In twenty more years.... It looks like www.deadlists.com is gone but you can access deadlists.com, which comes up for me as deadlists home page I'm not sure why that makes a difference but I think it's a recent change. Scared me at first too.
Aha, thank you, sir. I'm slightly off-grid this month (countryside, internet via mobile phone's low signal) so i wasn't sure if it was my end or somethin' or nothin' or what.
28. 1969-05-23 Road Trips 4.1 18:55 Main theme at 6:28. First verse at 6:48. Sputnik at 11:52. Bright Star at 15:56. Main theme at 16:57. Second verse at 17:21. Goes into St. Stephen. This one gets right going; the band sounds kind of busy, and Garcia adopts an angry tone. Someone will tell me what the rattlesnake percussion thing is. For the first few minutes there are peaks and valleys, as several times they come near to a stop, and then start banging away again. There’s a nice moment from 4:10-4:18 where Garcia starts playing a little lick and Lesh quotes it back to him. At 4:41, Garcia pulls up hard and seems to announce the advent of the main theme, but then they take off again. Check out Garcia’s drunken licks from 5:08 until around 5:22, which elicit an appropriate response from Weir. For a relatively short Dark Star, they don’t stint on the intro this time, finally pulling up to the verse at almost 7 minutes in. The middle jam starts at 7:54. The usual tension building gives way to some weirdness at around 8:30, and Garcia comes in very quietly with his lead line at 8:48. Things suddenly start to build at 9:45, and we come to a peak and then level off for a while, then build some more…at 10:59 Garcia again starts to stagger along drunkenly, then they feint at a peak, then start to build again, and then hit another peak at about 11:30. They pull right back from this and come down the other side, and at 11:39 Garcia starts playing a staccato repeated note, which leads soon thereafter to Sputnik. Tonight Sputnik alternates between arpeggios and jabs, until at 13:00 Garcia brings it to a close with some percussive jabbing. The band latches on to this and starts to stagger along, but at 13:24 Garcia pushes it somewhere else with a fire alarm blast that then turns into a more usual lead line. But at 13:54, he switches on the insect weirdness, which I don’t think we’ve heard for the last little while. By 14:28 he’s done with it though, and he returns to a jabbing motif. Then, at 14:45, Garcia and Weir start blasting, with Weir playing a high droning note which Garcia plays around. Then TC gets in on the act for a little while, but it all drops back down rather soon. At 15:40 Garcia starts to sketch in Bright Star; this comes on gradually, I’ve somewhat arbitrarily marked the beginning as 15:56. This attains a modest peak and then comes down, and soon we’re at the main theme and the second verse. What to say about this one? It’s not one of the most momentous versions, and doesn’t stand out for intensity or weirdness. However, every version is different, and this certainly has parts that are noteworthy. They don’t seem to stick with anything for very long this time, but there are some nice moments.
1969-05-23. This struck me as a playful, not-very-serious Dark Star that trades deep intensity for high spirits. The opening has some percussion counting in the beat, which I hadn't noticed before. The vibraslap might be a new instrument in the Dark Star repertoire, but like all the other pieces of percussion the Dead have laying around the stage, it fits right in. The lengthy & relaxed opening jam is dominated by Jerry & Phil, as usual....TC is mostly low-volume but sometimes rises to the occasion. There's one passage around 3-4 minutes that's almost a Hartbeats-like Phil & Jerry duet, with only little touches from the others. It has a nice emphatic ending at 4:42, when Bill joins in and they get back into Dark Star mode. (Bill stops within 20 seconds, perhaps feeling the moment is too soon for him!) A bit of feedback at 5:27 announces the entry of a loud woodblock, backed by cymbals....oddly enough the music gets deeper at this point, Jerry quiets down and Phil sneaks in the main theme, and after 5:50 they're traveling in a soft cloud of mystery. Jerry nicely joins the theme. He sings the verse very emphatically -- I don't think I've noticed "searchlight" sung like that before! They jump right into tense turbulence after the verse. Jerry does a bit of bell-tolling but prefers to play with feedback through the crashes. Then a cute contrast when he starts this quiet little delicate lead coming out of the noisy chaos. After 9 minutes Bill's drums and Pigpen's congas come in, sensing their time has come. The jam quickly gains strength...there's a neat unusual moment at 10:10 when Bill & Jerry play off each other. TC's also playing with more emphasis by now. It sounds like Jerry's pushing everybody to get more loud and wild, especially after 11 minutes. But as always, he soon tamps things down to a little staccato beat that turns into a Sputnik. Sputnik seems kind of subdued, the band isn't going wild with this. Mickey's doing his wood tapping but no guiro-scratching this time. Jerry's getting carried away lately with his repetitive jabs, and the others just have to go along with it. But at 13:24 Jerry finally breaks out with a dramatic burst, and we're back to the regular jam. But then he remembers: "oh wait, isn't there something I used to do here?" And it's time for an insect-weirdness flashback! Mickey switches to gong to make it weirder. The jam resumes in a high frenzy, Jerry repeating his high notes from 13:24, leading to a big noise peak at 15:00! As the waves subside, Bob & Phil start up the main theme again, figuring it's time for the verse. But Jerry's not done yet -- he slowly pieces together the bright-star figure in a long final climax. Both drumsets & congas going strong now and TC's full-blast, but Jerry doesn't play it very fiercely, it's more relaxed. I like how he lets it drain away in a final note of feedback. That of course sets up the last main theme in a nice finish. Pigpen keeps his conga patter going through the ending (and into St. Stephen). Well, not a Dark Star for the ages but an enjoyable one, many fine passages. I didn't mention him much but TC sounded a lot more loose than usual in this one....it's like he's playing more chordally, like Pigpen would normally do. I noticed that TC's keyboard sound is quite different than it used to be. I believe he's switched to the Hammond B3 organ by now -- it may be one reason he's cutting more through the mix lately and fitting in better. Judging from the sound, I think 5-10 was his first Dark Star with the new organ.
#64 5/23/69 Hollywood, FL: 18:57 – Road Trips Vol.4 No.1 (Seminole Indian Village, ok then, Florida.) Bright and cheery intro into a beautiful singing set of phrases from JG, really nice playing from everybody. JG is really upping his playing here, he’s playing the sounds I’m seeing, man! TC on chords mostly, Bobby with some beautiful fluid chordal playing. Oh boy. The hand percussion vibe is right-on here, though apparently there’s a vibraslap happening, which is weird. JG continues with neck pickup tone while the band plugs away at the rhythm (perhaps ignoring the vibraslap) Lovely windup into 3” mark. New more sparse accompaniment, JG still grasping notes out of thin air and bringing them to our attention. Bobby spaces for a while in some feedback or something, but JG is still wandering around in this new garden of flowers. At 4:45 or so, he switches to a nasally tone for a bit and tries out some old riff, they’re bringing it back up and he’s got some new riff ideas to play out before it settles. Oops, percussion mic feedback then some tapping weirdness from the percussion. Inspired by that feedback, they’re finding some frequencies floating in the air. TC has been chordal this whole time, I believe? Into the intro at 6:30, to verse 1. Lovely delivery with the cymbals washing behind. Strong intro to the next section, Bobby playing it very directly. We’re expecting the bell and it’s coming, bringing some feedbacky tones with it and some strong cymbals washing from both sides, when this has blown the world away, we’re left in a small place with Jerry exploring introvertedly. We have the whole band here, Bill has joined, but they’re holding back from any forward propulsion until JG takes it upwards and TC starts with his riffing and arpeggios. At 10” Jerry starts some fast runs, TC following behind. Like butterflies chasing each other. The waves of sound build up and down, but it’s not dying out at all, they are building and building until JG takes a staccato approach to some notes, heading to a Sputnik right before 12”. This one is also going into some choppy rhythmic statements, but they die down to a tiny little chittering before settling into a new set of notes with a flat 5. They burst forth into a theme statement, but so brief that it seems like only TC tried to hold onto a song-form backing set of lines. He gives up on that and Jerry moves right away and on then into the Insect Weirdness tone at 13:50! Freak out, people! This band is going somewhere not of this earth. TC comes down with some cool trills up and down, they band is holding steady, Jerry hits some strong notes, they bring it way up and it blossoms on into a Dark Star chord and them jam. “Theme” in quotes I mean. It’s always a restatement of the thematic idea, some great sense to it this evening, the hand drums are jamming along. And back to the intro with some cool little timbres from the organ. Verse 2 comes in nicely. Very performative. Hand drums still live and active during the verse/chorus. Nice outro, with one flat clam on the counterpoint. All in all an amazingly creative and fluid version, really upbeat and happy-sounding! They were clearly enjoying themselves.
Yeah, I forgot to post the location this time! I finally figured out what you mean by the "spy theme" thing during "reason shatters"...I listened for it this time. It does sound like a spy theme....I never really noticed it before, I think I often tune out during the verses...
Yes, a happy-sounding version, not so much the "this is serious" vibe of other Dark Stars. The Seminole Indian Village seems to have had a cheerful effect on them. I don't know what the venue was? So you noticed TC playing differently too. My theory is the new organ helped him sound, well, more like an organ player....there were a lot of points where I thought "wait, this isn't Pigpen again?" It's quite a shift in style, and he sounds nice in this. His playing is very supportive of Jerry's....though you could say the same of everybody else too, they all stick close to wherever Jerry goes.
Yeah, I know I keep making up my own nomenclature, I think it's just so I can settle the parts in my own brain and understand what's where. The verse/song form seems really important to me for some reason. In the "proto" Dark Star single version and very early live versions, they use the three-line form often as the basis for the jam, and the rhythms keep that structure: first line is basic, second has that offbeat "spy theme" thing, third line goes "casting" and wanders off. They do it in a lot of the jams (till lately anyway, it hasn't appeared much in the April/May 69 versions).
#64 1969-05-23 It starts upbeat with some pace; there's a little edge and fuzz to Jerry's tone. Plenty of Phil underneath and nice rhythm textures from Bobby too. A touch of vibraslap adds something different as has been pointed out. A couple minutes in and they are cruising along, things are moving quickly, Jerry seems to be playing a lot of notes. At 3:02 they ease off and Jerry continues on, weaving in and out, complimented by Phil with small, occasional flourishes from Bob. By 4:45 they're picking it up again and moving pretty quick. Jerry seems a little sloppy around 5:10 but they right the ship by 5:20 and carry on in more subtle fashion, hitting the main theme at 6:28 and then the first verse. Post verse they start to head out quickly, in come the gong washes and a bit of bell tolling but then they pivot into some weirdness at 8:30. Starting at 8:50 there's a gentle passage, TC steps in a bit more and Phil can be heard well too. This starts to build and by 9:55 it's pretty intense again. Some repeating flourishes from Jerry at 10:12 with strong drums; TC is getting in some complimentary runs too. At 11:00 Jerry does a jabbing thing that hits a mini peak. From there he continues on with a driving feel that spills upwards at 11:28 before easing up, after which he plays a repeating note and then they head into Sputnik. Sputnik is relatively mellow, TC adds some color, more jabbing from Jerry kind of like winding up, then at 13:25 he launches out and they continue on through familiar territory. They briefly pause at 13:50 and then at 13:55 they break into insect weirdness; hello again. This dissipates and then at 14:30 it's more jabbing guitar notes, fairly low key, with some TC color and a bouncy bass line. At 14:45 they quickly ascend and sustain a collective high before shifting back down again. They continue on with the jam and slowly work their way into Bright Star which is a relatively mellow version but it carries on for a little while, with lots of congas and drums. That resolves and then it's back to the main theme and second verse. I wouldn't describe this performance as particularly remarkable in the context of other recent versions but it's a good one nonetheless. And the circumstances of the festival may have had something to do with that.
There's some information about the festival in the liner notes to Road Trips 4.1. Sounds like it was a crazy time: "But let’s see---where can we stage a hip little music festival where we don’t need the approval of uptight city authorities or require a gaggle of local cops looking for any excuse to start breaking heads or busting folks? The answer to those questions was the Seminole Indian reservation in Hollywood, just north of Miami, and the event was the three-day “Big Rock Pow Wow”--May 23-25 1969--featuring the Grateful Dead as headliners the first two days (Rhinoceros on the third), as well as such acts as Johnny Winter, Muddy Waters, The Youngbloods, Sweetwater, Joe South, NRBQ and Aum. Timothy Leary, who had recently announced his candidacy for governor of California, was also a ubiquitous presence the whole weekend. City cops and Federal agents weren’t allowed on Native American soil without permission; indeed “the authorities” had no jurisdiction over anything that went on there. For their part, the Seminoles were happy to make a little bread from the event, which drew somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 people at its most crowded. (If that sounds small, remember that in the spring of 1969, the Dead were barely known outside of California. They only had two albums out--Aoxomoxoa would be released shortly--and hadn’t gotten much FM airplay yet, so their reputation in Florida was based primarily on their appearances at Thee Image and at the Miami Pop Festival on December 28, 1968.) Many folks camped for a buck in nearby fields and woods on the reservation grounds; others just came in for one of the three shows. A make-shift group calling itself Together Inc., which included a Timothy Leary associate named Anthony, whose brother ran a Miami “head” shop, put the festival together, and some of the people from Thee Image helped with staging and other logistical matters. The heart of the sprawling reservation was a re-creation of a traditional Seminole village where members of the tribe would demonstrate and sell native crafts and also perform ceremonial music and dances. One of the odder (but most popular) features was a swimming pool where every hour a Seminole brave would “wrestle” a rather tired-looking alligator, which lived in a nearby pen with a couple of his comatose brethren. Alas, there was no alligator-wrestling during the Rock Pow Wow, but the Seminole crafts and music were happening during the daytime, and various non-Seminole artisans and hippie groups were allowed to set up booths and sell their wares. As Denise Fesko’s account of the weekend in the Miami underground paper Strawberry Fields described, “There was a fresh fruit and juice stand, a flower shop and a record concession on one end of the walk bridge. Around the other side of the campfire area were chickees [traditional Seminole huts] operated by Indians making pumpkin bread and stringing bead rings and bracelets and sewing brightly colored clothes… “The people came and the music began. A sort of perfumed smell filled the air and rose up through the piney trees. The grass covering the ground was so soft and clean that most people dared not mar its face with trampling shoes, but entwined their toes around the clean grass blades. Peace and freedom were no longer trite, overused words, but a reality and a precious gift to the people.” But that idyllic description doesn’t mention perhaps the key element of the weekend: the orange juice. “There was a huge orange juice machine backstage that probably held ten gallons or more--complimentary orange juice; it’s Florida!” recalls John Blackwell, who was mostly known as Sgt. Pepper back then, and had worked at Thee Image and was wired into the hippie scene in Miami. “So someone got this great idea: Let’s put acid in the orange juice.” Appropriately enough, newly minted “Orange Sunshine” LSD had been spreading like wildfire since the beginning of the year and there was plenty around in South Florida. Blackwell also recalls being given a fistful of mescaline tablets to distribute in the crowd gratis, courtesy of Leary’s entourage. Eventually, cups and containers of the electric juice made it out into the crowd, too, and, Blackwell says, “There was a mass dosing of hundreds of people.” Wayne Ceballos, leader of the S.F. group Aum, and a friend of the Dead’s from the Warlocks days, recalls, “Everyone who drank the orange juice got messed up. My nephew and I had been drinking Wild Turkey before we drank the orange juice, so you can imagine… Me and Pigpen, who I was really tight with, were drunk and stoned--oh, my God! I remember Bill Kreutzmann and I had this huge deep, conversation about I don’t know what, but they had these big ropes that held up the tarps over the stage and we were holding on to this rope and talking, and all of a sudden I said, ‘Bill, you know what? I try to let go of this rope and I can’t.’ He goes, ‘Wow, I can’t either!’ And we just stood there and laughed and laughed. It was that kind of a day. When [Aum] went on, we were so wasted, we were spittin’ orange juice at each other and laughing our asses off. But then we ****in’ kicked ass. It was one of the best sets we ever played.” Banana of The Youngbloods remembers drinking some orange juice during a soundcheck, then heading back to the hotel and spending half an hour or so trying to extricate the band’s hopelessly high drummer, Joe Bauer, from the bathroom. “We were pushing and pulling on the door,” he laughs. “Then it finally occurred to one of us to turn the doorknob.” A couple of acts never made it to the stage at all or had to quit early. As for the Dead, well, the orange juice was not a problem--just another day at the office! But it’s also easy to hear the bold, slightly reckless psychedelic edge in their playing on these two sets, which feature a healthy chunk of the group’s mid-’69 repertoire, from a ferocious recitation of the (future) classic Live Dead sequence of “Dark Star” > “St. Stephen” > “The Eleven” > “Lovelight,” to “Doin’ That Rag,” “China Cat,” “Alligator” (of course!) and the lovely and relatively rare “He Was a Friend of Mine.” Though the playing on both Dead sets was at times positively feral, writer Fesko noted: “The Grateful Dead were amazing as the final act that [Saturday] night. The people moved smoothly to the serene sounds and sweetness of their notes and then could not keep from standing and dancing and clapping each other’s palms when the Dead played their happy, loud, moving songs.” Meanwhile around a campfire backstage one night, Leary, members of the Dead and a few others passed around more orange juice and yukked it up. Nearby, Blackwell relates, “The Seminole chief--whose son was a musician, and who led a dance through the grounds for three days straight--was swappin’ lies with a Hell’s Angel, and eventually our crowd [the Dead, etc.] merged in with the chief’s groups, and at one point he gets up and he made us all--this whole crowd, including the Hell’s Angel--honorary Seminole braves! Which frankly we were very honored by at the time; we took it seriously.” For the Dead, after the Pow Wow it was back to the West Coast for a series of shows. In Florida, though, the impact was profound. Fesko again: “A lot of the good from the Pow Wow has lingered with us and we will take it with us to the next scheduled gathering in Atlanta, Georgia, July 4th and 5th. In fact, this goodness has become embedded so deeply that we will carry it and contain it within us throughout our lives.” --Blair Jackson
What a scene! I guess that orange juice made for some happy musicians. And at these shows, someone could shout "Alligator!" and not mean the song. That reminds me of Bob Weir's jokes about the alligator living in the NY Academy of Music.... "The guy hollering "alligator" is serious, dead serious. There's an alligator in the Academy of Music, he lives under rows CC and DD, and he wakes up for the rock & roll. So there's always some dude back there hollering "alligator!" and everybody else thinks he's making a request."
Or when Pigpen said at the Fillmore East to more cries of "Alligator!" -- "Don't be hollering out emergency warnings in a place like this. An alligator loose in here could chomp off a bunch of feet. Especially yours, buddy!" But still, the Dead obliged with an Alligator at the Seminole Indian Village. Of course Bob had to preface it with a yellow dog story, which no audience could escape, even in the Florida swamps.
Wow, so the consensus on 5/23/69 Dark Star is that it’s “okay”? “Alright”? IIRC, my memory of it is that Garcia is jamming his ass off like a madman. A top Jerry version. Yeah, it’s not as deep and spacey as the best 1969 versions, but Jerry goes off. Or so I thought. I should spin it again. Perhaps it’s not as amazing as I recalled.
...guess you had to be there... Actually, I thought it was incredibly good, upbeat and happy sounding. The outdoor Dark Stars are really something, taking the whole world into space like that. And these stories are incredible. I can't even imagine trying to play after Orange Sunshine, though I guess you get 'used to it' if you do it all the time? My limited experiences of trying to play or perform on hallucinogens were few and far between (and long ago) and never went well—tuning and timing were, well, ...difficult—guess I just didn't do it often enough! I was reading Joel Selvin's book on Altamont (quite good) a while back and there was a throw away line about somebody in Jefferson Airplane eating some acid in the helicopter on the way, like they were just smoking a joint, and I just couldn't wrap my head around the casualness of eating acid as if it just "got you high". I had to assume that that was Selvin's misunderstanding of the effectiveness of drugs in general, but I know that he isn't that clueless, so in the end I was just confused by the statement. That said, perhaps if you have so much in your system all the time, I expect eventually you must level out somewhat. Haven't tried that route, personally. Yet.
I don't think any of us said "OK," did we? I'm not going back to look. It seems like the consensus was it's really good, but not as remarkable as some of the other ones immediately preceding it...
Yeah it's just alright! Compared to the other spring '69 Dark Stars. Which means it's still amazing. Even the weakest Dark Star in this time period is still quite a trip. But we're not listening to these in isolation, so it's natural to compare them, that's what this thread's about...you get high standards after listening to all of these. Personally I think this version is left in the dust by the Dark Stars coming up soon. But it's still a wonder! Like JSegel said it's really upbeat, very spirited Jerry -- every Dark Star has its own mood, something distinct to offer.
Considering the Dead had Owsley using them as acid guinea-pigs since '66 and it was practically part of their daily diet, I'm sure they had very high tolerances. They were used to playing through the hallucinations! Check out 6/8/69 for a show where they got extra-dosed and were so high they could hardly stand, and Jerry had to sit out part of the show.
Yeah, I always found that if you do acid two days in a row, you barely get off the second day....it weirds you out, but nothing that would impede functioning. For that reason, though, there's not much point in doing acid two days in a row....although I've done that a bunch of times anyway, so I guess it wouldn't be surprising if they did...
The melody Phil starts playing at 15:13 seems familar--is it a modular theme or just one of those things that seems familiar but isn't? 65. 1969-05-30 87516 Portland, OR Main theme at 4:07. First verse at 4:34. Sputnik at 12:00. Goes into Cosmic Charlie. This one comes in sounding kind of old-school to me for some reason, like a sprightly 1968 version. The tempo isn’t necessarily different, but there’s something bright and bouncy about this intro. At around 1:20 they begin to subtly migrate from the two chord pattern to a one chord vamp, as has been customary of late. At 2:00 Garcia starts playing a circular pattern while the band kicks up a bit, and the usual 1969 pattern of micro-dynamics asserts itself, where the band builds and recedes in small arcs. The tempo is flexible in a similar way; at 3:01, for instance Garcia begins a ritardando passage that culminates in a main theme fake-out at 3:07. Such feints have become a central strategic pillar of Dark Star in this era. Garcia and Lesh are weaving in and out of each other’s wake throughout the introduction, while, as is often the case, the contributions of TC and Weir are more textural. However, Weir is subtly subversive in his way, slipping in C natural to pose a minor counterpoint to Garcia’s mixolydian leads. This, along with some keening organ, imbues the main theme with a melancholy flavor tonight (4:07), and this mood carries through into the verse, at which point this version has already traversed gradually and seamlessly from sunlight into twilight, but as we will see, it isn’t going to opt for either—here, darkness and light meet and decide they like each other. The theme of tonight’s Dark Star seems to be turning confrontations into a kind of( synthesis. The restatement of the introductory theme after the verse ends at 5:39, and Garcia immediately begins playing a lead line, another throwback to 1968; at 5:59, however, he reverts to tolling, and it seems like things are descending even further into darkness. After a wandering bass passage, at 6:52 Garcia begins playing a hazy and somber lead. This leads to a transition that seems sudden, but at the same time it seems impossible to pinpoint exactly where it happens—I’ll put it at around 7:03—into a more upbeat passage that feels almost like a Bright Star section (the melody which Garcia feints at 7:10). Lesh is quite active, one almost wants to say unleashed, in this improvisation. The bass and guitar continually weave around one another. The effect is like that of two people having a conversation, each so familiar with the other that neither needs to listen to the other to know what will be said next, and whose remarks harmonize perfectly at times, and at other times are divergent yet mutually relevant. This reaches a kind of peak at 7:32, where the interlocutors seem to be shouting at one another in joyous agreement. This is the first of a series of little peaks and descents where the aforementioned passage seems to recur (in more or less altered form) at 7:49, 8:17, and 8:36 before they finally pause for a breather. Each time until the last, the descent from the peak is a feint, an excuse to reaffirm their ecstatic communion. Finally, at 9:06, they seem ready to move on to something else. One would expect Sputnik here, but at 9:19 Lesh starts to play the main theme, and Garcia begins playing with the volume knob. At 9:42 Weir throws in some feedback, and things start getting spacey. This inspires Jerry to reassert tonight’s theme of amicable confrontations, as at 9:52 his line becomes rather cheerful. This good cheer somehow has turned into tension by around 10:13, however, and the band kicks up again. Out of this morass, Garcia ascends triumphantly, igniting a flare at 10:35 that blazes across the firmament for 15 seconds or so until the next retreat into what starts to feel by 10:55 like Sputnik territory. Weir heads off Sputnik with the main theme at 11:15. Garcia seems to be compliant at first, but he veers into some tremolo picking and then flashes Sputnik at 11:44. At 12:00 Sputnik finally arrives in earnest. This one comes in classic arpeggio form at first, but it has a kind of swing to it tonight. Garcia begins interspersing jabs with the arpeggios until the former take over entirely, and the music takes on a jerky rhythm, with both drummers banging away in a harmoniously staggered pattern. At 14:17, Garcia’s tremolo and Lesh’s impertinent flourishes lead us into an interstellar swamp, and Garcia decides the time has come for insect weirdness (15:13). Immediately, however, Lesh starts playing a deliberate, stentorian melody, trying to lead us out of the swamp while Garcia keeps buzzing in his ear. This leads to a brief argument, but at 15:55 they all decide to be friends. Finally, at 16:34, things trickle to a halt, and they start gently flashing the introduction to Cosmic Charlie. This is an unexpected development as, for the second time, they omit the second verse. This Dark Star seems to be about juxtapositions. Every time a strong statement is made, it is met with a rejoinder, and a new synthesis emerges.
1969-05-30. Well this gets off to a flying start, like they can't wait to get into it. Like 5-23 it's very peppy (I can see the '68 similarity). Jerry starts soloing immediately, but pauses after :25 and lingers on one note for the next half-minute, letting the climate grow spacier. TC starts off with the ROR but then recedes, rarely to be noticed again. (I don't think I heard him at all after the verse.) Lots of percussion straight off with congas & shaker -- Pigpen stays on congas intermittently throughout. The jam's thick and biting, very dense and active. In keeping with the brisk feel, the opening jam is shorter than the norm lately, and they get to the theme in only 4 minutes. Once they quiet down for the theme, some whistling organ introduces the verse. Jerry starts off with a little lick after the verse a la '68, but soon returns to bell-tolling. The post-verse space from about 6-6:50 is one of the best lately, really lovely with harmonic feedback & gong crashes & bass throbs, getting closer to the Deep Space of later Dark Stars. Bill comes in on cymbals, Jerry oozes into a slinky lead, and they fly off into a happy-sounding upbeat jam. Jerry & Phil are way in the lead here; for a couple of minutes it's almost like a more energetic Hartbeats with the two duetting frantically over Bill's drumming. Bob lays out for a while. When he comes back in around 8 minutes, he's very assertive and his playing seems to clash with Jerry's like he's playing a different song at the same time -- the effect's a little discordant. (Can you tell what sounds odd here, is he off-key?) To add to the mayhem, after a peak at 8:30 Mickey's drums come pounding in too. It becomes that rare thing so far: a fullbore two-drumset Dark Star jam. They crash around for a bit and realize they need to take a pause -- Bob's almost playing dueling lines with Jerry. Phil teases the theme to get everyone on track; Jerry goes for the volume knob to calm things down, and Bob backs him with some nice feedback. And before you know it they're back on track with the jam, drummers pounding away, Bob slashing out chords, and after 10:10 they're grinding their way to a peak -- Jerry switches to a brighter tone when they hit it at 10:30. The wave recedes but the air's still full of built-up energy -- at 11:10 Bob starts a quirky variation on his Dark Star riff. Phil joins him in this and Jerry starts trilling comically -- it's almost like a Dark Star parody! But then Jerry decides to change direction and cuts a quick path to Sputnik. Seems like a long Sputnik tonight -- this one's really charged-up and kind of joyful; Jerry keeps the arpeggios going for almost two minutes as the band kicks things up. (Mickey's banging on cowbell now; no guiro tonight.) Finally Jerry gets into his off-beat jabbing, the tumult rises, and he climaxes with a wild scrub. And all of a sudden after 14:30 we're in Space again! This is full-blown Deep Space, full of hovering feedback & alien spacecraft -- it's really rare to hear this in a Dark Star so far; the closest example I can think of was on 4-4-69. Jerry brings in the insect weirdness, but Phil fights him off with this gigantic riff that the rest of the band wants to join. But Jerry won't give up -- he keeps up the insect shrieks while the band's off in another jam! By 16 minutes they're settling down into a quieter zone, insect buzzes and jam fragments washing together like shipwreck pieces on a beach. Phil signals an ends to the feedbacky chaos with some melodic high notes -- Bob responds by gently plucking the Cosmic Charlie intro, and Jerry spirals down from the heights to join them in the song. The mood becomes soothing as melody is restored. So much for finishing Dark Star! Great out-of-nowhere transition, though the Dead are kind of sloppy once they actually start Cosmic Charlie. This Dark Star is full of clashes. The band isn't as congruent as usual, they're kind of flying all over. So this isn't a smooth glide like some Dark Stars, more of a rough bumpy trip over the rapids. "Hectic and aggressive," one reviewer put it. Dark Star has been a relatively subdued piece for a long time now, so I think they're figuring out how to harness the full two-drummer power into the jam. The whole band sounds extra charged-up here; Bob & Phil are really steppin' out. Although this isn't one of the more harmonious & pretty Dark Stars, it's really densely packed and even the discordancies are thrilling. It repays closer listening: the more I examined it the more impressed I became. And aside from being the first of the Dead's Dark Stars to segue into another song mid-jam, it's another step toward the more wild & noisy Dark Stars soon to come! P.S. After the Cosmic Charlie interruption, the Dead resume the usual Stephen>Eleven>Lovelight. High energy: you get to hear the band play St. Stephen without Jerry for a while when he breaks a string. P.P.S. Phil's line at 15:13 sounded familiar to me too, but it could be I just remember hearing this Dark Star before.
Interesting, we both hear confrontation but I ultimately thought "synthesis" and you "clashes." You may be righter than me, and I may have just allowed them to browbeat me into thinking everything was peachy....
