ramp to Drums. It's a pretty good version relative to the era. The first half kind of feels they were playing it because it was New Year's Eve but they weren't particularly in the mood to take it for a ride. But then the second half gets more interesting and freaky although they never fully unleash the beast.
#188 12/31/89 Oakland: 15:05 This is now with the "Rosebud" guitar. Ending of Victim or the Crime has some arhythmic noodles with a midi-trumpet sound and big crashing cymbals and toms, held pitch-bended keys. Bob starts a little Dark Star intro and then they actually do it, and drop into the groove, though it’s sort of dissipated, the drums are slow. Guitar back to almost being a guitar sound, and Phil actually bubbling around more, the groove funks up a bit after a minute. Brent is still on the cascading riffs. Jerry is mellow on his leads, Bobby has a very distant sounds compressed guitar tone. At a couple minutes in, Jerry steps on the suck pedal and the guitar starts sounding like a trombone, but just for a second, and back to more guitar-sounding guitar. They wander around in the Dark Star mode world, and into the pre-verse theme area. But then Jerry steps on the pedal again and becomes a jazz flute and then there’s more digital keyboard sounds in there and Jerry is playing guitar. Maybe Bob also has the midi-pitch-follower today? Or is there someone else playing? Halfway into the track, Jerry starts some fast runs, the band just mellowly chugs along. They continue. A lull and then they dig back into the pre-verse groove. Verse comes in, Jerry is small sounding, but has most of the notes. Bass holds it together through the verse, the drums are light. To the refrain, they jumble it all up, but get it together for the ending into the outro. After the riff, back to a groove, though it starts to ebb a little. Keys arpeggiate downwards, some digital noises start in the background, big swirly reverby things. The track switches to “Spacey Jam” at 9:13 as things get atonal. The pulse falls apart, the pitch follower has a ghost voice sound. Bass keeps low mostly, they start to get a bit more frenetic and atonal and build up to a peak. Everybody is making weird noises. The piano goes to free jazz all-over-the-place bits, Bobby has a very pinched distorto sound, and then Jerry goes for distortion also and gets wild. They build to a high wild place and then let it cede to little picking and odd riffs at a lower level, though Brent still has some bits all over the keys. Distorted guitars play with feedback. Dumb-ass FM bells comes in. Jerry switches to an oboe tone, the drums start building up a rhythmic pulse. The instruments make noisy phrases while the drums continue and then 5:30 into this track, they give it over to the drummers, who continue a groove with bass and some odd percussion. Piano is warbling around for a second, then it’s all drums and percussion. Somebody is singing or yelling into a mic that is pitch-shifted in the drum world. They roll onwards through some hand percussion and then back to tom toms, rolling on. Bells still in the mix. Mickey strikes up the triggered digital drum sounds occasionally, they roll it onwards taking this track past 10 minutes long. Some odd distorted sounds come in from a vocal mic with some ring-mod treatment again. Rolling on big drums, hand percussion. Audience says, “whooo!” Toward the end some pitch-bends on some echoed instrument come in, leading to the “Space” track. A note from guitar with the percussion underneath leads the percussion to a sparser area while some pitched instruments make isolated little runs with echoes. And then the preset switch goes to a sax-sound for the guitar. Reverby noises take over the back, synthetic keyboard-ish sounds plinkle around. I think it’s both guitars with pitch-followers playing awful FM synths. Some syndrum hits. Halfway through, a low drone starts. A guitar emerges under it, with distortion but at a low volume, playing runs and arpeggios in a major key area. Another instrument is sounding like an electric piano playing sparse notes. I can’t tell who’s playing what, but there are occasional sounds that appear to guitars, though most of the time it’s synthetic voices. Then some low distorted rock riffing by itself followed by odd synth bell-bloops and low notes, some loud “bells” and then Jerry starts the riff into Dear Mr Fantasy. Yikes. Well, ok Dark Star is 9 minutes of this, and it leads to the drums/space biz. The drums segment is decent, but space is filled with those awful synthetic timbres. These last few have been pretty tough to get through because of that, it’s not the sort of timbral world I want to devote my listening time to! I like electric guitars, you know.
Dark Star 12-31-89 The dressed up, swanky yet slumming New Years Eve crowd pretends to eat up the Dark Star but most folk's minds are wandering. The band's minds seem to be wandering as well. Garcia seems wired and tired. Weir is ineffectual. Lesh's playing is selfish. Makes sense. His name is in the word. Hart is incapable of solid drumming. Brent seems quite high. Garcia has some new toys and has not spent enough time with them yet. He seems to think the flute and trumpet sounds are worthwhile but they're just new. Victim Or The Crime had weird chords for no reason other than to have weird chords. Makes sense. Weir's name is in the word. He seems to stay in the same mode now as Dark Star wafts into the air like a chili burger fart. As the jam meanders on it becomes obvious that lift-off will not be accomplished. At least BH isn't up there. Yet. BH colliding with Garcia's midi tones would be too much. Maybe not for the New Year's crowd. It's a social event after all. Music is secondary. Or thirdly. Dark Star is a thing of the past. Dragging it out at this late date is like an exhumation. Next up: Berkeley '84: Broken Skeleton Bones From The Closet
1989-12-31. Dark Star comes out of that happy new year's celebration song, Victim or the Crime, which turns itself into a noisy, freaky space, crackling with distortion. In the end the madness quiets down and Jerry begins Dark Star. (Cue crowd screams.) So there's an interesting reversal of events here: Space>Dark Star. Dark Star has a loose opening, the band dancing lightly around each other, but after a minute it settles into a rather peaceful jam. Bob has a kind of whistly, glassy tone; Phil is loud in the mix and solid; Brent's less obtrusive than usual, even (dare I say) laying back a bit. Jerry keeps adjusting his tone throughout -- after a brief touch on the main theme at 2:30, he tries on the flute sound for a minute. Jerry climbs up to a little peak after 4m in an early climax, then at 4:30 they drop back to gliding in the calm Dark Star groove. After a minute of placid jamming, at 6:20 they turn back to the theme (big crowd cheer) and the verse. The verse is almost instrumental as Jerry all but whispers the lines. Jerry lets the band establish the groove again, then comes back in with some minimalist touches (and a spectral MIDI sheen). After 9m things start breaking up, ghostly echoes round Jerry's guitar, the groove unraveling, drummers pounding & Brent hitting some atonal chords. They're pretty much back in Victim or the Crime territory! (You could even call this a Victim>Dark Star>Victim.) Jerry lands on a fuzzy tone and the playing gets more hectic; after 11:30 they're building up to some kind of peak, but it dissolves in feedback-tinged percussive chatter. Phil keeps puttering along as spacey effects careen around: digi-bells, bassoon, all sorts of random clutter. Amidst the mayhem, Jerry slips out the back door by 14m, the rest of the band quiets down, and the drummers take over. There's some (sampled) chanting in Drums, some distorted effects and a variety of drum sounds; overall a heavy tribal feeling, like the soundtrack to an expedition down the Congo. Eventually the band returns with various digital tones; Jerry goes through his usual array of space sounds, and Phil's trying out his own MIDI tones as well. The effect is almost hypnotic after about 4m. Jerry enters a surprising melodic passage after 5:30, sounding a bit like he's going into the Wheel. For a few minutes there's kind of a duel between Jerry & Phil, who's stepping all over with some wacky sounds -- getting downright cartoonish in the last minute. But in the end they peacefully resolve on Dear Mr. Fantasy. The audience tapes are all good: to my taste Daweez and Mahoney are the best (followed closely by Mattes and Bowen). This was a pretty good one, and far better than the band's last New Year's attempt on 12/31/81. It's very concentrated, but covers a lot of ground in a short time. There's a kind of dark & haunted feel here: rather than being taken in isolation, this Dark Star is part of the mood swing from the violence of Victim to the jungle sounds of Drums. The opening jam is almost like a classic Dark Star at times (4:30-6:30 in particular), and very tranquil in feel, the better to contrast with the escalating sonic madness after the verse. Other things also help: Brent's restrained and mostly sticks to a piano sound; Jerry's vocals are very quiet in the verse; Phil's bass is front & center; and the digital effects serve to make it all sound more creepy, like a pastoral scene being painted by a glitchy computer.
Being a Grateful Dead novice/poser, has there ever been a thread here about the best Dark Stars? Or a poll? This thread is sure a hell of a lot to read, and good luck searching within any parameter I have been able to conjure up.
This is pretty close to the first "best Dark Star" lists I saw in Deadbase and the Dupree's Diamond News magazine when I started collecting Dead tapes in the 90's. The site gets some criticism, but I think it's a good list if you're starting to become familiar with the piece. https://headyversion.com/song/66/grateful-dead/dark-star/
Thanks! Though I must say - it seems hard to believe that the best version of every song played at Veneta '72 is the version from Veneta '72.
