Listening to this Clementine practice session for the first time. After Box of Rain, this is probably my favorite Phil song.
Well I can tell you first hand as a once frustrated attendee of 6/17 91 that Dark star is indeed a song, not a teaser. The revisionist in me likes this show much better now that we are decades away from the sore feelings I had walking out of the venue that night....
Finished 1974-09-18 this morning, He’s Gone>Truckin’> Caution Jam>Ship of Fools is an amazing combo; He’s Gone and Ship are top versions, and the Caution jam is everything you could want, particularly by the end. Great show, great tour so far (I've tallied three great and two really good shows).
Shows like those from E 74 get overlooked because people read the opinions of others without listening for themselves. Egypt suffered the same fate, the whole thing used to "suck," but actual listening reveals a different Truth.
Oy, this was supposed to be a quick 'check into the forum and see what's good before I get to this giant list of crap I want to get done today, and instead I find this... I should mention I checked out the David and the Dorks show (12-20-70) for the first time in a while last night, that's well worth a listen for fans of Crosby's solo record (not so much for the first known performance of Bertha, which is pretty rough.) Plenty to like for fans of 1970 GD too, Lesh and Garcia tear it up, and evidently Hart is the sole drummer. Meanwhile I'll fire up my Dark Star playlist to set the mood: It gets my vote. The whole band except for Jerry plays their usual Dark Star lines at the beginning of that section of the jam. Archtop's example was my first, although this 74 version is another, of why I don't think the lyrics are essential to Dark Star. I'm sure I've made this argument in past discussions. You could say that random selection of various composed pieces (ie as they construct a different set each night) has always been an aspect of this group's collective improvisation, whether each number is a standalone (as in set 1 starting in 1970 or so) or strung together with (occasionally) serendipitous transitions (as in set 2 in latter days, or as in early 68 when they were still configuring the sequence of the various suites etc.) This also applies within the microcosm of their more open-ended pieces, like Alligator in 67-69 or Dark Star starting at the end of 68. In the performance history of Dark Star you can chart a general trend: it first appears as one brief segment of a suite of somewhat interchangeable parts, then (like most other parts in the sequence) it shortly comes to include longer sections of improv within its own structure of 'intro-verse 1-verse 2.' In the era of Live/Dead they repeatedly deploy various 'set pieces,' essentially improvs based on composed elements, some but not necessarily all of which appear in each performance, but typically in random sequence and interspersed with passages that are more off the cuff. Up until mid 1969 the structure mentioned above is almost invariably intact, though from then on the jam after the first verse sometimes leads to other songs and doesn't return for verse 2 (e.g. 6-22-69.) Most of the time these are other jam vehicles like the Other One and you also see cases like 11-8-69 where Dark Star>Other One eventually comes home for verse 2. Then in late 69 and 70 you see the emergence of the thematic jams, which are used just like the old 'set pieces,' ie some shows have only Feeling groovy, some have only 'Soulful Strut,' some have both, at least one has neither, etc. There are a few examples where one of these jams (or also the Other One) segues directly into another song without playing verse 2 of Dark Star, but 1970 has some of the furthest-ranging performances of Dark Star that still regularly feature verse 2. While I think a bare majority of 1971 Dark Stars do have both verses, it's definitely the turning point. The year starts off with Dark Star>Wharf Rat, and ends with a handful of Dark Stars with Keith, all of which feature their new trend of pulling into a random song (usually a cowboy song) out of the deep space that almost always appears sometime after the first verse. This trend became the new norm in 72, and there are a bunch of random segues. Once having done away with verse 2, the doors were open, and they spent the next couple of years experimenting by and by with the structure, and there are other clear examples of Dark Star that omit other (formerly indispensable) elements like the intro (5-25-72, 3-24-73, 12-6-73) or even the first verse (6-23-74, 7-25-74) Most of them have at least one of the three structural elements, but there is a fourth, which is basically just the main theme, and for me that's the essential part, and any appearance or even partial appearance of that counts as 'Dark Star' in my book. I do understand the impetus to divide Dark Star Jam from Dark Star proper, but I don't buy into it, since over the years they seem to have made it a game of 'how much of this can we still leave out of it without it ceasing to be the thing anymore.' It's my belief that Garcia's comments on Dark Star over the years, in combination with the way they treated it in its 89-94 revival, support this interpretation, but I really don't have time to get into all that now, I've been writing this post off and on since 9 AM! Suffice it to say that by 74 I believe they were intentionally experimenting with the idea that 'everything we do has a little bit of Dark Star in it,' to paraphrase an early 80s interview with Garcia, which is exemplified by Garcia's coy refusal to actually play the melody of the theme on 6-28-74, even though the rest of the band was playing their parts, and the jam that followed could have been easily transplanted into any other Dark Star from 71-74 and sounded pretty much at home. 6-17-91, that @fishcane just brought up, is kind of the culmination of this 'Dark Star or not' trend, although there are lots of teases and references throughout Summer 1991. To me 12-5-71, 3-24-73, 6-28-74, 6-17-91 etc. are essential to comprehending the full possibility of Dark Star as an improvisational performance piece, and so I would not want to exclude them simply on that basis.
I think a song performed instrumentally is still a song. I think the thing that makes it a song is that it was composed for voice, typically with words. Meanwhile, I've listened to this, my first exposure to the composition Dark Star, about a dozen times today: Does anyone else hear wah wah pedal on some of the guitar? In particular on what sounds like Garcia's melody lines, I hear it in the right channel. Also, I'll have to check the 'how is the GD psychedelic?' thread, someone must have brought this single up, apart from New Potato Caboose, it might be their recording that incorporates the greatest number of 'psych' tropes.
Of course the famous line of Garcia's is: Garcia: You gotta remember that you and I are talking about two different "Dark Stars." You're talking about the Dark Star which you have heard formalized on a record, and I'm talking about the Dark Star whcih I have heard in each performance as a completely improvised piece over a long period of time. So I have a long continuum of Dark Stars which range in character from each other to real different extremes. Dark Star has meant, while I'm playing it, almost as many things as I can sit here and imagine, so all I can do is talk about Dark Star as a playing experience. Reich: Well, yeah, talk about it a little. Garcia: I can't. It talks about itself. Reich: Each time it comes out a different way? Garcia: Yeah, pretty much. There are certain structural poles which we have kind of set up in it, and those we periodically do away with. (my emphasis)
Jeez and from that to whatever this is: Not sure I feel about the whole thing, but the song starts about 0:40. Do watch it at least through to 1:18-1:25.
Fricken Youtube... I don't like much techno music, but I think this remix was pretty cool. Shakedown Street is one of my top GD studio tracks. Oh snap, he mixes in some live stuff with Brent for the coda!
I wouldn't say I'm fully on board with all of the choices this artist makes in representing an EDM version of Dark Star; for instance, the bass line Phil plays for the verse is repetitive, but at least busy, this is kind of the half time version. Also he could have dropped the beat a bit more often. But this is pretty good, the creator of this gets enough of how Dark Star speaks to me for me to endorse this version. (There's even a verse!) For EDM it's a bonus anytime it doesn't remind me of the theme song of Creationist Cat.
Phil’s Capital shows rescheduled to unspecified dates. Phil in a short video says he feels great but his doctors havn’t cleared him as of yet. My guess is it might be in January. I’m holding onto my tickets. DSO filling in and said to be playing some classic Dead Capital dates. My guess is one of the Port Chester dates. I sacked up for front row Loge for 11/2. Here’s hoping for the 6/24/70, the 11/6/70or the 2/18/71 set list
That was going to be my reply, but then I thought, what if they're not playing any of the "song" part? Apropos of this whole discussion, most of us know that it's "Dark Star", even if we don't hear the words "Dark Star crashes, pouring its light into ashes, etc." or melody that goes with them. That's the part that's sung, so that's presumably the part that makes it a "song". But in terms of "Dark Star", that melody is at best the third-most distinctive melody associated with the song (after "ba-dump-ba-dum" and "doo-doo-doodle-dee-doo"). So what do we call the rest of those melodies? Are they part of the song or part of the arrangement?
