Every Dark Star (Grateful Dead)

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by bzfgt, Aug 4, 2020.

  1. ianuaditis

    ianuaditis Matthew 21:17

    Location:
    Long River Place
    I am not thinking of soulful strut, but around 11:30 on the 5-2-70 version of Dancin in the Streets, and especially from 11:50 on here:

    www.archive.org/details/gd1970-05-02.138227.sbd.miller.flac1648/34DancingInTheStreet.flac
     
    bzfgt, adamos and superstar19 like this.
  2. Mr. Rain

    Mr. Rain Forum Resident

    Location:
    US
    ianuaditis and bzfgt like this.
  3. Sredni Vashtar

    Sredni Vashtar Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dismal Swamp
  4. Mr. Rain

    Mr. Rain Forum Resident

    Location:
    US
    1971-02-18.
    If 1971 hadn't happened, where might Dark Star have gone if it continued on its 1970 trajectory? I would predict bigger, longer spaces; more quiet parts (9-17, 10-11 & 11-8 all ended on a subdued note); more compressed playing (a lot of the jams lately seem squeezed into high-density miniatures compared to the looser meanderings of late '69); perhaps less "Dark Star-like" playing as the jams became more varied or turned in new directions (almost every version lately offers some unexpected twist). Some of the Dark Stars lately have taken more inward, poignant paths, perhaps indicating more brooding, melancholy Dark Stars to come....on the other hand there are wild cards like 9-19 or 10-11 that full-out rock and hit incredible highs.
    In short, it's unpredictable! But 1971 did happen, and Dark Star took a different path...

    With no known Dark Stars from Dec '70 or Jan '71, this is a three-month break for Dark Star, the longest length of time they hadn't played it. Would it be rusty after the break?
    It starts out simply (the crowd's excited!)...this opening reminds me a little of how 1970-09-19 started, very cautious and minimal, like they're feeling their way back into it. Far from bold, they stay close to the theme and retreat rapidly to the verse at 3:20. It's still a pretty opening jam, working up to a little peak after 2:30. (On the audience tape you can hear the crowd go nuts at this point.) Jerry's guitar tone sounds more squeaky than in late '70. Mickey adds the inevitable guiro (for the last time!), and Bill joins on drums, adding a bit of drive. Jerry sounds very shaky in the verse, and Bob's forgotten his lick after the verse. Oddly, Mickey sticks with the guiro during the verse, and I don't hear any gong.
    I'm wondering if Mickey even had the gong with him (after the verse Bill taps the cymbals & Mickey gives a few last scratches). They skip space entirely and go straight to a wobbly little jam. This soon gets quiet and spacey, with kind of a dark mournful feel....Jerry plucking high notes while Phil strums the bass. Nice little feedback swell at 6:30, which for me is the highlight of this first half of Dark Star. This last minute feels like an intro to Wharf Rat, turning very elegant after 6:40 with Bob's harmonics & Phil's line, making a grand opening.
    Ned Lagin on clavichord becomes more apparent once Wharf Rat starts; the crowd applauds a new song. (Some people there might have remembered the Dark Star>Attics from 8 months earlier.) Wharf Rat gets a very stark two-drum delivery; afterwards they find themselves in an in-between spot, part Wharf Rat & part Dark Star, Jerry & Bob bouncing pretty arpeggios off each other.
    Then Jerry decisively starts the Dark Star theme and we're back to Dark Star. It's simple & straightforward at first, but after about 50 seconds Bob sounds like he wants to step out on the chords with a catchy rhythm. And like that, they're in the Beautiful Jam (like bzfgt says, it's almost like they've prepared it). It lives up to the name....great use of feedback by Jerry, great work by all as they patiently develop it through various stages for four minutes. After a few final flutters, at 5:20 Jerry pulls them back to the Dark Star theme again as Ned tinkles along. He sings the verse right away (again, no gong). It ends sloppily, and the audience gets excited in anticipation of....oh wait, it's Me & My Uncle.

    Other than the Beautiful Jam, this Dark Star is pathetic. They're rusty and unconfident, have to ease their way in, and can barely muster up any Dark Star jamming; seven minutes in and they're already cutting to another song. Space is gone entirely.
    On the other hand....for five minutes, a whole different Dead is present, graceful & locked together & inventing a heavenly new theme on the spot, fulfilling every promise they made in 1970. Add the magical Wharf Rat segues, and this vaults to the upper Dark Star echelons.

    The old Betty Board mix is quite a contrast to Miller's copy....Cantor's mix sounds a lot more raw and the guiro's louder, as it was on the PA:
    www.archive.org/details/gd1971-02-18.sbd.cantor-crouch-diebert-gmb.85478.sbeok.flac16
    (I think my favorite mix of the Beautiful Jam portion itself remains the one on the So Many Roads box set.)
    Ned, by the way, barely seems to be participating through most of this Dark Star, but that's a reflection of the mixes. The audience tapes indicate he was coming through more clearly on the PA from the start of Dark Star, but he's down on all the SBD mixes unfortunately. (It's also worth hearing an aud tape to check out the audience reactions -- they weren't passive bystanders here.)

    I've complained about the mix of the show on the American Beauty 50th release before; personally I think it was screwed up and is not the best way to hear this. For instance compare that little surge after 2:30 on the release...the balance is out of whack and it doesn't even sound like a surge.
    The Beautiful Jam didn't come completely out of the blue. There were a number of times in 1970 when they also conjured up a new theme out of nowhere:
    1970-01-02 Dark Star - 18:00-19:40 (related to Feelin' Groovy/UJB)
    1970-05-24 Dark Star - 13:30-14:30 (close relative of the Beautiful Jam)
    1970-10-17 Dark Star - 8:20-9:50
    (Or, in a totally different vein, the 1970-10-11 Dark Star from 13:30-15:40; I might even include the post-Main Ten jam on 1970-11-08.)

    One spot that struck me as a predecessor was 1970-01-23, from 12:30-13:10 where they're starting to strike up a similar beautiful jam, but then sadly Bob has to drop out for tuning. (1970-02-02 is also reminiscent for about a minute starting at 13:55, though this isn't a specific theme.)

    The Beautiful Jam can also be seen as a descendant of the two-chord Dark Star Strut pattern they'd done in so many 1970 versions. For instance 10-17 is a good example starting around 10 minutes, a slow-paced version with Jerry getting really lyrical from 10:55-11:50, with a glockenspiel accompaniment that's an exact parallel to 2-18-71's clavichord. It's just a small step from here to the Beautiful Jam.

    But, analysis aside, perhaps Phil should get the last word:
     
    Last edited: Dec 25, 2021
    bzfgt, Blue Note, superstar19 and 2 others like this.
  5. JSegel

    JSegel Forum Resident

    Location:
    Stockholm, Sweden
    #112 2/18/71 Port Chester, NY: 14:21 (DS 7:02 > Wharf Rat > DS 7:19) (with Ned Lagin) – excerpt on So Many Roads

    Alrighty! It’s 1971 and we’re back at the Capitol Theater (something about cancelled or not-adequately-booked dates in December being rebooked?) Dark Star comes after a pretty rocking 8-minute Hard to Handle and a few minutes of tuning noodles, including keyboards of a few sorts and some Dark Star intro teases from the bass.

    Dark Star starts with the riff, people cheer, JG making the intro melody a descending line and after a very short gap, starts lead playing, bass and rhythm guitar start to play together in ways to take it out of the stricter groove, the guiro enters after a bit and isn’t quite pulse-oriented. A sound is all it is, referencing what it had been in this context. (And apparently the last time it will be here for a while, as Mickey leaves the band after this show.) Nice and relaxed groove, building to a wave crest in the second minute that lasts for a while coming back into the theme area. Drums are already in, playing tom rolls as the verse starts at 3:30, Nice appoggiatura from Jerry’s vocal on the first line (And “flashes”), and tinkly keyboard lines, the vocal lines sort of crash into the refrain which offers a pause, and the bass takes it back with the riff, (and off-key guitar attempt to play along! Um, new guitar, man…) to a strong Dark Star intro that quickly fades but keeps a pulse, not blowing away entirely. Some quick riffing from Jerry, bringing it down, it takes a while to get to the idea that space may happen, JG is still playing lead lines, and the tinkly keyboard is still in.

    It gets sparser, into a space area at about 6 minutes, but still with normally-played guitars, into a little feedback, and then a melodic intro to a new song, it’s Wharf Rat. First time performance (I believe?). Quite an intense song to transition to, it’s such a dark ballad. Dark Star has the ability to open holes in the universe to show these stories emerge, then they separate and become themselves in the set on their own. Jerry sounds really strong on this version (I read some other accounts where people said this wasn’t their favorite version of Wharf Rat, but it’s pretty darn good, especially for a first play.)

    After the last verse of Wharf Rat, the riff repeats and then sticks on the A7 and drops down to a sort of Sputnik, from where it takes off with ornate lines and suddenly switches to a sort of China Cat riff on the A from which they start up the Dark Star theme area again, and Bob and Phil speed it trying to get to a Strut, but it breaks down to more counterpoint, sound like Bob is playing b minor and A, which we actually heard a year previous but Bob would have moved the bm-A to Gmaj7 and A, but this time is seems to be sticking as Phil is playing the B also, sort of a new Dark Star 2-chord jam (the “Beautiful Jam”). Eventually they stick on the A. Jerry is using a lot of the country lick ideas emphasizing the major 3rd in the A chord, (somebody else mentioned Sugar Magnolia referents?) slowly bringing it back to a Dark Star jam, and a theme statement, right before verse 2 comes in (6 minutes into this second half the song.) It sounds sort of somber. JG plays only some of the notes in the melody he sings, Bob loops around.

    Out of the refrain, they go to the counterpoint melodies, JG heading upward in trios of notes as usual, stopping on the high B as Phil strums the dissonant chords that usually lead into St Stephen, but here, they go static and fade a bit as Bob comes in with the rhythm guitar playing another dark ballad, Me and My Uncle.

    Whew! Not super much Dark Star jamming, but it led us to some interesting stories.
     
  6. adamos

    adamos Forum Resident

    Location:
    Southeastern PA
    ianuaditis likes this.
  7. pbuzby

    pbuzby Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago, IL, US
    Not sure if Miller's ever explained where he got those alternate mixes of these shows. Unreleased mixdowns from the multitrack maybe?
     
  8. pbuzby

    pbuzby Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago, IL, US
    Listening to that Charlie Miller source of 4/26/69, I think Weir hints at it a bit too around 1:15, playing a few A Major and related chords that clash with the rest of the group, and then at the end Garcia plays a repeated B-Bb-B lick quietly that hints at the Dark Star intro - but then he plays a decisive China Cat intro and Weir and Lesh quickly join.
     
    JSegel, adamos, superstar19 and 3 others like this.
  9. bzfgt

    bzfgt The Grand High Exalted Mystic Ruler Thread Starter

    113. 1971-04-08 141099 Boston 14:35

    Main theme at 4:01.
    First verse at 4:27.
    Sputnik at 7:25.
    Main theme at 12:44.
    Second verse at 13:19.
    Goes into St. Stephen.

    Phil Lesh is quite loud here, and sounds somewhat different. They start out with a statement of the main theme pattern, and this provides the foundation of introduction. The band comes to a peak rather early, with some classically transcendent Garcia notes resounding, and then they regroup and reach it again. Things finally begin to shift as they approach the four minute mark, but this proves to be a brief respite before the main theme. The theme then takes them on to the verse without much ado.

    I thought I detected a very short cut after the verse, of maybe a second or less. The post-verse space seems to have been abandoned; instead, they enter a kind of spacey jam. At 7:25 they grind almost to a halt, and Garcia assays some Sputnik-like runs. These are eventually absorbed back into the jam, which has a minor feel. At about 8:55 Garcia seems to want to shift it back to a major thing, but Weir is not eager to oblige. By 10:00 the three string players are locked in and playing some polyphonic madness that seems to be heading for a peak, which Garcia helps along with some near-Bright Star gleanings from about 10:38.

    This all comes down again at around 11:10, where the band seems ready to make some kind of transition. A descending four-chord pattern emerges, but it does not stay for long. They instead bring it to a two-chord bit that stays for a little while until Garcia brings back the main theme, and they then go to the second verse, which contains a very short cut.

    A short version this is, certainly, but it is nevertheless packed with wonderful playing. Dark Star seems to be receding in importance, judging by the amount of plays it gets, and perhaps they felt like they’d given it all they had in under 15 minutes this time. Nevertheless, though it doesn’t range far, the band sounds fantastic here.
     
  10. pbuzby

    pbuzby Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago, IL, US
    Although 4/8/71 is one of those Betty tapes that has been around for a long time, I never listened to it until today. Some notes from my first two listens:

    - In older Archive sources Star runs about a minute longer, because these sources include tuning (some of which is pretty) and dead air before the piece as part of the track.
    - Good news, Ned Lagin on keys. Not-so-good news, tuning problems in the guitars (mainly Weir) up until the first verse.
    - Yes, there is a small cut at the end of the first verse (in other sources the recording just fades out and back up at this point) and a more noticeable one in the second verse.
    - Garcia makes a mistake in the lyrics for the first time I've noticed in a while, singing the "mirror shatters" line in the first verse.
    - A short, scrappy, but at times quite high-energy version.
     
  11. pbuzby

    pbuzby Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago, IL, US
    Unless I forgot something, the first single drummer Dark Star is also the first with only drums, although lightly played by Bill. No more guiro, shaker, congas or gongs (other than some occasional percussion from Pig in the E72 versions).
     
  12. bzfgt

    bzfgt The Grand High Exalted Mystic Ruler Thread Starter

    Good point, I forgot that item
     
    Dahabenzapple likes this.
  13. adamos

    adamos Forum Resident

    Location:
    Southeastern PA
    #113 1971-04-08 Agreed that Phil is very prominent in the mix; buoyant too. Subtle sounds from Ned in the background. Jerry starts a gentle, winding line complimented by nice textures from Bob. There's a dreamy vibe to the proceedings. Jerry plays some quick climbing notes and the collective energy surges upwards before easing off again. It begins to build again with nice interweaving from the players; Bill is working the cymbals as well. They are soaring; around 2:50 Jerry's guitar screams out before they pivot and wind through some lower regions. Ned becomes more present again. At 4:01 they return to the theme and move on to the first verse. Lyric mistake in the verse as pbuzby pointed out.

    After the verse they reset and it feels like things might dissolve into space but they forgo it again and move into a floaty jam. Phil rumbles and Jerry adds a little fuzz to his tone before cutting a sharp line. I like Ned's accents although he remains relatively faint in the background. They work in this area for a spell and then around 7:22 Jerry starts a Sputnik line. They keep it quiet and gentle and there's a harp-like quality to the sound. By 8:20 it has run its course and they drift back into the spacey-ish jam.

    It starts to pick up momentum with both Jerry and Bob prominent in the mix. Around 9:30 they briefly reset and keep it rolling in a lower zone. By 10:00 they're rising up again and interweaving and driving towards a sharp peak that gets Bright Star-ish as noted by bzfgt, but with its own feel. They keep collectively jamming in the heights with Phil working a line and then around 11:00 they pivot and you'd almost think The Wheel was about to emerge.

    They quiet down and hover for a bit, playing off one another in slower fashion which has a nice feel. Around 12:00 they start to switch it up and get a little more momentum going before giving way to the main theme and on to the second verse. Seems like they could have got another jam going there but they were ready to move on.

    A short version that lacks some of the grandeur of classic performances but I still liked it quite a bit and there's some nice collective playing.
     
  14. bzfgt

    bzfgt The Grand High Exalted Mystic Ruler Thread Starter

    I somehow missed Ned, that's why it's good that we are doing this collectively I guess....
     
    Dahabenzapple, superstar19 and adamos like this.
  15. JSegel

    JSegel Forum Resident

    Location:
    Stockholm, Sweden
    #113 4/8/71 Boston, MA: 14:38 (with Ned Lagin)

    Top of the second set. Numerous riff teases from Phil, so we know where we’re going.

    It starts with a strong riff and into the groove, nice noodles on keys from Ned. Bob drops out a bit to tune more, then it settles into the groove, which immediately builds with full drums in to a 2 minute peak, then back down a bit, lots of tom rolling, bass grooving. New direction! By 3 minutes in they’re really moving! Jerry is striking high, the whole band is playing to his lead, when he dips a bit, they dip, he switches to the tone-rolled-off sound, and the bring it to a plateau a bit afterwards, then the theme comes in. (Bobby is still out of tune.) Verse 1 at 5:25. Weakly recorded vocals, but you can really hear the guitar line playing the melody.

    Bell tolls as the “Transitive Nightfall” starts, though Phil and Bobby keep a groove for a little longer. Jerry starts an arpeggio thing, it’s remaining melodic and not immediately moving into space, some echoey bits, a sparser jam area. Nice little key touches. At 8:30, it dies out and a quiet Sputnik is in there, though it doesn’t move much and develops toward single note playing. Drums are still in, some snare hits seem to be pushing toward establishing a pulse again.

    Phil wants to get into the groove, Bobby is playing with pulling the Dark Star chords around. (He’s loud in this mix.) After a couple minutes of rolling downwards, some new modalities are coming out, Bob has some screaming dissonant chords, Jerry builds it up to a sustained peak from 11:30-12 minutes.

    When they reel it in, you can hear audience clapping. They drop back into a descending line area, Bob has some chord ideas with the descending bass line, but it comes to a plateau again, arpeggios, then from the breakdown, Jerry glisses up to the A for the Dark Star theme at 13:40. Some beautiful runs surrounding it in this area before verse 2 at 14:30 (with a minor third clam from JG backing himself).

    Mellow verse, interrupted by a tape problem, back into the outro riff and climbing notes, to the chords which head once again into St Stephen, amidst a lot of cymbal swishing. Sort of a short-but-sweet Dark Star, no real spacy space, and the jams are mild except for right at the beginning.
     
  16. Mr. Rain

    Mr. Rain Forum Resident

    Location:
    US
    1971-04-08. Very nice-sounding tape, kind of a shock after being immersed in 1970 audience tapes for so long! (That said, the loud hum on this tape is also very distracting. Another copy reduces the hum.)
    Ned Lagin's electric piano is very low volume, but he gives this Dark Star a different feel, kind of a preview of Keith's Fender Rhodes presence. He seems to be playing off Jerry in particular...or they're playing off each other. Jerry's got his Peanut tone.
    The opening jam starts quiet & uncertain, but they quickly find their footing. Bill's on drums from the start. The opening jam feels like a little journey in itself with its own peaks and back-roads; I like how they've returned to stillness when Jerry resumes the theme at 4:00.
    You can tell we're in 1971 when there's no gong at all in the verse, just Bill's drums. Jerry's singing is weak.

    A bit of bell-tolling from Jerry after the verse! But they seem to have regressed to early '69 at this stage, when there wasn't a space-out after the verse, more of a dramatic flurry. My 1970 ears are accustomed to them going to space at this point, but no, they head to a new kind of jam starting at 6:05. VERY new. The whole post-verse jam is fascinating, and really pretty....it's only been a few months since the last 1970 Dark Stars, but this is a whole new-sounding Dead here, more organically loose & spacey. Even the Sputnik-like part has transformed into quiet chimes bending with the flow. They gradually build from quiet meanderings to an intense forceful high-pitched crescendo....then at 11:10, bring it down again. They tease at the theme, seeming like they might either play it differently or go into a new 1970-style descending chord progression, and they wander into a hypnotic Wharf Rat-type spiral....but all too soon, at 12:45 Jerry brings back the theme, and they settle in for the verse. (We're lucky the tape cut was in the verse!)

    You might think, from its few short early-1971 performances, that Dark Star was in the doldrums at this point; but this version is a huge jump forward. Almost everything they've been doing in Dark Star before has been dropped; their style has changed dramatically; and it points to new directions ahead. The seeds of the 1972 style start growing here.
     
    Last edited: Jan 1, 2022
    adamos, johnnypaddock, bzfgt and 3 others like this.
  17. Mr. Rain

    Mr. Rain Forum Resident

    Location:
    US
    Listening again to the wonderful 4-8-71 Dark Star....it works on a different level than the 1970 versions. I think this should be emphasized, how drastic the change is. Their playing in 1970 was more "constructed," I guess you could call it -- Dark Star had two poles, the far-out space & the familiar themes, and for the most part the Dead stayed within a tight framework. The playing in this Dark Star, I couldn't think of any moment in 1970 that really resembled it....for much of the time, you could be listening to an E72 Star. The playing is a lot more loose & slippery, any "theme" quickly evaporates as it keeps changing like a kaleidoscope.

    So I have to wonder.....how? In just a few months, hardly playing any live Dark Stars at all, they shed their old skin and emerged with a new style. Were they practicing this in rehearsals? Was this a byproduct of other changes they were going through? Did something influence their new jamming direction? I know no one can answer this, but it's something to ponder.
     
    JSegel, bzfgt, adamos and 2 others like this.
  18. adamos

    adamos Forum Resident

    Location:
    Southeastern PA
    To me it seems reflective of the overall changes that they were going through that year. Maybe the impulse to scale back some of the structured aspects of Dark Star is similar to the one that made them want to go back and remix Anthem and Aoxomoxoa. Maybe they also felt they’d done as much as they could in that format and/or felt that they’d worn out some of the grooves and needed to mix it up to keep it fresh.
     
    bzfgt, superstar19 and notesofachord like this.
  19. pbuzby

    pbuzby Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago, IL, US
    I guess some factors were:
    - Garcia playing with Howard Wales and Merl Saunders and bringing that style back to the Dead
    - more flexibility with only Bill on drums

    And just that they were getting more experienced and better.
     
    superstar19 and adamos like this.
  20. notesofachord

    notesofachord Riding down the river in an old canoe

    Location:
    Mojave Desert
    The single drummer thing is the main reason.
     
    JSegel, adamos and superstar19 like this.
  21. adamos

    adamos Forum Resident

    Location:
    Southeastern PA
    It’s also interesting that the last time they did a full space section, 11/8/70, the crowd was charged up and someone made the bird sound and Weir jokingly admonished the crowd that this was serious, etc. So maybe at that point they thought it was time to scale back on that for a while. They skipped it on 2/18 even with Mickey, and then maybe without him and the gong, glockenspiel and other percussive sounds they were less inclined to do something elaborate in that segment, at least for a while. Things do get spacey on 4/26 though even though that’s a short version. So maybe not, or maybe 5+ months was long enough.
     
  22. JSegel

    JSegel Forum Resident

    Location:
    Stockholm, Sweden
    There's also some changing idea of where to bring "reality". They already really sank their teeth into this Americana reality as a new band/music identity growing out of and somewhat away from their acid head reality of the years previous. But for instance, I always associate the musical entry into the "Transitive Nightfall" as illustrating movement into a different world, especially when they started blowing away reality with cymbals and bell-tolls and entering this "Space" where they play, um, space. They did start inserting other songs, and during 1971, more and more, they are bringing a new, more "human" tableaus in like a window to another place and time (rather than just space), entering other whole songs in this area, especially ballads—story songs—of other realities... and then sometimes returning us to the Dark Star frame (or The Other One frame, or whatever song allows a transition to another world within it). Later in the year it happens more often even. In a way, it's sort of weird to read the setlists and see how they sort of stick in the previous acid-identity songs in the midst of the more recent Americana, but doing these transitions sort of brings it home in a way, grounding both ends of the spectrum.
     
  23. bzfgt

    bzfgt The Grand High Exalted Mystic Ruler Thread Starter

    114. 1971-04-26 145130 Fillmore East 12:52

    Main theme at :06, 1:20, 2:54, and 5:12.
    First verse at 5:47.
    Sputnik at 8:15.
    Main theme at
    Goes into Wharf Rat.

    They start right off with the main theme, and the jamming when it starts stays close to home, circling back to the theme several times. There is a dark and languid sound to the playing tonight. From about 4:45 the band pedals a bit, and almost it sounds like they’re going to break into a modular jam here, but instead they return to the theme and sing the verse. There is a sudden and unexpected uptick in tempo just before they get there.

    The post-verse space makes a bit of a comeback tonight. After the verse, they roll around on the Dark Star chords for a while, and then at 7:50 they crash into space ever so briefly before Garcia starts to spin out Sputnik at 8:15. This is played out by 9:14, where Garcia seems like he’s going to wind up the theme for a moment, but instead more spacey expressions are forthcoming.

    At 11:22 Jerry fires up a lead line that seems like it wants to lead into the middle jam, and indeed not long ago it would have, but we’re almost out of road here. The jam seems to flounder a little before Jerry strikes up the Wharf Rat chords, and Dark Star is over.

    This is a nice little piece of music, although it doesn’t particularly stand out among the Dark Stars we’ve considered thus far.
     
  24. JSegel

    JSegel Forum Resident

    Location:
    Stockholm, Sweden
    #114 4/26/71 Fillmore East: 12:52

    Middle of the first set, nice mix with the three guitars/bass and Bill on drums ticking away at the hi-hat and cymbals, no guiro anymore. Some gentle stretching of the key ideas right off the bat as they enter the exploratory groove. Really nice together-playing. Restrained soaring lines from Jerry, nice mellow backup chords from Bob, some tremolos for an eddy in the flow after a couple minutes. Hints at the Dark Star theme, but nobody starting it on the ‘one’, it dwindles, then the gliss to the melody, slowly, and more exploration of it. Really great improvisation, Jerry stretching the mode.

    Getting into a pulsed rhythmic jam at 4 minutes, it finally breaks it out to the Dark Star chords and speeds up a bit after a minute, heading to verse 1 before the 6 minute mark.

    A real break in the lines for line two, nice mellow wandering on line 3, Bobby continues it into the refrain, which is a little loose. The jam begins after the counterpoint intro with Phil hitting bass bell-tolls, cymbals washing, but Bobby continues with chords for a bit which give way to scrubbing and cymbals. At 8 minutes space is achieved and people yell and clap, Jerry almost immediately brings in a high Sputnik, which speeds up and sparkles its way along for a while.

    It stops and there’s a gliss as if to the melody, but it goes into atonal arhythmic weirdness leads. Horror movie soundtrack atonalism! Phil is knocking the bass around, some drum hits happen but it’s all more soundscape. Jerry emerges with some bright tone in the atonal world and into feedback by 11 minutes.

    Tonal lead lines bring it out of this area with a quiet back beat. A little up and down, drums roll around, and instead of heading back to Dark Star, we enter Wharf Rat once again.

    _________________________
    Some nice exploratory jamming here! Wish it went on (and that they made it to verse 2.) The atonal soundscape is replacing 'space' sound-jam world lately. I'm not sure exactly how to describe this sort of thing yet, the earlier space area that were made up of not-necessarily musical sounds owed a lot to the era's exploration of tape music and the post-WWII avant-garde's development toward sound-as-sound equals music. There were several groups of musicians that veered out of the "classical" world into performing music that stretched the ideas of musicality, and this heavily affected rock music (of course Cage/Tudor/Mumma with Merce Cunningham, but also Musica Elettronica Viva [Rzewski/Curran/Teitelbaum] in Rome and AMM in London with Cornelius Cardew [etc], trying to eschew any signifiers of "genre" in what they played—note that Pink Floyd's first album's track "Flaming" was trying to recreate AMM's "Flaming Riviera Sunset", this all to say nothing of the tape-music collages on every 1968 album...) Anyway, here, by 1971, the Dead are moving away from soundscape made with sound into "outside" atonal or polytonal melodic and harmonic areas. It's sort of a "free atonalism" that ends up sounding like 1950s sci-fi soundtrack or monster movie... and I know that the doc "Long Strange Trip" really stressed some fascination Jerry Garcia had with horror movies, but I don't really know if there's a connection between that and this sort of jamming. Regardless, it's not jazz and it's not classical/post-classical, it's very free and very outside. And only getting more and more intense.
     
  25. pbuzby

    pbuzby Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago, IL, US
    While as far as I noticed Bill was on drums throughout the 4/8/71 Star, on 4/26/71 he starts on maracas while also playing the hi hat with his foot and his other hand. Puts down the maracas around 3:45, but goes back at 5:45. Tambourine at 9:20.
     
    Last edited: Jan 3, 2022
    bzfgt, JSegel, adamos and 1 other person like this.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine