#134 1972-05-23 Really nice pre-opening segment that has a Renaissance feel. That vibe carries over into Dark Star proper and there's a pretty quality to the proceedings. Jerry floats out on a line and the collective interweaving is lovely. At 1:31 they briefly return to the theme and then continue to glide on. Phil is prominent in the mix and his articulated notes stand out well. Nice textures from Bob and Keith too. Around 1:45 Bob plays a repeating note and then Jerry jumps in and makes it more prominent with Bob and Keith sometimes mirroring. It creates a bubbling, swirling feeling as they float upwards. The prettiness of it all continues as they wind and build while loosely harkening back to the theme. By 3:30 the pace picks up and they are cooking along. Around 3:58 Jerry starts reaching upwards with high, repeating notes that Bob adds to in a lower register. Phil is working a good line underneath and the jam has got some legs. Jerry brings in some pinched notes that he works for a good spell. Around 5:03 they downshift briefly but then keep right on rolling. More spiraling runs from Jerry and Bob is quite active too. After 5:45 they ease up again and Jerry dabbles gently in some Sputnik notes. This provides a soft landing and they continue to interweave in mellower fashion. Some stretchy notes enter at 6:22; they collectively quiet further although Jerry is still fairly active. Phil, Bob and Keith play off this and they wander for a bit in a semi-spacey but still melodic zone. Lots of flourishes from Keith and things slowly get spacier. By 8:00 it feels like they are considering their options; there's a hint of the theme in Phil's bass line starting around 8:15 but they continue to float on. Some feedback enters around 8:35; Phil adds some thundering notes and things get weirder. There are sustained spacey notes from Jerry as Phil marches through some prominent staggered playing. The revving fury builds until around 10:45 after which Billy steps forward and they shift into a mostly drum break. Phil can still be heard throughout and Bob sticks around for a little bit at the beginning too. By 13:30 Jerry has gently re-entered and Phil steps more forward giving them something to work off of. Before long Bob and Keith are back too and you can feel the jam percolating. The collective groove comes together and they start to build some momentum. Around 14:55 Jerry starts working some melodic notes and then reaches upwards with just a touch of Bright Star as bzfgt mentioned. Right after that the makings of Feelin' Groovy become apparent but they bypass it and instead rise to a building peak that is thematic and a bit Bright Star-ish again. This crests after 16:50 and they slowly start bringing it down, finding their way to the main theme at 17:15 and then moving on to the first verse. After the verse they reset, work around the theme a bit more and then cut the engines and drift into the ether. Jerry plays a gentle wah-ish line as Phil hits some prominent notes accented by Bob's rhythm. There's a pretty feel again as they drift along patiently. Jerry, Phil and Bob interweave nicely as Bill and Keith lay back. There's a brief Jesu quote that bzfgt noted and then Jerry starts to shift into something stronger and spacier. Phil lays down some heavier notes and the vibe becomes more foreboding. Bob does some complimentary picking as Jerry heads for wah-ish weirdness. They take their time working in this freaky but still relatively subtle zone; after 23:00 it starts to build more and by 24:00 the Tiger is being unleashed. The frenzy builds and they scream and howl into the night, stretching out the meltdown for a good spell. Around 25:45 they ease up but Jerry keeps rolling and they work some more weirdness and build it up again. Keith and Bob are quite active in the freaky tapestry too. Around 27:05 the feel shifts and a stronger groove starts to emerge. They put some muscle into and begin to take it for a ride but before long they pull back and let it get weirder again. This rises to another peak and then around 28:20 they shift into a mellower groove. Jerry winds his line a bit longer as Bob adds some nice rhythm and Phil steps forward too. This has the makings of a nice melodic jam but Jerry opts to shift into a Sputnik-esque line at 28:55 which leads to things winding down. The theme begins to reemerge but after some fuzzy descending lines and brief hovering Jerry signals Morning Dew and they create an opening for the transition. I like this one quite a bit. The opening segment is lovely, lots of collective interweaving and there are some good jams. I would have liked the Feelin' Groovy to have materialized but it's not what they wanted on this night. The meltdown section isn't their most intense but it still gets there and they keep it going for good while.
I recently obtained this one on the soundtrack CDs and while the recording is fantastic, I don't think the playing quite measures up to the previous night. Nice companion pieces, however. And, IMO, both of these are more fully-realized on 9/19/70.
#134 5/23/72 London: 29:54 - Europe ’72 Complete Recordings Long shows, a full set of them with NRPS in London, this is the first night. There’s already some spacy wandering after Ramble on Rose, before Jerry starts Dark Star, Phil joins in and they start the mellow groove, it winds on with lovely tones from the instruments. Jerry plays around the 2nds and 9ths of the scale, theme restated a minute or so in, then they get caught up in some climbing eddies and back to a groove that gets some speed going. They rock out on this for a while, climbing and falling and finding little riff areas, a great one at 4 minutes in. After some relentless pinch harmonics, they take it more jazzy. It sputters out at 5:40 and sounds like a background Sputnik is happening, coming up. It spaces out, Jerry has some nursery rhyme melodies in the space, he ends up favoring a B for a while into near emptiness, the band quietly making sounds as he finds small feedbacks with it. Phil starts some big chords but plays it back to Jerry moving to an E and finding feedback, Phil starts a more dissonant slow line with rolling drums behind him. Eventually Jerry drops out and the drums and bass continue, Phil soloing in a sort of e minor thing which goes through a bit with the opening notes (B-Bb-B D). Band back in at 13:40 they continue in mode, using more b minor and e minor before heading back to an A mixo root a minute later. Pretty quick groove again, an almost Bright Star at 15:20, back up there a minute later. Organ is in. At 17 minutes, a sudden shift in tempo and to the theme heading to the verse 45 seconds later. Groovy first line, big fermatas on line two and a long roll back to line three with lots of motion from the bass and Bob. Refrain is perfect until a chromatic slide right before the next section intro. The band starts the section with long held notes, arhythmic. It dies down to small sounds, a very sparse and quiet modal melodic section, Jerry with tone rolled off, focusing some on the D major aspect of the mode for a while before it goes to a song-like section in A major that goes off chromatically after a bit and gets scarier. There’s a long quiet atonal section that plays like a tense underscore, building in volume very slowly. The wah gets wahing a bit more as it piles up on itself, speeding up and getting louder in the 24th minute, it gets very noisy and chaotic for a minute, then insistent chromatic melody takes it down again, though Jerry continues pounding out an endless stream of chromatic eight notes. So they go ahead and build it up again, sounds like Phil and Bill trying to get it into a groove, which seems to succeed somewhere in the 27th minute for a while, though it threatens chromatic weirdness for a long time still. In the last minute of the track they’ve gotten it reined in to a chordal groove, back in A and seems to end as Jerry brings it in with a slightly Dark Star-y bit to land on the A chord and then goes to the D and then insinuates Morning Dew again, and they eventually all figure that out and start the song. Neat fast jams in the first part and a long and fast chromatic weirdness in the second half. Lots of energy and inventiveness, a great version.
I wouldn't not read TOO, but I would rather see what write-ups on Bird Songs and Here Comes Sunshines (is 12/6/73 secretly the under-the-radar GOAT?). I think smaller bites would be a good change of pace. But in any event, my trusty Dark Star spreadsheet lists 47 still to go in the 70s after Europe '72. That is if you count 6/28/74, which a lot of set list sites do (personally I do not).
You can count on a healthy debate here once we reach that date! This thread's covering Dark Star Jams too (I think)......
Love hearing Pigpen on the rare occasions he gets involved with these '72 Dark Stars. I wonder if he's even on stage during most of these. When he's playing he sounds good. Nothing fancy required - just the mellow vibe of the Hammond underpinning the melodic sections is all I need.
Can you imagine if we had a multi-track of 9/19/70....I would give a paycheck for a multi-track recorded mix of that show. BTW are you enjoying 2/21/71? Do you also find the mix to be warmer / better than Three From The Vault? As a whole, I also find this to be a better show than 2/18 (although, the 2/18 show is an absolute must for me, on account of the Dark Star; after all, it is the only one that flashes).
Just a single disc from 9/19/70 with Dark Star through Lovelight would be most welcome. As for '71, it appears that bzfgt syndrome has infiltrated your domicile. 2/19/71 is 3 FTV and is a harsh recording; 2/18/71 is in the 50th of AB and is somewhat warmer (and has that Dark Star, which I find to be good, but not necessarily great other than the Beautiful Jam). Then again, I've only listened once, which is akin to only taking the wrapper off, as it were. The real gem in my latest score is the 2/14/70 Dark Star (from the LST Soundtrack). It may not be an all-timer, but the mix and mastering are fantastic. The 2/13/70 and 2/14/70 Dark Stars make a great prequel to the 9/19/70 Dark Star.
The Feb 71 shows were multitracked (and also recorded direct to two-track in the sources released from the Betty Board auction in the 80's). I guess the mix of 2/19/71 that they released was harsh (I've only listened to it a bit). There are a few different mixes around of the "Beautiful Jam" and the rest of 2/18/71 and I've read comments that the AB 50th isn't the best.
135. 1972-05-25 87682 London 34:30. Main theme at :00 and 15:04. First verse at 16:40. Feelin’ Groovy at 21:06. Tiger at 32:35. Goes into Sugar Magnolia. The main theme emerges out of a little jam at the end of Wharf Rat, which is such a natural transition (in either direction) it’s somewhat surprising they didn’t do it more. The opening jam has a brooding vibe. Weir plays surging strums, somewhat like the jam in Bird Song in the late 80s, and Garcia alludes to Sputnik at times (see 2:38). At about 4:02 a bluesier feel starts to come through, and there is a little momentum building. Lesh throws in some jazzy riffs (for instance from 5:10); it is difficult to keep track of all the times he does that, as he often throws them in in passing. At 6:00 Garcia’s playing seems to take on more urgency, and the band hits an early peak culminating at 6:29—6:36. From here they pull back into some weirdness. This comes to a head at about 8:20, where we find ourselves in a space jam which deepens as it goes along. At 11:28 Weir is playing some shimmering tremolo guitar, and Garcia has kicked on the wah and seems to be hinting at a meltdown. They keep the energy tamped down, though, and the music gets even more sparse. By 14:30 it starts to sound a bit like an old school Feedback. Finally at 15:04 Garcia starts playing the theme and they pull it together and head toward the verse. The front four come out of the verse seemingly ready to space out, but Kreutzmann has other ideas, laying down a bouncy beat that Lesh and Godchaux bop along to for a while. Weir is still getting into the tremolo effect, and he lays on texture here and lets the other two carry the rhythm. Lesh shifts them into Feelin’ Groovy at 21:06, with Weir still using the tremolo, and at 21:14 Garcia, quietly at first, finally joins them. They pick up steam, but overall they keep it light this time. By around 24:40 they seem to be making a transition to something else. This winds up being a remarkable little jam that takes its impetus from the preceding Feelin’ Groovy jam and heads into less charted territory. By 26:30 this starts to come apart and they seem to be gesturing toward a meltdown, which seems inevitable in the second half at this point. As they did in the first half, they bring it way down at this point. The build-up from here is gradual and subtle; they come to a little peak at 30:14 and then bring it down again, dispersing into maximum weirdness. Finally Garcia goes for the Tiger, and as they come down from this Weir starts signaling their next destination, Sugar Magnolia. The last Dark Star of the European tour is neither the best nor the worst one they played there. After and in contrast to Rotterdam, the next two had a lot of very focused jamming. This one is sort of all over the place again. However, it is not an unworthy finale to the tour, as there are numerous excellent passages.
Yeah, but when was the last time you listened to it? Are you using the same headphones and playback equipment as the last time you listened to it, however many years ago that was? Perhaps trying listening to Three from the Vault from a HDCD decoded source and see if it still has the crunchy metallic tin foil sound. I’ve always though that it sounded great, but, of course, my playback equipment perhaps sounds different, I dunno.
The last time I wanted to. Probably 4-5 years ago. No, my Bose crapped the bed. Using Sony MDR-V600s that I've had since the 1990s. You assume I know what that means and how to do it.
I don’t think that it sounds harsh, you do. The reality might be somewhere in between. It’s certainly not unlistenable in a Dave’s Picks 24 kind of way.
I'm not unilaterally declaring it's harsh, for the record. I do assume that when I make statements such as that, people realize that I'm stating my opinion. It sounds harsh to me. More like crunchy, but not the good crunchy. Anyway, there's isn't even a Dark Star on ThFTV, so we're off-topic.
1973-05-23. There's a nice little pre-Dark Star jam that fades in before they play the starting riff, kind of like the start of Live-Dead...very neat! The opening jam's engaging. They speed up for a bit between 2-2:30, then slow down again, then Bill gets more active on drums and the jam picks up speed again. Just a few minutes in and time's lost all meaning already; they're carried away in a Dark Star rush. Jerry's repeated pinched-harmonic thing after 4:40 is unusual and quite cool. After 5:50 Jerry spaces out and the music gets more quiet and sparse in kind of a free-flowing trickle. The spaciness increases, Jerry sounding quite desolate after 8 minutes, and by 8:50 it's taking a turn toward a full-out spooky Space. This part is mostly a Jerry/Phil duet (with some quiet Bob and drum rolls), Phil doing his doom chords and Jerry with feedback cries. Very evocative, but at 10:45 they stop for a drum break. Well, Bob & Phil are still idly puttering along, but I'd still count this as one of the drum breaks that were a regular feature of Dark Star in May '72. Phil's pretty unorganized and boring in this part; it hasn't really developed into the bass/drum duets that would take shape later in '72, and it really kills the momentum in this Dark Star. But at 13:30 Jerry comes back in, Bob & Keith follow, and the music gathers more purpose. Phil's got a propulsive bass line around 14:50 and the jam's getting promising again; he even briefly teases Feelin' Groovy around 15:50 but it's just a feint, they're getting swept along in the stream again. The jam's percolating nicely and things are kickin', but around 17:10 they sort of stumble into a pause and Phil brings up the theme. The others go with it -- the transition is smooth but kind of abrupt -- and the theme feels warm and welcoming. Soon, the verse. Well, this was one of the longest jams before the verse so far...I think only 5-11 went longer until a verse. Once the verse is over, this time they go for a pretty flowering rather than a doomy space. It's a nice contrast! After 19:50 there's a delicate Jerry/Phil/Bob trio, with almost a classical chamber-music feel -- oh wait, Jerry's even quoting some Bach! This Dark Star has taken an 18th-century direction...Bach-Style Dead. But by 22:20 Jerry's got the wah on and he's spiraling back to modern times, pointing toward a Tiger. They take their time in a slow & patient slide, Keith adding piano stabs, gradually getting freakier until the full Tiger bursts forth at 23:50. This one's almost funny, like a giant robot chasing after small fleeing creatures. It eases up at 25:40 but they land in a stretch of tense jagged weirdness, the Dead not ready to give us relief yet; the Tiger still lurks. (Around 26:45 it sounds like a parody of itself.) But by 27 minutes a sense of melody starts appearing, a new form is taking shape under the freakout, and after 27:30 a more coherent jam roughly emerges around Jerry's up & down riff that he's been doing for a minute, trying out different variations of it, only to peter out again by 28:20. Now we're in a more relaxed jazzy mode, Phil & Keith putting on their jazz shoes, Jerry subsiding to a sputnik-style pattern. Notice how well Bob follows everyone here! Jerry sounds like he's searching for a grand melodic hook to finish it off but not quite finding one. At 29:30 he's signaling Morning Dew to the others -- but the transition's awkward and not as good as 5-18; the others are slow to catch on, thinking they're heading for the main theme again, and they putter around for another half a minute before landing the Morning Dew intro. This struck me as a loose meandering Dark Star, not very heavy in spite of the noisy Tiger stomp. It's mostly really nice...just not that transcendent, it doesn't catch fire. Maybe I'm left feeling that the post-meltdown ending kind of fizzles without a payoff after the promise of the first ten minutes. It's kind of a kaleidoscopic Dark Star, they rotate different flashes of what Dark Star can be.
#135 5/25/72 London: 34:30 - Europe ’72 Complete Recordings Here we’re coming from a strong version of Wharf Rat, night three of the run. A slow lead on the powerful chords ending Wharf Rat, Bob starts wandering a bit before the end even and it quiets down and Jerry starts the Dark Star groove riff instead of going through the little intro bit, they fall into a quiet Dark Star groove and then Jerry devolves into a trill, so it quiets down even more. It rolls through relaxed melodic sections, waves of music up and then down again. Bill starts a side stick rhythm a couple minutes in, Jerry is arpeggiating on suspended chords, Sputnik-like, before heading off into a lead and they move into a slightly Latin feel jam. This moves on and maintains the spritely feel for a very melodic long jam. This is great improvisation. Jerry stretches it at 6:30 and it moves into a quieter area after the wave crests. Lotta fast Phil stuff in here. At 8 they start scraping strings and going into noise space. Bob is being very chromatic, it’s very weird. It gets super weird with feedback and odd sounds at 10:30, Phil starts with the scary chords. Bob has a weird tremolo on his amp. Jerry starts some odd tonality melodies with the wah-backed-off tone a minute later. It sparses out a lot but maintains its dissonance. Lotsa feedback and big bass chords in the 14th minute. Jerry takes it out with major key melodic runs and then at 15 minutes suddenly back to the Dark Star theme. Nice. A slow Bright Star at 16 minutes and the verse at 16:45, not great vocal entrance, they get it together for the stops on the second line, a suspended space from the piano bits on line three also. Sounds like some odd chords on the refrain from Bob, there… he sorta ****s up the outro, but the intro to the jam is fine. Bill is rolling around as the instruments fade out, he settles into a groove with Phil and Keith. Bobby comes in with tremolo bits. Phil starts the Feelin’ Groovey descending bass line at 17:30 and Jerry comes in for a spritely major key jam. The ride it for a while and bring it down by min 25 to look for something new. It gets a little more bluesy but stays in the major key area for along time. Eventually by min 27 they go more outside and it starts to melt down. It moves into a sparse atonal space with a lot of fiddling about from Phil. This goes on and builds up with stretches from Bobby and wah weirdness from Jerry and string scraping from Phil. To super meltdown stuff… Jerry comes out with fast little climbing bits and it builds again to a giant crescendo with lots of noise, including organ swells, then as it crashes, Bobby signals Sugar Magnolia but it doesn’t take the first time, they continue some quieter weirdness for a bit and then he starts it for real. Nice upbeat Dark Star! Lot of melodic and mostly major key jams. A real contrast to the other recent versions, as well. These two London versions are great together...
#135 1972-05-25 Nice entry from Wharf Rat although it feels more like a slowdown and signaling than a seamless transition. They slip into a mellow Dark Star groove and glide along gently. Around :34 things well up and swirl and then they glide on. There's an enchanting feel to the patient proceedings. The momentum briefly builds then ebbs again around 1:30. They drift a bit before Bob steps forward with some strumming that seems to send Jerry in a Sputnik-esque direction. The momentum picks up again and Jerry starts reaching higher as Bob keeps strumming and Phil works it underneath. Accompaniment from Keith blends in nicely too. They ease up a little after 3:30 and find a descending pattern. Around 4:00 they shift into a new groove with a bluesy feel as bzfgt noted. There's a sort of staggered or stuttered feel at first and then they start cruising along with it. Jerry's guitar gets twangy in spots as he works his winding lines. Bob continues to add prominent textures that help to rev things up. By 6:00 the intensity is rising and Jerry heads upwards and they build to a brief peak. They pull back at 6:36 and things start to get spacier. Jerry wanders lower and Phil and Bob play off it. Surging accents from Bill and some occasional flourishes from Keith too. After a semi-flurry of related activity they ease further into spaciness and things begin to get weird. There's some string scraping and more ominous sounds from Phil and Keith and a brewing feel as they cast about. Phil becomes more prominent as the others play off him. He shifts into more of a revving thing and Keith adds some pulsating sounds. Now they're pretty deep into spacey weirdness and they drift through the vastness. It gets freakier and starts to sound melty but they pull back a bit and go for intermittent weird and thundering sounds instead. Feedback rings out and Jerry starts working a line that eventually leads back to the theme. They work it patiently for a spell blending in a slow moving Bright Star before heading to verse. Good passage. After the verse they reset and hover briefly before Bill starts working a beat and Phil and Keith jump in on it. It's got a good feel and bopping along is an apt descriptor. At a certain point you could almost imagine a Slipknot bass line emerging out of it. Guitar accents from Bob come in and they flesh it out a bit more and find their way to Feelin' Groovy by 21:06. It's a light and bouncy version with some kind of effect on Bob's guitar at first. Jerry comes in too and they take it for a stroll, building up some momentum initially and then continuing with semi-mellow jauntiness. By 24:30 it appears to have run its course and they start to shift into a new jam. It picks up momentum quickly but then they pull back before winding up and increasing the intensity again. The guitar ebbs once more while the beat continues forward and then Jerry jumps back in with a high, winding line. The collective groove builds and they cook along nicely for a brief spell. Around 26:20 they start to let it go and slowly move towards meltdown territory. After 27:10 they bring things to a near halt and then drift in space. Bill becomes quite active and there's some freaky percussive sounds from Phil too. Everyone is working the freaky tapestry at a low boil at first but the intensity slowly rises, reaching at peak after 30:00. From there they pull back but Jerry keeps working it, calling out into the void. The others add accents and the cauldron bubbles and the intensity builds and eases and builds again and by 32:35 the Tiger is unleashed. They reach a frenzied peak then give way around 33:50 after which Bob immediately signals Sugar Magnolia but they take another 40 seconds for easing weirdness before launching in. Another good one for the last performance of the tour. There’s a nice feel to the opening, some interesting jams and a good amount of spacey freakiness.
1972-05-25. First, let me highlight the little pre-Dark Star jam in the last couple minutes of Uncle John's Band! Magical, and really unusual for 1972, a year in which there were rarely ever transition jams between songs (other than DS or the O1). They could be headed for Dark Star, but they settle deliciously on Wharf Rat. When Wharf Rat winds down they find themselves briefly in an in-between space again, but within about 15 seconds Jerry starts Dark Star...and it's an unusual start, because he opens up with the main theme rather than the usual opening riff. (Is this the first Dark Star so far that skipped that riff?) The opening jam's loose and sensitive, maintaining the unique floating mood from UJB>Wharf Rat. Jerry's Sputnik hint around 2:30 leads to an upbeat jam, Bob doing funky chords. It's hard to pin down the feel here, but they stay in this odd groove for a while. Jerry gets more piercing around 6 minutes and they reach a high peak by 6:40. Then they tumble down & reassemble, playing oddly like no one can find a new center, getting spacier by 8 minutes. Jerry turns into wisps of vapor while the band bubbles and splashes, and they plunge deeper into space. Phil & Jerry tug them out to infinity with long tones; Keith has an odd reverb effect on his piano (which Bob copies with his tremolo sound around 11:10). They're lost in space, getting more desolate by the minute: delicate plangent wah notes from Jerry, soft heavy chords from Phil, Bob & Jerry drifting into harmonized feedback at 14 minutes. Feedback almost prevails, but at 15:05 Jerry calmly switches back to the main theme, and they're right with him, Bill sounding happy to return. They play the theme very mildly, keeping up the gentle floaty vibe from the start. They dwell on the theme for a while before the verse at 16:45, which Jerry sings in subdued fashion. Time for a return to space? No, Bill sounds like he's ready to start another drum solo! But this time the others don't let him carry on by himself; Keith and Phil join him in a jazz-trio interlude. (Bob comes back in with some cool tremolo shades at 19:40.) This is full Jazz Dead here, but Jerry is nowhere to be heard. By 21:10 Phil's ready to move on and starts Feelin' Groovy, Bob keeping the tremolo on in a nice touch, and Jerry comes back. This Feelin' Groovy starts out very low-key and builds up, getting sprightly & bouncy, more like a warm beam of contentment than an explosion of joy -- some sweet notes from Jerry! After 24 minutes it starts transforming into something else, keeping the feel but dropping the Feelin' Groovy outline; after 25 minutes the structure crumbles and the jam steps sideways & gets off-kilter. (It kind of reprises the odd jam from 20 minutes ago!) By 26:30 they lurch into atonal weirdness, getting quieter after a minute, Jerry & Bob quietly tip-toeing while the drums rattle & the bass burbles. They carry on in this vein for quite a while, the intensity rising & falling, Jerry getting nutty on the wah. Around 31:40 Jerry moves to the Tiger mode and they suddenly crash into a meltdown, first a small wave then a big one. After 33:20 Pigpen drops in to add some extra organ blasts to the chaos! (Just when you least expect him, and the last time he'd ever play in a Dark Star.) When the meltdown subsides, Bob gives everyone a Sugar Magnolia heads-up, but they float around on volume-knob eddies for another half-minute before he starts the song. This was one of my favorite Dark Stars of May '72 but it's hard to explain why. Partly because it's part of the UJB>Wharf Rat>Dark Star suite which gives it more weight; it feels like the Dark Star's continuing the same story from some different place. And although it's very spacey and relaxed (most of it's pretty low-key), somehow it doesn't feel aimless or rambling to me; they're exploring a shadowy realm and finding new corners. Individual parts of this echo earlier Dark Stars on the tour, but the improv flows naturally with a loose free unhurried feeling. Bonus point for Pigpen giving his final Dark Star hurrah in the last minute.
136. 1972-07-18 32678 NJ 27:13 Main theme at 15:25. First verse at 15:52. Tiger at 22:28. Goes into Comes a Time. Back in the States again. The Dead played in Hollywood on June 17th, a date which marks the last concert they played with Pigpen (before Bird Song tonight, Weir announces that Pigpen is sick and that he hopes to return soon, but of course he never did). After a month off, the summer 1972 tour began two days prior in Connecticut, so Dark Star has had a bit of a layoff after seeing heavy action in Europe. The first Dark Star since the Europe tour begins at a languid pace. Garcia is very active from the beginning, but he doesn’t sound like he’s in a hurry. The band stays close to the two-chord Dark Star progression, although they aren’t always entirely explicit with it. Jerry hints at the verse melody a bit, beginning around 1:45 and particularly at about 2:04, and then he starts a fairly long chordal lead. The band is rising and falling behind the lead guitar, and the effect is peaceful but at the same time very active. It may be a bit trite to say they seem like a living organism here, but in any case the relations between the instruments seem very sympathetic. Listen to the little bit that Jerry plays at 2:31, and then hear how Keith echoes him. By 2:50 or so Jerry starts to bend a little, hinting at a breakdown of the structure, but it snaps back together, and as it does it starts to gather a head of steam, coming to a little peak at about 4:02. Coming down the other side, Lesh takes the lead and spins out some melodies for a little while. Garcia eases back in with some Sputnik-like rolls. They come apart and then get back together at 5:54, with Garcia again playing chordal stuff that hints at a move toward the theme. Instead, they move toward E minor, then back to the A, and to a space of indeterminacy in between. After some shifting, E seems to be winning out, with Phil in the lead again until 8:07 when Garcia reënters with some fast runs. The jam that follows is not exactly disorganized, but it is very loose. Weir has been rather unobtrusive, and he seems to be low in the mix, but Keith is very audible throughout. At about 11:08 Weir starts to become a little more audible; the jam starts to gain momentum here, with Garcia getting more aggressive, laying in some repetitive licks, and the others kicking up behind him. At 12:57 Jerry starts playing a repeating lick based around an E, to which he insistently returns; then he spins off and starts to build around the A at 14:08, and the effect is galvanizing, with the sequence finally coming to a close at 14:34. After briefly recharging, Jerry starts pushing again; it all comes to a head with the A at 15:13, at which point they simultaneously back off and we slide down to the theme, which quickly comes to the verse. By 17:30 they start heading into a space jam, led by Garcia and Lesh. Weir and Garcia make plangent noises while Lesh gets heavy on the bottom end, and then decides to join them as they sound like a pod of sick whales (in a good way!). Then at 20:14 Garcia kicks on the wah, which seems to indicate they are going into a meltdown; sure enough, at 21:10 he begins the preliminaries of a Tiger jam. The Tiger arrives, albeit somewhat gently at first, at 22:28 as Jerry starts his double-time triplets. After about a minute these get really vicious, and Weir can be heard scrubbing away alongside him. At 23:53 Jerry begins some volume knob manipulation and the band quiets down a little. By 24:30 they seem like they might be heading into more structured jam, or even a song, but the meltdown picks up again, ebbing and flowing some more without much indication of where it’s going until 25:45 when Jerry finally hints at Comes a Time, which here follows Dark star for the first time. His line seems to phase in and out between this and Sputnik for a little while until Jerry finally strums the opening A chord and the Dark Star is over. This is kind of an odd one—on the one hand, I want to say it’s sort of uneventful, but there are some really stunning moments, and Garcia is masterful throughout. In a way, the band seems almost too tuned into each other here, if such a thing is possible—there are shifts and micromovements, but no grand statements. They are certainly playing on another level compared to the last time America saw a Dark Star, but there are even better things to come.
My initial reaction to this thread was snarky, but in retrospect, I wish there was something/ anything as interesting to me as this song is to GD diehards. By the way, my favorite version is on Dick’s picks vol. 4.
Sorry, I don’t know his name. I took the picture at the New Orleans zoo a few years back. I liked it because he appeared quite contemplative. Also a little sad truth be told.
