Whew, this quixotic project took 3 years (obviously a pandemic-initiated endeavor!) but listening to one or two (or three) a week, I’m done with all the existing recordings of the Grateful Dead playing Dark Star. The first hundred are here “Listening to the first 100 Dark Stars“. There is no reason for anyone to read all this, but possibly it would be interesting to spot trends and changes in the history of the track. And it’s not just me, there are several people writing up their listening experiences on this thread here: https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/every-dark-star-grateful-dead.983414/

(We’re not done yet on the forum.) The thread-master, bzgft, is posting our summaries by version here: https://everydarkstar.blogspot.com/

According to this guy Jim Powell here: DeadEssays.BlogSpot.com* there may be 100 missing versions (early versions! 1968-70, the best…): never taped or just not in circulation. Frankly, the fact that 220+ versions were taped is incredible, especially considering the tech of the late 60s and into the 70s. Of course by the time the audience tapers were legion the band started to suck. Well, ok, I guess they could be good sometimes. I mean, I did listen to Dark Star plus related tracks or sequences from all of these concerts through the 90s. It’s sorta up and down, there are great moments. But frankly, I couldn’t handle listening to a lot of the concerts (especially the Weir/Barlow songs… I don’t like Barlow’s lyrics and I don’t really dig Bob Weir’s musical ideas much. Sorry to those that love these songs. I feel like Barlow is a hack and relies way too much on Biblical or other trite tropes—for example, when a writer uses Christian Biblical references, it automatically makes me think they don’t have any good ideas of their own, or hadn’t ever read anywhere beyond those particular versions of mythologies into worlds that could be much more interesting. Hack. Um, OK I might exclude a few artists from this list, like say, Nick Cave… maybe Andy Partridge. Dylan? Not sure.)

Also, check this out: https://deadessays.blogspot.com/2020/06/dark-star-graph.html -a graph of all these and their lengths. Obviously other people have gone through all of these before.

Anyway. Here we go. Soundboard tapes often, noted if not. Luckily there are many many soundboard tapes available!

*note that the date links on that page don’t work. Deadlists had something happen to them so the www. doesn’t work. You can go to Deadlists.com and search by year/day.

…on a ’63 Strat.

101 1970-04-25 Mammoth Gardens, Denver, CO 24:39 AUDience Tape 

Audience tape shows an interesting aural spectrum, the band starts the songs and Jerry tests some feedback and swells before a theme entrance, played a few times before heading to more restrained lead playing, sounds like neck pickup in the hall, not super bright—he’s back to using an SG now, a ’66 Standard. They reference the theme a few times before it starts to take off. Nice playing, wish it were a better tape! Bob sounds like he’s keeping the rhythm, essentially, it’s tough to hear his chordal notes exactly. They build with Phil following Jerry closely into waves that crest and break. Some chordal whirlpools at 4:00 in, with Phil controlling the harmonic environment. Back to the song basis, and JG is off again, he’s exploring some nice runs, endless melodic motion, then goes into an area of stretching strings. Really beautiful stuff! Then the gliss up to the A and the theme proper again at 6 minutes, into verse 1 at 6:30.
People clap at the singing (reviews said the audience were sort of expecting Live/Dead and got hit with a full opening set of folk music). Nice verse version, a little more motion as it goes through the lines. And out to the counterpoint and into the middle section, Phil is setting it up droning on the A string as the band tremolos toward quietude.
A slight bell toll from one guitar rings an e-minor… cymbals take over with small sounds from the instruments, hardly audible in this hall recording until they build the volume a bit. Scrapes and sounds. Some volume knob swelled notes. Space. It gets very quiet by 10:30 minutes, sounds like a quiet Sputnik emerging by 11, against some odd sounds still happening, some feedbacks. It breaks at 12 min, melody returns with lead playing, again not the bright Strat tone exactly (I wonder how much of that is the tape?) Phil picks up underneath and they go immediately to the UJB descending bass riff major-key progression. (I’m just going to call it that. The other nomenclatures are too weird) and then a lithe segue into the “Soulful Strut/Tighten Up” two-maj7-chord jam. (Again, I’m finding all these names weird, maybe given our historical perspective, can we call it proto-Eyes?) Jerry’s tone is honky and nasal, maybe he has a wah pedal backed off like he used to use? In any case, soaring lead playing, lots of claves and Bill on side-stick latin groove. Move over Esquivel, here’s some real space-age bachelor pad music.
At 17:20 it breaks to a new arpeggio, sort of Sputnik-y, with the “Shall we go” sixths following, playing on them to a new area, which sort of leads back to the UJB riff as Jerry plays with the implied chords. At 20 min it drops back into the Dark Star chordal area. Drums still plugging away a bit and JG starts a type of arpeggiated lead section that relates to the Sputnik chord, but he takes off on it and the band follows upwards. Several melodic waves up and down and to a Bright Star, really playing it out, loud and strong by 22 minutes!
Bringing it down from there in volume and tempo, people clap and cheer as the band enters the DS theme again.
Verse 2 at 23:00, no filigree really, sort of a staid rendition, the outro vocals sound good in the hall, reverberating. Counterpoint leads to the static chords, leading to St Stephen and a searing version of the Eleven, so the audience is gonna get Live/Dead after all.

This is really a great version despite the bad quality audience recording, very seamless transitions between the jam sections, nice playing all around, great full-band playing. Wish there were a better audio copy!

102 1970-05-08 Farrell Hall, SUCNY Delhi, NY: #18:05 (missing start) AUD

Very distorted audience recording, which starts with Dark Star in the middle of an incredibly strong riff, it almost sounds like a different song altogether. It drops into the theme and verse 1 appears only a minute into this tape.
Hard to discern things in this recording, it sounds like everything is mushed into an underwater piano. Out of the verse, people clap, and it starts to go somewhere but falls away to the cymbal crashes and noise, into free improv space. Cymbals lead to feedback and odd sounds in an arhythmic space, volume swelled notes emerge, and bass feedback, it all sounds ring modulated by the tape distortion. More feedback, lots of weird and loud sounds. Sputnik emerging at 7:30, some notes a minute later, and chords, not sure where it’s going. Sounds like Bobby is playing that G7 so there’s some melodic things playing with the G-F#-Fnatural for a bit within the Dark Star chord progression. Claves are loud in the hall as well, as it builds into a jam, eventually with major chords. I think. Tighten up. Or something. Hard to tell. This jam goes on a long time. Break down at 17:30, people clap, the band disperses and the recording goes into Dancin’ in the Streets.
Whew, that one was rough.

103 1970-05-15 Fillmore East: 19:40 – Road Trips Vol.3 No.3 (also AUD)

Super long evenings at the Fillmore East, acoustic sets, New Riders’ set, Dead electric set. This Dark Star is after “Next Time You See Me” classic 12 bar blues, toward the end of the electric set. Joking about the alligator in the audience…a couple of intro teases, then they stick the intro riff and head into the track, at a decent tempo, not too slow, nice and relaxed. It only takes a few seconds and Jerry heads off into melody land. It’s a good mix, shakers control the pulse and the guitars seem to be working together moving forward, into a few small whirlpools that build up and down into big Dark Star thematic areas, the gliss to the A starts the riff to the verse at 3 minutes. Sort of a rough vocal intro (long night!) mild accompaniment for the verse, but nicely orchestrated. JG’s guitar sounds like a banjo on the chords in there on the “Shall we go”!
Jam starts, the band goes in and backs away leaving the space to change as the cymbals blow it away and the guitars become bells. Space has small sounds in it, mostly little feedbacks and swells. Some odd percussion come in. It’s an extended area of stasis, with notes only coming in with volume swells, even bass swells. Using the odd metal scrubbing sounds to build clouds of frequencies.
At 8:40 or so Jerry is coming in with a melodic idea, backed for a while by feedback swirls, it develops into a Sputnik-like arpeggio, but he breaks out of the arpeggio into slow lead playing and the band starts to come in by about 10:30 with a groove on A to G. Claves and eventually a drum set join, Bobby starts playing with the 7ths on the chords, going for that G7 again. It’s a relatively mellow latin-type jam on this progression for quite a while. He sputniks again at 13 minutes and goes into double time banjo picking, then into three-against-two chords. By 14:30 there’s hints of the Dark Star theme. They bring it down a bit, but it’s fluidly moving forward still and it heads to the Feeling Groovy feel and chords a half minute later. It breaks away at 17 min or so, and hits the Bright Star theme at 17:15, a relatively slow and solid statement, still in the old groove. The bring it down in tempo with the theme and head toward verse 2 at 18 min.
Classic verse treatment, some nice wandering on the third line after a strong rhythmic second line. Good outro and outro vocals, into scrubbing the static chords instead of just hitting them one by one, with cymbals, and into a short St Stephen, Not Fade Away and Lovelight.

Nice but ultimately fairly mellow version. Great space section.

104 1970-05-24 Newcastle-Under-Lyme, UK: 21:21

Their first overseas gig! At a big festival (where they played after Black Sabbath and Free!) Freaking out the Brits.
After Cold Rain and Snow, entering the late part of the set, Dark Star starts clean and together at a relatively brisk pace. Outdoor versions, always interesting. Jerry steps back after the intro and gathers his thoughts before coming in, the band is jamming away. They almost immediately build a wave up in the thematic world. High intensity, they are really pounding it out. (Relatively.) Drums come in in the two minute area, necessarily, I imagine. Lovely runs from JG, the whole band is playing full on with drive. Jerry’s whirlpools are intense examinations of specific notes or areas.
Theme statement on breakdown at 4:15 or so, onwards to the verse, after reining in the tempo and volume a bit. Verse comes in after some cymbal splashes and more quieter jamming, at 5:20. Really upbeat line one, making the break to the e minor on line two really dramatic. and the wandering on line three breaks it up even more, where it seems like the “Shall we go” is a baroque way of rebuilding, though Phil is heavy on these area. Heavy counterpoint intro, directly to cymbals and feedback and noise, and into space with droning bass tones and feedback and metal sounds. (I heard someone say something like “Watch where you’re going!”  but assuming that was about a physical presence on the stage, not to fellow musicians.) Cymbal or gong making phase-waves like a jet plane, lots of noisy metal stuff. Must have been amazing in the outdoor speaker system (this is an audience cassette! It sounds really good.) Bass and guitars enter with sound, feedback, on top of each other, it’s a pretty active space, really active cymbal play, with washes and hits. A flexatone! OMG, he’s getting out there with his percussion toys.
Sputnik enters at 11 minutes, still with odd bass noises and cymbals. And Bob soloing. He slows it down to a sort of old style Sputnik, but is playing with some flatted notes and goes into chord stabs. Lead emerges and the band drops back in, still at quite a high energy level. Bobby is on some dissonant chord for a while before it settles more right before the 14 minute are for a more classic jam heading to A and b minor before making that b minor into a G maj7 and the A into Amaj7 the Tighten Up jam comes forth, with a lot of explicit ‘bom, ba-bom’ (“It’s not unusual to be loved by anyone”) rhythmic motif statements.
At 18 minutes, Jerry seems to want to take it back to Dark Star, and it sort of strays around for a while before getting there, including a lengthy feedback tone. At 19:30, out of dying out chaos, Jerry emerges with a quiet Bright Star that just goes into the intro theme area and to verse 2 at 20:00. Sort of sudden! Nice verse rendition, interesting bit by bit wandering lines on line 3.
All vocals, making the multi-part madrigal outro and launching it to the guitar counterpoint and the chords that lead to St Stephen. (Which song ends up heading off to Not Fade Away after 6 minutes, and eventually into a half-hour Lovelight.)
Man this must have been an amazing festival. This was a great and high energy version of Dark Star, unusual lately—or in general.

Now we go back to SG

105 1970-06-24 Port Chester: 19:57 (9:45 > Attics > 7:09 > Sugar Magnolia > 3:03) AUD

Some stage banter beforehand and then a count and launching into the intro riff (where oddly, Jerry plays an E in place of D on the high note in the first go-round) into the groove with people clapping along, grooving. Some nice majestic riffs in the lead part, then taking it down into a long multi-headed hydra of the three guitars improvising with occasional references to the thematic material. Super long slow build to the theme before four minutes, back down to start a new jam with slightly more broken up rhythmic parts, taking it down in volume further, with JG on high small notes. Bobby starts going for some more dissonant chords. Back to the theme in a minute and the verse starts after six minutes.
Nice relaxed reading of the verse, with some great post-vocal bass and rhythm wandering within line 3.
A popped balloon during “Shall we go” elicits yells, the band goes on, out of the verse into the ‘nightfall’ intro and to directly dissipating music, into small noises from bass and percussion.
Percussion heavy with Chinese cymbals in there with the weird sounds, a bystander near the mics says “oh my god!” at 8:30. It’s building to an active noise jam and then off to volume swell melodic guitar, and then slow intro to Attics of my Life, nice transition where the melody comes in slowly and it could possibly be just another jam section, but people recognize it and start clapping before the singing comes in.
The song plods along for 5 minutes, and then switches right back into a Dark Star jam, which picks up the tempo over then next few minutes or so, ripping it up. Sort of a Bright Star at 2:30 into this part, then into a Tighten Up jam, which builds over time to some nice peaks. After the 6 minute wave cresting, it gets back to a Dark Star theme bit and then the Feeling Groovy bass line and chords, but then this is supplanted by the sliding into the A intro to Sugar Magnolia and into that groove, working out the melody and then going into the verse. And eventually another, and into a chorus, and back to the A at which point they head back into more jamming.
The root stays at A, but they soon realize they were in the middle of Dark Star and head back there as a groove idea, with some Sugar-y curlicues before the theme proper comes back in, and we get verse 2! (yay!)
A very rhythmic pulsed version, with people clapping along, and side stick drums in throughout. Nice outro and into St Stephen, and people realize it and freak out. St Stephen heads off to China Cat, IKYR, and they end with UJB. It’s a series of hits, the audience claps along the whole time. Must have been an amazing show to see.

106 1970-09-17 Fillmore East: 26:30 AUD

After a Star-less summer of almost all country music, we’re getting into some space again here at the Fillmore East on a four night run. This Dark Star is toward the end of the first evening.
Shakers for pulse, with a little settling in in the first minute or so, it gets comfortable in its seat. Sparse notes from lead guitar, accented by Bob in between phrases, with Phil bubbling underneath and sending it forward. JG finds a feedback note and holds it as an eddy in the current for a bit. A quiet brighter star area gets back to the main theme, and then off again with more conviction by the three minute area. When they bring it down and back to a thematic area before the verse, it’s a little disjunct, but verse 1 come sin and the audience claps. It’s a casual and mild delivery, leading to a slower outro. I note that nobody is ornamenting the spaces in the refrain after “Shall we go” and “through”, they are just held notes, no bedoopbedoop no nothing.
As soon as the new section starts, it falls apart and suddenly there are loud, weird screaming sounds like the bird sounds in the middle of Pink Floyd’s Echoes, and then into percussion sweeps and small noises. Some clapping, regardless. It goes into space, arhythmic and atonal. Some guitar hits, a few of those bird-like sweeps but at a more controlled volume, playing alongside some scraped strings. It’s sort of like a buzz-whistle, maybe? Still getting volume swell bass notes and then eventually volume swell guitar notes, which don’t develop but instead JG comes in again with a soft Sputnik at about 10:45, but it doesn’t hold together rhythmically and falls back into the sea of sound.
Repetitive melodic bits come out of the next rise, and they grow into a slow Dark Star jam, and people love this. It’s fairly slow and playing notes around the root chord rather than ever really staying on that A. It moves forward with repeating riffs occasionally, deliberately building slowly and Jerry takes off a couple time, but comes back to the steady upward-moving statements.
We’re heading toward a slow Tighten Up maybe, and Bob has that A7-G7 thing going on, but the tempo is still pretty slow—though the claves are trying to energize the mix. It settles into more of a Dark Star jam again. They are using those steadily climbing statement against each other to build to a Bright Star (a slow one) and coming down the other side of that wave Bob speeds it up into the actual Soulful Strut jam. Some serious riffing going on from Jerry and he gets down in this groove. The drums are in and coming along with him. In the middle of the 19th minute it sounds like he’s chasing some specific melody for a while, and that continues off and on over the next couple minutes.
They are really holding on this jam for a long time, bringing it down in the 22nd minute, to get somewhere else, and an odd and abrupt switch to sets of melodic sixths, similar to the verse outro, but then it forms a placid pond of tones, from which JG does a few of those post Sputnik stabs, but they don’t bring it out of the area the first time, and it builds again with a wave of volume up and down and then the Dark Star theme pops up and they’re back in the song. Nice! Like the opposite of how it usually blows away into the middle jam section. People clap along, verse 2 comes in at 25 minutes, more upbeat than verse 1, more action on lines two and three, especially the climbing lines under line three.
Nice vocals on the outro madrigal, and nicely played outro counterpoint, into the chords that lead to a somewhat slow and short St Stephen and into Good Lovin’ with drum jams within it.
Really decent version, interesting space (especially with that weird whistle or whatever that was) that held on for a long time. Long “Strut” jam with some ripping playing from Jerry, chasing some specific melody only he could envision.

107 1970-09-19 Fillmore East: 25:24 (SBD)

Night three of the run (Saturday) and a soundboard tape, which is nice.
Rad start after the intro with single building feedback note against the rhythm, then one note and a slow build in the lead, nice tempo and groove. Very slow all the way to the theme at about 2 minutes and low soloing after in varying mode. And a bell tolling for a bit a minute later. This is a very introspective jam, very sparse, wandering into other modal territory, whole new style of Dark Star. Sounds like Bobby has some jazz chords going on before taking it back to the theme groove at 5 min and jam, gliss to the theme a minute later and verse 1.
Nice dramatic vocal reading, the verse is fairly animated with percussion and bass.
And into the transitive nightfall with almost the groove, bell tolls in the background and this reality isn’t sticking anymore and it fades out. Very quiet space follows, some audience yell. An occasional bass note or bell hit on the strings, like windchimes. Then actual windchimes. The percussion doing some Asian style of wood block, some jack noise while plugging in that screaming thing from the other day, but holding it into feedback. A slow chord progression comes out for a while and fades to string scrubbing, and alternative techniques from both guitars.
Sputnik from a trough at 13:00, a short wave of arpeggio and toward the Tighten Up jam at a decent tempo, then a sudden shift to the Feeling Groovy chord progression at 16:00. Long jam and heading toward the Dark Star area again slowly, then a statement of the Feelin Groovy chords from Bob before the 21st minute, capping off this area and it goes to the DS riff.
No verse yet, JG starts another very slow lead and the groove devolves into single strummed chords and finally a Dark Star theme, in higher register, in largo. It goes on and on. A gap and a gliss back to the theme and into verse 2. After a few extra bars. Which verse are we at?
He gets there and sings it well, sounds a bit like his later voice again. Really groovy verse, drums in. Classic outro to St Stephen.

Really, really nice version, very spacey from the outset. It’s suggested that it was on news of Hendrix? Slow lead playing in all the Dark Star areas, but at speed in the later jams, then back to slow. Nice ‘other concepts of rhythm’ in the space section, reminds me of, for example, the Noh Theater ideas of rhythm, with rhythm based on ingressive, held and out outgoing breath.
Seems like an intense show as it goes on after this as well.

108 10/11/70 Wayne, IN: #20:29 (missing start) AUD

Awesome intro with the cassette mics being rattled and the sound image gradually recovering. The band heads into it and is jamming right off the bat on this one, into a super rhythmic jam. Eventually they slow it down to deliver the theme. An amateur drummer near the mics. Verse 1 after 4 minutes, slow, but some nice interpretation especially on line 3 from Phil.
Sounds like it sort of barrels into the refrain and then into the nightfall.
It holds together for a bit, sounding like each player gets stuck in their own space and it decays away into cymbals. Slow windchimey hits from guitar sounds, sort of like a broken machine. Some sound back and forth activity. Atonal horror movie soundtrack plucks sounding like piano or koto strings. Given the cassette distortion on the recording you could isolate this section and claim it was some historical ethnomusicological recording. It’s a nice long sound jam with some sputnik tendencies toward the end by 12 minutes. When the wave recedes, Bill starts a nice FG groove, but it doesn’t exactly head that way and heads back toward Dark Star like the first part of this evening’s version, fast and energetic. Building to an almost chord progression and then superimposition of things, Phil kinda does a descending bassline but they obviously all look up and sync back to Dark Star-ish groove at 16 min. Odd hints at the theme out of time with everybody else, the rhythm falling apart and it dies off for a while before some attempt at pulse is established. It gets back to the them area a couple minutes later but Jerry is still spacing out and gets distracted by a swept chord for a while before hitting that long gliss up to the A for the theme and verse 2 at 19. Strong verse, intent rhythm and bass notes on line two but not so much upward movement on line three.
Really ornate vocal outro with good Phil vocals, and into the counterpoint parts, some mic bystander is slack jawed and goes, “alright…” like, that was interesting! And to the chords into St Stephen.

Nice upbeat presentation, too bad about the tape quality. I thought it was definitely listenable, though, and you can hear all the parts.

109 10/17/70 Cleveland, OH: 19#:17 (two cuts in the middle) AUD

Lotta tuning and listening to tapers talk before it starts, a couple indications of the intro riff and then they go for it. A mellow intro area, wandering leads slowly over the top, but it coalesces and starts to groove with the shakers and such and picks up steam after a couple minutes, in a nice intro jam. Then suddenly a cut to the end of verse 1! No fair.
After this it almost directly falls apart into space, cymbals washing away the music. Some string scrapes and small noises building with a bass drone at 6 min, then dropping again, leaving a very quiet sputnik-y arpeggio happening, though it is consumed by slide-on-string play, and after a while longer some notes emerge and a quiet area of melodicism happens with glockenspiel, though Bob is insinuating his G7 that usually leads to the Tight Up jam later, it’s a very slow intro to that maybe though the build still sounds more like Dark Star in the melodies. Phil pulses on some notes and eventually there’s a slow Bright Star rendition at about 13:30.
Jerry starts to take off on some fast long runs as Phil starts jamming a bit. Jerry is taking it up and it goes into a very rhythmic jam from which a Sputnik erupts and the volume drops immediately, but they stay with that pulsating rhythm. It goes on into a quiet but intense and fast jam, lots of forward momentum. Up and down a bit then an abrupt Dark Star theme statement from Jerry, then band falls in around it and they slow down as he does the gliss to the melody, then another tape cut to the middle of the verse at a slower tempo.
Sounds like a nice reading of the verse, very relaxed and contrasting the fast jam that led to it. They continue from the outro chords to St Stephen.

Odd version, good jams but very up and down and the tape cuts are jarring. And the quality isn’t very good, only the cassette taper versions are available for a lot of this year’s shows, apparently.

110 11/5/70 Port Chester, NY: 21:06 AUD

Audience recording from the balcony, bass slightly overloading the cassette.
Clapping audience out of the The Other One and they start the riff into a little jam (which in some ways has a little Main Ten idea to it, the rhythm of the E to G to A picking that JG is doing) and it moves into a nice groove, some audience “woo!” and they’re off. Bob and Phil holding it down, Jerry slowly develops what he wants to explore, some specific notes accented, he’s playing with some riff idea for awhile. It’s a nice mellow groove that they build on for minutes, then at 3:30, the gliss up to the A and to the theme. This holds for a while as a typical Dark Star world and the verse enters a minute later.
Nice verse, interesting stuff from Bob on line two, hammering it on on the last offbeat accent and then with melodic lines on line 3.
The intro riff starts them into the middle section and the band slowly blows away reality and as it fades out there’s a single “bell toll” hit that heads into light feedback, then some bass tapping. (You can hear some heads starting to freak out nearby.) Cymbals, isolated hits, feedbacks, enharmonic sounds, a cavern of metallic noises and odd string noises. Tapping the strings with a slide, playing behind the bridge. Phil starts to take some forward steps at 10 minutes in, the volume goes up with some bass bombs and guitar feedback wailing, bass feedback coming up underneath, long drones. Really intense!
It ebbs at 11 minutes and a Sputnik starts coming in for a second, but is abandoned and then a slow quiet melodic section comes instead. Bob starts the notes for his two-chord thing, A7 and G7, but not in rhythm. There’s still feedback happening, and when guitar notes start happening, it’s still arhythmic, until some runs happen a little before 14 minutes in and Phil starts a slow walk and it heads toward some idea of a slow pulse, in the Dark Star chordal world. Really beautiful transition into and out of space in this version. The tempo picks up a bit, but it has occasional rhythmic dropouts, and remains mellow, though audience start clapping along. By 16 minutes there’s some Dark Star theme elements, and then the Soulful Strut begins for real a little later, when Bobby starts the chord progression, though he veers off a few times. Claves are signifying, sidestick drumset grooving it. The Strut isn’t super ‘hot jazz’ this evening, but it moves into a chunka-chunk rhythm for a bit, and JG uses some feedback to transition to a Bright Star theme and they head back to Dark Star proper.
They reel it in pretty quickly and verse two comes in at 19:30, at a higher energy than verse one, though not much movement on the lines 2 and 3. The outro sounds sort of ragged with all the parts and vocals spun around the hall, they head off to the outro chords and into St Stephen, people yell and clap.

Nice transitions in this version, very fluid. The intro improv is mellow, and not tons of jamming in the latter half, but a beautiful space section. A relatively medium-to-low-energy version, and not a great recording.

111 11/8/70 Port Chester, NY: 25:18 (DS 16:36 > Main Ten 8:42) AUD

Sort of hard to hear the beginning over the crowd noise, people are amped after Casey Jones and Truckin’ in the middle of the last set.
They are still influenced by the country licks from the beginning of the set, using a lot of hammer on stuff off the bat. Some high people having a convo near the mics, the band starts exploring the groove in a nice way, getting outside the chords settling in odd eddies of notes (with sly tuning happening on repeated notes.)
Guiro is keeping it rhythmic, sort of. By 4 minutes in it’s still coalescing, never quite settling. Bob has some interesting chords. JG goes on some Sputnik-y arpeggios, and the rhythmic pulse fades in and out, almost gone before 5 minutes, like it’s the middle section! More exploration and odd chordal stabs, then alluding to the Dark Star theme at 6 minutes, slowly, it enters and builds, volume backs off, there’s some glockenspiel and the verse begins, Jerry sounds intense and direct. Bob with his new hammer-on rhythm for the off beats on line two and scalar lines on line three.
The last line of the refrain lands heavily and Mickey picks up a metal bits-shaker and the bands blows everything away into bass feedback (a head nearby says, “whoa, goddam.”) Cymbals and odd sounds, some people make funny bird noises in the audience, yell at the band “rock!”, other people shush them! I hear coughing.
Loud yells of some sort are happening amidst the cymbal wash. Loud feedbacking screaming thing is plugged in and wails a few times too loudly before getting it under control, some volume swell chords happen, and tom tom rolls, cymbals and crashing with lots of feedback guitars and scrubbing bass weirdness. This goes on for a while! Feedback notes and glockenspiel appearing after 14 minutes in, in the mix of weirdness. More arhythmic splashes and a drum starts a pulse for a bit, Main Ten theme starting quietly underneath, at 16:30 or so, it starts that up as a slow groove, plodding along.

Main Ten as a groove continues for a couple minutes before some breakaways happen, Jerry sticks with the theme element for a long time, keeping it in the Main Ten world, it’s almost like renaissance music in a way, with the theme material on roots and then fifths. Nice development as a jam within Dark Star, but I guess we never get back to Dark Star really.
The drummers start to pick it up a bit, it dives right into the actual theme from JG and Phil a few minutes into this section (3:30 in the new track.) From here they start deviating, though the pulse is kept, and Bob is sort of droning. It falls apart a bit again at 4:20, but picks up from there with JG starting to actually solo, the band is moving away from the Main Ten riff and into improv. The solos settle into chordal bits, it’s fairly static. They start to build intensity on the root chord, and at 7:40 into this section, there’s sort of an idea of a Bright Star, -ish… but we’re heading somewhere else, and they stick on the Main Ten riff idea as an intro to Dancin’ in the Street, which continues at a medium tempo.

onto the Rick Turner Peanut:

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. (And apparently the last time it will ever be here, 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 the song, 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 a year previous would have moved 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 (Is this what they call 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, 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 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.

more Rick Turner “Peanut”

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.

114 4/26/71 Fillmore East: 12:52

Middle of the first set, nice mix with three guitars and Bill on drums ticking away at the hihat 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.

115 4/28/71 Fillmore East: 14:00 (with Tom Constanten) – Ladies & Gentlemen

Latter part of the second set, after a Cryptical-Drums (solo Bill doing an excellent job)-TOO suite and a cut Wharf Rat, Sugar Magnolia, and a lot of tuning and we presume setting up keyboards and then we get to Dark Star, with Tom Constanten back for the song on a reedy sounding organ.
“Where are we?” Then they start, and Jerry goes into a nice swinging jam, it’s at a relatively brisk tempo and the waves build and lull. It’s very 1969, especially with TC. Bill is mostly crashing cymbals and attempting a pulse with hi-hat, so that’s different. It’s a nice intro jam on the theme, TC goes for some organ riffing after a couple minutes, then it breaks into some static area for a bit, coming out into some chords and then a new delicate area leads to the gliss up to the A for the theme. Verse 1 already at 3:43, TC fully riffs on line one, they play line two with strong rhythm offbeat accents and then he riffs again on line three as they all wander, coming to strong A chords on the refrain.
Transitive Nightfall enters with some percussion Bill seems to have inherited, or maybe somebody else is there? It’s immediately static, with strong bass roots and chords but not much forward seeking. It dies away, TC holding long tones. (Sort of nice to have him in there.) with cymbal washes and occasional slow melodic bits leading to feedback tones and atonal notes. A big major chord, low bass drones, long tones, more feedback. A sputnik is emerging at 8 minutes. Bob is playing arpeggios alongside, Phil goes for high harmonic plucks.
Descending into a new jam, fast lead playing, a chord progression comes from Bob, then it goes full on country sounding. Are we going to enter a new ballad tableau? Nope, though it builds to a fast jam with Bob stretching some outside lead notes. It dies off and sounds like it might go into Wharf Rat instead for a minute, then at 12, the gliss to the A happens again, but no melody at first, until the Dark Star chords and groove come back. Verse 2 happens immediately at 12:40, drums make line two really pause, but pick up again on line three with the side stick groove. Outro is classic, though everybody appears to be out of tune by now, vocals and guitars. Phil extends his ending of the vocal lines, they go on to the counterpoint and the chords for a short time and enter St Stephen relatively suddenly. Everybody claps.
Decent and relatively fast version. Not very long, not very spacey, but some interesting jam ideas, I guess trying to figure out how to play this song in the world of their 1971 material, this is the third one in the month of April 1971, then they drop it for a while.

using a Les Paul Special at this next show.

116 7/31/71 New Haven, CT: 22:36 (SBD with AUD patch) – Road Trips Vol.1 No.3

Nice intro, Jerry starts out on a descending line and then picks it up with some lead lines with a slightly distorted and bright tone (Les Paul Special for this show! P-90s!) They sound pretty much into it after not playing the song for several months. Jerry forces an eddy in the moving flow with some repeated notes before 2 minutes in. It all falls apart at 3 minutes and then from the ashes, the theme starts again, drums coming in. It doesn’t seem to stick, though, and they go into some spaciness and off into atonal/arhythmic space world! Wow. This is serious. It moves forward with odd sounds and string scratching, bubbling up drums and bass, and Phil intimates the Dark Star theme again at 7 minutes, but it doesn’t move into a groove yet, it takes its time to get there, through more weirdness at varying levels, some stretched strings crying out and it all falls back together again in a jumble with some strong chordal leads heading toward Dark Star again, still playing around with the idea of maybe playing the song, but it does happen! Took ten minutes to get to the first verse, wow. Sort of a mellow verse tempo, lots of playing around with the rhythm, nothing is very spot-on, even line 2’s normal offbeats. Even after the refrain, the counterpoint is slightly offbeat, and it heads to strong bell-like tolling, but breaks down into a new ocean, Jerry comes in with single note line again, but not in any specific key. Phil is playing odd things with his strings, bouncing something around shoved in between them. Come volume swelled notes. Drum rolls. Distortion building up as the drums continue rolling around, when it breaks down we have odd behind-the-bridge picking rhythms with drums building a rhythm back up, trilling notes. Bob is interested in a dissonant chord he seems to like. Jerry starts some new lines, drums still rolling around, as Jerry starts up a riff sort of thing, Bob starts some chords and they break into the ‘Groovy’ jam with some stops on the IV chord. It breaks down for a while, builds back up. Breaks down, sounds like it might move back to Dark Star at 18:30, and gets to the theme again at 19, as if we head to verse 2. It never gets there. Maybe he forgot the lyrics? JG keeps trying out some solo ideas, Bob and Phil riff on the Dark Star chords, drums roll on. Then it suddenly dies off and they start Bird Song with a crash. What?

Now comes the “Nash” Strat.

117 10/21/71 Chicago, IL: 17:09 (DS 14:57 > Sittin’ > DS 2:12) – Dave’s Picks 3

This is a new era for Dark Stars, here. With Keith Godchaux on piano and Jerry using the 1955 Stratocaster given to him by Graham Nash, later to become “Alligator.”
Starts with intensity, exact rhythmic statement of the intro, into a nice jam, with piano. Jerry has some nice licks going on, back to a Strat now, really good tone to this instrument, he starts playing with the pinch harmonics even near the top. Takes a long way around the Dark Star melody, lots of multi-note pull-offs and eddies with the whole band, it’s like the “equipment” is warming up, lots of spacing out, and Keith goes into a whole tone planing chords thing at 3 minutes that takes them tonally outside for a while, out of that wave into a theme statement but then more extra-modal wandering. Trilling from the piano. It’s a very different sound than the most recent Dark Stars, especially earlier in the year.
They even take it full on into intense monster movie atonalism, but it breaks apart and Jerry forces a Dark Star theme at 5:30, the band comes in and it gets going again. A short jam and then verse 1 at 6:40, nice strong guitar and vocal melody leading it in unison. Strong offbeat accents on line two from rhythm section, then the groove continues in line three with slight ornaments from bass. Nice outro and into the middle, it trills away on bass, chords from piano. It quiets way down, but the space is still tonal and fairly pretty. Then on to introspective noodling from everybody, Jerry goes back to trying the pinch harmonics for a while, then back to melodic lines. By 11 it’s very quiet and odd noises are starting, but the piano is still arpeggiating mostly in key. They pick up on a quick pulse that goes into a major key jam, which eventually goes to Feelin’ Groovy chords, descending major key bass. It oddly goes sideways halfway through 14 minutes and goes atonal again! The piano doing this makes it sound sort of classical. The way out from this is apparently to start playing Sittin’ On Top of the World, quick and bluesy. Outro licks of this song go almost directly back into Dark Star, at a comfortable pace, and to verse 2 almost immediately. This part doesn’t seem real, somehow, like a 7” single 2 minutes of Dark Star edited on to the end. The outro to Dark Star is very exactly played, the outro chords go to Me and Bobby McGee. Weird.

118 10/24/71 Detroit, MI: 20:47

Here we find Dark Star sandwiched between Mexicali Blues and Me & Bobby McGee, like an uncomfortable side trip to space between very normal country-blues in a down-to-earthy set overall.
They start at a staid tempo, and get in the mood pretty quickly, sparse lead notes and line, (people clapped at the start). It sort of dies down after the start, to get to a “from nothing” build up. Jerry is way into his pull-off lines. Man, this Strat sounds good, I can see why he used it for a long time. Swirls, a lot of eddying (even sputnik-y arpeggios) and not a lot of forward movement in the first few minutes. It’s nice, very spacey, everybody sort of of exploring in their own directions.
The multi-headed hydra is looking in multiple directions. But relaxedly. It dies down to pinch harmonics again at 4 minutes and Phil takes it with some pulsing bass line, but then it goes atonally off the rails into space. Phil comes back in with some riff ideas, they are still not settling into a mode area. Then a theme statement at 5:45, but running away from it as soon as it’s stated, the band falls into a groove, and some nice lead stuff follows, getting back to a slow version of the theme material. Verse 1 at 7:15. Slow and stately, with a chugging drum beat. The line two offbeats are sort of skewed by the riffy bass line and drums, not much wandering on line three with the drums like that. The refrain brings it around and back to the jam intro, which starts as if in a normal Dark Star jam, Jerry is moving a lot with his lead lines, the drums are grooving still… for a bit, it turns into full-band waterfalls a couple times, then back to a slow groove. Jerry is still working on some fast riff ideas, Phil also has some fast bits he’s working with, and the tempo builds for a while, by 10 minutes we’re into a rocking groove that rockets onwards. Jerry is rocking out. Then slightly before 12 minutes, JG slows himself down and reflects, the band steps back for a sec, then they head back to the fast forward momentum, Keith plowing on some chord over and over.
An almost Bright Star and Jerry reels it in again with some weird bends, then Phil brings up the descending bass line for the Strut but it doesn’t quite take. They go into a holding pattern for a while, high bass notes, Jerry getting back into the major key groove. It sounds a bit like it might head to another song, and at 15 min there’s some sixths/chordal lead parts that could be heading elsewhere, but come to mark the Dark Star chords a bit more, a new sort of finger pick pattern that’s not Sputnik. Still moving forward quickly, it builds to a wave crest again with more Bright Star insinuation, then breaks down back to the slow tempo at about 17 minutes. A slow Sputnik is underneath this area. At 18 minutes, the theme emerges again, and they band settles back into Dark Star. Verse 2 happens at 19 minutes. With the slow groove drums, they break it up a bit more on line two this time. Also more filigree from Bob on line three.
All vocal parts for the outro, not exactly in tune, yikes. The land in a heap at the end, the lines head upward to the static chords, but not to St Stephen this time, instead they sort of cede to Bobby strumming the intro to Bobby McGee. (and then Cumberland Blues, and then they do eventually get to St Stephen.)

Interesting version, very wandering. These early Keith versions don’t have much direction, but there is some speed to this one in the latter half. Keith seems to take “space” to mean heading out of the key or mode, and the band hears that and goes with it, so we’re getting more atonal or polytonal areas erupting out of the jam. No “sea of holes” type space lately. Some nice playing from Jerry in bits and pieces, the Nash-gift Strat sounds really good though.

119 10/31/71 Columbus, OH: 23:14 – Dicks Picks 2

Set two starts off with Dark Star for this Halloween show!
After the intro riff, Jerry starts wandering with the opening theme right away, and they head into a mellow jam. Bill is in on the drum set right off the bat lately, for the pulse (no guiros anymore, ya know.) It’s a different beast in that way as well. Really beautiful expressions from the lead guitar, nice tones used, little eddies of notes, and runs. Phil’s got a different tone, (what bass is he using these days?) Nice continuing jam that lands on the A at 4:25 and they start the theme, breaking off for more improvisation on it. This seems much more moving in the world that Dark Star will enter in the following year, it sounds like. Jerry takes the Strat out for some highs and lows, exploring tonal/pickup variation as much as register variation. He gets into a tremolo area for a while.
A strong landing back to the theme at 6:50, and verse 1 at 7:15. Really strong offbeat statements for line two, mild wandering and odd chords coming in on line three. Jerry sticking the guitar doubling for the vocals.
The classic intro to the middle section, which starts with more groove like at the start but Jerry takes it sideways with some fast picking and then arpeggio, Phil and Bobby follow suit. Then Phil goes for that fast pulse bass line thing, and they head into a major key-sounding jam for a bit, but it doesn’t last. The key idea is out the window and they go outside for a while, a groove brings it back in for a bit, they’re exploring up and down, not really sticking with any particular idea, again more like the multiple heads looking in varied directions rather than the multi-headed machine.
Oddly at 13 minutes Jerry starts the Tighten Up/Strut/proto-Eyes Maj7 chords and they go into the Latin flavored jam area. (Apparently the first one in a Dark Star this year and the last version of this in Dark Star at all, say commenters on Archive.) Keith is not with the band on these chords really, he’s got some other idea going on (but he’s low in the mix).
This jam goes on over some hills and dales, starts hinting back at Dark Star melodically at 18 minutes or so, but keeps at tempo until a minute later as Jerry is Sputniking, and the band defers. Theme-like statements, non-temporally as it breaks apart, then non-tonal space with diminished scales and chromaticism. Scary movie stuff, tremolos and trills. Out of this, instead of going to verse 2 or the theme, they start Sugar Magnolia. Ok, then!

I liked the first part of this version, but I felt like it never really got it together after that and the second half just spins out.

120 11/7/71 Harding Theater, SF: 13:58

Back in San Francisco, at the Harding Theater, 616 Divisidero. It was a nice deco theatre in the 1930s, not sure how it was holding up in 1971, I don’t think this was a usual venue—it’s the Emporium now, trying to revive the deco theater that was there, and oddly it’s next door to the Independent Club (which has been the Kennel Club, The Justice League, The Vis Club, etc) which has been a music venue for the past 4 decades.
Nice tempo start, lots of bass in the mix, sounds like Bill got himself a hand shaker of some sort. Jerry plays a bit then goes into feedback before a wide melodic pattern, really creative lead playing of the theme-adjacent areas that dive down into quiet tones and build back up. Everybody is playing at the edges of the Dark Star theme groove world, it’s back in there somewhere, but the players tonight are skirting the edges in different ways. Really interesting repetitive-pulse groove area a few minutes in, and it leads the drums into the groove. Phil is leading this, it seems like, though possibly he’s just loudest in the mix. He comes out of this area into some low chord arpeggios that lead the band into spaciness, with some scraped cymbals and non-rhythmic playing until Jerry states the theme at 7:45 and the drums bring a groove back in, though Phil is still in exploration mode so it doesn’t stick and heads back to spaciousness, Jerry comes back again to the theme at 9:20 and they finally are playing the song. Verse 1 a few seconds later, nice reading, the drums providing a groove for line one, then punctuating larger stops for the off rhythm on line two. A very together route into the refrain, and the outro. Phil has a nice melodic statement leading to the intro riff, then as they settle into the Transitive Nightfall, it’s all fast quiet tremolo and oddness, low notes from the bass, blowing reality away again, some string scrapes and things, but a drum hit starts Jerry off on a lead run at a new pace in a minor key area (sound like b minor, the same notes as the A mixolydian, but accented differently. It’s almost that ‘beautiful jam’ area, but Bob never quite gets on the actual chords. Some weird nursery rhyme things from Phil, he’s really in his own world this evening. Phil even plays the Feelin’ Groovy descending chords for a try, but then Jerry starts the Other One rhythm and it goes off for a bit, and devolves into a drum solo! Ok, weird one, guys. Nice playing, they’re still sounding a bit like a multi-headed thing that can’t focus it’s minds together, each head is sort of looking in its own direction.
The drum solo is maybe not a part of this version, I’d say (though it’s just labeled “Drums” of course), so much as the extended intro to The Other One. The Other One is much more intense, though weird in its own way, encompassing Me and My Uncle in the way that the band is doing these sort-of acid rock things lately that enclose country/blues ballads. Where the blowing away of reality in Dark Star used to lead to space, it’s now leading us to other more “human” realities with the ballads. The second half of The Other One after M&MU is much more like continuing Dark Star, there’s even a Sputnik at 3:30 into it, and it’s very filled with space, I would not have been surprised if they had completed Dark Star with its second verse here or after verse 2 of TOO (in fact I would have appreciated it…!) but as somebody on stage says “We probably wouldn’t have stopped there, but we got a broken string.”

121 11/15/71 Austin: 20:44 (DS 12:55 > El Paso > DS Jam 7:49) – Road Trips Vol.3 No.2

Lotta Phil, he’s switched his tone to a much more lead-bass tone lately on the giant bass, so he’s strong in these mixes lately. He’s going for a lot of little fast riffs in between statements of the Dark Star theme area, as is Jerry. They are all working as a unit on this intro jam this evening, much more than it has been in the earlier part of the year. It’s like multiple lines braiding the rope of the music.
Jerry drops into a Sputnik after a couple minutes in, with Keith arpeggiating along, then they take it up again, JG is really reaching for some beautiful lead playing. It falls off the mode at 3:30 for a bit and then falls back in and JG goes for some of those pinch harmonics, and Keith leads it out in arpeggios. Drums mostly drop out for a bit and it enters a space area, but the players are maintaining some pulse so it pulses back to life. Phil is mostly playing higher notes so when he plays a descending bass line, it sounds like it will come back to Dark Star, but he goes back to the higher notes again, Bob on some odd chords, they continue playing propulsively but outside, then it breaks up and JG starts the theme and verse 1 at 7 minutes. Really stated rhythms on line 2 with Phil climbing on the beats, back to a groove for line 3, only wandering at the ends of the phrase. A funny drop to the “Diamonds” and a strong bass note. Into bell tolling on the bass, with volume knob playing, and noises taking over. JG skirting all over with fast quiet lines as Phil and Bobby play with feedback and noise. Drums start kicking it in and they build it up with a strong rhythm and fast lead playing going on and on, the endless melody. Jerry takes it down at 11 to a lower register, the rhythm section is still chugging away, but it’s dying off slowly, heading somewhere else, JG is playing with double stop lines, and some sputnik-y arpeggios. At 12 minutes he takes off in a fast lead that goes all over the place harmonically, and keeps switching key centers even as he’s playing some country licks in there. Sounds like Phil gets frustrated trying to keep it and hits some low notes, and then they start a waltz time and what happens, they start El Paso! What a weird window into the past, emerging from Dark Star into a Marty Robbins cowboy song.
(I’ve got a lot to say about El Paso, all off topic perhaps, but I’ve been listening to it and the sister song “Feleena from El Paso” for a long time and trying to reconstruct the reality that this ballad takes place in, and I’ve come to a conclusion that the entire song hinges on cognitive dissonance: The Cowboy’s tale is based on misconception of the reality of the situation, ie, maybe Feleena doesn’t care about him at all, probably it’s only a day or less when he “hasn’t seen a young maiden” for so long, probably the people he sees returning to town don’t know who he is at all and when he, in his paranoia, starts shouting and shooting his way back into town, they are taken aback and start to shoot back, duh. He’s probably dead way before the song ends, that rifle shot is a cap to that, and it’s doubtful that Feleena comes to his dying side let alone even knows who he is. He’s basically schizophrenic.)
Anyway, it goes off into atonal lines as soon as the song portion ends and the band starts a new space section with atonal notes in melodic lines, and noises and sounds from Phil and Bob. JG starts chromatic descending lines over this, building up the monster movie soundtrack, breaking it down into tremolos. (What is this sort of space called by the ‘heads?”) Continuing lines and statements with no tonal center, volume swells and tremolos, string scrubbing, then suddenly a chugging rhythm emerges at 3:40 into this part, A minor to D. (“The Carlos Santana Secret Mystical Chord Progression!”)
It goes on with this jam for a while, Jerry playing with some licks that mimic the intro riff occasionally. It eventually peters out to a quieter place, Phil still playing some odd little sounds. It never comes back to Dark Star proper, instead, Jerry starts the intro riff to Casey Jones.

Nice playing, especially in the first part, braiding lines together as they move forward in time.

122 12/5/71 Felt Forum, NYC: 20:17 (DS 8:01 > Uncle > DS 12:16) (instrumental)

A rolling jam that just continues on for a few minutes before taking a breather, then Phil comes in with a different riff idea, and they move into a new area, Bill is really rocking out. When it comes back to a potential Dark Star theme area at 5 minutes it’s still got forward momentum. Great playing from all the musicians. Sort of moves toward a descending bass chord progression bit for a sec, then away again. Bill starts a side stick groove, but they don’t stick with it, and it devolves into bass chords and rolling drums. As it moves into atonalism, they crest a wave and then come back down to start Me and My Uncle, another ballad in the middle, it takes a bit to settle into it with Jerry still playing lead until Bob starts singing. It’s a fast and strong version of the song.
From the last hit of the song it starts wandering off toward Dark Star territory and quiets down into a spacey section. At a minute into this section there are hints of the Star theme, but it maintains no tonal center and all lines wander out of the mode, and again at 2 minutes in, it’s like atonal variations of bits of the theme. This is the new style of space section, it’s got more “notes” and less “sounds” and the notes are not tied to any center. Keith is doing some very outside piano bits, they build it into a tense trilling area, Jerry spikes some non-tonal lead playing and string stretching as the band builds up tension. Some string scrubbing with picks or other implements, bass feedback, it maintains a tense level for quite a while. Jerry sticks on some high notes, with noisy accompaniment. Nice jam! Some shouts from the audience. A little dip in volume and back up with everybody making noise. They are really holding a level of tension here. Jerry starts some lead lines at 7:30 into this part, Keith is playing triplets against any pulse established by that, Phil and Bill pick up the pulse, the band drops in and starts a fast jam for a minute, then it dies off with some more non-tonal melodies accompanying it. At 9:30, Phil comes in with the Dark Star theme and Jerry does some slow Sputnik, neither coalesces, but it does place the jam in the Dark Star world and it slows down the tempo. At 11 minutes into this section, it feints a jam, but it falls apart as Bob continues scrubbing strings, then Phil comes back to the Dark Star riff and they move forward. Toward… not Dark Star, but where they might have actually gone to a verse (that never happens) Jerry is playing the intro to Sittin’ on Top of the World as a collage right over the Dark Star theme area, and sure enough, they play that instead. Wow, man. Trippy! It never got to a Dark Star verse, but definitely had elements of the song in the jam themes and the riff poking its head through. A couple side trips to space while landing back on earth and hopping off again a couple times. The set continues with regular old songs, ya know.
Space, as such, is now a multi-headed free-for-all combining polytonal or atonal melodic and harmonic components with noise/sound-qua-sound components. Free jazz-y. It’s a very rootless area (well, space) with hints at normalcy (short runs of tonal figures) presented in collage, like superimposed realities.

123 12/15/71 Ann Arbor, MI: 20:23

Nice strong steady and relaxed groove right off the bat, drums joining in during the intro riff, rolling into a groove. Bobby has a little turnaround riff back to the A that’s cool, winding around—sort of like the later Terrapin Station riff… Jerry’s going for some chromatic bits in between the melodic runs. It runs strong for only a couple minutes then hits a lull like where it hits the second line of the verse, in the following space they explore, Jerry even references the climbing triplets of the outro. It slowly moves into a new rhythm, rolling on the A and coming to rest on the E, then goes outside tonally. It enters a quieter space with individual little sounds and riffs, some tremolo, it moves into a descending chromatic area that builds into free atonalism, a little chaos. Free jazz. Moving into ascending chromaticism chaos, sustaining the tension at a high plateau for quite a while, at 7 minutes Jerry breaks out into lead playing again, fast this time. They suggest the 6/8 of TOO but holding mostly on the A root. An A drone starts and the rhythm moves out of the 6/8 proper and into a more pulse-oriented area, which crests and then suddenly out of the ashes the Dark Star theme comes out and verse 1 at 10 minutes. Wow!
Sort of a groovy jumpy rhythm for line 2’s offbeats, with rolling tom toms. Back to the groove for line 3, Bill is really into his drum rolls these days. The outro is offset between the guitars, they are sort of echoing each other, and it moves into a fading Dark Star groove for the Transitive Nightfall.
It fades to Phil strumming big bass chords, the guitars making small noises. Then volume swells and plinky noises, when it fades into quieter space it sounds like Jerry has a slide scrubbing on the strings. A very sparse area, small occasional sounds, sliding notes, trilling piano keys. Bobby on some weird stretches. At 14:30, JG starts melodies again, rising from the ashes slowly and quietly, bit by bit, still very quiet and sparse. Bob plays the G7 to am thing and it goes into a jam on this progression. Jerry plays more with his pinch harmonics. As it builds in intensity, it seems to be moving toward a new song, sounds like Keith is trying all sorts of chord progressions. They even get something like the descending feelin’ groovy chords one time at 18 minutes. It devolves into little riffs from Phil, no real chord progression sticking for very long. Sort of hovering, sounds like they’re trying to figure out where to go. Nice build at the end in this modal area, but it heads off to somewhere else, and on the tape Jerry starts “Deal” and they go there. There could be something missing on the tape…

Again, nice start, it sort of dissolves at the end. Deal might have been the window in the middle, but it never gets back to Dark Star. So ends the Dark Stars of 1971.

124 3/23/72 Academy of Music, NYC: 22:43

Upbeat start and they roll into it, Jerry takes an odd upward lick to begin his soloing. Bill is in on drums right off the top, they’re sort of in a rolling groove form the outset. Jerry plays more with his G# stretch that he hit earlier, but eventually comes back to the G of the mixolydian and plays some thematic bits. He goes into a Sputnik after a couple minutes, though, an eddy in the flow. It lasts for a while, but breaks out into more theme material with improvising on it. I guess it’s the first time in a while they’ve played the song and they’re exploring bits and pieces of it, breaking down the elements, building them back up, it tremolos out and dies off for a bit into a quiet landscape, JG comes back in with the theme at 4:30 and the band backs him up into the verse.
Lots of drum rolling into line two and through it, Phil on an octave lick on line three so no real wandering. Breaking it down for the refrain, and to the outro licks,
JG starts the middle with that same G# to A stretch. They continue in a dissipating groove that falls apart to mostly Phil notes, some trilling bits from the guitars and piano. A nice quiet area is reached, piano tinkling around, the guitars go in for soundscape ideas.
At 8:00 they go into chromatic riffs, but quietly, not in horror movies fashion. It proceeds in little waves of sounds, trills, a few notes at a time, building slowly in intensity and a more atonal nature to the chromatic licks, Jerry uses a backed off nasal tone sound, wah wah pedal maybe. It comes to a rest at about 10:30, and then builds with more diatonic minor key riffing from Phil and Jerry. It’s just a wave of this, then back to chromaticism, drums building up now. Phil goes for a repetitive low note (he’s loud in the mix). They build in volume staying outside key-wise, some wide augmented arpeggios from Jerry, scrubbing from Bob, they are getting loud and noisy, atonal, Phil is wiping his strings, it’s all gestural sounds, Jerry with the wah wah. Bill comes in with some weird beat on the ride cymbal, but they don’t really get into a groove and it fades off, Jerry comes in with some prettier notes, while Phil is still making uglier ones. Again, Bill comes in with a groove idea at about 15 minutes and Bobby picks up on it, eventually Phil does. Bobby is sort of playing the Feeling Groovy rhythm but not the same chords. They are slowly heading back into playing in a key, using that syncopated underlying rhythm. At 16:30 it breaks into a major key thing and the band starts swinging, into Feeling Groovy, they finally hit the descending bassline and chords at 17:20. They continue with the major key groove. It may go somewhere else? At 19 it starts to sound like Sugar Magnolia licks. And Bob is playing China Cat riff! What…? It breaks apart and out of the rubble, Jerry starts the Dark Star riff again, yay!
Verse 2 suddenly at 21:20, Phil still riffing on an octave thing, he goes for an ascending walk on line two and then holds high E notes across line 3. Well, then. The refrain comes along and all vocals on the madrigal outro, a nice reading except then Phil breaks it and the normal outro riffs fall apart.
Looks like the set moves on to Big Boss Man and Not Fade Away after this. This was a nice reading of Dark Star, lots of weirdness and a bit of groove, not super much forward momentum in the jams except for the major key stuff toward the end, but the atonal space was interesting, though heavily punctuated by Phil making a lot of noise on his bass.

125 4/8/72 London: 31:30 – Steppin’ Out, Europe ’72 Complete Recordings

Well, this is a great show. Playing in the Band is incredible, for starters, the band-as-unit jamming is coming together.
Dark Star takes up a big chunk of the second set, after Hurts Me Too, before Sugar Magnolia and Caution.
Nice bass melodics after the intro, Bobby takes off into a mood setting pretty quickly also, Bill comes in with some toms to keep the pulse, it’s very light and airy overall. Little quick riffs from Jerry and Phil in between waves. Into a build with everyone focusing on forward moving 8th notes for a wave, then Jerry on some folky melody.
My impression is like it’s descending into the sea, bringing us into the underwater life.
Into a pulse-based section winding it up into the 6 minute area with the minor key fast riffing. Long builds, telling some epic stories. Wow, this is a whole different animal than it was previously. Jerry brings it down in the 8th minute, Bob has some riffs going on. Phil and Bill rocking it. Interesting when Jerry feints down by chromatics, Keith is right there with him ready to go out of key. At 10 minutes, Jerry starts the Dark Star theme, and we’re back in the song. He’s still winding around the theme, so many variations to explore.
Verse 1 at 11 minutes in. The rhythm section moves right on through line 2 instead of pausing on the downbeat, relaxed halftime backbeat, cruising through the lines, some wandering in the bass on line three. The refrain is nicely stated and then they head off into the Transitive Nightfall, Phil and Bob leading the way down, down, down. With cymbals splashing.
Getting toward some feedback from the bass… small noises from the guitars. Soundscaping again, nice. Keith is maybe stuck a little bit on piano, something which only plays notes? So he’s on chords and moving around. Phil making some specific notes, and feedbacks, Jerry coming in on expressive slow stately melodic statements. Some artificial harmonics against rumbling bass bits. Bobby coming back, maybe he had to pee.
Phil starts some rhythm attempts. Building it back up while Bobby tries some feedback. Bill is back in and they’re grooving, pretty quickly, moving forward. Jerry’s playing with some modal changes, again Keith right there. Up into a chromatic crest, hammering it out, there at 19 minutes, into tremolo. Hey, organ is coming in! Pigpen is playing, wow. Or? The wave crests, they come back down. It’s in a floaty area and then Phil makes a root to put it in key. Jerry is doing a weird tremolo, organ is doing arpeggios, piano is playing rhythms. At 21 minutes it’s coming down again, we’ve got some minor notes still, though Keith seems to be suggesting otherwise.
Jerry takes off on little melodic flights in a rhythmic lull. Then some volume swells of a bit of the vocal melody on his guitar. It enters an abstracted Dark Star thematic area, arhythmic. Again, dropping into the sea…Jerry starts some atonal playing in minute 24, it’s entering the horror movie soundtrack, wah wah pedal coming in, Bill rolling around. Continuing atonal free jazz, into some hits together accenting things. Bobby building chords upwards, with Keith. A sustained peak at 26:30 for a minute, then it crests and Jerry starts some very pretty, major key folky licks, they all fall in. An instant song.
Then they hang it on the A for a bit and the backbeat comes back in. It’s almost Sugar Magnolia already, but with a new interesting descending melody and bass line. Aha, this is a theme jam isn’t it?
Then suddenly it is Sugar Magnolia!
What an amazing version. Really nice playing, interesting sections, nothing like the versions previous. Very unique.

126 4/14/72 Copenhagen: 29:14 (also AUD) – Europe ’72 Complete Recordings

Dark Star Song Map: theme [4:00] > Jam [2:00] > Space [1:30] > Jam on DS theme [3:00] > Space [4:00] > Jam on DS theme [2:00] > First Verse [2:00] > Space [0:30] > Jam [3:00] > Jam on Feeling Groovy theme [3:00] > Space with sputnik hints [4:00] > Sugar Magnolia.

I’m leaving Copenhagen on the train as a listen to this, oddly. After Øresund Space Collective shows. The main train station is right next to Tivoli where this show was. Just a little over 50 years later…

Again a stunning Playing in the Band jam in the first set, it’s gonna be interesting to see the development of this tune into the space monster. Here Dark Star comes toward the middle in the second set after Looks Like Rain (Jerry on Pedal Steel!), and again into Sugar Magnolia.
Some futzing around beforehand, and the bass starts it, drums rolling in, Bob comes in and then Jerry and Keith. Nice relaxed feel, for some reason this feel they started this one and the last one with reminds me of tropical beach relaxedness. Not sure why. Like, I almost hear a mellow surf crashing in the background there.
Anyway, Jerry is stretching out on the theme, some nice runs. He finds an eddy on a stretched high note, the band starts swirling around it, it comes back down, this wave brings us down at about 4 min into a new area. Phil’s got a little riff on roots and fifths, Jerry starts swirling runs, they start a build, it goes up and down. Oddly it comes down again into a more sound scape-y area, static notes and held rhythmic piano ostinato, Phil takes it outside a bit with odd chords, Jerry still running up and down, and back to chords for the Dark Star theme area -type… This one has Jerry holding a higher note in the repeating rhythm ostinato, then the drums come in with a new beat, and Phil comes up with a descending bass bit, like the Feelin’ Groovy thing a little, and then back into space a bit. These spacey sections are different. Some string scrubbing sounds, drum soloing to silence, modal changes, little trills. Very calm space. Small statements. Some volume swells. Phil sort of leads it back at 15 min or so to Dark Star land. It slowly coalesces, the lead guitar calling to the theme from major scale riffs, and slowly coming to the thematic stuff, they start landing on that A that signals the Dark Star theme and it happens at 16:40. And into a verse at 17. Beautiful.
Jerry’s vocals sound a bit dramatic. Nice rolling reading of the verse, strong guitar doubling the vocal melody. Phil’s wanders on line 3 are sets of riffs. And to the intro stuff, but as soon as it lands, it lands, they’re ready to be in a new land already, no fooling around with blowing away the old, it’s already there. Bill even rolls it into drum wildness. It builds into a quick tempo thing, lots of strumming from Bob, and then he develops it into a descending riff-based thing also, Jerry is rocking out and he gets to a (different) descending repeating riff also. And then at 22 minutes, Phil and Bob go right into the Feelin’ Groovy major key world. That was a lot of different descending riffs that telegraphed that!
It devolves in a space section again, no fixed address. Little mournful stretched notes with the tone rolled off, odd chords. Scrubbing the bass. As it builds it gets more atonal and monster movie. Some free jazz drumming. Big bass chords. Jerry has a little melodic phrase that spurs Keith into a repeating arpeggio thing and this leads right into Sugar Magnolia, while Jerry is still in rolled off wah wah land, he fixes that pretty quickly and they sing the song.

I loved the first 2/3 of this one, the last third was ok—for some reason I didn’t really dig the Feeling Groovy stuff in there. Not sure why, some notion of what I’m liking in the Dark Star world lately, like this jam is too upbeat somehow and seems foreign in there. Well, actually, I’ve never really been down with this particular jam in the space of this song (I know, I’m weird.) Anyway, really nice playing, but a lot of ups and downs, jams into space, into jams into space. Really nice recording and mix on these ones, which is great. I like the mixes where the guitars are L and R and the piano is more centered rather than over Bob on the right.

127 4/17/72 Copenhagen: 30:54 – Europe ’72 Complete Recordings

This one was on TV. I’m listening before watching it.
After the intro they’re already in stretch-it-up mode with reaches and harmonics from Jerry. Super vibe in the mode with everybody relaxedly floating along. That tropical beach feeling again. Lilting lines, little triple-metered phrases in the lead and then the bass. Then the plaintive swells, allusions to the theme, some waves to catch, up and down.
In the trough it brings it around into a new area of unspecified rhythm and more minor sonority. Gotta say that Stratocaster sounds good. (It’s an odd bird, this gift from Graham Nash, a parts-caster with a ’57 body and ’63 neck that has a maple fretboard which is rare for that year. A fretboard cap on the maple neck, not a solid maple neck like the 50s Strats.)
Seamlessly moving into chromatic space, taking the audience outside the realms of “song” world. And then back in with the main theme at 7 1/2 minutes, with some pedal steel-style stretched notes. And strong bass and rhythm pulse backing it up into a new Wharf-Ratty feel, back to the theme and the verse.
Verse 1 at 9:45, with drums chugging away through line one and giving the pauses on line 2 with some rolls back into the rhythm for line 3, with Phil playing a descending “searchlight” wandering (I don’t think I’ve heard that before!)
And the Transitive Nightfall starts as if we’re continuing to play the song. Jerry starts on an arpeggio Sputnik style, fading in and out. Phil with some lead note and Bob with some chordal stabs. Arpeggiated piano. It sort of dispels itself into drum rolls and tremolo guitar, isolated piano notes before Jerry starts with some lines, taking it down, down, down. Back into chromatic space, the whirlpool.
Now we’re underwater. It’s non-tonal, sparse, not scary but disparate. Some soundscaping. Piano waterfalls. Jerry imitating that as well, and then they start chasing each other around a bit. Back into a modal scale, Phil plays with a Dark Star-type riff very quickly. Settling to a major key area for a short moment then running with fast line. The wah wah pedal goes on. More chromaticism, building intensity, some organ swells in here! (Yay, Pigpen!) It’s more action movie than monster movie in this section. Really building and chasing each other around. Strong piano statements in the 21st minute, very Rachmaninoff. Bass is rumbling and playing chords. Crying guitar leads, into melodic statements, still atonal, but playing with scale statements.
They hit the bottom of that long wave and sift around in the sand for a bit, first some major 7th chords coming in to establish a new jam area, then onto more minor chord areas. This develops into a jazzy jam and then into the Let it Grow chords (as you mentioned). This is a nice late-in-the-Dark-Star jam, feels better to me than the Feelin’ Groovy idea. Jerry goes through some chromatic pulloffs, through a Main Ten-type riff to a sputnik arpeggio to a lead again as the band falls into chaos, he stays on a repeated stretched E, and holds it into feedback, Phil plays through a little Dark Star riff and it dies out into a chordal thing and Bob starts Sugar Magnolia, like a cross-fade.

Well, that was amazing.

Aw, I tried watching the video of the show, but the Dark Star segment doesn’t have much actual synced footage. Most of it’s not actually playing Dark Star, just random other footage of them playing done all psychedelicized with occasional pieces of actual sync. The intro looks real, Pigpen doing some percussion as they start out. I was hoping to get a good look at them playing this thing!

128 4/24/72 Dusseldorf: 40:38 (DS 25:45 > Uncle > DS 14:54) – Rockin’ the Rhein, Europe ’72 Complete Recordings

Rockin’ the Rhein, with a bunch of cowboy songs—some of which had been very popular there for years, you know: there was a huge American country music presence in Germany due to servicemen there since WWII, lots of German fans. In this set we get the El Paso and Me and My Uncle, surrounding and within Dark Star, its other worlds.
The intro, riff repeated a few times and then relaxed rolling around, lithe waterfalls of notes and drum fills, from guitar and piano alongside each other, little chordal bits. Some eddies of low notes, little Dark-Starry-riff bits. It’s very relaxed in a latent way: anything could happen and the music accepts that.
Nice little following bits, a stretch from Jerry and then one from Bob. They go into a minor key area, some phrygian seconds, for a bit in the third minute, and back out again. In the fourth minute Jerry is trying some repeated phrases and there’s an echo, it sounds like he’s testing what the echo units from the front of house are doing (of course German technicians would already have echo units in the front of house racks in 1972. Typisch.) The house-sound gives a big space sound to the mix overall. This exploration moves the band into a more atonal and arhythmic, and then more minor modal space, and when it dies out at 6:30 or so, Jerry starts a pretty little nursery rhyme melody, but this builds into chaos also! More exploration follows, they are really stretching it out, waves of chaos and harmony. Some very avant-garde stuff. Sounds like the front of house got the piano in the echo for a bit there at 8:30. They build it into a fast groove by 9 minutes and continue it upwards until it comes down into a pretty area again and into Dark Star themes a minute later, in a harmony setting between the guitars. This music is very diegetic in its dramatic ups and downs, like story-telling.
Volume swell playing, pedal steel-like stretches, and then back to the theme.
Verse one at 11 minutes. Piano waterfall into line two, some pausing from the drums on the downbeats and builds into the next line. The echo is in on the vocals on line three (“Casting…..casting…”) but no real casting about from the bass this evening, he’s pretty static, though he tries to build it up in the refrain. Some interesting piano chord interjections in here.
Outro, and into the Transitive Nightfall. The entry is often as if they’re going to keep grooving along with the Dark Star chords, and it breaks apart. Here, as soon as they reach the downbeat of the end of the outro it devolves into repeated riff bits immediately, we’re in a deep ocean already. Then Jerry plays with arpeggiated tones with a rolled off wah pedal and everybody is hovering, some small bits of feedback and held notes from guitars and bass seem to shift like a chord progression, but then Phil starts booming and it goes spacey and atonal. The drums come in raggedly. Piano trills and bits of chords, sounds like the piano signal is moving around. They take their time getting into a new quick groove, all jamming along by 16 minutes in. Jerry builds it up to heights and then into a riffy area and back down again. As it comes down the rhythm dissipates into sparse licks, lots of fast little atonal turns from Jerry and Phil. Wah wah pedal back on, it’s pretty scary in here, they have a 6/8 TOO style rhythmic theme for a second, that too is left by the roadside, Jerry is building it up in wah-tones and tremolos, everybody is trilling and tremolo-ing. Jerry is scrubbing the heck out of his strings with chromatic close-note phrases and building it up to a climax with the wah wah in the 20th minute. Wow, this is incredibly dramatic! At the top, it breaks into isolated notes and suddenly a harmony appears between the bass and the guitars. Still playing with isolated note, the pinch harmonics come in, and Phil is rubbing something on his strings up and down.
A sparser playground is reached. Bill plays on tom toms, the band remains extra-modal though Jerry is still playing fast phrases, now at a quieter level. He starts a little jaunty repeated descending phrase at a few pitch levels.
Out of the chromatic chaos, Bob starts Me & My Uncle. Odd window into “reality” here that we’ve arrived at. I hear organ in here a bit, so I guess Pigpen came back to the stage for a second?
Three and a half minutes of relative song-based normalcy and the last chord falls back into the sea of improvisation with some arpeggiated movement from Jerry into legato phrases from all players. The echo is back on Jerry’s guitar. Jerry is really feeling some melancholy melodic sense this evening as much as he was the monster movie frightening stuff, some of the melodic phrases he lands on are extremely evocative and he obviously feels it and repeats it.
A sputnik-y area a couple minutes in for a minute, bits of his toolbox. This section is a slow build in the e minor area, though a phrygian F appears also, and it leads back into chromaticism.
Jerry repeats an E for a while at 5 minutes, before going back to more atonal/polytonal lead playing, Keith right along with him. Phil tries some short phrases, pulling his strings. Chromatic again for a bit, then Keith has a minor key phrase at 7 minutes into this section and it moves into a more tonal/minor (E dorian) area a brisk clip. It sort of lands on A again at 9 minutes in and then Jerry emphasizes that with a G# leading tone in his folky little descending melodies he brings in here. The rhythm section is pulsing, everybody heads toward a rhythmic unison. Latent growth here again, they sound like they’re heading somewhere specific, a theme jam, Jerry is playing A-D-E, and then the country-style licks that usually head to Sugar Magnolia, they play a riffy little country jam. Bob has some chord progression ideas besides the A-D-E-D-A, he throws in a b minor now and again. but what happens? A feint sideways, the rhythm slows and it’s back to the Dark Star theme as if a second verse might bring us home from this journey, but instead! Wharf Rat appears, and we head to skid row, back to reality indeed.
(Though they do get to Sugar Magnolia after this down and dirty visit to skid row.)

Well, wow is all I can say. This is great piece of music. They are really developing the musical storytelling, the improvised sections tell incredibly dramatic stories here. A tone poem.
They must have been enjoying this tour to let their music develop like this.

129 4/29/72 Hamburg: 29:54 – Europe ’72 Complete Recordings (also AUD)

This show opened with (a fantastic and extended) Playing in the Band, and closed with the Dark Star/Sugar Mag/Caution triad, with encores. Dark Star starts and begins wandering and tuning, then gets into the relaxed groove. Lots of swells and ebbs from the drums while Bobby and Phil plug along, the lead guitar seems to be playing with the space, and he gets some controlled feedback at mid tones even. Bill settles into a groove, lots of toms recently, and they’re recorded well so the full set is nice and round sounding.
It’s an endless sea of this groove till some tuning has to happen before 4 minutes and then it breaks down a bit, Bill starts up with a sidestick groove, Jerry starts playing with leading tone stretches and eventually an eddy of single notes, coming out of this into a quieter place with faster little spurts of runs from lead guitar and piano, bass catching up and they bring it up and down. Sort of jazzy now with the sidestick groove and Al DiMeolo-type fast guitar runs, and then hey, Phil starts the Feelin Groovy riff halfway through the 6th minute, and they switch into major key stuff. Well, until they take it tonally sideways a couple minutes later, heh, you thought music was normal for a minute there, didn’t you?
Jerry brings it down with an arpeggio and then it goes into a minor mode, Phil on some minor seconds. Into a sea of holes.
It is very soundtrack-y, storytelling, the scene changes and we’re in a new space, new things are happening. It’s getting a little scary in this scene. Jerry is playing some very high false harmonics and stretching them (you stop the string right where you pick it to make a harmonic of the fretted note). It goes arhythmic and atonal. Into some volume swell space, Bobby playing clusters of notes, runs from the piano.
The bass is picking up some strong feedback tones, non-tonally related notes, it comes to a crest and they start more melodic lines, drums still in bursts and no groove, but it’s coalescing now to become Dark Star again at 14 minutes, the theme is on its way.
Verse 1 at 15:07. Grooving drums through the first line, laying back on line two, and back on line 3 with Phil riffing on the last line. The refrain has some tinkly piano and they go to the outro and into the Transitive Nightfall, a bit of groove happening, it’s not falling apart immediately, takes a few bars. It’s maintaining a semblance of song for a minute, drums start making small rolls, then it’s gone again into volume swelled atonal notes and low piano notes with some weird quick muted guitar strikes, rolling piano bits, rolling drums building into a wild drum area, big bass strikes, Jerry jamming along with his wah wah pedal all backed off for a nasal tone, while the band goes wild, lots of atonal noisy statements from everybody, culminating in a feedback note from Jerry and it brings it into a sparser space at 21 min, some chicken clucks from Bobby, longer notes from Phil. Jerry brings in a wide arpeggio, still with wah wah up and down. Bill is still rocking out and it’s settled into a groove with Keith finding something in there. JG begins the fast licks again for a bit, some of the riffing has that Main Ten idea for a second. JG is very jazzy, Bill is maintaining a jazzy jungle groove on the floor tom, Phil starts some walking bass stuff. JG still in the quick jazzy licks world for a long time, almost heading toward that later jazzy Blues for Allah type stuff. It starts to break down at about 26 minutes. There’s still an underlying latency like it might come back up, but it stays quiet for a bit. Most of the band backs off and leaves Jerry to lead them somewhere else, but he’s moving around different key centers still. Bob and Phil back him up for a while, then Phil starts just playing big chords, sounds like they’re getting tired of it, it goes into extended tremolos, fast little chromatic repeated bits with wah wah, frightening build up with the bursting drums. The break down is fast muted notes, big bass distorted chords, arhythmic statements and then Bobby starts Sugar Magnolia.

Fascinating version, not as beautiful as the Düsseldorf version, but interesting. Lots of jazzy riffing contrasted with atonal monster movie sound tracks.

130 5/4/72 Paris: 39:25 (DS 19:22 > drums 2:31 > DS 17:32) – Europe ’72 Complete Recordings

{Dark Star theme/jam [2:19] > spacey Jam [8:58] > transitional Jam [0:23] > Dark Star, first verse [1:50] } * (5) Space with drummers * (6) {spacey Dark Star Jam [3:25] > ‘happy’ Jam [1:13] > spacey Dark Star Jam [3:21] > transitional Jam [0:14] > Dark Star, second verse [2:#04] } *
Jack Straw before it, Dark Star remains somehow embedded as an alternate reality to cowboy songs, and out into Sugar Magnolia.
Intro to the chords with isolated drum beats before settling more into a groove, Jerry has some very melodic phrases and is exploring the sound of the guitar with single notes and a few pinch harmonics, it winds away from the theme center after a couple minutes into a swirl, careening slowly into space as the lead goes up and a new thing develops. They all play on little trilled sets of notes, into a small and quiet whirlpool.
More of a minor key space follows. Rolling on toms, small bursts of lead guitar in fast & jazzy runs. Drums start to kick in with that idea, they’re chasing each other around, bass come up with a riff to match. It’s a quick-paced vignette with rolling skins, very Krupa there, Mr Kreutzman. Landing on a little repetitive lick at 8:35 that Jerry’s used before, dit-dah, dit-dah. By 9 minutes, it settles into more of a D major area after some diminished chords. Bobby playing with chord pulls up and down. Jerry has some riff he’s figuring out, rocking out on. He keeps at this rhythm, but the band develops it into a more dissonant thing. So it falls apart and maybe back to Dark Star world, but it enters a delicate space first. Little octave piano tinklings lead the band back to the theme and the verse at 12:10, Jerry sound sort of ragged on the first line. The second line breaks the pulse with fermatas, third line has weird bass fiddling around in high register more than wandering, outro follows, and off they go with some big bass strums and everything else floating away.
Feedback leads the way in. A very sparse sea of sounds. Some volume swelled notes, a few isolated drum bursts. Quiet controlled feedback. All kept in a delicate space. Bass trills as sparely spoken words, string scrubs. Jerry plays a few notes at 16 minutes, but they devolve into feedback also. Non-tonal notes in melodic statements, going in and out of any key and into trills and string noises. Wah wah embellishment, some sputnik-like arpeggiating. The scary movie stuff is there but subdued. Drums come in to roll over it all, and it takes off into a drum solo section for a couple minutes. (Did anybody leave the stage to pee? Or they just stood around listening?)
(Section 2, track-wise) The drum solo is mostly rolling quickly over the toms for a while, with occasional kick or snare punctuation. It develops into more of a rhythm after a minute and a half and then dies back into isolated cymbals and tom statements. A roll starts up again and ends in cymbals, the bass comes in.
(Section 3-track-wise) Still sparse tom-tom rhythms, now with bass sounds, not really bass lines so much as isolated notes. Guitar is back in making some quiet little runs, tone rolled off. Bass chords are heading toward something. Jerry starts playing medium tempo chromatic phrases, the bass chords back off into little notes again. Drums still rolling around. Bobby is back in too, now. They’re still in soundscape world, building it toward something, though. Wahwah backed-off leads building up in chromatic phrases, back down again. They’re with Bill’s rhythm, and then he starts the side stick rhythm, Jerry still on a fast chromatic bit, piano following him. It’s very restrained still, but has an obvious latent undertow of menace, then it all sort of dissipates and moves into a quieter world.
Jerry starts modal lines, Phil following, they hint at a groove. At 7 minutes into this section it’s got a Dark Star-ish sense, but coming into it with a new and faster pulse, and even sounds like a Bright Star at 8’ in. Nice jam going on a building up to a repeating falling star pull-off area a minute later, then to more groove-based jamming and another repeating riff, over the crest and back down. At 10 minutes Jerry is doing the slide that usually goes up to the A for the theme, but Phil takes it sideways and drops the Feelin’ Groovy riff in instead. Sort of a mixed up version, it goes outside and comes back in for a bit.
The sideways again, more pull off riffs and a sudden Bright Star, but the jam following is country tinged and still has elements of the Feelin’ Groovy riff world, but it goes on to a new jazzy jam, lots of funky chord stuff from Bobby, Jerry takes a little wah wah into the mix with some odd arpeggios, and it quiets down before building back up. Jerry still has some lingering pull offs and feedbacks to express. It loosens up and they all step back, and the piano makes a very outside chordal choice for a downward arpeggio and then Jerry comes in with the theme, people clap. Verse 2 at 16 minutes!
Yay, verse two! It’s a suspended span and not just a single cantilever. Still a little ragged on the vocals. Phil really grooves it up on the Lady in Velvet line, almost a Pink Floyd-type funky groove. Nonetheless it’s only that one line and the refrain comes, to the outro with Phil’s vocals (ok, he hasn’t sung it for a while) and then the descending phrases, starting with a repeat of the refrain part, sounding very ponderous, not sure where they will lead. They start low and go a few times through, upward and to the tritone chord… once, not several lulling chords to lead to St Stephen, instead a new little melodic tidbit, to a held chord and Bobby starts Sugar Magnolia.

This was a cool version, very developmental but not stellar. Sort of latent, like it held keys to things that could become amazing but they never really sprouted. The introductory jamming is still lovely and relaxed, and they took it to a great space after the first verse, very sparse soundscapes. The latter half’s funky jamming was cool. I appreciate that they brought the whole thing back with the second verse, (and that odd outro.) The ‘first-verse-only’ versions that are common nowadays take the listeners into the alternate reality and abandon us there! The earlier versions encapsulated the space of other worlds and brought us home again. No more bringing us home, we’re out in space! I guess there’s one more version (July 26 ’72) that has the second verse and then that’s it till 1981. I’m sort of surprised that they never split it over several nights, like came back into the song and ended with the second verse the next day!

131 5-7-72 Wigan, Bickershaw Festival: 19:27 – Europe ’72 Vol.2, Europe ’72 Complete Recordings

(I also listened to the Aud/SBD matrix that was available, some people wrote that fireworks went off behind the band at some point and people Wooooed…)
Outdoor festival in the mud, tons of amazing bands. (I mean, Captain Beefheart, Family, Captain Beyond! Early Hawkwind… Etc…) There’s a bunch of writing on the web about the impact of this festival on the folks that went, including stories of it inspiring later musicians (such as Elvis Costello being inspired by the Dead, which is interesting and obviously wasn’t part of his public persona for years. Much later, though, he did have Jerry sit in at a Marin show!)

Dark Star comes after Jack Straw again, and heads off after a drum solo into an extended The Other One. That’s one way to take that ball and run with it!
After the intro, Bobby starts playing with the chords, centering it more on the e minor, though it’s casual. Lotsa tuning in between notes and strums for a bit. Nice little eddies in the flow forming after a couple minutes, getting caught up in small fractals of the available notes. Nice echoing from Keith following Jerry’s runs. Into an area of wailing stretched strings and some tremolo at 4 minutes in to a Sputnik area.
Sputnik continues fairly quietly over its run, moving into an area of spaciousness as JG starts small lead bits as the drums roll on. Coming out of it with more modal melodic phrasing as Bobby holds on some minor chords in the key. They build the jam up to a faster pace, they have a new little chord sequence by 8 minutes (sounds like b minor are for a while there?) Bobby trying some very dissonant chords and phrases against Jerry’s short building blocks of melody. They hold on an e minor area as it becomes more space oriented, remnants of Sputnik.
(At 10:55 there’s a little lick that Jerry has played several times in the past that I call “it’s all the same” for long-ago acid trip reasons, it is a repeated “dit-dah dit-dah” nursery rhyme rhythm against the beat of whatever is going on, with descending intervals. This evening it’s D-C#, D-B, a couple nights ago he used it on a major third, G#-F#, G#-E. Not structurally important, but I always hear it when it happens. Just so you know.)
They settle on a b-f#-G and then a higher G maj7.
Jerry comes in with nasal tone bits at 12 min. Nobody exactly following him to a groove, Bob plays little stretches. Blips and bloops from Phil. This is some spaced out rock music, man.
Some volume swells follow with delicate feedback and slow forward movement to the theme entrance at 14:28, and they’re back in the groove. Nice one!
Verse 1 at 15 min. Sort of a slow groove first line, decent vocal entrance. Phil leading the breaks on line two, Bobby has the wandering bits on line 3 with the previously explored dissonances as melodics. Refrain and out to the Transitive Nightfall with trills from Bob and chords from Phil, feedback from Jerry, and volume swells, it’s very much a transition here. (Jerry takes a bit to tune his strings, probably changing a lot in the humidity. Isolated sounds and swells follow, a rocky undersea surface, light feedback backgrounds, cymbals. Drums start moving around in the mix. The instruments sound like tape music, music concrete, very much sound-as-sound and not as notes really. Phil starts some trills. Eventually it’s just drums.
A 2.5 minute solo drum section follows, rolling on toms, continuous rolling over the kit. Eventually some kick and cymbal punctuation for the longer sentences. At about 2:10, he starts the 6/8 and it leads to Phil diving in and they start The Other One.
This is a long version of The Other One, 30 minutes! So we’ve got some intense jamming happening now to take people home from the Dark Star. The Dark Star was a little disjointed, or rather maybe a bit mellow overall. The space was nice but the jams never got super developmental and the soundscapes were relatively short—unlike the version of The Other One that follows, which is endlessly moving forward and growing off in branches. Even weirder spacy sections. …um, after Bill’s drum solo, again, a whole new band. (What was backstage during the drum solo?)
Note, at 25 minutes into TOO, they start a groove and Jerry almost goes for the Bright Star melody. It’s a jam that would not have been out of place in the latter half of Dark Star at all. After a couple more minutes though, they start the journey back to TOO.

132 5/11/72 Rotterdam: 47:11 (DS 13:45 > drums 3:40 > DS 29:46) – Europe ’72 Complete Recordings

(now, why is this track-separated with drum solo separate? I mean, jazz tunes break down to drum solos all the time.)
Anyway. This show opens with a great Playin’ In the Band, Dark Star toward the end with the Caution suite and more. Pretty high energy show, altogether!

Dark Star starts with the intro, into a fluid jam with Jerry playing with upward moving modal leads. It’s very hopeful sounding, lot of melodic bass with his very midrange lead bass tone. The music has little eddies and pauses and develops out into new rhythms, Jerry starts very insistent 8th notes for a while. Really nice togetherness from the band. In the lulls it’s really beautiful, (though some odd chords from piano), in the swells, they’re really together pursuing that note. At about 4:30, Jerry starts a low riff and does not let it go, Phil playing around it rhythmically, Bob and Keith on chords, it’s a cool high-energy section. (Little tuning pause a minute later.) It finally settles a few minutes later into a very sparse area, some chordalists suggesting a d-minor section (like the initial jam in Playin, also like they did in Dark Star in London on Apr 8)
but as it builds up to a jam it’s more e minor/phrygian, and then Phil brings it back to the A with some fast riffing, and repeated riff-licks from Jerry. An A-minor fast jam for a while.
Jerry busts it apart in the 12 minute with a tremolo and it falls into strong lead bits over a space rhythm. The drums start rolling and the guitars drop out, bass has a few more notes, and then it’s all rolling drums.
Drums solos are cool, and especially in 1972. He is playing around rolling on the toms, and building up tempo, eventually some punctuation from kick and cymbals, then he even unclips the snares from the snare drum and uses it like a high tom or timbale in the middle before clipping them back on and going for the kick and snare marching band and jazz rolls. It builds with this to a crazy around-the-kit explosion, adds in more toms for the last build as the bass starts playing some notes along with. People clap, they dig a drum solo.
Bass and drums, with Phil sort of riffing alongside. It doesn’t take more than a minute or so for him to start playing with some dissonant notes. Jerry comes in (again clapping, after bass riff solo), tone rolled off into the jazz tone, he plays very melodically, it’s fairly fast and has Dark Star hints occasionally. Wah pedal on and it shifts into a new space, weird filtered guitar notes, more minor bits until he hits an A and goes back to the A mixo and a “Star” melody of some sort at 5 minutes into part 2 and they start the theme groove and head to verse 1 at 5.5min.
Really nice vocal delivery, not super ragged, but he sounds pretty old on line 2, but then holds line 3 strongly. Phil does some interesting rhythmic wandering on line 3. Refrain stated in a stately manner.
They go through the outro and into the next jam with feedback from Jerry and strummed bass chords, rolling drums. When it settles it’s in that b-min, or the B-F#-G thing. Jerry takes off in steady notes, while Bobby goes for some B riffing. Lotta of playing in this mode (same notes as the A mixo, very different contextually.) It starts to go into chromatic off-the-rails at 11 minutes or so, and I hear organ back there…! It goes spacey and arhythmic, with planing dissonant chords, strings struck with objects. Atonal dramatic leads, wah pedal goes back on for the rolled off tone at 13min, chromatic dramatic melodies, monster movie soundtrack. Chromatic build, speeding it up, bringing up the volume and tension for an entire minute to a noise break at 15 minutes, sharp rubbing from the wah pedal, guitar huge bass chords and feedback, total freakout for a long time, backing off a bit still into chromatic quick riffs. It slows and maintains tension, still with the volume and feedback from the guitars, but no drums. The guitars are screaming in the 17th minute, after a bit more, Phil starts jamming out in a pulse, Jerry is quick and dirty sounding chromatic runs, Keith and Bob with chordal strikes. It moves into waves of chromatic notes, drums establish a groove now at 19:30, and it starts bopping along in D major like it was a song the whole time, what freakout? Organ is jamming along. This becomes another d-minor section, again like 4/8 London. Jerry comes in with a strong weird melodic statement and jams on it a bit, gets to it again and drops it (21:40-) and drops out for a bit leaving a lead bass with organ and Bob accompaniment for a couple minutes. Jerry comes in at 23:40 again with the phrase, and keeps going where he left off, he gets to it again. (C A-G-F D dropping) He’s jamming out on the d minor pentatonic, ending up getting modal with the b and c and then back to the melody
They start this buildup and break down, repeated riff and then the melody, and it builds, very much a collage of parts and very exciting forward moving jam, with strong tones.
It backs off, into a room with a lot of doors out into different songs, everybody is suggesting things. At 27 min Phil suggests Truckin’ fairly intently, but it still doesn’t go there. It stays in a more arhythmic space area with major key embellishments (still the A-mixo, really) Phil starts playing little chromatic bass bits, the organ dances around in the back as Jerry starts a sputnik picking pattern on a b-minor, they let it fade off and Bobby takes the ball and runs with it, starting Sugar Magnolia.

Quite an epic, lots of energy for the jams in the whole thing. I love the whole first section vibe, and the drum solo before the verse. That jazzy part toward the end of part two is incredible, it sounds very Steve Howe in some ways with the jagged pentatonic lead in a bright tone, and the super fast riffing. (He gets caught up on one of these same riffs more later in Caution, up a step.) All that latent melodic energy that never quite got out in some of the last couple Dark Stars all got through in this one. It’s always a treat when Jerry is working on some idea, like he’s repeating the riff or melodic shred until finally he gets what he was after, and then it’s like, oh, that’s what it was, and then once he gets it, he abandons it and goes on to the next thing.

I like that it’s so long. . . It’s even an answer in some trivia games. One thing that led me to this ‘listening to all the Dark Stars’ was listening to that 45-min Playin’ in the Band from the ’74 Seattle (NW box set) and thinking how great it was that they could just do that sort of thing on stage. Incredible.
This is also sort of a mid-point pinnacle, we’re a little over half-way through all the Dark Stars and this is a big and long high point in the world of Dark Star. It’s a long tail after this.

133 5/18/72 Munich: 28:21 – Europe ’72 Complete Recordings

Lotsa futzing about and tuning beforehand, the track length I have includes a couple minutes of it (it’s not the 26’ listed). Dark Star is coming toward the end of the concert and going into Morning Dew (which is a great idea, though they hadn’t played Morning Dew for a while and it’s a bit rusty.) Slightly restrained start riffs, into a floaty initial jam. Bill is rolling around on tom toms already. The jam is colored by some skipping descending riffs and a restatement of the them after a minute, with pretty intense cadences from the drums in a mild jam. At 4 min, Jerry steps it up and turns it up a bit (with a slight bit of feedback). He’s stretching some interesting notes, coming from outside the normal mode. He even hits his amp and sends a reverb shock through it!
It comes down to a sparser section, but it’s a pretty one, lots of major key runs from everybody. It goes arhythmic, static, by 8:30 and Jerry holds a sputnik-y arpeggio for a while. Bob plays with some chord riffs, building a rhythm, Bill and Phil come in. Nice melodic building in the tenth minute, mostly over a pedal A. It builds to Bright territory but no theme per se, then it breaks into a quieter area by 12 min and comes back to the theme groove at 12:46, which holds some nice melodic lead playing that stretches up to the B above the high A for a while and into chord-jams on the Dark Star groove, heading to the theme proper at 14:30 and the verse. Really good vocal delivery with slight nuances appogiatura. The really hold the fermatas on line 2, and groove out on line 3 like it’s a Pink Floyd song. Refrain is well played from all with a big ending chord from Phil. Into the next jam it’s immediately suspended sustained chords and then dissonant arhythmic bass chords and wah-wah backed off tone on guitar, rolling. It starts a new section of atonality with a downbeat kick at 17:30, it gets super scary with feedback bass and rhythm guitar, a wailing down stretches and feedback from Jerry. Then sparse strong hits from bass and drums, atonal riffs. Intense strong space, lotsa bass feedback with small repetitive high picking from Jerry, who continues when the bass backs off later. It’s quiet and non-tonal runs and odd chords for a bit and the bass comes back in. This sort of atonalism is like music-simulacra, it holds a rhythmic cadence as if it were obeying normal tonal music cadence but the notes are unrelated, like bizarro world song. Then it devolves, with a load of tremolo coming in (keys? Or Bobby tapping his guitar with a slide?) In any case, they build it up to a monster movie tension, even Bobby is stretching notes. Hammering away, lots of wah wah tone on fast little chromatic bits, drums loudly rolling over it all. Keith starts on chord repetition for a bit and it breaks to a new rhythm, Jerry riffing heavily with chromatic descending elements.
They bring it down finally at 27:30 or so, and hold a D chord, which allows them to start Morning Dew.

Intense. The first time I listened to it, I thought it was unfocused and chaotic, the second time I heard more of what holds it together. It’s a good space out atonal abstract section.

134 5/23/72 London: 29:54 – Europe ’72 Complete Recordings

(6) {tuning [0:42] > spacey tuning [0:48] > Dark Star theme [1:42] > speedy Jam [4:15] > Slow Spacy Jam [4:40] > Bass and Drums [2:50] > Dark Star Jam [3:50] > Dark Star theme [0:33] > First Verse [1:27] > Spacey Jam [4:50] > Dissonant tigerish Jam [2:30] > Jam [1:40] > transition [1:40] > Morning Dew}

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.

135 5/25/72 London: 34:30 – Europe ’72 Complete Recordings

Dark Star timing: Opening theme/Jam {8:25} > Spacy and dissonant Jam {6:00#} > Jazzy Jam {#2:06} > tiger Jam {7:32} > Sugar Magnolia transition {0:40} > Sugar Magnolia.

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 fucks 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 recent versions, as well.

136 7/18/72 Jersey City: 27:13 (also AUD)

Out of Truckin’s end jam, they go into a space for the last minute and a half, they drag out a cadence and then start the intro to Dark Star and a medium pace, nice and tropical, groovy but sparse, drums rolling from cymbals to toms. They settle into a rolling little backbeat major key happy jam for a bit, but it threatens some sideways stuff at times, with Bob doing some bends into the chords. Slight lull and then Jerry arpeggiates and then takes off up higher and faster for a bit and then brings it to a high and bendy “bright star”-ish thematic statement after 4 min, then he backs off and lets it slide over to Phil soloing with rolling drums, piano arpeggios bring Jerry back in with matching arpeggios, which comes down and goes to the theme before 6 min, but they let it escape into more bass soloing and then space, with Bill still kicking it.
Bob comes in with chords in a more e min area, the drums are still rolling more than grooving with it, Jerry comes in with fast licks as the chords dissipate and Phil gets stuck on a riff.
Weird headspaces tonight! Jerry heads into some faster soloing at 9 minutes and Phil follows it to more of a Dark Star groove, though it’s also very bluesy. Bill, still not laying off the continuous rolls. (It’s all the same at 10:20) Another multiverse bright star before 11 min and then Bill finally lays into a backbeat with the side stick, fast and jazzy. Jerry comes up with a cool riff section on F#-G, then raises it, when he’s figured it out it backs off, the next wave is similar on a repeated riff on E pentatonic and then up to a fast yet-another-variant of bright star at 14 min. It builds again and then dives into the Dark Star groove at 15 1/2. Verse 1 30 seconds later. A very sage Jerry delivers the vocals, crooning on line 2. Line 3 is again a more groove line, into the fermatas of the refrain. People are loving it. Really nice vocal delivery.
Into the outro/intro, Bill starts up a weird immediately-damped cymbal and kick rhythm, then builds a roll under everybody fading until it enters atonal arhythmic space with strong odd notes from Jerry and Phil. Jerry is going for the pinch harmonics before 19 min and then the growling bass chords come in and the wah wah goes on, some feedback, Bob coming in with feedbacky chords. A very scary and loud space goes on for a while (my dog left the room.) Jerry starts the little fast chromatic wah-backed-off building tension at a lower volume, Phil still making giant chords, then starting higher and Phil makes odd noises, they build to the “Tiger” meltdown (right?) in the 23rd minute, with wah screaming roars and super weird notes at the breakdown. Into volumes swells. Then some odd diminished chord stabs, it builds a wave and comes down to string scraping.
By 26 min, Jerry starts an lilting melody which heads into arpeggios, a Sputnik with the rising high note like so long ago, and then it drops and fades down to the A chord, which eventually goes into “Comes a Time”, which is amazing and has some searing blues bending at the end. Wow, must have been an amazing show.

137 7/26/72 Portland: 30:49

Dark Star Map: Dark Star theme/Jam [9:22] > theme/Verse one [1:49] > Spacy Jam [1:08] > Bass and Drums [1:05] > Bass, Drums and Piano [1:10] > All but Jerry Jam [0:30] > Jam [3:45] > Spacier [1:15] > Space [4:05] > tiger [1:00] > Uptempo Spacy Jam [2:50] > theme/Verse 2 [2:53] > Comes a time.
Lazy opening with Jerry lagging behind Phil a bit in the intro, and he takes a while to really get to it once the groove starts up. It’s a long piece, winding around as the groove moves forward. Cresting a bit at 4 min, it comes down and has a little build on the swung triplets. When that comes down, the whole band brings it down, Bill backing it up quietly with some side stick. They are still doing the triplet accent for a while, but Jerry brings it back to a swing for a sec and then into arpeggios and back to the Dark Star groove. He heads to pinch-harmonics and thematic soloing, theme proper at 9:20, slow and in the high register. Verse at 9:50, nice vocals with little frills. Rolls from the drums on the second line, into the groove for line 3 with no casting about. Rolls again on the refrain, and to the outro.
The jam starts spacey, with sparse notes and bass strums, into drums with small guitar volume swells and then a drum solo with bass grooving along. Piano in a minute later, the guitarists went for a piss. Bob is back at 14:30, Jerry a bit later, comes in soloing over the fast jazzy groove in a 12/8 feel.
It’s a long build, goes over the hump and Phil threatens to bring it back from the e minor to A. It crests and sounds like it may go back to Dark Star but Bill rolls over his toms and Jerry starts some little country style licks before switching on the wah pedal and going sideways. At 20:15, it heads into chromatic weirdness with string noises and gets scarier, the drums start up again in waves. Big Phil chords a minute later, into a monster movie section with atonal harmonics and odd noises all around. Fast chromatic build up starts at 24 minutes with the wah wah building to the Tiger meltdown. I think Bob was in there with some big high notes. Bill starts a pulse and Phil hits some low strong tones, like it’s gonna go all death metal. It melts down again. Augmented chord arpeggios start up at 26 min, it’s all scary movie stuff, building to some stretched note screams. It builds again but the machine winds down and then the Dark Star theme rises from its ashes in the 28th min, with lovely descending piano parts, it winds down to Verse 2 at 29:19!
Jerry can’t remember the first line, but the first word changes to ‘mirror’ in the middle of enunciating it, and he gets the rest right, drum rolls continuing the groove on line two instead of the fermatas (hey it’s the second verse, man), and a long (phasey? multiple open drum mics…) roll to line three with a nice rising lick from Bob wandering in the back.
Outro, and all vocals, Phil even sounds pretty good. They head to what would be the outro lick but Jerry starts “Comes a Time” which is both expected after the last Dark Star, but unexpected after a verse 2 and outro.
Last time for Verse 2 for a long time! We’re gonna be stuck in the Transitive Nightfall every time now for a while!

Alligator is getting some upgrades, so next he's using a '56 Strat

138 8/21/72 Berkeley: 27:25

The Alligator Strat is in the shop for a month now that they’re back in California, so Jerry is using a 1956 Stratocaster that seems mostly unaltered. After Ramble on Rose, a little telegraphing, an allusion to the beginning of El Paso and then to Dark Star, they begin Dark Star with the intro and into the groove with soaring bass lines and everybody moving along, building a solid groove with some interesting bendy statements from Jerry, lots of motion from everybody, some odd chromatics thrown in from Bob occasionally. It goes through some longer waves, comes down to reassess after a few minutes. The roll into a dip at 5 min in, a long slow build out of it that never reaches super high (6 min the ‘all the same’ a g a e). (Sounds like some filter effect in the piano? Wah pedal?) before abandoning the groove almost entirely at 8 min and going more chromatic around it. They start doing a build again and Jerry finds a melodic area in the high register before stating the theme at 9:20, in a bendy way. Verse 1 come in at 9:40, Jerry sounds haggard on line 1 but delicate on line 2, with full fermatas, line 3 is somewhere in between groove and stops, the drums roll through Shall We Go and stop on the refrain, they play the outro and intro to the next jam, mostly Phil, and then he starts up big chords, trills from piano and into space with crying guitars and dissonant chords and chromatic runs from the piano.
Several builds in an atonal arhythmic monster movie soundtrack, to trills and close chromatic runs.
Bill starts a rolling rhythm at 14:30, Phil chugs in, Jerry starts more concise runs, still fairly non-tonal, with big piano chords coming in. Jerry still running around in chromatic stuff, building to the Tiger style meltdown stuff, though it passes a crest and continues into a lower area, till they hit on a pulse at 17 minutes in and it starts to hit a key for a while, riffs from Keith and Phil. Over that hill and still in the short chromatics to a lull, people cheer.
Jerry starts a slow wah-toned non-tonal melody as it winds around. Jerry starts Morning Dew licks at 20:40, but it doesn’t get there so he wanders away and catches some pinch harmonics, building it to a static high lick. Keith is going for some jazzy progression and Bill joins in with the groove. They go on with a fast bass, drums and piano jam and the guitars drop out for a minute. Bob back in on rhythm moving along. Drops down to a lower level with mostly kick and bass, some Bobby and lower keys. Jerry comes back in and they continue the jazzy groove, he goes for some quick licks. Jam continues and builds and falls back a bit, then suddenly as it dies off Bob sticks on the intro to El Paso and they segue to it.
I’d consider this to be an enclosed window song, and especially since they come out of it into “Space” before Deal and then Sugar Magnolia. Bob sounds a little tired singing El Paso. People clap as they end it and the band starts chromatically dropping, tuning, some little licks and more space playing with a slow bass line with a more tonal feel, just Phil and Jerry for a couple minutes. Nice.

Not my favorite, though some nice parts. Lotsa Keith in the mix, including that mostly piano jam toward the last part.

139 8/24/72 Berkeley: 27:10

Out of Truckin’ again, though they end it and then start Dark Star with the normal intro. A ride cymbal keeps a pulse but it takes a while before it really becomes the groove, Jerry is slowly moving through thematic notes, getting into little eddies. Some really beautiful guitar playing, band backing it up, this guitar suggests some other notes and phrases. He brings it down and fades out with a trill at 3:30, drums keeps going, others moving around into a piano whirlpool, Jerry quietly comes back in. At 5 min he starts up some bluesy licks, though the band isn’t playing along and heads off to a different rhythm a minute later. Jerry playing heavily in the pinch harmonic high notes.
They move into a quick section with isolated bursts of energy, building it into a fast but not-extremely focused jam. Bob starts up a stabby rhythm, which narrows the focus a bit, Phil is cooking along with it. Jerry finds some common notes and tests a riff, moves up and out. He starts a slower riff after nine minutes and the band quiets down and enters a slow space that could head to Dark Star, and Jerry starts strumming it and then into a bluesy theme area with a lot of outside stretches, theme proper after 10 minutes and to a Dark Star groove. Verse 1 at 11 minutes.
Strong vocals, backing off dramatically, big fermatas on line 2. More playing between downbeats than groove for line 3, into the refrain and the outro.
Intro to the middle are and then Phil starts with some wide arpeggios, Bob on some slightly dissonant chords, the drums roll and roll. It dies off to go to space. It’s a noisescape with scraped things and screaming weird high notes and isolated low notes, developing into more note based multi-tonal and chromatic sparse falling statements. Bass bottom ends thuds against arhythmic harmonics, some feedback emerges against a rolling tom tom. Waves of sound, multi-voiced in multiple atonal areas, Bob even starts playing some single note licks as it starts to roll forward, staying non-tonally centered, Jerry is into his small chromatic groups of fast notes with wah-wah. An outside-reaching wider lick as it builds to a head and dies off to quieter rumbling quick notes, fading over time to tremolo and into a new lake of weirdness, Jerry still on his small chromatic fast things with the pedal, scrubbing it out underneath and erupting to the Tiger meltdown.
Dies off to reveal a quieter Sputnik area with moving chords, eventually moving chromatically as well. It builds up into a latin groove by 22 min, then heads for more 12/8 ish and keeps grooving along.
It winds up at about 27 min with some quiet guitar volume swells following with Bobby on some arpeggios. Sort of like the Space after El Paso on the previous Dark Star… (which would lead me to think of the previous one as part of Dark Star, with El Paso inside it) this one tonight does manage to go into Morning Dew, this time it’s Phil who makes it explicit.
And it’s a rippin’ Morning Dew!

My expectations were high for these sorta-hometown Berkeley shows, but for me neither Dark Star surpasses either of the London versions, for example. There are good ideas but nothing really develops, and the scary parts aren’t even as scary.

140 8/27/72 Veneta, OR: 31:27 – Sunshine Daydream

Well, this one is classic and on film, it’s very intense, lots of footage of the band playing, it’s cool to see Jerry staring into his own head as his fingers move. And a lot of close ups of his fingers, doing the pinch harmonics, plucking, picking, moving, adjusting knobs on guitars and amps, close up of the Colorsound wah pedal. Quite intense footage. Also some great Phil moments and some funny scenes where Bob stops and looks at what everybody else is doing. The camera by Keith’s side is mostly over his head, but there’s some keyboard action shots. A lot but not all of the song footage is in the movie, of course it’s cut with a bunch of animation and “trippy shit” some of the time, but a lot of good synced footage is there. And the naked guy who looks like he’s on Jerry’s shoulder (he seems to have put on shorts later, or maybe they’re animated in the latest cut of the film?) And a child that runs across the stage twice, only Bob seems to even notice the first time, Jerry laughs the second stage-run.

Anyhow, in the course of this hot hot daytime concert, hey take a break to allow a sunset and cooling for the hot afternoon, coming back, they start with Dark Star coming out of announcements about water.

Listening without watching it’s a bit easier to analyze rather than get lost in it. The intro happens and heads to a ride cymbal groove. It’s another outdoor Star. The riffing has a relaxed quality to it, the band allowing the music to happen. Jerry plays with some of the Bird Song licks a bit, moving out to the 9ths and 11ths of the key. Some covert tuning a couple minutes in, he comes in underneath everything afterwards, quiet and a darker tone. Some whale sounds in there to get him into a higher register. A funny little polyrhythm thing at 4:40, playing the swung threes as the beat, eventually playing around the theme area, but not every playing the actual theme. By the 7th minute it’s really threatening to land on the Dark Star theme on some upcoming downbeat but never does, and heads off to intensify the jam. Jerry starts doing double-stop bends and finding some interesting melodic points in the stretches. Over this crest, it comes back the theme groove with Phil on a rising riff version, Jerry starts taking off, Bob and Keith wander outside a bit into more minor chords in the mode. Drums back off at the next lull, 9:30 or so, Jerry and Keith on more arpeggio stasis. Gathering it up as Bill continues the groove, they continue onwards and enter a zone where everybody is on the triplets at 11 min, and it lands when that comes down right into the theme, though there appears to be some tempo adjustments between Jerry and Bill before he starts verse 1.
It grooves into line 1, really delicate and beautiful vocal delivery, the first real fermata of the piece on line 2, and back to the rolling groove for line 3. The refrain is a punctuation and they head out to the outro and into the next jam, Bill rolls but keeps a back beat, Phil is still in groove land, so they continue, Bob has some chord ideas. Jerry eventually comes in with Swelled high notes, sounding very pedal steel. Bill switches up the beat a bit leaning on the snare, Phil on a riffy type bass system. They head to more minor key area, and into stronger groove, but with jazzy overtones, Jerry starts the quick runs.
Eventually this leads them a little sideways, mode or key wise, though the groove still goes on.
An odd rhythm jam, stabby bits from Jerry in response to Bob, and more chromatic licks emerge. They all catch a little heap of sound at 17 and then build it, Bill still rocking out, they move into a quicker jam. It continues for several minutes, Phil eventually decides to do some root motion to test out some new mode areas a couple minutes later, but mostly he’s still riffing, and they dip down and keep plugging ahead until 20 minutes, when it takes a lull and emerges with a drum and bass solo, Bill still rocking out, so Phil is jamming alongside. At 21:30 he takes it up a whole step, Keith likes this so he starts playing along, Jerry follows with some rhythmic bits. He comes back with a lead a minute later, some fast playing, but with a rather mellow tone. Sounds like Bob has dropped out for a bit, back in with a very brittle tone. Jerry on some repeated licks that I think I’ve heard in TOO, then they go into chromatic sideways world with some odd chordal movement and they build with chromatic statements from everybody. Jerry comes in with the wah (Colorsound!) at 25 min. Still very jazzy and lots of forward momentum, still very chromatic, Jerry finds some odd melodic licks and plays around with them.
Minute 26 has some stasis, though with momentum still, some repeated notes and hints at arpeggiation, but it doesn’t rest, keeps going on.
In the 27th minute, Jerry’s melodic rooster licks come to full fruition. Keith has a wah wah on the keyboard! (How is that possible on an acoustic piano? Is it just some filtering to prevent feedback or something?) Everybody is rolling, Jerry starts the chromatic fast wah licks that lead to the Tiger, the meltdown is happening for him but it gives way to arpeggios in min 29 as nobody really followed Jerry into the Meltdown, they continued grooving on whatever they were on. Finally at 29:40, Bill cedes the rhythm to an arhythmic noise area with some big bass notes and odd riffy chords from Bob. Jerry starts a majestic statement of some sort that seems to be leading down and out of this area, though it lingers, they land eventually and Bob and Bill start El Paso.

It’s weird to get to this version in this thread and realize how odd it is, comparatively. I’ve seen the movie a couple times and never really considered that this version of Dark Star is not at all like the versions preceding it: it’s made of endless (fast) groove jamming, there are hardly any striking sectional or modal changes besides the verse, and it’s still a half hour long. There’s no space per se, and in that way it’s more like the versions of Playing In the Band that they had been developing in this period (the version of PitB at this show is 20 minutes, and great also, though a bit slow sounding.) The noise area of the Tiger is very brief, the chromatic stuff leading into that is more jazzy than scary, no monster movie soundtrack. All in all it’s a very tame Dark Star, more like an extended jam on the main theme with some slight exploration toward the latter half.

141 9/10/72 Hollywood, CA: 35:20 (DS 32:17 > drums 1:33 > jam 1:30) (with David Crosby)

Second night in Hollywood, at the Palladium. David Crosby sits in on Dark Star, coming after Black Peter.
Is Crosby playing guitar? I can’t quite tell either, the main one is Bob-style pretty much. Though he’s not wandering so much tonight, I thought it might be Crosby, but… Anyway, so Jerry just plays in mode, nice meandering lead. Phil is sorta walking in the theme progression. They do get into Crosby-initiated eddies, like the old Dark Stars. It develops nicely, a lot due to rhythm guitar. They go into a cool very spiky rhythmic jam for a wave in the 3rd minute and come down to a riff into a b minor section, which Jerry takes on a Sputnik ride at 5 minutes.
Into arpeggio sets of 3s, very delicate. Jerry lands on the actual Sputnik notes (the emin7, with a C# move) after a minute and a half. They bring it down to the A. Bob is grooving, they slowly bring it to a new jam, Phil goes off for a bit, Jerry thinks about it and then comes in with more high but delicate lead. Keith has a wah on his piano signal, he plays with that a bit in the background. Ride cymbal groove. It dies down by 10 min, and they start to build it up with a new groove, with toms and a stretchy chordal stab from rhythm guitar. Jerry pedals for a while, then riffs a bit in chords. More arpeggio to keep in the rhythm, eventually more single note lead, major mode.
Rhythm on a strong chord thing, resolving oddly and then back, they start to groove on a Bo Diddly vibe for a second, then back it off, Bill with a strong and paced backbeat, till they bring it down, he rolls still a little in the vibe. Jam with bass and drums.
Guitars come back in at 15 min. Grooving along, rhythm guitar on harmonics and chordal chops. Jerry rolls on. They come to a riff, then abandon it, wandering off. Building it up into a faster Dark Star-type groove. Over that wave, it mellows out, and Jerry sees the spot to start the theme proper and verse 1, people are thrilled.
Verse at 19, first line has an accidental at the end on the guitar, nice fermatas on line 2, almost vocal melodic phrasing from the bass on line 3, to the refrain, and Crosby climbs instead of dropping the last melodic bit. They hold the chords after the outro, Bill starts rolling. It’s a sustained moment diving into the depths, Jerry comes in with some atonal melodic tidbits, bright tone but not loud. Keith is using his pedal. Sounds like Crosby has come in in the middle of the mix, a phasey bright guitar sound? They stay atonal and diving, there’s odd beasts wandering around at the bottom of this sea. Nice guitar interplay with three guitars and a bass, sparse little odd statements from each. Chromatic runs from Jerry bring it down and then into low end of the Tiger. They start some fast chromatic frenzy bits, mostly falling patterns. Jerry climbs with the Tiger figure, some weird noises from the new guitar and keys with wah. Jerry starts rocking out in the high end, semi-chromatic figures, very jazzy. Keith obliges with jazzy rhythms. Rhythm guitar starts rocking it. They crest the wave and bring it down into a jazzy fast groove. Chordal riffing from rhythm over a popping bass.
Jerry starts a wah-on high riff then brings it back to lower the intensity a bit, some fast little runs with the rolled off tone for a bit. And into a new jam, keeping the energy going until the 31st minute when the guitars back off and leave a drum solo and then a quiet bass and guitar area, Jerry and the middle then left channel guitar. Then Bobby starts Jack Straw, and we’re out of space and into the ‘real’ world

Lots of energetic jamming in this one, really nice changes from rhythm guitar instigation, so lots of Jerry just jamming over it. I can’t tell which is Crosby, but whatevs, great version. back to Alligator Strat

142 9/16/72 Boston: 26:56 (end patched with AUD)  

With Ned Lagin, it says. Note that Jerry is back with his Alligator Stratocaster again now!
Starts with a pleasant feel, some sparse piano notes from Ned on electric piano, Keith on acoustic. Jerry plays in little fragments for a while. When he starts playing more wildly, he’s stretching notes like mad, getting back in with the Alligator strat. They rein it in a bit, and ride. Series of falling statements and gathering in trills at the bottom, not much separation in the mix, hard to distinguish some things in the seaweed of small sounds, Jerry and Ned are blurring a bit sometimes.
Dark Star theme fragments at 6:45, but hidden in there. They build it back to the Dark Star groove, Jerry runs around. He’s still playing a lot with stretching strings way out. They settle into a marching little groove with riffing from Phil. Jerry goes on exploring his guitar, a section with pinch-harmonics. And settling into the theme proper before 11 minutes. Verse one comes in, very sensitive vocal delivery. Bill continues a bit into line 2, then holds and builds back into the groove for line 3, beautiful refrain from Jerry, people yell and clap, the outro and Jerry already with some notes, then the go more static on suspended chords. It dies into small swells and notes. Bobby and Phil have a minor modal area that they explore a bit. Bill is keeping a subtle pulse. A Sputnik emerges late in minute 14, moving ominously. It gets really quiet in the 15th, slightly chromatic, but subtly, and stays that way for a while. More latent scary chromatic statements start at about 17:30, with bits of feedback and wah pedal. It grows but not quickly, some arpeggios with wah and then Tiger-like bits at 19 min, stabs from piano, drums build up a fast and odd groove, it stays chromatic and strong building to and through meltdowns. The groove goes on from Bill, Jerry seems like he’s tired of it, then stages a comeback to some high stretches and then back to the bottom to build a real Tiger, he starts to take over with the fast wah wah chromatics to break it apart. Pianos droning on low octaves, Bill won’t quit the groove. Finally at 22 minutes it breaks and a piano (Keith I would think) is playing a saloon western thing, Jerry falls in immediately, then the drums start the train beat, into a fast new jam with a lower volume. Sounds like Cumberland a little bit. Endless riffing from everybody, Jerry gets caught up in several repetitive little bits, at 26 minutes it breaks back to take stock, the drums roll off.
Jerry leads a coda and then brings it into Brokedown Palace. (With a small splice of audience tape in the SB.)
Not the best version, interesting but not spectacular. Some fun experimenting with stretches and sounds from the guitar from Jerry, different from the previous concerts.

143 9/21/72 Philadelphia: 37:22 – Dick’s Picks 36

{Dark Star theme [2:22] > Variations on theme [5:06] 7:30> pretty theme [4:11] 11:40 > Dark Star theme/First Verse [1:45] 13:30> Light Speedy Jam [5:10] 18:40 > Dissonant/Tiger Jam [8:35] 27:15 > Unknown theme [3:10] 30:10 > GDTRFB-like Jam [3:25] 33:35> MLB-like Jam [3:14] > Morning Dew}

Lovely plaintive stretches from Garcia as he starts after the intro goes. Relaxed feel, a lot of interplay between the players, everybody sort of bopping along. Everybody’s instruments has a good sound, even Bob’s got a decent tone here, and he’s playing with some licks in between chordal bits. Jerry sneaks in some little jazz licks in a bassier tone, then he starts playing with volume swells, leading to a plateau, though still with the underlying pulse. The plaintive stretches come back a little bit, leading to some small repeated melodic nursery-rhyme melodics, and it starts to build from there, still referencing the Dark Star thematic world. At about 5 min, Jerry starts plugging away at something that is a new build up to a Brighter Star at 6 min, that contains a little circle around the theme. Nice. That wave comes back down and Jerry goes back to some volume swells on his plaintive stretches, and into a new area.
This section has a latent Sputnik, or at least a 6/8 feel, but Jerry brings it into some light feedback, with whammy bar! (Whammy bar? How often does that happen?) Wow, that was unexpected, and then he rolls away on tremolo single notes. Still in the circle-around-the-theme world, Keith and Phil play with that idea in half time against Jerry, really nice counterpoint. The some pull-offs, Keith mirroring.
A lot of tremolo and trills from Jerry and Keith, then piano with wah on this also. They back off, leaving small gestures of the theme and then Jerry starts it for real at 11:45, the band falls in and they head to verse 1.
Nice delivery, very emotional sounding, highs and lows, long held first syllables of each line. The refrain, strong answers from the instruments, and in the outro and Bob has some little appoggiaturas as the band mutters around starting the next section. Jerry on light and fast low volume stuff that starts to insist itself more and more. The drums seem to roll along haphazardly until about a minute later and then by the 15th minute they are in a fast jazzy jam. Some little eddies of close notes, and out into a lighter area, Bill on side-stick rhythm. Piano and bass accompany, a little bit of Bobby, but Jerry is stepping back to take stock. Or light a cigarette, perhaps.
Phil starts a more driving riff, still mostly piano for high melody stuff. Jerry slips back in at about 19 minutes, wah pedal on but rolled back. Bill starts rolling more on toms, he and Phil start a Bo Diddley beat underneath, Jerry starts to take the mode outside, Keith happily follows, as does Bob with some dissonant chords. It’s getting tense, he has some little riffs that lead up and some Tiger pull offs already inserting by 21 min. Wah on the piano stays with Jerry, it starts to sound very Miles Davis of the similar era (or maybe some combo of John McLaughlin and Keith Jarrett era?) Both Jerry and Keith on a chicken riff at about 22:45 and Phil doing the walking bass type stuff.
Chromatic fast riffing is building up the volume and tension, up and down, and then from the bottom a Tiger meltdown starts for real by 25 min. Strong low chords from piano and bass, super dissonant, ending with stretched bass notes and pinch harmonics playing out atonal melodies. Big bass chords. Volume swell chords from Bob. Odd notes from everybody as it dies down.
At 27:30 or so, Jerry seems to want to take it back to a sweet melodic area, Keith plays around it modally for a bit and they land with some side stick attempts at pulse, Jerry takes a new melodic whirl as they seem to play in D major/e minor while he stretches to a Bb, it never really gets its stride until after 30 min, Jerry has some bluesy/country licks, and it stays in the D major area and he plays some banjo-type stuff. Who knows how they’ve come to this point! (To me it almost seems like Dark Star is pretty much left behind at this point and they are moving on to somewhere else.) Jerry is still playing with that Bb in the D major world, moving up and down in contrary motion simultaneously. They go full into this for a Mind-Left-Body jam, (which sort of sounds like that part in Music Never Stopped, now that I hear it) with the dropping line, C-B-Bb-A on a D major chord.
Over the hump of this jam, it starts resting a bit and quieting down, and they head to Morning Dew, with only a brief moment in between.
Really beautiful playing, some new explorations. The plaintive aspect that Jerry set up seems to stick with it for a long time, and then the whole thing has a trajectory toward the Tiger area, and it comes back to the world with folksy music references. Great piece.

144 9/24/72 Waterbury, CT: 33:56 (DS 27:43 > drums 1:59 > DS 4:14) – 30 Trips

Phil messes about with the intro riff, then a verbal count off. Soon after the start, Jerry gives the plaintive stretch of the other night again, but they settle into a moving groove, everybody winding out the notes like a multi-headed hydra. Jerry playing with some wide arpeggios, then upward runs, eventually getting caught up in some fast little riffs that take it out of the mode a bit and up to a little plateau of harmonics, everybody else keeps grooving along so he starts again at the bottom strings and builds it up again. Jerry is into some fast chromatic/jazzy riffing tonight.
In the 6th minute Keith uses his wah tone a little, but then abandons it. Jerry still skipping a long, they are pounding it out. It finally breaks down a bit at 7:40, entering a quieter mellower area. Jerry is playing with reaching leading tone chromatics, bringing a theme statement before 9 min, and then some more quick running around and back up to the harmonics, and back to the low strings, bringing it back up by thirds, the whole band winding around little riffs. Keith is following Jerry quite admirably here. It gets very jazzy and then min some shorter runs, though it continues back to endlessness, with some great outside-the-mode bits, they are all still just cooking, endless groove. Bob sure likes his stretched doubles stops, he spends minutes playing with them. Theme feints from Phil at or so, they end up playing a skewed Dark Star groove, still moving in and out of it and running up and down, grooving. Keith back with his wah tone. A lot of feints to the theme, but then running away off into more riffing. It breaks apart and reassembles to build as Phil goes up and places the theme notes, Keith and Phil cascade slowly around it and finally an actual thematic entrance.
Sort of a grooving verse at 11 minutes, nobody really abandoning the pulse for the fermatas much. Jerry sounds a bit strained, and ragged at the very ends.

Phil starts the Transitive Nightfall with big bass chords, sort of the bell tolling, but it takes only a minute or so before he goes into more minor key and bigger scarier chords. Band is backing this up and then it comes down in texture as Jerry has some sweet little arpeggios happening in the background, with trills from Keith. The side stick rhythm comes in, they seem like they’re heading into a jazzy groove, but it takes a long time to gel. It gets cooking with walking bass, and some scrapey sounds from Bob for rhythm, and isolated keyboard stabs, Jerry with odd wah-backed-off tone.
They stick with this odd music for a while, very jazzy and not quite tonal. Jerry seems to want to build this into Tiger meltdown, in the 21st minute it’s getting up there, but still maintaining a jazzy root. After a rise, Jerry starts the Tiger for real, piano following on the chromatic fast bits, the band builds it up to a serious high, Phil starts heading for big bass chords, then dissonant distorted notes and string scrapes. Bob playing offset stretches and screams, piano holds a droning repeated note as it freaks out in a serious noise fest.
Jerry leads out with some notes up to high stretches. Keith brings chords into the background, the waves crests, they start to pick up the pieces in a more melodic quiet way. A little side stick rhythm as they settle into a chord progression of sorts with a minor, G and e minor. But at 27 minutes, Jerry starts moving modally sideways into chromatics, Phil and Keith are on it, the music turns rubbery and stretches out while Bill continues grooving his kit, eventually leading the string players to leave him to it for a couple minutes! He picks it up, DRUM SOLO! whooo.

Phil and Jerry back in with more jazzy groove, Phil is riffing, Jerry in the bluesy-jazzy mode area. More serious grooving. Phil settles into a punchy groove riff, they take it for a ride. Less than a minute from the “end” Phil settles on a high note and they start looking around for where to go, I think I hear some voices in there talking to each other, and then Jerry starts the China Cat riff, and then fall right into it. Nice one! He starts singing within the minute. Sort of a slow groovy start (and version) to it, but hey, it’s China Cat.

I got lost in this one, my audio file I had copied to my laptop was messed and kept skipping back and repeating parts, it was very confusing!
Anyway, with that sorted, I finally got the actual sequence of events. A nice and generally high energy version of the song with a lot of jazzy grooving, some serious multi-headed animal improv.

145 9/27/72 Jersey City: 30:49 – Dick’s Picks 11

A very slow intro this evening after Ramble on Rose. Into a relaxed groove, Bill punctuating with tom hits, the band sort of lays it down into a low energy melodic area, Jerry goes on a tangent of ‘it’s all the same’ dit-dah, dit-dah, before building up little melodic towers, Phil starts to get into some syncopated rhythmic stuff to make it more exciting, and it works in that they speed up and build into a more solid rhythmic area after a few minutes.
These modal thematic waves bubble up and down over the course of this jam. A lull is forming after 6 minutes or so, but the band rolls on, Jerry takes the opportunity to get some more chromatic rising riffs in there, but it’s still Dark Star themed material, to what would be a normal theme statement, nobody makes it at 7:40 or so, Jerry goes into pinch harmonics. The band lies low, slightly quiet sputnik feints, to some potential drum solo… Jerry has dropped out, everybody else seems a bit lost now.
At 9 min or so, Keith starts little chromatic bits, Bob copies. They’re still not sure where to bring it off to, but they try for a quick groove bit, sounds like it could hang together by 10 minutes. Still no Jerry. Bill swingin’ it on the ride cymbal.
Finally about 11 minutes, Jerry enters and starts the fast jazzy licks. Bits of blues and country thrown in, of course. He’s sort of melding western swing with jazz rock.
At 12:40 there’s a fun bit where Jerry is riffing on the intro riff notes within the jazzy swing. He uses the figure again a few times, has a few riff-eddies, but this jam just keeps on chugging away. At 15:45, sort of a jazzy arpeggiated Bright Star maneuver, then to the 7th chord arpeggios he’s playing with.
Switch in texture at 16:30, they bring it down, Phil steps on some low chords, Bill still keeping a beat. He lands in a new minor area that Bob picks up on. Jerry frosts it with some volume swells and eventually feedback (with whammy bar again!) This dies off into noises and chromatic falling, Bob on some odd chords.
Sounds like Keith is playing the insides of the piano after 19 minutes. Interesting. The band starts to make harmonious sounds at a low and slow volume, though all still playing with quiet odd sounds. More Phil lead, but slow and scary. Jerry again with volume swelled notes. It dies off several times, with small sounds keeping the concert going. People cheer, though. They move outside of the pretty melodic area, and it’s a bit more atonal, still quiet.
Suddenly at 24:15, they have died entirely and they start the Dark Star jam up again, into the verse. Wow! We got here, although Jerry sounds a little haggard again, but does a nice dramatic reading. Nice rests on line two and back into the groove for line three. A convincing refrain, held end notes. And pretty little articulated intro to the next section, with Bill maintaining a ride cymbal slower groove, they head off to a new jam, similarly jazzy licks from Jerry, but a different feel, different chords from Bob. Jerry is still using his 7th chord arpeggios here. At 28 minutes he starts a chop rhythm on 3s against the 4 beat, then back into fast riffing and little repeated licks.
On the other side of the wave, Jerry keeps getting caught it little things until they start Cumberland Blues.

Cool version, some great fast jazz-rock stuff, and cool to get to the verse after 24 minutes—I thought it might never happen.

146 10/18/72 St. Louis: 28:21

Well well, enclosing Dark Star (and Morning Dew) within Playin’ in the Band. That’s meta! Second set opens with PitB, nicely upbeat. Even Donna sounds relatively in tune even on her ‘yeah-yeaaahs’. Bob really starts the improvs here, moving around with chord playing, Jerry takes his time and tone starts in the wah-rolled-off area before he starts to explore, using more jazzy bits already, arpeggiated runs, little riffs. They are really rocking it out together, all cylinders firing, Bill is really pumping away (it’s sort of no wonder this 12+ minute jam leads to a drum solo.) Nice sections of Keith and Jerry mirroring each other too, great stuff from Phil and Bob. Really strong music already…
Interestingly, Jerry starts to signal the “back in” to PitB at 15:30 into this, but the string players instead beg off and leave Bill to a 3 minute drum solo. He starts small, with hi-hat and a few toms, smaller sounds, leading into the rolling waves of percussion. Out into the hi-hat again, Phil starts Dark Star.
He starts it relatively slowly, but it moves into a stately swing, not quite the tropical-breeze feel of earlier this year but more a walking pace. Along the boardwalk. Everybody is “on” but not overstating anything.
Jerry has some plaintive cries again at 2:30, after finding those notes by stretching to Keith’s top notes. Tripping little rhythmic bits from Bill and Phil. Stretched pinch-harmonics creating an ethereal top end to this.
Cool interplay from the guitars and bass, still in the Dark Star groove. It moves into a minor area after 5 minutes, a little quieter, lending opportunities for drop outs, and then a minute later hardly anyone is there, little sounds and trills in this deeper hole. Isolated chords or notes, mostly rubato. Bill leads some rolls so it dives even deeper into nothingness at 7:30, it becomes more chromatic and distant. Another false ending a minute later, sort of a coda, then Phil lands on a note at 8:45, to settle it for a second before it continues sinking.
Jerry starts a Sputnik-y arpeggio, everybody else tremolos in waves with it. At 10, a drum roll, then Phil leads it back to the theme groove! Nice one, they sound strong, really stating some forward motion, though the theme is mostly staying on the low end at this point. Jerry is seeming to head upwards to a brighter star, but it’s mostly in allusions to it.
Verse 1 at 11:40, sort of ragged vocals to start, but he holds it together. Line 2 really has a nice landing on the fermata, with drums rolling onwards. Wide open chords form Bob on line 3. Jerry holds out the last vocal notes of the refrain lines.
Outro perfectly stated and into the Transitive Nightfall, a kick drum is insistent, though no actual rhythm is implied, Jerry starts a wah-wah arpeggio. It eventually lands in a Dark Star-ish melodic area, slow and delicate, though building in intensity on simple (“it’s all the same”) stretched-out licks from Jerry developing into feedback. Then they dive in and head to the jazzy stuff, a new phrygian mode almost immediately emerges. They continue driving forward getting more and more chromatic. Avant garde, even.
At 17, we have a short Jerry and Phil jazz set, wah stuff coming in after a bit, very Miles-sounding. Bill is super plugging away. (I think Keith has dropped out.) Jerry starts the Tiger licks, but they don’t develop yet, instead going to diminished chord bits. At 19:20 or so, the rhythm section has backed off leaving a spatial hole for odd melodic notes. Phil starts emphasizing some notes looking for feedback (I think), he heads to big bass chords in the 21st minute. Everybody else eventually leaves him to it. Bass solo!
His bass solo is mostly big evil sounding chords, though right before 23 minutes he starts a major-ish chord riff. Bill comes in to help it out with a beat. in the 24th minute the other guys are finding their way in with little additions to his new pop song. I almost hear a little allusion to bring it back to PitB at 25 minute, but instead it dies out by 25:30, Phil comes in with the Feeling Groovy bass line! Ok, then! Band hops on board that train. (Keith is back in too.) But it doesn’t seem like they really want to develop it much, they just jam on it for a bit, Jerry already going a little sideways after a bit, but back to the major-key grooviness, it rolls on until some cadential phrases from Jerry, and then he changes it to minor notes and it breaks, and Jerry starts Morning Dew, Phil in after one note, Bob after two. Bob, by the way, has been playing with some sort of chewy phase shifter or vibe pedal in this show.
Nice one. Beautiful playing. Not super developmental, a lot of deep diving and holes—a nebulous stellar nursery—especially compared to the PitB before it, but a great companion to that, and to the music that is still going as it moves into Morning Dew and then finally (seamlessly, on the very last note) back to PitB, which jams in the jazzy world for only really a couple more minutes before insinuating the song again and coming back to the outro riffs and Donna screaming and to the chorus. Overall, a fantastic concert sequence. Dark Star on its own has elements of the versions before it, the jazzy riffing and chromatic deep dives, but none were taken to any extreme depth nor length. Plus a bit of Feelin’ Groovy. Still, it clocked in at 28 minutes, pretty good for an enclosed version exemplifying the very essence of “Playing in the Band” within itself. It takes the band a full minute to start the next section of the concert.

147 10/23/72 Milwaukee: 28:23 AUD

Odd that this one is with a couple seconds of the same length as the last one…
We have an audience tape! It’s sort of wonderful that way, too, it blends the band a bit. It starts with the intro riff and settles into a mellow ride-cymbal vibe pace and cruises. Jerry soars off the bat and plays upwards and downwards arpeggiated runs with Keith following. Some plaintive bends happen after a few ups and downs, but he still is resorting back to those arpeggiated runs. An eddy forms at about 4:30, the sense of pulse backs off a bit into short gestures, little chordal stretches from Bob. Phil keeps it up for a while, but eventually cedes to the depth of the space they find themselves in by 6 minutes.
Building back out takes a few tries. It’s almost a groove again a few times, but backs off with short melodic things and chordal stabs. A very low eddy comes by 8 and there’s some Sputnik-y feints, but it’s mostly just holding the 6/8 to the swing rhythm, they build it up.
Thematic feints at 9 minutes in, heading back toward a Dark Star groove, with Bill subdividing into twos. Star-theme bits at 9:50, deconstruction still happening from all members. It falls apart into melodic groups of three and then heads back down to an droney pool. Back to a deconstructed falling melodic version of the Bright Star at 12 minutes, which makes it to the theme proper and the verse.
Verse 1 at 13 minutes, nice strong vocal delivery. Nice fermata on line 2, hard to hear a build back on line 3, Phil doesn’t explore much here. The refrain is a nice offset to the sound, and they hold the harmonies together well, people clap heartily as they start the outro to the Transitive Nightfall, with Jerry on high pinch harmonics, making a melody, and some latent happy groove bubbling up from Bob and Phil and Keith. The band moves into swirly eddies as Jerry continues, they start some ‘Playin in the Band’ rhythm stuff (dah-dit-dah, dah-dit-dah) but Jerry takes it to a minor/phrygian mode, and they keep a rhythm forming there.
It starts to go outside tonally, more chromatic notes. Wah-wah on the piano, he has a little lead area at about 17:30. Seems to be dropping to a fast jazzy feel, Jerry is doing his little fast atonal/diminished chord licks but fairly quietly. Possibly Bob drops out for a bit. (It’s the Miles Davis section.) By the end of the 19th minutes, Bob is back and Jerry is getting louder and higher, still they’re plugging along really quickly with walking bass style stuff.
By 21 minutes they are heading for a Tiger-style kung fu meltdown, but the keys and bass are still holding to the jazzy feel, so it takes a while, it gets extremely chromatic by 22 minutes, and gets very noisy and meltdown-y. Not in the Tiger chromatic pull-offs, though, but in chromatic notes strewn about up and down, everybody freaking out.
It dies down a bit at 24 min, but they are still wailing and Jerry finally starts up for the Tiger riffs, everybody scrubs their instrument strings loudly and it seriously goes outside. As it comes down, more enthusiastic clapping! A sustained lull for the 25th minute, holding feedback and some chords.
Jerry starts a pretty folky melodic ramble by himself, and then with some volume swells. They maintain a lower volume pool with feedback and string noises and volume swelled slow melodic notes for a while, in D as it sounds like it might go to Morning Dew… but stays in this space for another minute or two, with allusions to the Dark Star melody even. Phil plays isolated notes as accompaniment to Jerry’s swelled notes and then as they hold the last note, he starts the intro upswing into Mississippi Half Step Uptown Toodle-oo.

Well, wow. This is a great version, too bad that it’s only an audience tape (or we are lucky that it exists at all, I suppose). I love the pools they fall into in between areas in the first half, I sort of missed those old eddies int he jam. And the post-verse jazz jam leading to the meltdown(s) is epic.

148 10/26/72 Cincinnati: 21:32

(No bass in the soundboard mix which is difficult, but he can be heard in other mics.)
This Dark Star is deep in the second set, which again had started with Playin in the Band (a long one). Drums roll over the intro as they attempt to settle into a paced groove, accented with little riffing from Jerry and Phil. Lots of little runs from all players, small eddies in the current keeping it from settling down. Phil is playing fast little runs intermittently also, and getting into riffing things that the other pick up on. Jerry makes some theme statements before the 4 minute mark. At 6 minutes it lulls, into a pool, Bob playing with some minor hammer-on chords. Starts a section of trilling and arpeggios that leads to a strong set of emphasizing the three-beat feel, this builds and breaks to a thematic groove area at about 8:30.
It doesn’t hold together, Jerry goes into insect weirdness somehow (on the Strat!) and plays some repeated single notes and then to a pull off that heads atonal. They start speeding it up a minute later, getting more intense, but again it doesn’t stay and the band falls away. Jerry stretches out with some more repeating notes breaking away into riffs and then to a chord back and forth (A sus4 to A).
Even though the rhythm is mostly died away, Jerry is still working on little fast riffs, so Bill picks up a side stick thing. The chordal suspension comes back, almost a song hidden in there. Phil sounds like he’s just playing riffs endlessly.
Some tuning happens at 13:20 or so, then volume swelled notes. A nebula is forming, some Sputnik-y playing way down low. And they break back into the Dark Star groove at 14:20, a strong thematic statement from Jerry a little later, but the licks are all starting high and falling. The groove happens and heads to verse 1 a minute later.
Strong and dramatic vocals. A big fermata on line 2 from everybody. Hard to tell exactly but I think Phil is exploring a bit on line 3. To the refrain, Bill rolls out of it. The outro happens with rolling toms from Bill, and into a suspended chord set, but Bill is holding a rhythmic beat together, so Jerry starts his falling chordal arpeggios and into light fast runs initiating the jazzy fast bits with Keith rolling notes out. After 18 minutes, it sounds like the guitars drop out and it’s piano and drums (maybe bass too.) He uses his wah pedal on the piano. He eventually drops out and it leaves drums and bass (which sounds like a drum solo.)
At about 20 minutes, Phil is starting the Stomp, but Jerry is riffing again. Neither is gelling, really, so Bobby starts Sugar Magnolia.
Not a great version, sort of a wandering set of whirlpools that never develop. It’s not helped by the lack of strong bass in the mix. Ok, worst of ’72, maybe, but still.

149 10/28/72 Cleveland: 27:43

(From Bear’s tape, drums a tad loud…)
Starts with the intro, settles and then Jerry moves into the plaintive bends. Some triplet rolling underneath from Keith and Bobby. Nice mellow jamming with little takeoffs in the rhythm from Bill and Keith. Keith is really rolling along on this one. Jerry backs off and then goes for some fast little jazzy riffs, while again Keith has some upwardly rolling triplets. More plaintive stretches in there, they get caught in little eddies of the triplet rolls. A lull in this long slow build before the five minute mark, and they start to build again in a minor area. Jerry takes them on a striking upward set of chords and it breaks into more Dark Star mode again. Jerry gets into some fast repetitive riffing at 6 minutes, Keith comes along.
The whole tempo moves up, the band gets excited. Bill is into some dit-dah, dit-dah kick pattern, mirroring the “it’s all the same” thing that Jerry plays with around it.
They move into more fast playing, building it up in pitch and then down again before sort of settling into a pedal tone suspension on a strong rhythm, really jamming hard. A set of fast bits crest the wave, with big country licks from Jerry coming in at 9 minutes, still playing on the suspended chord. It finally breaks at 9:30 and the Dark Star theme emerges and the tempo slows. Really nice transition, great playing and great musicality.
They enter a quieter area, with some thematic entrances again at 10:45, heading toward a verse. Verse 1 at 11:24, strong vocals, very feeling. Audience claps and yells! A big fermata on line two, building it back on line 3, with the grounded bass, Keith wandering in clouds on line 3. Refrain with monster movie vocals back again! And an outro leading to a weird watery tremolo sound in reverb from a melodic instrument (? Bobby?) bringing us into the Transitive Nightfall. Rhythm attempts to pick up but the guitars go into soundscape, so Bill goes into rolls. The band dives deep into the sea and there are monsters, big bass dissonances strike at 14:40, drum hits play around them, guitars stretch odd double stops. Some feedback in the background as Bill rolls on for a bit, drum solo accompanied by feedback and occasional bass notes.
By 16 minutes we are entering an area with volume swelled notes and feedbacks, big deep minor isolated bass chords. At 16:50, Phil starts his rhythmic strumming on major chords, Bill joins in. Instant song, though only bass and drums really. It’s a very poppy song, actually. The guitars start to figure it out. Keith is fully in by 18:20. Jerry starts lead playing a little later. He settles into some high rock riffing with the wah wah on.
At 20:20 or so, Jerry starts playing with some extra-modal riff, heading somewhere else, but it doesn’t really get there and winds itself up into high stretched cries. This moves into the jazzy fast jamming, which breaks down with weird stretched chords. By 22 minutes it’s falling into atonal chromatic little licks, Bill rolls in and out. Jerry is insinuating getting to the Tiger meltdown, but it’s never coalescing, he stays outside tonally, with wah wah tone. He’s nearer to it at 24:40, actually playing the chromatic Tiger riff finally, moving harder and higher. Meltdown! They hold the high point for a while until it breaks at 25:40, and it’s back to smaller sounds and isolated double stops moving away from the center accompanied by string scratches and small drum hits and rolls. They settle on a dissonant bit, Bill is playing a drum while changing its pitch like a talking drum. It dies out and Bobby starts Sugar Magnolia.
A nice version, in the end. Goes through some interesting changes.

150 11/13/72 Kansas City: 22:03 + 10:13 AUD

(Bear’s AUD patched )

Ok, this is interesting (to me): these next few shows, the rest of the Dark Stars of the year, Jerry is playing an instrument built for him by Dan Erlewine, a walnut Stratocaster with a Gibson stop-tail bridge. (I wonder when this was commissioned? His shop was in Michigan at the time, now he’s in Ohio.) This guitar is an odd beast, built out of the same slab of walnut that Erlewine built Albert King’s Flying-V that same year. Erlewine is super famous in the guitar world, he’s a god of repair methods and inventing tools for simplifying things (see Stewart-Macdonald, stewmac.com, he’s designed a ton of the tools they sell.) He fixed an ancient Strat neck of mine once, even, so of course I love him. Look up his story, pretty intense. He sold his Les Paul to Bloomfield, changing the sound of 60s blues from that Telecaster… etc, etc… https://woub.org/2016/08/25/a-lifetime-of-music-dan-erlewine/
Anyway. Dark Star. Number 150!
Sort of a loose intro riff, into a nice and uplifting side-stick groove, with Jerry reaching up and doing some of those stretches, audience approval all around. Some nice little pinch harmonic eddies after a minute or so, cascading bits from Keith. Into quiet fast little runs. Some people near the audience mics are enjoying it, “wo-o-ow…” Nice alternating melodic lines with fast runs, heading up to that chord with suspension thing from the last time, but more in the groove this time.
Waves crest and they begin anew after 4 minutes, a little sparser to start with. Eddies on a stretched 9th, with rolling rhythm underneath, into a more 6/8 TOO-type groove for a sec, but it breaks out into new chords, striking a strong repeated area before 6 minutes, and holding that plateau for a while, up high. A mesa.
This wave breaks into little arpeggios at 6:40, the audience loves it. Tinkling high piano, sort of Sputnik from Jerry. Back into chordal stabs, rolling it out of mode a little. At 7:50 or so, it breaks apart into an odd area of volume-swelled notes, sparse rhythm and odd piano bits, Jerry comes up with some melodic bits like the vocal refrain notes, then to more stretched plaintive notes, Bill seems to be winding up a new rhythm.
After 9, Jerry scurries around quietly like a little squirrel, while it’s still pretty quiet. Wah on the piano makes some odd background sounds. The suspension chord makes a slight return, (Asus4 to A). The fast runs start to infect Phil, who starts funkifying the bass line and they all build it up till it hits the theme area in the late 11th minute and they start verse 1.
People clap. Line 1 is strong, Jerry really milks the slide on the first part of line 2, strong vocals, Phil holds a high pedal tone on line 3. Keith still playing wah on his piano.
Weird chord in the middle of the refrain, there, Bob. Regardless, they make it to the outro and Jerry breaks apart a chord, while the wah piano warbles around. It dies off into soundscape by 13:40. Odd little notes and swells, the stretched plaintive note. Bill rolls around. A minute later it’s diving into feedback and deep oceanic bass tones. Keith strumming the piano strings (I think.) Almost complete silence a couple time, really small sounds emerging, little feedback and stretched tom tom rolls. Weird piano sounds, string noises… this is cool, very atonal avant garde like ’69 space, the deep sea of chaos.
Atonal chords and small sounds go on for a long time, diving deeper and deeper. Jerry steps on the wah pedal for some stronger isolated notes. At about 18:30 they start building the intensity again, warbles from piano, Tiger-like bits from Jerry, Bill and Phil getting louder and stronger. Tiger meltdown approaching, in the 19th minute it really starts happening, big clusters from piano, wah-inflected chromatics from Jerry. The bring it down a bit and hover in this world for a while, Phil picking odd notes in a sort of drunk-walking style. It finally is spent by 20:45, the bass is still plucking out odd notes, lead guitar on some little chromatic runs, Keith really goes for some long chromatic piano runs up to the high end and rolls around up and down. They stay in the atonal area, maybe going for another buildup… (in Dick L copy of the Owsley tape the track separates here, for some reason.) A Tiger Meltdown for real starts with the snarling chromatic wah wah riffs, everybody noisily building it up, Phil coming underneath with big bass chords, people clap and he starts the Philo stomp chords, a seamless transition from the meltdown.
Bass and drums jam on his pop song chords with small accompaniment, Keith figures out some nice falling melodies, the guitars seem to find some of the chords, at 25:00 in they all land on the root, and then back to the fifth, they’re figuring out his song. Jerry eventually takes up some major key jamming with it. Quiets down… audience is clapping along.
The wave crests and Bobby goes back to the suspended chord thing, Jerry still playing out long bluesy major key riffs.
Bill has a moment on a high tom ringing it out. Keith starts mimicking the bluesy aspect Jerry brought up.
At 7:30 they enter a riff area and it a half minute later it heads to a very fast Feelin’ Groovy from Keith and Phil, the band falls in, jamming it out. At 9 minutes they hold it out on the root, then hit the progression again a couple more times to round it out. Then they start letting go, to head off somewhere else. Where will it go?
Well, when it finally allows the entrance, Jerry hits the big D chord for the start of Morning Dew. Band falls in immediately, the audience claps appreciatively.

Well, I loved this one, or at least most of it. I love that space that precedes the meltdown, especially stretching out the weird quiet deep sea stuff and then building it up out of that to the prolonged loud meltdown. I’m not as keen on the Philo stomp poppiness nor the Feelin’ Groovy riffing (within Dark Star, that is). But still, overall an amazing version. Very inspired and exploratory.

the Dan Erlewine Strat

151 11/19/72 Houston: 31:#40 (DS 25:40 > WRS Prelude 6:00)

A funny tuning section with Dixie and circus music beforehand, they regroup and begin Dark Star.
A strong start and into a moving groove with a few little holds, but mostly all the players continuously moving forward in their lines, like a multi-voices chorale. Jerry gets into a few little repetitive eddies, Keith follows him, it’s nice. Sounds like band communication is going well. Phil gets on some contrasting high parts, then low parts: lead bass.
Jerry starts a low string riff at 3:20 or so, keeps at it to get into its rhythm before taking off again, and extending the mode a little, though they stay in Dark Star groove. It moves through a potential lull a minute later, but keeps going, moving through the dip in pulse replete with extended runs from bass, piano and guitar back to a more rhythmic groove with some new modal choice, a little chaotic.
At 6 min, Phil starts a harder riff, but give in to the Dark Star groove again a little later. It’s getting a little ominous sounding, but Jerry takes it higher with some stretchy runs. Right before 8 min there’s some cool up and down arpeggios in the melodic spots. Bobby is really moving around the possible chords. In the 9th minute there’s a cool syncopated melodic thing going on, it eventually dives to small string sounds from Jerry, against the continuing groove, he settles on some choice notes and then starts up some strong statements with stretched string intros. This guitar has a more splanky sound, but he’s getting some nice tones out of it.
At 11:20 or so, the “it’s all the same” rhythm leads to the Dark Star theme and into verse 1 at 11:45.
Classic verse playing, Phil doing the climbing 3+3+2 rhythm on line two and the octaves on line 3. The refrain mostly keeps tempo, they don’t really hold out the fermatas until the last line. A big bass chord ends it, and they go into the outro melody and into space. Jerry finding some odd little sounds, Phil going into rubato bass solo area with little trills. It dies out to some stretched drumhead diddles, and little string touching sounds with some latent feedback threatening. A low drone enters.
At 15, some big evil bass chords with guitar feedback drones, a minute later that screaming wah-pedal sounding feedback shriek happens, scary! Bass continues with some rolling drums as the others drop out. Sounds like he may be heading to his bass solo area, he’s building some riffs, sounds like with multiple channels from his bass. The bass is loud in this recording, by the way, the drums are no match for it, though Bill sounds like he’s jamming along.
Bass solo with drums continues, riffs and chords. The Philo Stomp suspended chord thing starts at about 21 minutes, going to the major chord root, and then he holds the root for a while and the guitars come back in for a feint to Feelin’ Groovy, but it doesn’t go there, stays in the root area in a major mode (though Bobby tries some outside chords occasionally). By 23 minutes, Jerry has a melodic idea, sounds like a hit, boys. They jam out on this. Keith is noodling along this whole time.
It all backs off a bit in the 25th minute bit by bit and then they start the Weather Report Suite prelude idea, a composed chord progression at this point on its way to being a song. Nice place to go to! Yet another emergent song-embryo coming from Dark Star. It’s a pretty spacey version with warbly wah-infused melodic playing.
A couple minutes in it starts to intimate that a Tiger meltdown is going to happen, by 3 minutes into this section it’s pretty chaotic, just moments after the relative Order of a composed chord progression. They go atonal and awry, it heads over that hill and back down, up another atonal hill and over the crest to some volume swelled note pairs and from the legato chaos, Jerry starts up Mississippi Half Step.
Most of this makes a very nice version, the Dark Star areas leading to the verse were prime multi-voiced improvising, and the space after the verse was deep, but then it leads to an ok bass solo area and then a few programmatic tries at theme-jams. It ends up being pretty good but not as stellar as it started.

152 11/26/72 San Antonio: 25:11

A rip-roaring PitB starts set two, a few songs, then Dark Star. It starts with the riff, lotta Phil in this recording. It’s a beautiful rolling tempo, Jerry takes his time for some rolling peaks in the thematic jam, riding the waves. He goes to that low string riffing again after a couple minutes, I guess this guitar feels cool down there. After this they start to space the mode out a little, and Jerry goes for some feedback bending, Bobby is doing some melodic stuff, Keith keeps some thematic elements. Jerry goes off on endless 16th notes, building it, into a rhythm that Keith joins in on, Keith goes full Jarrett for a bit with chord melodies in the 16ths, they crest and continue. Quieter and more delicate, Jerry and Keith are still moving in patterns of endless short notes off and on, but at about 6 minutes Bill switches the rhythm up into straighter pattern and Keith goes into funkiness. After a minute they are finding a new song, a new melody for this feel.
Moving between two chords (or a suspension on one, really), Phil goes into a high riff, while Jerry rolls like a Sputnik but very fast and they hold it for a while. This pattern inform the whole next while, Jerry makes more Dark Star theme insinuations and then starts the actual theme much slower at 9:30, it takes the band half a minute to wind down to it, and they fall in. Cool, like overlapping realities, coalescing.
Verse 1 at 10:25, nice vocal delivery, very honest and not very dramatic but well sung. Phil maintains a rooting line, Keith does the wandering on line 3. Refrain is very ornate with the guitars and bass, and full in between all the fiddly bits.
The Nightfall section starts and they start falling, receding patterns, Phil plants a bass chord but then starts high again, Jerry adds quiet harmonics as the dust settles and they all roll around to a lull. Jerry begins the feedback and volume swells, Phil in with notes in a duet for a bit. After a couple minutes it’s just Phil and Bill, very delicate and quiet. Phil builds it to bigger chords, solo and then the suspensions heading for the Philo Stomp maybe, but taking it more slowly and exploring a bit with the sound of the chords in his multi-channel bass thing. At 16:20 he does start the strumming, Bill brings it up.
Guitars come back in, grooving out. I hear a wah on low strings low in there, and he comes out at 17:45 into higher territory. They’re heading for major key riffs, and at 18:35 it breaks the Feelin’ Groovy ground, takes a couple rounds to really settle into it and hits it more. Major key jam, Jerry on wah-mostly-backed-off tone. The jam falls apart late in the 20th minute and in the ashes, Jerry begins chromatic wah stuff, Phil comes in with high notes, it builds to the Tiger, everybody freaking out, right after that happy major key jam, man. Super loud Tiger meltdown by 22:30, then it backs off in volume but maintains intensity and atonality. Lulls for a while and then goes for it again, with wider notes patterns, then falling cries, which dies out and then Bobby fucking starts Me and Bobby McGee, damn it.

Beautiful intro and theme jam, very fluid and melodic, in both the rhythmic areas before the verse. The verse is stated sort of matter-of-factly, no drama to the voice, but very beautifully plain. Sounds like the truth. The refrain and outro inter-line filigree from the guitars and the bass is great. Second part seemed very programmatic, like they knew the ideas for each section and switched between them pretty quickly. Really well played bass solo and the major key “Groovy” bit, which was nice in there, till the meltdowns come and chaos reigns again for quite a while, until structure comes again in the form of Me and Bobby McGee. ( Though I’m not really into that song much. I think I heard it too much when I was little. And especially not their cover of it, so it kinda bummed me out as a sequence, but I’d bet in context—in Dec 1972—this was the height of intensity and coolness for a bunch of high kids in San Antonio. So long as they survived the meltdown.)

153 12/11/72 Winterland: 34:26 (also AUD)

There’s a nice matrix of this one where you can really hear the whoops as they start it up, but it’s evident on the SB as well. Harder to hear all the parts on the matrix, so I’m gonna stick with the SB.
Settling into a mellow groove with some tripping over one another for a while, Bill keeps it in check with a side stick rhythm. Jerry is puttering around and floating over the mess, they get mired in little pools of triplets, a lead guitar leads it out and it gets a little funkier by 4 minutes, but it breaks down a minute later into suspended chords and then harmonics and high bass notes, ending the pulse.
Phil tries to take it back in with his syncopated rhythm and it tries to congeal but remains sort of chaotic for another minute, coming back to a jazzy groove. Jerry goes for his plaintive cries again.
At 7 it goes into a sputnik-y arpeggio section and fades off for a bit before establishing the old Sputnik moving notes in the arpeggio. Phil is pretty much keeping his syncopated thing going on this whole time. He’s got ahold of something he doesn’t want to let go. Bob sounds meandering. They all do, actually. It’s not really “together” so much as side-by-side. Keith is in some world of his own even, not following Jerry like he usually does. Regardless, they keep at this group-of-threes thing for a while.
In the tenth minute it starts to coalesce a bit and they dig in more. Jerry goes for some fast riffs and repeating bits, eventually taking it higher. It crests and breaks down again into a low point where Jerry goes into low octaves and Keith goes into high tinkling. Into this new rhythmic area, it stays low for a bit, then they start to explore more, with small extra-modal excursions. Jerry takes off into the fast jazzy riffing against Bob’s staccato chord hits and hammer on riffs. Jerry finds some little melodic bits to play with, still in Dark Star mode, and still runs fast little bits in between. An eddy in the 15th minute maintains the energy over the crest of this wave, which is breaking at 16 minutes back into a slower Dark Star theme area by hints and then hits at 16:25. When the band enters the groove, Jerry finds a bit of feedback before getting to the melody and slowing it down more, heading to the verse (some onstage chatter happens at 17:20, can’t quite get what’s being said?) Verse at 17:38.
Nice vocal delivery, held long notes at the starts of the lines, especially line 2 with the band fermata. Wandering on line 3 from Keith and then Phil takes it up at the end of the line. The refrain is very dramatic, rubato. People clap. Outro and into the next section, with hammer on bits and some feedback, bass slowing, toms rolling around. Where to, gents?
At 19:40 it’s almost gone, a low bass note droning, more whoops from the audience and the feedback starts to build into long held notes, wiggling around punctuated by drum and bass bits. Soundscape-string bits from Bob, and more feedback from all of them with dissonant chords from the bass. Rolling toms. (Somebody unplugs and plugs back in it sounds like.)
Feedback continues as the bass goes into sporadic notes, very sparse. Sea of holes, very spacey.
In the 24th minute there is some rhythmic tidbits entering, drums start rolling around, and it develops into a riff occasionally, (a little Good Lovin’ intro for a sec), otherwise dissonant cluster bits. Sounds like the Tiger pull off chromatics are being alluded to, but it’s from the keyboard (? muting the strings by hand while playing?). Jerry starts with a wah-pedal clicky-strummy thing, and more feedback, drums pounding still. Weird section! Eventually the bass and drums sort of sync into an odd rhythm.
By minute 29 it’s mostly just drums with sparse sounds form other people, little wails or weird noises from wah-keys. It backs off a minute later and there’s a little chromatic riff in the background from Jerry, lightly accented. Keith comes along after a bit. It’s still very light and not really heading for the meltdown so much as being atonal. Some stretched chord bits from Bob, Bill heads into a 5/4 area, wow, it’s very Miles Davis in here. Jerry still keeping a low profile with the wah backed off, he goes for the actual Tiger bits at 32:30 and it builds into the screaming meltdown, which dies off as quickly as it came into held notes and little phrases and then as it rolls around on the floor for a half a minute, Jerry slows his roll and (plays a little Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring?) his lead notes, he starts Stella Blue.

I didn’t like this one as much as bzfgt. Oddly this one had a cooler second half than first! I thought the first half was chaotic but I didn’t think it was in a good way, they sounded like nobody was listening to each other (to me. I see you’ve top-5’d it!) And such a severe slowdown into the verse. But then it went into space, and that was a very interesting space, that I did like!

154 12/15/72 Long Beach: 25:00

A jam at the end of Truckin’ leads to a jam that leads to Dark Star, the track separation is still in E but on a huge Phil bass note, followed by some feedback and stretched notes over the occasional low E. It takes a bit to settles down to nearly nothing, to start to build it back up again with some thematic runs suggesting the Dark Star world before any idea of rhythm comes back. It takes its time, almost 3 minutes before Bill starts up a sidestick mellow groove with Keith on rhythmic chords with jazzy extensions.
At 3:50 Phil goes for some cool fast licks that contain the Dark Star intro riff! It sounds like a whole new riff thing played like this so they jam out of that into a two chord thing. Nice groove, it speeds up and moves, a long slow climb up the hill of intensity, a few little glens to cross, it goes smooth after about 8:30, the guitars backing off, then it’s bass and drums. Bill is still moving, Phil is zeroing in on a riff or set of notes.
At 9:30, he starts a new thing, a little help from rhythm guitar. Jerry comes back in quietly and they maintain a quiet but fast area. Drums eventually start just rolling on the toms. The guys stick with a percussive but continuously rhythmic but quiet area for a while, only getting a little louder in the 12th minute. Before 13, they start a syncopated rhythmic phrase, it takes it down and there’s a hint of the Dark Star theme before it goes soupy and then suddenly they break into the actual Dark Star theme and groove, to the verse.
Not very good vocal entry, but he recovers. Nice long fermatas on line two, breaking it up. Only a tiny amount of Bobby wandering on line 3, into the refrain, which is slightly rubato. The transitive nightfall line slowing still, to the outro and onto part deux with isolated repeated notes and feedback, Phil slowing it to drop into the ocean, Keith still with some chordal playing. Jerry starts some volume swells, it’s very spacious, hardly anything else. More feedback wails, and lighter controlled drones. Bobby makes some string noise, feedback calls still in the distance. Some pedal tones from piano. Very interesting feedback section from guitars and bass at 5:00 (19:00) with long slowly moving pitches.
That poor thing, the piano, only has discreet pitches, so then he plays some of them, and some dissonant clusters.
Jerry starts to come in with wah-rolled-off pre-tiger fast chromatics. Drums are building it back up, some cool dialog bits between drums, bass and guitar. Jerry is continuing in the fast scary bits, Keith on cluster chord stabs, but he’s got a rhythmic design to it.
At 8 (22) they start from the bottom, low and chromatic, hover around a bit threatening to break out, but it never gets super scary wild. Then a minute and a half later, they cede to slight melodic germs, it backs off into a more potentially pretty space, latent with modal themes threatening, some guitar statements right at the end of this lead to Morning Dew.

Nice version in general. Very cool feedback and odd space in the second half, the threat of a full Tiger meltdown slightly averted toward the end and steered slowly into Morning Dew.

So ends 1972, generally a very good vintage! Looks like it’ll be a couple months before a new star happens.

Alligator Stratocaster

155 2/15/73 Madison, WI: 19:17 (also AUD)

Jerry is back to playing the Alligator Stratocaster again, all modified now, and there are new additions to the setlists, such as this version moving into Eyes of the World (I guess this is the second time they played Eyes?) It starts on an upbeat feel, staying with the groove, but at a nice pace. They seem refreshed, I guess, after a break where they obviously worked up the new material.
It moves along, Bill ride-cymbaling a strong pulse. Phil and Jerry really going for it, they get into some interesting little eddies of notes, like at the 2:40 area. Keith seems to be taking a slower take, hitting the occasional chord or riff, sort of with Bob instead of Jerry.
At 4:30, we have the plaintive volume-rolled cries, and small swells following take it down, eventually Bill follows into a deeper area, abandoning the pulse. They enter a space area, some pinch harmonics and isolated bass notes, mostly arhythmically stated. Cluster chords from Bob, more swells and stretches leading to some feedback and atmospheric sounds. Phil takes a lead area, into bass solo territory. A sputnik-y background from Jerry is happening in the 8th minute.
Jerry picks it up with some wah-rolled-off fast bits, quietly, but building it, so the drums start to come back in with a side-stick rhythm. Into a new jam area, Jerry starts with a new modal feel and a straighter guitar sound at 9:30 or so, Keith hugging his back, they jam along, building it and moving forward until about 11 minutes, it breaks into a full swing and a descending melodic bit brightly suggesting the Dark Star area again, some allusions to the theme at about 11:45, playing with the intro octave into new melodic bits, they bring it way down a minute later and it hits the Dark Star theme proper and the verse starts.
First line is cruising, Phil plays out some riffy stuff on the fermatas of the second line then goes off on trills for line 3. Refrain is back off, Phil still playing through, and into the outro riffs, Bob has been sounding very sedate, sort of. Jerry hits an odd wah chord for the start as the drums fill around, Bobby stretched a chord.
Phil continues, he’s moving into a bass solo, (some audience yell about this!) but it’s a slow experiment, heading from single notes to chords, maybe his sound placement is changing, sounds like at 16min, the bass has multiple channels sending different tonal variations to different places, I hear a brighter more-distorted signal off to one side, with the main bass signal in the center, and some stereo-ization maybe spreading it to the other side… Some of the strings are now sounding far away (17:30+) like the G string is off somewhere special and the D and A strings are right here. People seem to like this.
Jerry comes back in at 18:20 with a pretty melodic take on Phil’s chords. This goes on for a short time before he hits some harmonics and then Phil starts the intro to Eyes of the World and Jerry and band fall in. Nice.

They sound good, here. This is a nice version, generally, they sound upbeat and happy, but in the end it’s not super developmental, just good jamming. I like the move into Eyes of the World, (also another 20 minutes of music) and then into China Doll.

156 2/22/73 Champaign, IL: 13:30

Again, they seem pretty upbeat here, as they settle into the groove after the intro it’s got a definite lilt to it. Jerry builds the melodic areas well within the Dark Star theme world, playing it up and down, stretching the mode a little bit with leading tones. It develops into a relatively quick-paced jam, interjected with several stretches. It eddies into a lower area after 3 minutes to build a new wave. Some more mixing board play on Bob here as there had been for a second on Jerry earlier, jumping around in the stereo spectrum. This wave of the jam comes to a high mesa at 4:30 or so and finally comes down the hill at 5 minutes, into a lightly played Bright Star, with Keith rolling around under it.
About 45 seconds later they have moved into a faster groove, Bill on ride cymbal, but it doesn’t last long and comes back to the theme at 6:30, (people clap). Rather than slowing it down, Jerry pretty much sticks with the tempo and starts the verse at 7:10, to the glee of the crowd. Line one continues in rhythm, line two’s fermatas really bring it to some stops, from which line three slowly builds it back up a little bit. A very (plaintive?) emotional refrain from the vocals. People clap and yell, the band sinks into some depths following an arhythmic bass, wah-backed-off guitar notes and some chromatics from Keith. Jerry starts a chromatic trill low and breaks little waves of it, other follow suit, into atonal slow music immediately. Cluster chords from Keith. It’s moving along, not lulling in the deep sea exactly, Bobby on arpeggiated dissonances.
Whoa! A flexitone at 10:40, that’s weird, and somebody in the audience is obviously way into it. Atonal sparse music continues, sort of a sideways/bizarro world type of counterpoint between the bass and lead guitar. Jerry gets into classic atonalism with some tritones. By 12:20, he’s heading to a Tiger, starting low with the wah rolled off and building it up quickly, the wah gets its treble by 13 and it climbs over the hill with pounding drums and everything and bass jumping all over the spectrum, and suddenly we’re in Eyes of the World!

Wow, short and concise. Lots of energy, all the spots hit in sequence. Good version, if a relatively tiny version! I guess a lot of jam is shunted into Eyes here.

157 2/26/73 Lincoln: 25:05 – Dick’s Picks 28

Upbeat intro again, they strut into the Dark Star groove, the whole vibe of this jam is driven by Bill K… especially that ride cymbal. Jerry goes on some little excursions and gets into some little melodic eddies, getting into a low-string riff for a bit, then going up again into plaintive territory before settling down and letting himself and everybody move forward in the more noodley space with the fast jazzy licks. By 4 minutes they’re all straining at the edges of the mode, with Keith and Bob doing responsive chordal riffs to Jerry and Phil’s melodic riffs.
Onwards with more full band forward-momentum improv ups and downs, an eddy forming late in the 5th minute that goes slightly chromatic and falls out back into more riff-driven lead playing back to the thematic area. After that, though, it dives down to little notes, a delicate section that holds latent Dark Star material waiting to grow out of it. Some plaintive stretches bring it out and hocket-playing between Jerry and Phil get it back up and over a crest into a new lowland area, everybody getting small again in the 9th minute.
More delicacy, Phil is making some statements (somebody is yelling in the audience but they don’t sound super happy? Not sure what’s going on there.) It comes to a very quiet place and Phil starts a riff, very gradually others come in. Jerry tremoloing notes and then going for the volume swells on a melodic riff and by 11:30 the Phil riff has developed to something that sort of sounds like that bit (the em riff that moves into dm sections, is this the elastic ping pong?) that they all do together late in Eyes of the World, same rhythmic stuff, but here it’s more stretched out harmonically and establishing a new jam rhythm, which ensues.
Lots of little takes on this rhythmic idea with various melodic riffs, similar but different. Finally before minute 15 they break off and start heading somewhere else, though Phil is pretty into this riff. It holds on until the Dark Star theme slowly emerges at 16: 20, Jerry starts the second half of the melody, then breaks it up as he starts the melody and everybody preemptively slows down knowing that that is the thing to do. A minute later they’re all on the groove and melody and the verse starts.
First line is consistent, it really drops for the second, Phil stays with the groove for half of it and then even he drops. Line three is mellow, but back in rhythm with some trilling toward the end. The refrain has some punctuation and is beautifully played (an audient thinks so too apparently.)
It goes into some chaos that cedes to rolling toms and bass notes, volume swells into feedback. This goes on for some time, feedback continues, rolling continues. Bill starts up on the snare, continuing a forward moving beat for a bit, but the guitars are on isolated notes and sounds. Feedback and atonal notes still happening,
At 22 minutes Phil makes some big bass chords, but he’s not going into a solo. Some small melodic bits happening from Bob while Jerry seems to be playing with clicking the strings while wah-wah pedaling up and down. These turn into scratches, Bill is still rolling forward on the drums throughout. Phil gets going on more chords and riffs a little later moving with the drums, and they have a brief minute of bass and drums before Jerry comes in with some licks and Bob starts the chord and it heads off into Eyes of the World.

Another really nice version. Upbeat playing, lots of great jamming and a space section that is propelled by constant forward motion from the drums. Also I love how the verse is being treated, it’s gone through so many changes over 5 years, lately the band sort of plows right into the first line from the melodic groove before it and then makes a huge break in the rhythm for line two. Where previously Phil had been accenting the off-the-beat rhythm pattern in line two and then they built it into a wandering upwards on line three, over the past year or so they’ve been heading to a fermata on the beginning of line two, occasionally punctuated by the 3+3+2 of the original rhythm—here, nobody is even there except Phil on one of those offbeats—and then moving into a Pink Floyd-like groove for line three. Sometimes players will do some wandering around on line three as the searchlights casting about, this time only Bob entered toward the end with some trilling. The refrain area is always an interesting set of counterpoint, some in triplets some in straight time. Really nicely played in this version.

158 3/16/73 Nassau, NY: 27:13 (also AUD)

Some weird attempts at harmonizing the intro riff, nonetheless it heads into a relaxed groove and Jerry heads off into a world of natural and then artificial harmonics. It doesn’t settle so much, some moving into outside modal notes before heading more toward Dark Star thematically. After a couple minutes, they lull on a chord while Phil strums, it’s a very spacey jam, odd notes flying around, occasional alluding to the Dark Star theme stuff as a reminder, but it’s continuously spiraling off into little eddies of individual instruments, a fairly slow pace (Nonetheless, here, for me, it sounds pretty good, unlike the more highly individual 12/15 that sounded more untogether at this point in the track). Everybody is exploring odd little personal musics, Phil has some very deep bass chords at 5:40, Keith has high chords, Jerry trying out some odd stretches between fast riffs. A lot of call and response between the players in the 7th minute leads to Bill stepping up the tempo so that they get into more of a cohesive jam boogie.
This goes on, Bobby on some little riffs off to the side, Jerry is sort of backed off… then he comes in playing with a slide at 8:45! Wow, that’s neat. They start to take it a bit sideways and it lulls before picking it up again without the slide, Bill provides an interesting pattern offsetting the snares in threes against the larger fours. They all do some quick wandering riffing (except Bob who has a stretchy chordal thing happening as a response.)
At 11:30, bass and drums bring it over the crest and then they move into a new area of quick little riffs, Jerry happy to be part of this. Bob trills over and over to match the rhythm. This wave comes down at 13 minutes, Bill rolling the toms, and they start in with the Dark Star groove at a leisurely tempo heading to a verse.
Verse 1 at 13:55, slightly wavering vocals, expending energy over the line. Big fermatas for line two, only downbeats, line three has wandering from Bobby and limited bass from Phil. The refrain vocals sound strained and emotional. The outro riff is left hanging, eventually Bobby comes in with his higher harmony part, and then Phil reacts and comes in and then hits giant loud chords to compensate as it enters the next section, with distortion on bass and big minor chords, eventually leaving only a ride cymbal, and some feedback comes in over the rolling toms. A very sparse area happens, floating feedback and drums. Bass back in with some low tones, Bill starts a pounding rhythm. Audience cheers. Some wah-clicky rhythms come in. Drums continue grooving without much accompaniment. In a low area, you can hear the tiger low chromatics in the wah wah, very low to start, then it starts to build the chaos, noises from guitars and the drums go into gear again. A meltdown is in progress, but it cedes into a Sputnik-y arpeggio area at 20 minutes, but maintains more of an atonal progression for almost two minutes, settling on chords occasionally, heading downwards. Entering an atonal set of single notes with wah-wah warble, not much accompaniment, little chordal arpeggios from Bob. Bass in again after 22 minutes. Jerry starts scratching the guitar strings, they all do, the drums come back in, they build it up heading for the Tiger meltdown from the bottom up this time. They bring it up and hold it high for a while, it comes over the hill and lands again at 25 minutes to start a new slow rhythm and tonal area, Phil insinuating the Truckin’ intro lick a bit, but then relaxes into the new minor groove in this area. Phil starts from the low end and starts to insinuate the rhythm again, Jerry plays it through a sort of chord progression, then Bill hits the swing at 27 minutes and Phil goes for the Truckin’ intro again and they head into it.

Interesting. Weird first jam area, multi-headed hydra all looking in various directions, but kinda nice. Generally good jam from there to the verse, the spacey part after was nice, with scary parts! Not super great but overall a good one.

159 3/21/73 Utica, NY: 21:41

Weather Report instrumental intro for a minute and then directly into Dark Star on a cymbal swell, intro and and into a flowing theme area, some playful notes at the intros for each person’s single-note lines. Jerry starts in on some fast riffing in a minute, but they sound fairly playful bouncing around the Dark Star thematic world. Phil has some interesting statements at 3:30 or so, Bobby responding with harmonics, Jerry then goes into an eddy with an augmented leading tone bringing it over the crest, landing on some trills which then bring the rhythm into a different area. (Some “yeahs” from the audience.
They bring it down even farther to get set for the next wave. Keith on a descending melody, then Jerry idles out on the “it’s all the same” rhythm moving it into a bluesy riff before 6 minutes, then they start it up again. They chug away and get into some new odd rhythmic stuff in the 7th minute, Phil accenting things into a new world. It ebbs at 8 minutes and they regroup, in the Dark Star theme world, with an interesting thematic version that climbs in dyads to a kind of Bright Star at 9 min. Theme directly afterwards, and into the verse at 9:38.
Nice vocals, strong at the start and then sensitive, Bill keeps a ride at half time for line 2, Bob doing some very interesting wandering on line 3. Refrain goes smoothly, they play through the outro into the next section allowing it to flit away in the breeze, Jerry starting on a wide arpeggio (that is like the outro to )
He lets it go and brings it back while people come in and out of the rhythm. It all floats away into isolated swelled long notes (plaintive!) that develop into feedback. Some odd noises from Bobby (? or is it Keith with wah piano? sounds a bit Sitar-like, I think he’s scraping the piano strings?), some sticks and cymbals from Bill.
It moves into more drums, but not really a drum solo, there are odd little sounds from everybody as accompaniment, string scratches and wah bits. The noises build, everybody making warbles and scrapes, Jerry on some clicks and pops with wah-pedal. Wow, very odd. Billy comes back with a stronger drumscape, but not fast, just short rolls and hits. At 17:30 it sounds like Jerry is heading for the Tiger meltdown. Some stronger bass notes come in, in between the scrapes. It lulls at 18:30 into longer scrapes and some atonal notes and riffs from the guitars. Jerry starts up the Tiger chromatics again, but doesn’t bring them up high, and some bass feedback signals the crest of this wave and they back off into soft sparse notes.
Some more atonal quiet venturing goes on, into a bizarro polka for a second, Jerry goes off on a whole tone scale. It’s a short little wave that peters out at 21:30 and slowly allows for Eyes of the World to begin (into Wharf Rat.)

Nice one! Sort of short and sweet (at 22 min), great multi-player improv on the thematic area up front, a nice verse and then some very weird noisescapes in the second half.

160 3/24/73 Philadelphia PA: 4:00 (jam/Spanish jam/space 22:30 > DS)  

This is an odd one to assess as a version of Dark Star, it’s sort of in reverse, or inside out. There’s a small bit of groove leading into the actual verse in there, but it immediately heads off into “Sing Me Back Home.” Before it, however, there are 20+ minutes of instrumental jamming. After an extended Truckin’ end-jam they drop after minute 10 into space, there are some feints to the Dark Star intro riff played at 10:40 or so but it never really coalesces, they just keep on spacing out and then some rhythm guitar starts in a fast groove.
Fast lead playing happens. He gives way to Keith playing some riffs for a while, with several “Dark Star” indicators (Keith plays some modal licks, then even play arounds with the intro lick a bit again, in the late min 14 are with some melodic bits toward and 15:15 for the intro lick as examples) It gives way to an bass-n-drum solo that later picks up again in a sort of Dark Star mode, with fast groove playing, little tight lead licks (Slipknotty, a lot of Blue-for-Allah licks are emerging these days!), before heading into the more recognizable Spanish Jam chords after some diminished arpeggios from Jerry.
Spanish Jam moves forward and gets quite intense, even approaching Tiger for a bit late in minute 27, before it all gives way. They pulled this one out of the hat, that must have been a surprise.
From here it does go into a spacey section for several minutes that eventually emerges into the actual Dark Star groove. This section is mostly just the guitars, it has wah-flavored atonal notes moving in and out of tonal melodic fragments, quiet area and heading back to falling diminished chords and chromaticism in arpeggios from Jerry while Bob tries out several short melodic bits. After some little licks and feedback, Jerry starts the Dark Star theme. What? Oh we were here the whole time, didn’t you know?

As far as being the Dark Star song, they come into it with the opening thematic lick and move into a pleasant groove, with some melodic lead playing that spins up into small whirlpools, and comes back down to emphasize the downbeat before the verse. Grooving straight into line one, they pause on line two, Bill plays a little to keep it going, and rolls into line three with a moderate groove and a little wandering toward the end of it. Refrain is punctuated by big drum hits, and into the outro it quiets up a bit, and spaces out for only a few seconds before Sing Me back Home starts. It almost sounded like it could go into Wharf Rat instead, but no.

So that was it! Nice jam, good parts, sort of like the Dark Star sections were out of order (and of course the Spanish Jam fell in there.)

161 3/28/73 Springfield: 32:08 – Dave’s Picks 16 (also AUD)

A small Dark Star feint from Phil that instead leads to a full 3 minutes of Weather Report Suite, it’s getting worked out. (Then 30 minutes of Dark Star, followed by Eyes of the World and Playin’ in the Band!) The intro starts in a very staid way, each note articulated instead of trilled, sort of odd. But the groove come in strong and they flow. Jerry even trills away after a minute. Nice and relaxing as it moves along. Jerry is trying several modal outsiders, he hits the “it’s all the same” rhythm before 2 minutes before heading off in longer runs. It’s many ripples of melodies instead of one long flowing one, from everybody, shorter ups-and-downs, little waves lapping. Some plaintive stretches. Bobby gets caught up in a trill on a minor second and goes for some chromatic runs in there, even. A few Dark Star melodic feints, some low string stretches, some lulls.
Everybody is into the shorter fragments this evening, and small interval trilling. In the sixth minute there’s a pedal tone on an open string happening with hammer ons against it, brings the tension up a bit to a suspended chordal area, Phil starts stepping it up. This seems to incite both Jerry and Bill to get going more, but it only lasts another minute or so before a lull into a quieter area. Punctuation with falling arpeggios, then up and down arpeggios, moving into a delicate upper register area, before fading.
At 9 minutes, they settle on a b minor/phrygian area, but it’s still very delicate, coming in and out. It fades, drums pause a couple times, Jerry keeps going, in shorter delicate bursts. Again they come to the minor modal area. It doesn’t seem like anything is permanent here, it keeps coming apart. Bill goes for tom rolling, then heads to ride cymbal stride and he’s nearly all alone by 12 minutes. The band is quietly in there, not playing much at all. Bobby starts a chord strumming pattern at 12:45 or so, punctuated by harmonics. They are still playing with the b minor/C major thing it seems like, and now Keith has an idea for it. Jerry has dropped out for a bit. It rolls around a bit, short back and forths from everybody. Jerry comes back in with runs before minute 15, this seems to hold it together more, he has a melody in his head, and they’re back in the A mixo world. It starts to take off a bit, the whole band moving forward.
The wave crests at around 18 minutes, and they come down and start the Dark Star groove again, people cheer. Verse comes in at 18:35, slowly moving into it. A large fermata for line two, only downbeats against Jerry’s melody. Line three has some bass movement upwards, but it’s wiggly. The refrain is delicate, with a drum punctuation in the middle. Again, the outro notes, like the intro, are very separately stated and not run together like the normal method. The space starts with volume swelled guitar and occasional bass notes.
The bass holds a note that develops into feedback and threatens to take over, starts pulsing loudly. Guitar takes over a delicately fed-back note, Bob comes in with some odd chords. Bass has some sub-bass feedback notes going on, and odd electronic sounds. The guitars are stretching notes, and playing some notes to find resonant ones.
In the 24th minute there are odd wah-plucky sounds and odd atonal chords and notes from guitar and bass. Very little drums are in this section, clicking in and out. String scrubbing noises. Phil is playing double stops, but delicately until his big chords after 26 minutes, in multi-channel separation. Jerry starts the Tiger licks at 27 minutes underneath this, but he cedes it to atonal single notes, they play a slow counterpoint of non-tonal notes, drums start pulsing in and out. Jerry starts a diminished chord arpeggio, falling by steps and then into a sort of “Eep Hour” progression for a bit. The wave crests into slower notes, Bobby makes noises that they are going to move on but it holds on for a while until Jerry eventually starts Eyes of the World.

Another nice one, weird mood they must have been in with all these shorter ideas rolling along.

162 6/10/73 Washington, D.C.: 26:34 (also AUD)

After a few months away from the Dark Star, they’re back orbiting it. At a stadium! A long show, 4 1/2 hours. This time, PitB ends a set and Eyes starts the next set where later Dark Star moves into a pair of slow ones, He’s Gone and Wharf Rat.
Dark Star starts with the intro riff, into a nicely paced groove, side stick and strong bass and rhythm guitar on this recording. Phil seems to be pushing it a bit, while Jerry is relaxing into it. It’s a nice area. Some beautiful full band counterpoint lines weaving around each other after a few minutes. To a little eddy at 4 min, Phil still taking it forward with some licks in between longer notes, they Ping Pong this elastically back and forth a bit and then start to build it again, Jerry goes into jazzy Blues-for-Allah style licks for a bit.
At 5:50 Phil builds the rhythm up a bit with the Ping Pong riff, Bobby coming along, while Jerry goes for some small feedback notes. The Phil goes sideways tonally for a bit, Jerry backs off into a receding thing, leaving it to Phil to go for it and he starts strumming. It’s just bass and drums for a while. Even to the rock licks in min 9. Guitars come back in at about 10 minutes in a new faster rhythm in a b minor area. It resolves to the A a minute later and comes back down to start a new wave on a major key country-ish riff. They jam out on this for a while.
Over the crest of this wave at 13 1/2 minutes, Jerry starts the Dark Star theme again and they are back in the relaxed groove. Verse at 14:23, nice relaxed vocals. Phil plays along an upwards-moving line on the fermatas of line 2, they are still fairly relaxed into line 3. To the refrain, and on to the counterpoint, some whistles from the audience.
They start the next section continuing in rhythm, Phil with chords, Jerry coming in with short fast riffs. The chords are almost the verse chords, it comes over a hill and then starts to fritter away to more space. Jerry starts more feedbacky notes, the band still plays modal chords and notes, Bill is still in rhythm, they aren’t really spacing out so much as keeping a jam together for a while. The bass chords get more intense in the 18th minute, they allow it to fall to bits finally at 19. Jerry underscores a Tiger bit, Phil starts some odd low-end noise feedback. Bobby rolls around on some short lead bits while Jerry goes back for feedback. Some choppy fast rhythmic stuff from Bobby and then Jerry goes for more fast short atonal bits and wah-enhanced scary statements, building it up as the drums are getting some speed going. More Tiger stuff at 21:50 but it tails off into scraping, though everybody tremolos holding the tension for a while.
After a brief lull, the scrapes continue with some stretched bass notes and odd bits from the other, then Phil goes ballistic again with low feedback and noisy notes. Into a lower volume area, still noisescape, the guitars fade out into drums with accompaniment from odd noises and swelled notes moving into feedback.
Drums fade out at 25:30, feedback continues from both guitars, it gets loud again, bass comes back with big low end notes, and as they fade, Jerry starts He’s Gone.

Pretty good one, some cool noisy weirdness and a nice intro jam area. There were bits of the nice multi-musician moving lines in the improv in the first half. Really well sung verse.

163 6/24/73 Portland: 27:13   

(I’ve had the Pacific NW box set for a while (in fact the 45-min PitB got me started on all this concentrated improvisation listening) so I’ve heard this one a few times—it’s the only Dark Star out of 6 concerts in the box set! )

A very relaxed intro into the song, and nearly leaving for space immediately for a minute, where they finally pull it together into a groove. Delicate, again. Nobody is pushing it, allowing easy shifts in the mode. It’s a beautiful quartet interplay, bass drums and two guitars. No Keith going on here… he went on a break, I guess? Or isn’t on the tape? Hard to say. 

Coming back to the theme occasionally before departing again at 4 minutes in, it goes into a new very spacey groove where Jerry tries some Sputnik-y ideas, but they fade into a low tremolo.

It comes back to a very quiet modal area, some hammer-on/pull-offs using lots of open strings, and back to a Sputnik in min 6. Bill picks it up as it fades a bit, hoping for someone to groove along, and then Phil steps in with a riff in 7, (the ping pong/proto-Solomon riff) against the 6/8 drums.

Jerry picks it up and goes with it. It evolves as a band theme in a few minutes, riffs from Jerry cohere it, and Bobby starts going for it after with sliding chord figures, by 10 minutes they are getting down on a funky groove. They keep plugging away at it over some crests, Phil starts suggesting new places to go melodically/tonically. In the 12th minute Bob is doing his erratic skrrawk on guitar in between riffs (as he isn’t singing at the time to skrawwk vocally). 

At the end of min 13 it falls apart, Phil takes it down and then a roll from the drums into a drum solo!
Which leads them all to a way back in at 15:24 with the Dark Star groove. 

Verse at 16, vocals far off at first, coming in closer. Very sparse line 2, rolling back to a descending and then ascending groove on line 3, to the refrain. 

Outro and into the sea of the Transitive Nightfall, Bobby has his lick moving down against pulsing bass coming in and volume swell guitar. Drums drop out, everybody leaves space, the sounds get small. Phil stretches a bit higher, Jerry is soft, but looking for some feedback. Phil goes for some big chords, answered by small wah resonances from tapping on the guitar. It goes low at 20 min, into wobbly bass subharmonics and the multi channel thing bouncing around. Swelled atonal notes come in. Bobbys stretching some odd chords against the fretboard. 

Creepy-crawlies start at 22, little short bits and odd sounds. Jerry sees the opportunity to start the Tiger meltdown in min 23, but it comes over its crest and backs off again into the depths, building again but this time in atonal wah-inflected pseudo-melodies, the riffing starts as the bass gets louder, drums get chaotic. At 25 min, Bill starts a heavy back beat and I finally hear some Keith in there, rocking on it. Phil is in on the groove, but his bass is still moving all over the place spatially. Jerry and Bob are making odd little noises respectively. It cedes to string scratches and noise, back to swelled notes and feedback from Bob’s reverb, and then suddenly Eyes of the World. 

Much phenomenal stuff here. The keyboardless interplay is amazing, it’s all very delicate; they have the proper sound stage to hear each other and work on the smallest details. I really appreciate the versions where they can obviously hear each other and have the ability to play very subtle things. The versions of a lot of songs in the PNW box (both 73 and 74) are really good, and the audience really comes along for the ride, even for those intensely long jams, like the long PitB. Impressive.

164 6/30/73 Universal City: 16:15 (also AUD)

There seems to be good monitoring on stage so they can play quieter.
Little hints at the intro riff while tuning, they start it together after a cymbal swell into it. Sort of slow intro, takes a while for Bill to come in with a beat as they roll into the groove. Lots of dynamics here, subtle changes. They sound very relaxed in the space, Jerry is being very delicate with the leads. Everybody is sort of rolling along, Keith has some wah on the piano occasionally. Phil gets caught up in a little octave riff after a couple minutes and it sort of coalesces the rhythm into something new, allowing Jerry to go modally outside occasionally, experimenting with chromatic leading tones. Bass is taking them somewhere, and they build it with a new progression for a bit. It lulls a bit at 4 min but then goes into a jazzy area at 5 minutes that barely contains the Dark Star groove, though Jerry refers to it, and at 6 min hits the A as if they are going to the theme, but it dissipates into isolated notes and trills, almost entirely dies off. A very bell-like electric piano continues, Jerry comes in with chords and they continue for a second though Phil tapers off.
At 7:30, it’s almost gone entirely again, and Jerry quietly starts the melody, they slowly come back to the groove. It’s very delicate still, mellow. Bobby stretching doubles stops downwards, creating a relaxing atmosphere.
Verse comes in at 9 min, a very intimate vocal from Jerry, delivered quietly and slowly through the verse. Slight build to the refrain, each line tapers off. The outro is perfect and lets us slide into the sea as they hit static notes and Keith has little noodles. It enters space. Cymbals are still rolling around. Bobby hits some warbling pedal, Jerry finds isolated notes in a chromatic area, very dark starry sky with the bell like piano. Phil starts some evil low notes, Jerry on chromatic wah-tones, Bill rolling around. It doesn’t really build much more than this, but continues with more. Jerry comes in low with Tiger-like riffing, some frenetic responses to this. The bass sound is moving around in space, little short fast riffs from everybody overlapping. It maintains and more Tiger riffing comes in by min 15 and everybody builds the meltdown, which cedes to jumpin’ Eyes of the World, a nice way over that hill.

Really weird and cool version, very delicate, more than before even, and not much Dark Star groove or jamming, but the second half has some very odd chromatic weirdness. Cool build at the end that gives way to Eyes of the World

165 8/1/73 Jersey City: 24:52 (also AUD)

Huge show. Here, the stadium show is shorter, yet they insert an El Paso between Dark Star and Eyes. Dark Star comes after Row Jimmy (for some reason a song I just don’t like much.) This is our last Dark Star with Alligator, I believe. Some cymbal rolling leads in to the intro riff and the song starts in a slow and mystically drifty way, the band are each playing sparsely, though Jerry has a lilting gait and descending phrases, that he comes back to occasionally in the waves. Bobby even starts playing some melodic bits after a minute! Keith sounds cool on the electric piano, sort of a sharper sound in there. Little eddies form, in a building way at 3 minutes in, they head upwards and Phil takes it and runs with it. Bill picks it up and they start moving quicker.
Jerry reiterates his lilting climb but the energy doesn’t stick this time, and only Bill is left plugging away after a couple minutes. Bobby picks it up with a groovy riff, Keith and Jerry with rhythmic stabs, developing it and settling into a jam, Jerry finally really takes off. It’s in the Dark Star world but pretty fast and moving. Over the hill by 8 minutes, it starts to settle a bit into a lower volume area. Bill is trying some odd patterns out, Keith is chordally accompanying the cycles, every body else finds their way into some sort of phase pattern cycle of sounds for a minute or so. It moves into a new groove after this but Bill is still trying some weird patterns out (13s?). At 11 minutes it lets go and drops into a mellower area, from which Jerry insinuates a new Dark Star melodicness, and Phil takes it into a downbeat so that at 12 min they go into a very slow and odd Dark Star melody-ish, and by 12:40 it starts for real heading to the verse.
Verse at 13:13, strong vocal entrance, slow band chugging away, Bill keeps the hi-hat on line 2, and Phil bubbles away at the end of that line and continues wandering around higher and higher on line 3. The electric piano makes nice octave bells on the refrain. They all play in sync in this section, and into the outro riff, from which Bobby does his “transitive nightfall intro lick” only twice, and Bill picks up some sleigh bells!
Bobby plays around with low notes, Phil taps his low strings, Jerry comes in and out with small sounds, string scratches. Phil and Bobby do percussion on their instruments, Jerry comes in with a wail-and-wah, slide playing again! Very bluesy little licks against a bass drone and percussive guitar. Eventually Bobby starts playing modal guitar in a very folksy-English way, and the bell tree ushers in cymbals. A peak with feedback slide and big bass notes comes at 18:30, over this, it’s still a slow two chord blues, (1 and flat7), some phrygian notes start sneaking in and the bass goes for some feedback as well.
At 19:40, Jerry drops the slide, plays wah-rolled-off notes, Keith arpeggiates a bit (I really like the sound of this piano!) and heads for major chords, Jerry picks it up and runs off with an arpeggio to a very major folky/classical melody, Bobby comes along. Bill has some new percussion or bells he’s rubbing together. By 22 the mode is expanding, entering non-tonal areas, ceding to chords, planing diminished chords and wah swells, Tiger chromatics make a soft entrance, and fade out. Odd little spurts of sound from guitars and piano, drums on hihat. A real Tiger happens at 24 min, building up higher and higher to a few wah-growls, but it lets off to notes again, and Bill rolls along, Bobby starts up El Paso.

These stadium-size ones have been interesting. In one way they are very introverted, the stage sound must be decent for the band to play like this, and then you have thousands of people watching and cheering. They can get very small, mic’ed up hand percussion and all, and then also huge. It sort of took a while for this one to develop into a jam, but that said, a bunch of these lately have been endless successions of short ideas in rolling waves. It’s beautiful how they move through these areas collectively.

now working with the Wolf Guitar

166 9/11/73 Williamsburg, : 22:16 (also AUD)

First Dark Star with Wolf guitar.
I have the audience tape of this, so my timing is off by 2 minutes I think? it starts with lots of noisy fans, Phil strumming his bass and some noodling around for a bit amidst tuning. They count it in and start it slowly and methodically, playing around with the theme exactly one time through the theme notes before venturing off into stretchy notes and then stately runs of notes. Keith is playing organ? Long tones, wow. Jerry continues in light runs of modal notes.
At 3:40 they start a rhythmic idea but it seems to fall away again after a short time, building back to a Dark Start groove. Jerry starts the runs again. The long chords from the organ are cool in there. Heading for a crest at 5 minutes, Jerry eddies on a high stretch area and Keith warbles in arpeggios. Over that hill, he’s holding long chords again, till he switched to the short stabs and starts in on a groove with Phil. Jerry backs it with double stop second before going off again in runs, Keith back on long chords. Phil playing very sparsely but intently, heading to some high notes like a bell ringing against the rhythm of everything else.
Minute 8, Keith has altered to a flutier sound, Jerry feints the Dark Star melody, but it lands in the accenting the minor 7 like the English folky thing of the other day, finally starting the melody right before 9 minutes, it takes a while for people to come back to it, and it takes a bit for the audience to realize what is happening and clap. It’s a very weird version, Jerry goes off into other modal areas, but then Bobby and Bill start up a marching rhythm on a major (3,4,5 melody) chord and the flat 7 again. Keith is back to his electric piano, and rocking out with Phil in the 11th minute, Phil finds the Ping Pong riff, goes a few times through and they get down on it. Sounds like the guitars are backed off to let the bass and keyboards play. It starts to go into chromatics after a minute, falls apart a bit, Jerry comes in with runs again, they’re in a minor key area with a climbing riff, everybody playing with that. The jam plateaus and keeps going, Phil eventually hits a big chord at 14:20, and it stalls the jam out for a bit, Jerry continues with a finger picking pattern on a suspended chord melody, then at 15:35 he does the sweep from the A to the high A which he used to do to start the Dark Star melody, here it takes them back into the Dark Star world a bit, though the melody isn’t explicit. Keith goes into undulating electric piano turns under the suspended mode lead playing, Phil gets going, even stretching the bass strings.
At 17:40, Jerry starts the Dark Star melody for real, setting them into a slower tempo. The settle in and the verse starts, people clap. Nice delivery, rolling into fermatas on line 2, bass noodling and organ on line 3.
The refrain has some awkwardness to it again, not everybody in the same rubatos. Outro and Bobby starts his TN intro lick, repeating it several times before it dissipates into bass feedback and guitar feedback under it. Big bass heaviness happens, big chords, and then some riffing in between. Bass solo goes on for a while, he moves into a riffy Philo stomp in the 22nd minute, a few guitar trills join in, he heads off to feedback and big chords, guitar feedback leads it out and into Morning Dew, a really cool segue.

167 10/19/73 Oklahoma City, OK: 26:20 – Dick’s Picks 19

A stately and rather slow bass intro going into a relaxed feel, moving along at a leisurely pace, Jerry running up and down, lilting around thematic areas. Keith is on the nice-sounding electric piano. It eddies a bit with Bobby on some chords with seconds, before Bill kicks in with a stronger beat. Phil plays some tripping lines down to the root, goes off and comes back. Jerry is feeling out the possibilities on the Wolf, continuous melody. Phil keeps going up and up and then punctuating with low roots. The piano sounds like little bells in there.
They eddy out again on repeated notes at about 4:30, let it ebb and Jerry starts a series of chordal fourths for a high and and then low. At the bottom it all goes sideways, little Tiger hints happen (sans wah). Keith goes wild on rolling clusters. They all go off in new directions after this, runs, little figures, etc. It dwindles and stays outside, though Jerry has a few Dark Star referents in his licks. Bill starts some odd figures outside of the rhythm, they are all outside, Jerry still with some Dark Star licks occasionally, a feint to come back to the groove, but it doesn’t make it and goes into a quiet area with stretched delicate notes, into a very classical area. Jerry again comes back at 9:45 with the Dark Star groove theme, but it takes over a minute to get to a definite groove. Jerry is still wandering around, the band is sort of in the Dark Star groove area, and they start to build the intensity. Parallel universe Dark Star groove #167.
At 12, Jerry does the slide up to the A and instigates the groove for real and the verse comes. It’s sung very mournfully, grooving into line 1 and as they go into line 2, there’s play between drums and bass for the fermata-versus offbeat, Bobby sliding chords around. Phil does a descending thing for line 3, Bobby wandering, then bass heading upwards. The refrain is full of odd rubatos from everybody, the outro is squarely stated. Bobby plays his Transitive Nightfall intro lick a few times over and over, moving into slow trills while Phil starts big bass notes and a few chords, into an arhythmic bass solo with some harmonics and odd sounds. The bass starts moving around to multi-channel, the big chords spread around.
Jerry enters with wah-backed-off tone and slide again, Phil feints a riff, but it moves into the slow bluesy slide mood instead. Bill is hi-hatting, heading for something. The band starts to coalesce around this and Jerry moves back into fast picked runs. They find some chords, a progression, and stick with it moving into the Mind-Left-Body sequence, Jerry picks up his slide again.
Some serious strumming on the V chord a couple times through and then it goes to the descending thing that signifies this MLB jam sequence. (I still think it sounds like that part in “Music Never Stopped. My mind does not actually leave my body in this progression… I know, I know, it’s a Kantner song, right?)
When this runs its course, Jerry dives down into low fast chromatics, the band dies off, they move into atonal bizarro-world melodies, Jerry running around with his wah pedal mostly holding it in check. Keith scoops around. Tiger is coming. The wah starts to accent the chromatic licks, it gets super scary and growly, though the accompaniment is mostly fairly tame. Jerry backs off for a bit, comes back with warbly wahs and some planing chords, Bobbys is making loud scary chords and stretches, bass is feeding back.
It dies off to volume swells and low bass notes, then to a prettier area, still very mellow. Bass harmonics, rolling drums. A nice little melodic outro leads them off to Morning Dew.

Pretty nice version, other than that it seemed sort of slow. It had the parts. I like the verse quite a bit, the interplay on line 2 was nice. Also I always think it’s a nice choice to come over the freakout into Morning Dew!

168 10/25/73 Madison, WI: 23:02

Bass is again prominent at the intro, but after the licks, the theme happens about a half a time before they start deviating. It doesn’t immediately get onto its feet, though Jerry plays with the theme off and on more than the others (though he manages to wind extra-modally around it quite a bit.) After a couple minutes he goes into low bits and they all mull this over. Keith has some jazz ideas for planing the chords up over the root. He is on a real piano, it sounds like.
Jerry moves into arpeggios, Keith follows and goes into the high tinkly range. It’s Sputnik-like for a while with these sounds. From this, Phil and Bill emerge with a latin feel for a second, but it doesn’t last. Phil goes into plucking little rhythmic sounds and Bobby moves into the MLB descending progression landing definitively on the V chord, and coming back to it. It takes a couple time before everybody is in on it, but it’s getting more developed now, more determined. By 7 minutes it sort of fritters away with Keith and Jerry moving in 1/8th notes side by side. At 8 min they move into a Dark Star theme of a sort, with some rhythmic motifs on the E that starts the melody. It finally floats off and at 10 min they come in with the actual Dark Star theme and groove, and it floats along again, though of course Mr Garcia has some extra-modal ideas and some wide string stretches. A couple minutes later he comes back to the theme for a second and embellishes it with fast upward runs. At 12:40 they head to the verse, it comes in very delicately, which continues through line two, no fermatas needed apparently. Though on line 3, Phil has some wildness and they wrap it all up into the refrain, Jerry singing like a choral member. The refrain and outro are spattered about, nobody is playing it together. Bobby strums out his TN intro lick. and then hovers. Bass hovers low and they head toward feedback land, but in a low volume way.
AT 15:20, Jerry picks up the slide in the quiet world and plays out some bluesy slow notes with the bass bombing some low tones in there. It’s a mournful and delicate area. (Keith has moved to electric piano?) It starts to build some intensity from underneath, and then at 17:40 or so, the Tiger starts to move from the undergrowth, everybody making frenetic little gestures. Bobby is rubbing a slide or something on his strings. The build takes its time, with intermittent feedback. Tiger doesn’t come jumping up to growl for a while. At 19:40, Phil starts coming in with frenetic lows and the Tiger comes out for real, but just for a second, and then it fades off with scrapey noises from the bass.
20:30 is ebbs for s second and then starts up again, atonal chaos, the bass cedes the scrapes for low feedback as the guitar stretches high. It backs off to wah inflected licks and some planing diminished chords and atonal bizarro melody.
The big bass notes end this sequence and they regroup and head off to Eyes of the World.

Nice freakout that never quite gets as out there as it promises, but the earlier section and MLB jam are nice.

169 10/30/73 St. Louis, MO: 27:07

There’s some bass chords in the tuning after Big River, maybe setting up the vibe… They start Dark Star with a slightly wonky version of the riff and drop into the groove and start moving (at a mellow pace, but they’re all moving forward together.) Phil’s bass is prominent and has a lot of nice low end to it, though he is contrasting the higher notes with this deep bass end. It gets very outside, though mostly within mode, by a couple minutes in. Bobby is finding some little corner of weirdness on his own, the combo of his constant playing and the off-beat notes from Phil make it kind of odd for a while, Keith has cascading patterns going on.
By 5 minutes it’s hard to tell if they are playing together or just playing, but the dynamics move over a crest and it mellows again. Phil is wandering around at the higher end, Jerry starts to play a thematic relative, though with many augmented chromatics to it. He ends by trilling and Phil goes into the Proto-Solomon Ping Pong strongly at 6:20, Bill is with him, finally emerging from a droney sidestick area into a beat.
This jam feels pretty cohesive at this point, by a minute into it, it’s got it’s feel and mode happening for everyone. Bobby maintains his fast picking bits that he’s been doing this evening, Jerry starts to go for the jazz-runs. They build the dynamics up over several minutes, it gets pretty scorching for a while, then Jerry drones out for a bit, it comes down in quick little runs.
In the 12th minute, it hovers about as they move in new directions, some jazz chords from Jerry even, and then it emerges into the Mind-Left-Body descending line for a new section. It slows a bit here as well, making this progression sort of stately. They try out new chordal ideas in there for a bit, and some new melodic ideas come forth, Jerry switches to the slide. He has been liking the slide in Dark Star, but where before it had been sort of bluesy, it’s more prosaic here over the descending progression. Again, this jam seems pretty cohesive now, as far as the band knowing what they are doing, but it only lasts a few minutes and then dies off and then Phil teases Dark Star again in the ebb, Jerry comes in with the melody, Bob with the chords. Verse is on the horizon, a mellow rendition, Jerry holding the notes out lightly, they don’t pause much on line 2, it sort of just runs on. Bill plays the beat through all three lines, no wandering on line 3. The refrain finally pauses the forward momentum, and the outro is very together. Bobby starts his lick but starts playing with it after a couple iterations. Phil steps on his multi-out thing and the bass makes glissandi up to a plateau and they all let the sky in. It gets very small and quiet. Small trills, little string noises. Snare rolling quietly. High little bass notes, Jerry is quietly finding a melody somewhere. The song nearly fades out entirely. Pinch harmonics, quiet melodies. Volume swelled notes. Odd chords from Bobby.
This goes on for a few minutes and then they begin a volume build as Bill starts a tripping rhythmic part. Jerry comes with some shaky notes, still playing melodically, moving into chromatics.
Jerry starts some little chromatic fast runs. The electric piano sounds very Miles, Bill comes in with some hot jazz licks. Keith has some chordal statements to base it all, Bobby still trilling on his chords. Jerry even comes in with some chordal jazz licks. Bill and Phil move it into a Latin groove after a bit, side stick and all. Keith moves to piano. This is sort of a mellow finger-snapping jazzy groove for a while, though the players are all a bit outside. Jerry alternates between fast little runs and chords, tries to go into Stella, nobody comes with until he settles on some suspended chords and then they move into Stella Blue.

Interesting in that the jams are fairly cohesive, the intro playing area is disjunct but has some cool stuff. The theme-jams are decent. Not the best of the year, but pretty cool.

170 11/11/73 Winterland: 35:38 – Winterland 1973

Another one I’ve heard a few times, the three night run at Winterland, this Dark Star is toward the end of the last evening, moving into Eyes of the World. (the night before had a folded up PitB, with UJB surrounding Morning Dew!)
Calm seas with ride cymbal and/or sidestick groove for 15 solid minutes, including several types of playing, Al DiMeola-style fast runs, jazzy bits, slower melodics, harmonics and even ending with a Sputnik area before dissipating the rhythm to announce the theme and then the verse. It starts in the familiar Dark Star groove world, the band doing their multi-headed hydra Dixieland space music, some eddies happening int he general forward motion, a few excursions to diminished chord mode play, but mostly sticking with the groove for long periods, which is sort of a throwback. Though Jerry’s playing is more jazz-inflected. Bobby is also playing more little licks and riffs in his chord playing, and going for more augmentations of the chords. Phil is pretty much holding it down for minutes at a time. Keith is on the Rhodes, which always gives it the jazzier edge.
At about 5 minutes the groove even locks into a newer and even mellower bachelor-pad swing, Jerry heads upwards into a quiet harmonics realm. They start to bring it up a little faster by 8 minutes and go into faster runs from the lead guitar and the bass gets a little busier, though he’s mostly been grooving along and not doing the full-on lead bass playing. Keith switches to piano and goes off on little trilling bits, in between Bobby’s chords. They build on it, winding up the band into a single unit improv which breaks out into new bass groove repeated notes at 10 minutes.
As this moves forward, Jerry starts playing arpeggios that fade in and out, a Sputnik overlay which leads forward for more groove jamming. At 14 minutes there’s a feint to a Bright Star, bizarro-world melody version 170, but it sort of makes the jam lose focus a bit and mellow out, and it cedes to low bass notes, they start the Dark Star groove and theme. It’s a beautiful rendition of the theme, slow stretched notes in the melody. Verse at 16:40, a wavery first sung note, (and on the second line.) Strong fermatas on the second line, with Jerry’s guitar faltering on the melody doubling. Back to the groove for line three, and tumbling into the refrain, with more vocal faltering. A nice outro with lilting bass and then to Bob’s transitional lick a couple times before it starts hovering and fades to soundscape guitar tapping and big bass notes in the multi-channel bass world.
Bass solo with background guitar sounds, but it’s a very sparse solo, isolated statements and withdrawn small notes and chords. Small feedback and string tapping continues. The bass comes to the forefront again, slow lead bass lines. It’s a nice space. Feedback gets louder in and out, becomes notes, wah-backed off cries.
23:20, Bill comes right in with a beat, with Keith in tow, they head into a jam. Jerry picks up the slide again. Bobby is riffing more than chord-playing. They move forward, with slow slide melodies over the top. At 26 min, Jerry drops the slide and comes in with short runs, the band follows this route into all playing short little bursts. It gets more chromatic, heading more sideways but maintaining a higher energy as it moves into a jam. Very jazzy playing from everybody for a while, it starts to get scarier and the wah pedal goes back on, though even int he chromatics it doesn’t head toward a Tiger-style thing. They back off late in the 29th minute, Jerry is playing clicky muted little notes with the wah pedal, everybody else making short little bursts. String scrapes, piano warbling, the scrapes with wah pedal are almost vocal sounding. At 31 minutes Bobby and Keith head into a new blues-riff groove which leads directly into the MLB chord progression. It sounds like they pretty much know where they are now, they jam out on it, rocking their way through the chord progression a few times, then bringing it down into the arpeggiated version, leading it away to a proper ending, dropping us off in a chord. People clap, they meander around a bit in a coda and then Eyes of the World begins.

Beautiful version. Nice to have the long jam in the first section instead of a bunch of short ideas thrown in sequence. Post verse space is nice, not super busy, with a nice instantaneous transition to jamming again. The improv areas are great, they obviously know the MLB jam by now. The odd sounds in the space section are also great, that vocal ghostly string scraping with the wah pedal is cool.

170.5 11/21/73 Denver, CO: 3:25 (instrumental)* – Road Trips Vol.4 No.3

This is a tease at Dark Star moving into Wharf Rat, within a longer PitB that enfolds El Paso and both the Dark Star and Wharf Rat and then moves on to Morning Dew. Some amazing playing and full-band improv happening in PitB especially. Bill Kreutzman is just killing it during this period. Keith is very active and Jerry is very on, fast and exact.
As for the Dark Star part of it, it’s coming off of a minute of some sort of PitB jamming, tailing directly from the last chord of El Paso, where there’s a tempo and mode/mood shift that happens very suddenly, and then they almost go into Wharf Rat, but Jerry starts bending around and Bob never plays the intro chord lick, so it sort of wanders into being Dark Star. Jerry goes for slow leads and some feedback, it almost ends up at a Dark Star groove, not quite. Faster than they would get to it lately, I’d say! It eddies out like a DS after a couple minutes, and comes out into a long trill from Jerry, then they sound like they’re in a holding pattern as they consider where to go, and it goes back to the A and starts Wharf Rat instead.
And this goes off to PiTB again, without any jamming at the end in the Wharf Rat or Dark Star A-mixolydian groove, it just moves directly into an A-minor-ish area, speeds up and goes in off-kilter jazziness immediately. But then this gets into slow sparse atonal space with big bass noises after a few minutes, into more scary soundscape stuff and then into a Tiger Meltdown, so that’s very “Transitive Nightfall”…could’ve gone back to Dark Star, man. But they get over that hill into a lovely Morning Dew.

171 11/30/73 Boston, MA: 9:37 (instrumental) – Dick’s Picks 14 (also AUD) (needs 20-second AUD patch)

Well this is another weird one. The mix is odd, for one thing, Keith is loud and Jerry sounds very thin and distant.
It drops straight from the end of the Weather Report Suite, hovering on the holding pattern of “it’s all the same” then moving into the Dark Star theme, no intro, though it is extremely dissipated even as Phil and Jerry send that theme out there a little bit—it never sticks, really. They just move right into oddness. The ensuing 9 minutes are like a mellow collage of the players going through little runs and noises that don’t really coalesce or meld, more like they are all happening simultaneously in their own little spaces. It reminds me more of the sort of space that they would get into 20 years later, and oddly (for me), even though it’s all separate worlds juxtaposed (and not sounding “together”), I liked it quite a bit. It doesn’t feel much like any other jam that they’ve done where they sort of tried to hold it together into the Dark Star groove, it’s very much allowed to be just a series of individual bits and pieces superimposed.
Jerry alternates fast runs and slower melodic bits, throwing in Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring even. Phil slows down right after the intro and goes off on his own. Bill eventually decides to have some sort of rhythmic pulse, but it doesn’t sound much like anyone else is exactly with it in their little worlds, so he wanders off too. It sort of sounds like the Dead had gone to a music store and everyone was trying out different instruments. Everybody gets caught up in little figures that they repeat a few times and then abandon, sometimes these things have something to do with one another, more often not.
Eventually, realizing that Dark Star may never actually solidify, they start Eyes of the World.

172 12/6/73 Cleveland, OH: 44:07 – Road Trips Vol. 4 No.3 bonus disc

Wow. This is the shit. Light Into Ashes (Same guy who did the graph) has an entire blog post somewhere (?) about this one, and he’s got it right as I recall. (That Rhodes, for instance!)
Lotta tuning and noodling at the start, Dark Star is sort of suggested but takes a while to get past the tuning, but Keith plays a tuning chord on piano over and over and then continues melodically while Bob tunes. Then a minute and a half in it has a short little intro and then it gathers and restarts, a very slow cadenza creeping into Dark Star melodies, very spaced out, Bill rolls a little and at 3:10 it sounds like Jerry starts a tempo for real and the band comes in behind him in a groove. It takes a while before Jerry really takes off with the fast riffing, but he gets there and has some new ideas for taking the mode slightly outside. They move into serious jazz riffing, for a long time, everybody doing their part. Keith is jamming in tight little motions, Jerry is on fire, really extending out the solos, Bobby playing with odd notes to the chords, they move into some new phrygian modal areas, and chromatic notes.
At 8min Phil seems to want to step it up but he gives way to a sort of Spanish Jam-ish area, Jerry seems to have some specific melodies he is hearing, and he takes it up from there. They take it to a peak at 10 min, it stays for a bit then comes down the other side, but they continue moving forward. Jerry slows it down, Rhodes gets warbly.
Moving into a rubato area with sparser rhythmically spaced notes, bringing it to a new slow pulse but Phil comes into strong and builds the volume, heading for big bass feedback, Jerry speeds up his figure that he was bringing it down with. It comes out into a new groove right before 13 minutes.
Jerry keeps messing with the time, playing groups of slower or faster figures, winding up a clockwork of riffs, sticking on pedal tones occasionally then moving around in circles. They pick up the pace at 15, everybody starts moving fast, endless melody. Keith follows Jerry right underneath, and continues lines after Jerrys cadences. It’s the bebop section. Though you could say it’s why he chose midi-horns later… Piano is loud in the Road Trips mix.
However this cedes to a sputnik-y eddy that’s very e minor and engenders bass feedback low long tones. The arpeggio moves to A7 and almost hints at the Dark Star vocal melody, while the electric piano is warbling arpeggios with suspensions against long feedback bass tones, building to a very classical tonal moment, which Jerry follows by bending notes against that, Phil really getting into the feedback. It comes down to a resting pulse by about 20 minutes. So yeah, here it comes at 21 minutes, a very casual way back into the Dark Star theme, with a rising rhythmic riff from the piano juxtaposed. This continues immediately into jamming for a while in this Dark Star theme area with riffing bass and Rhodes.
At 25 minutes they’re finally in the head space to attempt the verse.

Beautiful emotional vocals from Jerry, held notes right on pitch, nice tails for the first couple lines, sort of plaintive. Nice groove on line 1, and it barely gives way for line 2—they forgot that they usually pause here—then some runs and rolls moving out of it into line three’s groove. The refrain is mostly piano in this mix. Some nice chorusey sounds on the guitars.
As the Transitive Nightfall starts, I hear Bobby try his lick a couple times as it fades to space. The bass plays some thrown notes to interrupt the space, Keith is just channelling, oddly continuing with a pulse ostinato. Philo Stompy big bass chords. At 28:40 Jerry comes back with odd chords, but it heads back into soundscape, scratches and various extended technique on guitars and bass, little feedbacks amidst quiet space.
Really weird spectral-sweep feedback happens, with some guitar feedback coming in the mix, with the guitar controls cutting it in and out. It gets wild, some big sound is going on, high and low. For a while, this is amazing. Eventually we get some volume controlled swells and it moves semi-tonally and heads back down to the world of notes. Moving into minute 35, the bass is going for a harmonic series feedback to cap it off with some flat 7 chords back to A.
Keith is super high, he’s going for it again, back to the endless 16ths a minute later and Jerry just says yes. So we go into jazz world again. Nice eddy at 38 minutes they get stuck on two suspended notes. When it gets back to lead playing it’s all fast riffing. Keith is still searching for the perfect riff. At 40 minutes, they’re just letting Keith go with it. Find it, man.
At 41:20 they come back in with new chord progression from the perfect riff and then Jerry goes back to lead playing, and extended chords, mostly on e minor 9-11ths.
And it’s broken up in downward thirds, led out with the stuttering it’s ‘all the same’ rhythm downwards to intro to Eyes of the World, which is also full of immense forward-momentum playing.

Jerry Garcia made serious strides in melodic playing in this version, quite amazing stuff, endless new melodies emerging for minutes at a time, different uses of chromatic notes moving the mode around. Some of it is definitely on its way to Blues For Allah-world (even with no Ping-Pong/Proto-Solomon riffing) and the bass feedback is great, he really peaked in his weird sound world. I don’t know if it was the room or the equipment, but the availability of all sorts of frequencies in the bass feedback made the use of it extra creative.
Keith is intense. It almost sound like he has some form of echolalia lately, like he’s compulsively making sounds as he hears sounds, often very “inside the music.”

173 12/18/73 Tampa, FL: 21:44 (also AUD)

Sort of a casual start, the guitar plays the first part of the intro lick and then bass comes in after sort of haphazardly, and they move into the Dark Star groove, a nice relaxed tempo allowing them to stretch it away and head upward and outward within a minute. It bogs a little there, and sort of regroups a bit, Bobby starts on some harmonics, Jerry is finding a melodic eddy, they sort of drone out a bit, it settles on a suspended chordal section for a bit before moving forward, but when it does, Bill reins it back a bit, Keith goes into low notes on the piano against Jerry’s high runs. Phil is bouncing back and forth between low areas and high areas. At about 4 minutes it gets going with some snare driving it, and everybody rolling around. Bobby finds some weird little runs and shakes against the eddies that form from bass and lead guitar. Little waves crest and recede.
Jerry settles into a roll on a specific note at 7 min and then it crests and comes back down, Bobby still on stretchy little chordal things, Jerry does quiet little fast runs and they go into a country-ish Mind-Left-Body descending progression. It doesn’t really coalesce though, moves onward to a riff from Phil where he tries out the roll into The Other One while sticking on a specific root. It doesn’t go there, of course, stays in DS world and Jerry brings in the theme at about 10:45.
Verse at 11:15, with intimate vocals, Phil moving on a descending line for the fermatas on line 2 and playing more with it on line 3, while Bobby runs around. The refrain is motley, rhythmically, but they pull it together for the outro and Bobby plays his TN intro lick once and then plays around with it while Phil goes for low notes and Jerry goes into small pinch harmonics. Bass pulls some high feedback wails, drums roll on cymbals.
As this moves into sparser territory, Jerry finds some resonant notes to feedback with his wah pedal, sounds like Phil is trying out some pinch harmonics before more bass feedback.
The harmonics continue over bass feedback for a while, moving to short melodic runs. Bobby starts tapping the strings, drumming on them. Jerry moves to ghostly background warbling notes. There’s some weird synth stuff going on at 17:30 as somebody is asking about finding something “in here somewhere.” Jerry starts string scratching, Bobby plays with a feedback-echo of some sort, building notes to regenerated echo feedback pulses. Feedbacks continue from bass, Jerry is making Tiger noises, they build it up into the scary section and Tiger starts in min 18, with synth buzzes. The Tiger cedes to bass feedback and the guitars start up some pretty arpeggios underneath, emerging against more feedback from the bass.
It al dies off to leave the drums, he enters a drum solo at 21:30 and continues solo for 2 minutes and then they enter Eyes of the World.

Sort of a letdown after the Dec. 6 version, not bad but not great. The first half has some nice grooving, no stellar playing, really, and then the space section has a lot of feedback and an abrupt Tiger freakout. However, one more date and then end of tour and they’re home again.

174 2/24/74 Winterland: 29:37 – Dave’s Picks 13 (also AUD) (needs 30-second AUD patch)

Back to Winterland, again Dark Star is late on the 3rd night of a 3-night run opening these shows, first of 1974, this weekend being the only shows in the first few months of the year (and one a month later at the Cow Palace.) The Wall of Sound will be appearing over this year.
Some teasing with the intro riff while tuning, a cymbal swell and into the riff and to the groove, they relax it back. Some teasing stretches from Jerry and into a sashaying pace. It threatens to fall apart after even a couple minutes building into echoes of one another in shorter riffs, into a new world. Little sideways modal suggestions from Keith and Jerry, it gets pretty spaced out into little worlds, musicians each on their own phrase lengths, they get into a tremolo arpeggio which breaks out again into a jazzy groove for a short time, till it fritters away. Keith is still pushing chromatically away they settle into F# and a weird ascending pattern (7min) some arpeggios from Bobby. And down into a morass of phrases circling a downbeat that holds off with Keith continuing some rhythm phrases and Bobby trilling. A drum and bass thing with odd arpeggios hovering around it develops (10min). A hint of theme at 11:10, but that’s all we get.
Bill is going endlessly in 12/8s while the other musicians are spacing out on some sort of Dark-Star-adjacent progression, they enter a fast modal area for a while. It dwindles out in the 12th min and no groove emerges, though Bill is playing up a storm still, they space it out again, into echoing falling patterns and off-kilter chromatic tonality. Another fast jazzy thing emerges after a minute or so. It gets hot by 15 and sounds like they might try to head to the MLB idea for a sec, but it doesn’t happen and the mode gets out of control for while. By 17min we’re back in a groove with little fast licks. Even gets a slightly surfy vibe for a sec at 17:45.
Over this groove and up the other side is an overlapping change of tempo with the Dark Star theme and then into the verse at 19 min.
Great, very strong vocals, intimate but also a little scary-warble on the starts of lines 2 and 3. Line two has nice piano outside notes at the starts, it has a nice feel to the fermata. Line three is back in the groove with descending and ascending little bits from Keith and Bobby.
Nicely into the refrain with echoes from Kieth. Bobby is developing on the transition riff a few times before repeating it into an arpeggio. Bill has bells or some hand percussion? They keep the tempo up on a suspended chord, light and under control volume wise, Keith rolling on some rhythmic suspension, it fades out finally at 22:30 into bass weirdness. Keith is playing along, sort of echoing—his playing lately has been really reminding me of echolalia, like he is compulsively playing whatever he hears as he hears it. Some scary volume swelled guitar notes, dark grottoes as we get deeper to a low bass note and something emerging at 24min, Bill is keen to go, Jerry is scratching strings and wah-pedal, Bobby has a chord progression for a second and then back into small eddies of notes and rhythm, little blooms of sounds in major key. Jerry brings out the slide for a bit.
Min 26, Phil is picking up a little into a groove. Jerry plays a bit of the rhythm and then takes off on a run, tries a few things and settles in an arpeggio D major thing heading for the C, but then a wind up for an ending at the end of min 28 and into a big start of a stately Morning Dew.

This is a very spacey version, nobody seems to be committing to much of a groove or even a common downbeat for a greater part of this evening’s presentation. “5 guys in search of a downbeat!” Bill is shredding, but very quietly a lot of the time! There’s almost no repeating phrases at all, everybody is continuously moving away from playing “the theme” or anything like a repetitive groove. Yet somehow they continue playing, endlessly spacing out. (This sort of reminds me of my own experiences of trying to play on acid, but in those cases, mostly people just spaced out until they weren’t playing at all anymore, and I’d look up and be the only one playing some feedback or something!)
I can’t tell if I loved this version or hated it, it’s weird because the spaciness sort of made me unsettled. I recently went back and listened to several versions from 1969, 1972 and even a year previous in ’73, and they are much more “coherent” in musical ways, with the modes used and the themes guiding the improv (like back in the 60s when they even played through the song progression as a high point in the improv jam.) I really liked that, and while the band are better players, the versions of Dark Star are becoming very dissipated. I guess they developed their musical ideas into some advanced state where the song itself is implied, (like bop jazz chord progressions) and they are all playing along with some inner platonic ideal of Dark Star that nobody can actually hear. It allows it go anywhere, of course, ultimate freedom. Though, I’m sort of missing the beauty of the plainly stated theme lately, and the builds to great heights contrasted with the space.

(Second time through 2/24:
They stick with the theme a few times through and settle into a moving groove with a few choice altered notes, it’s very nice and clean. They have the dynamics to be able to play at whatever level, Jerry really takes advantage of this to be very expressive. His playing is beautiful, leading the band out of the groove and mode and back into it very easily, eddying out after a couple minutes, followed by low licks that are echoes by bass and piano. The drums are more subtle than the previous version on NYE, at least they are able to roll out of the way instead of just continuing to chug along, though Bill is keeping a pulse through a lot of the jam here.
Another eddy forms before 5 minutes, rolling on threes, piano and guitars. It takes off half a minute later as Jerry takes it higher, Bob has some interesting background riffs going on, and Jerry cedes it to crying downward bends, and the band takes it lower, drums roll off leaving a low and slow arpeggio for a bit.
They go back to following a slow melody area, Phil is playing mostly low notes these days it seems, utilizing those thick strings. There’s a lot of back and forth with Jerry playing a lick and then piano or bass responding. At 9 minutes it warbles out with a plateau of arpeggios again, dies off, Bobby playing his weird little spastic trills, Jerry entering a sort of Sputnik that slows down over a minute, everything swirling around.
At 10:30 Jerry feints the theme, though in a skewed way, and the band does not really take it to heart, they still swirl around it. Keith actually plays with little chunks of the theme as well, and eddies out on a repeated bit at 12:30, whereafter the band dies out and then waits for Jerry to lead them back, though he ends up going fairly atonal in a slow quiet melodic area at this point. Eventually he goes into fast little runs, and it seems like it may move into a jazzy groove, but it takes its time to get into any sort of rhythm for real, though by 15 minutes, Phil has found a good funky (ping pong) riff and is holding it down. )

175 5/14/74 Missoula, MT: 26:41 – Dave’s Picks 9 

Three months later they’re on tour starting in Nevada and then two days later in Montana and they decide to go for the Dark Star again, coming out of the Weather Report Suite which was grooving along. (Note, the band is headed back west to the PacNW shows where they pull off the amazing 45-minute PitB in Seattle a week later.) They’re in a quick jazzy groove at the end of the Weather Report Suite, it goes into a lull, and Jerry comes up with with Dark Star theme, so the band changes tempo and moves into it for a few bars, and lets it hang. They come back and start a groove, though Jerry is moving in and out of key, Billy still keeping it inside so that it holds together. Keith goes for a wah-pedal for some chords, gets back into some lines, as Jerry and Phil go off onto long floating lines. Bobby starts wandering. Thematic allusions in the 3rd minute, it’s a very spacey vibe again. Jerry appears to be having some fun with his guitar, but it’s not extremely melodic, Billy and Phil sort of fade out. By the 4th minute the song is barely here, though Bill starts plugging away at a groove. It almost comes together but then Jerry takes it into some odd little double stops in a new rhythm. Bobby finds it and tries to go with it, but the rhythm section fades in and out.
Some sort of Sputnik comes in at 7 minutes, a slow fade in and out of arpeggiated chords, landing on one odd one for a while before doing the old sputnik notes, but then going into more double stops. They fall apart, Bobby resorts to harmonics, Keith sort of noodling. Bill is still going, so the guitars end up playing in his tempo, Jerry sounds like he’s in a holding pattern, sort of like the “it’s all the same” thing.
A more dissonant groove develops by the end of the 9th minute, but it doesn’t hold together for long before Phil resorts to long tones and Jerry goes back to a sort-of “PitB” rhythm of his double stops.
At 11:30, it sounds like Dark Star is going to start up out of the mists, but it doesn’t gel for a quite a while, when Jerry finally gets to a melodic variant, it’s pretty slow and takes its time to get to the groove and then the verse.
Decent verse, (last one until September!) almost everybody drops for the fermata after the downbeat of line two, then builds to a continuously moving line three, with movement and riffs from Bob and Phil. The refrain is together, building to the outro and Bobby’s lick twice introducing the new section, which has slow fuzz guitar notes coming in and low bass, rolling drums.
Drums drop out mostly, Bobby dies off to tremolo and it goes into buzzy insect-y guitar notes and string scratching bass. (Somebody yells, “yeah!” from the audience.) Volume swells on the guitar notes, though I hear doubling with the normal guitar note and the fuzz as separate channels (? Or maybe it’s Keith exactly doubling?) Punctuation from drums and bass, noisy. Into atonal scary melodics from Jerry with jazz chords punctuating from Bob, using his pickup switch toggle to tremolo the notes.
At 19 the drums and bass roll around, Jerry is playing wah-rolled-off fast trem notes, moving into the Tiger world, which starts for real with the chromatic runs building to a scream at 20 minutes, with high-frequency feedback from the bass! Atonal denouement with everybody rolling back off, then at 21 minutes, Bill comes in with a beat. It takes a bit before Phil joins in, but they move into a new funky sort of groove. Bob finds a riff. Jerry comes up and takes a relatively mellow tone while Keith plays with his wah pedal. The rhythm section is pretty fast, but the guitars are relatively slow in contrast. After a couple minutes, Jerry gets a little groovy jazziness in there and some cool bends, he keeps going back to that dit dah dit dah ‘it’s all the same’ sort of rhythm and eventually it goes modally sideways out of key for a bit, to some high struck chords building to the one (25:30), they scrape it out while Jerry finds an odd chordal area to focus on, it holds together for a little while, and Jerry starts slowly heading downwards and directly into the beginning of China Doll.

Sort of a spacey version again, lots of little things in a row instead of plugging away at the groove. Not my favorite—though I have listened to the previous one a bit more and it’s growing on me more. Still though, the super spaced-out versions seem like there were not so many ideas coming forth, with lots of referring back to tripping ‘dit dah’s “it’s all the same” rhythm which is sort of a holding pattern ’til an actual idea comes, waiting for that wisp to come through the ear to chase after, and it never really arrives. When Jerry is after some melodic idea and the band continuously work toward it, it’s unparalleled. These last couple Dark Stars are more like stirring a stew where the bits float to the top for just a second and then submerge again into a cloudy morass.

176 6/23/74 Miami, FL: 22:04 (instrumental, DS 17:54 > Spanish Jam 4:10) – excerpt on So Many Roads, complete Dave’s Picks 34 (also AUD)

An all-together intro, and into a relatively fast Dark Star groove that seems to hold together, incredible. Bopping bass lines and modal melodic lead playing, moving sort of toward fast runs and then back again. Bill’s got the sidestick going on, they’re actually jamming out on the groove and it’s sort of normal. It doesn’t really eddy out for a while, they just keep plugging away at it. It even picks up some speed, and then finally at 4 minutes, Bill and Phil drop out and Jerry plays a descending melody. Bob echoes it, Jerry heading to Sputnik-like playing, and into quiet little runs. It enters a very light area, with mostly guitars and piano. When Phil starts to come back in, he’s playing with short phrases that don’t seem to guide it anywhere, and it sort of plateaus, though Bill picks it up with faster sticking in a syncopated rhythm, which Phil starts to pick up on at about 7 min against some arpeggiated licks from Jerry, down then up again.
About 30 seconds later, it starts to go sideways tonally, into a scary atonal section with little swells and ebbs, heading into a tremolo held area, Bill picks up the intensity.
Moving away from here, they start playing with licks that move in and out of key, like an echo with slow modulation. Back to held tremolos at 10 minutes, and the scary wide arpeggio-licks interspersed with atonal melodics while Phil starts up a groove with Bill.
Oddly, in the middle of this, Jerry seizes the opportunity to play the A and then G chords, insinuating that Dark Star is still happening, but it goes back into tremolo and then string noises and weirdness against the drums, and Jerry heads back to a Sputnik-y arpeggio, with the moving top note like a “normal” Sputnik, even.
Twelfth minute is very free jazz, Keith is rolling around on a repeated thing on the Rhodes, Jerry plucking out odd little double stops. Jerry hits the wah pedal for some rolled-off-tone notes and licks.
Phil starts stepping into a bass riff in min 14, Keith is with him in the rhythm, Jerry moving around it for a while, Bobby trilling odd chords, jazzy and odd groove. Phil starts hitting big bass chords, it gets super hot in the 15th minute, Bill swinging it out with a big bass beat. It holds together for a while, Jerry starts some place holder licks, then into chordal accompaniment, with odd shakes from Bobby on warbling notes.
At 17 min, it’s sort of like the climb to a Bright Star but as it reaches the peak, Jerry plays the phrygian progression that brings them into a new tempo and mode, and starts the Spanish Jam.
It takes about a minute to fully transition, and then they’re here in the Spanish Jam, Jerry steps on the fuzz pedal and they go for it. It’s a nice, very strong version of the jam, goes up and down and builds again, big and tough and eventually drops us right smack into US Blues.

Well, that was interesting. Could have been a nice Dark Star if they actually played the song part! Funny that they ran the groove for so long without doing that, especially when most of this year’s versions have been so scattered with short ideas frittering away into space.

176.5 6/28/74 Boston, MA: 3:30 (instrumental after MLB jam)* – Dick’s Picks 12 (also AUD)

Uh, well sure it’s a Dark Star in there. There’s a lot of space action after the Weather Report suite which has some MLB jam in it and, like the June 23 version, this one dumps the band into US Blues at the end.
It starts with atonal slow melodies with sparkling little accompaniment, fading in and out, Jerry with a very delicate wah-back-off tone for several minutes. Some audience yells seem to like it as they move into a more solid chord progression that presages the MLB jam, they slowly move into it and begin to build it up.
Over that long hill, they move into a more jazzy wilderness, and at about 12 minutes in it does sound like the Dark Star mode, though it still is moving around wildly, Jerry playing very chromatically. At 13:50 it sounds a lot like a Dark Star intro area, though the rhythm is quickly brushed away, and Jerry is strumming some chords instead of moving into a theme, and it moves into an e-minor/b-minor area, in that same sort of A-mixo world (D major scale.) They bring this up over the next few minutes, Keith and Jerry playing some raging leads. At 20 min there are some proto-Blues for Allah licks moving in, though then Jerry starts playing with outside notes and eventually the mode splits apart and the band falls apart. Jerry continues, moving into weird sounding fast chromatic runs with either an auto-wah or the wah pedal (?) Bill rolls around the drums, Keith places sparse spikes of chords. Jerry and Bob tremolo out into string scratching and odd noises while Bill fumbles around.
Bill heads to a quick beat, and at 25 minutes we enter Tiger-world, big and strong freakout. People clap, it doesn’t last super long and out the other side, Bill and Phil are in a groove, Keith joins in. This lasts until the start of US Blues.

Dark Star is more like any other “theme jam” at this point, I guess, wherever it arises in that mode. Or else it’s any space jam, maybe. Many versions of the Weather Report or TOO (or whatever) go into a jam that has elements of Dark Star within some Spanish Jam or MLB, which is to say, the things that had been part of Dark Star, like the Tiger freakout or bass bombs or various types of “Space” are happening all over the place outside of being within the song Dark Star. Dark Star has turned itself inside out, egesting its pieces. All of those developments that happened within it have become their own songs (UJB, for example, and its parallel Feelin’ Groovy jam which moved over to the China-Rider transition, the MLB jam is slowing moving around before getting incorporated into Music Never Stopped, even the Sputnik that happens in PitB sometimes) or jams that are part of other songs’ jam sections. I will probably always think of the later “Drums” and “Space” as really being part of the Dark Star milieu.

177 7/25/74 Chicago, IL: 23:59 (instrumental)

No verses here. A slow intro riff into the Dark Star world, Phil almost immediately goes off-piste, though the band manages to hold it mostly together following a sidestick rhythm from Bill, but the runs move up and away pretty quickly, so the groove barely holds together—just barely, but it does, and continues forth. It seems to go outside and then back again a few times, Jerry switching up tempos of his runs, from slow melodicism to fast jazzy licks, though staying in the A-Mixolydian world for quite a while. An eddy forms at 3 minutes on a few notes, the band moves out of it into new depths of the groove, Bill still chugging along.
Jerry moves into low register in the 4th minute for a while, and sounds some blue notes in the scale, the band has some tremulous rhythmic bits, Bill rolls to and fro on the drums, taking the groove somewhere else, by 6 minutes Jerry also finds a new rhythm with some chordal leads.
It sort of dissipates as Jerry runs away and pulls some descending blues picking pattern out of his hat. The band all drops down by 7min and Jerry starts playing with new modal notes. He leads Keith and Bill into a new rhythmic area of endless lines, and then this cedes to a plateau of sputnik-y chordal picking on some F# to G thing. They seem to find a way out of this when Bob hits on a chord pattern, but it doesn’t hold together for long and by 10 minutes is heading back to the two note alternation, though then Jerry steps on the wah pedal and warbles out some notes. Drums go free jazz.
Some call and response after it dies down, from Keith and Bill, electric piano riffs answered by drums. They continue together for a while, a duet. Phil joins in, sort of a jazzy bluesy riff, guitars seem to be picking up on it, with a repeating descending line moving into diminished chord outlines. They’ve moved into an E Minor sort of world and from this emerges a new fast groove at 14:30, Jerry moving on quick lines as the band picks it up and hustles for a while. Sounds a little lick each of them sort of fritters away, and then Jerry is back with quick endless lines, but lower volume, he heads into tremolo’d notes and back to odder lines with a diminished scale, which leads them to a jazz-fusion interlude in min 18. Keith is sounding very Jan Hammer.
Jerry comes out of this with statements of a d minor scale, but back to diminished chord planing and diminished scale runs. They enter a sparse space with extra-tonal arpeggiating for a bit before entering what is labeled the Slipknot jam, when Jerry starts the riff (a-c-e-d, a-c-e-d, e-g-b-a, then the outburst into the diminished chord outlines). Obviously not everybody is exactly onboard with the full expression of this yet, but Jerry seems adamant about practicing it, after a minute, you can hear Keith learning it.
It peters out into soft jazzy chords and ends up heading into Stella Blue.

Not really a bad performance, some interesting stuff. They actually stayed on the Dark Star groove for a while, relative to other recent performances, though it is very disparate. The theme and chord progression are more “implied” (like abstract jazz, where the entire chord progression is implied by substitutions and never plainly stated) but it remains within the Dark Star world for a while. Some new little riffs to play with but nothing seemed to really stick and get hammered out; even the Slipknot was just stated a couple times and then dissipated. Cool to hear it being worked out, to some extent.

178 9/10/74 London, UK: 31:18 – Dick’s Picks 7

They stop to tune and then they begin Dark Star all together, at a stately and slow pace, though it heads into the groove and seems leisurely and sparse, not bogged down. Some nice playing around the mode, some ups and downs, the band sounds pretty together for this jam, little filigree from piano and rhythm guitar offsetting the lead guitar and lead bass (Phil is within his bass duties but off in his own rhythmic world often.) Before the three minute mark, Jerry plays out some fast runs and pokes at the edges of the mode, but they come back and he pauses in an eddy of specific notes that leads to a small wave crest. Out the other side, he starts low and builds it up, the band cranks it out, they’re getting more intense and into it for this wave. Down the other side, Jerry quietly plays some Dark Star theme for a second before running away again. It starts to dissipate.
By 6 min, it’s no longer in the Dark Star groove exactly, Bill is playing away and Phil lets him go, tries to catch him up in a riff like the ping pong riff for a bit, but it leads to single notes and Jerry into a Sputnik in the 7th minute and they pound away at this for a quite a while building it to a weird cadence at 8 minutes or so and out the other side into a more Starry groove, but Bill is still riffing away on the drums and Phil tries to find some riffs to match for a period of time.
At 9:20, Phil hits on a leading tone riff, but instead of leading them to a key area, they go outside for a bit and then Phil and Bill hit it off into a syncopated rhythmic area with Jerry running lines all over, it gets to the jazzy fusion stuff as he starts some chordal lead playing (fourths?) and Keith buzzes around.
Rhythm section continues their groove, it’s solidifying into something. Lead guitar is getting higher and higher, piano is doing quick little runs. They get to a call and response thing between bass and drums.
This continues in jazz rock area with Keith doing some leads, Jerry drops out for a bit in the 12-13th minute. String change? Bobby finds a nice melodic chord thing with some extended notes, heading to tremolo notes.
Jerry comes back in with fast runs again in minute 14, but it all winds down by the end of the minute into longer notes and slower rubato melodies, they start moving into a more chromatic world of abstract melody and whole tone bits, jazz chords planing, little runs in between. Drums mostly drop out, bass is quiet, it’s mostly Jerry and Keith for a bit, landing on major-7 type jazz modes before the 18th minute, though there’s a hint of Dark Star melody right around 17:50. It remains in rubato slow world, Bill starts up a slow beat, Keith switches over to organ! Sounds very slow/quiet blues for a bit here!
And then, just when it seems like Dark Star will never come back, at 19 minutes it slides in a bit and picks up, then off racing away again for a bit, and back to the theme at 20, with a little bounce to it, then on to a more four-square statement of the theme with strong downbeats, rising lines and frittering away into pinch harmonics for a time instead of taking us directly there. It takes its time to get back to a groove and the verse starts at 22:30, line 1, with rising lines from Keith, Bill playing his way right through line 2 instead of the fermata, warbly scary-movie “searchlight”. A nice refrain with some jitter.
Bob does his lick a few times introducing the next section as it fades off, he spaces it out more and more, sticking with it. (Note, recently heard the 11-08-69 version while on the subway, and he plays the lick after the refrain going into the “transitive nightfall” so it definitely has been around a long time, I should have noted that. Now I have to go back and do it all again.)
This next part is labeled Spam Jam on the Dick’s Picks album. Not sure exactly why… It starts with tremolos and wah pedals moving out of harmony into diminished chords and trills. Little creatures are stirring. The beginnings of a Tiger freakout are building. It develops into a frenzy and the tiger’s claws come out! They stay high for a while, and Keith settles back into some groove in it, Phil and Bill pick up on that. They go on with that while Jerry and Bob continue flipping out and it heads over the crest.
On the other side, Phil chooses a few notes and makes them speak with some distortion and feedback, Keith rolls all over the place, Jerry is back in the atonal low-wah-fast-chromatics. Seems like Keith wants to move back into a groove but nobody is coming with him.
It cedes into low warbles from Jerry with Bill coming up and down, Phil on isolated notes until it starts Morning Dew for real.

179 10/18/74 Winterland: 31:58 (jam 7:47 > DS 24:11 or jam 17:40 > Dark Star 17:37 depending on who you ask) —with Ned Lagin – Grateful Dead Movie Soundtrack 

Middle of the five night run (!) filmed for the Grateful Dead Movie. Here the entire second set is jamming, for the most part! It’s 24 minutes of Seastones (Ned and Phil, later Jerry starts toodling away in there), this evolves into a “jam” (called various things, Prelude, Jam, etc. I guess it’s a sectional change when the drums come in and then Phil starts riffing instead of noising, but it is just bass and drums for a while before guitars come back, and piano.) This is similar to various space sections of Dark Stars of the past, then into a jazzy full band jam that goes on for several minutes and then proceeds to Dark Star which heads into the intense Morning Dew.
Dark Star seems to be looming toward the end of the “jam” as Jerry makes some melodic feints to the Dark Star theme, though the tempo is much faster than Dark Star itself would be in this era. He goes into a quiet “it’s all the same” bit right at the (Soundtrack version) track division, then to some 9th chord holding pattern, as Bill rolls around and brings it down, and Jerry starts a line that winds its way toward the Dark Star theme, they seem to get the groove by a minute into the (24’) track.
It’s a very relaxed groove as it moves into this world with nice circling lead lines from Jerry and counter-melodies from both Bob and electric piano (Keith or Ned?). A little melodic up and down eddy at about 2’ in cedes to arpeggios and then the wah tone comes in and warbles it up a bit. Bob seems to be the one extending the mode today, for the most part it’s grooving along in the normal A Mixolydian. Jerry is alternating smooth melodic playing with fast runs, though at 4 minutes he starts doing the slide up to the A that used to go to the straight melody, here it’s a facet of the lead lines, which keep happening. A higher eddy around the bright star intro at 5:40, they crest the wave and bring it down to a light version of the Dark Star groove, interjections of fast little quiet runs take it slightly away again, and at 7 min Jerry does the fanfare lick that he alluded to toward the end of the preceding jam (~8 minutes into it), this time over and over very strongly, then quieter and back to the theme, the band falls in and they go to the verse at 8’.
People clap and yell. Nice vocal melody and guitar doubling, not much fermata on line 2, but very delicate vocals. Less band presence on line three with very small upwards wanderings. A beautiful refrain, and near perfect outro, coming into a still-solid groove for a few bars as it starts to melt only a little, Jerry continues with lead playing, Phil has been holding down a very low end this entire time, he’s in the pocket quite a lot this evening. The melodic nature starts to stretch a little as the intensity ratchets up a bit and they play on the threes of the swung groove. Some counter-lead playing from Bobby at 11’. (On the film, you can see that Jerry walks off stage for a bit, I think he broke a string.) They sound like they are winding up a spring, the eddies are tight and intense, Phil starts climbing to a big downbeat of the A at 12:14, most bright-star-like thing we’ve had in these sections recently, a strong bell tolling on each bar with leads in between, they ratchet the intensity up even further to a sudden change at 13 minutes to a minor modal area with a softer feel. The drums take it down and roll around as the band dissipates by 15 minutes.
We enter a new section with a quiet arpeggio (and secret tuning) and into a slow climbing melody from Jerry (with echoes! Is he using a delay pedal or is it the house sound?) They move into this new e minor modal groove with Phil on a cool little riff and chordal stabs from the piano, A D and em I think. More counter lead playing from Bobby with stretched strings and short melodic bits.
At 20 min Billy starts rolling around the drums again, Phil and Keith stick with him as the guitars fade out for a bit. Bob comes back with odd little licks, and to short tremolos answering Phil’s bass riffing. Jerry comes back in with a run and sounds like he’s bringing it somewhere else. The band allows a lull, low notes under short little runs, rolling drums, fairly quiet, the get sparser and sparser. String scratching starts replacing notes, odd little noises from all the guitars. Bill has a big tom tom sound at this show and he plays them as they fade out, and from underneath, Jerry starts a chord and a run that moves into Morning Dew.

Fantastic version, love the fact that they held it in the Dark Star theme groove so much and where they went with that was great. Nice playing from Bobby countering the leads from Jerry. Phil was really holding it down with the low end and not running all over the place. They mostly stuck with the idea of groove and downbeat, way unlike the version at Winterland from the previous February! A really great end to the era of Dark Star as a set piece highlighting the improvisation arena (though oddly not much ‘space’ in this version, it had all happened during the Seastones and preceding jam.) This is the most together version of the year, and a very strong performance all around, probably my favorite of 1974. (Sad that it drops from the sets now for several years, but good to go out with a strong one.)

In the Youtube clip from GD movie footage, you can see Ned Lagin there between Bill and Jerry, but I can’t hear his playing. It’s cool to see them play it, with actual footage of their hands playing this music. It’s pretty intense to watch up close. Jerry is very adept (duh) at picking with his ring finger and pinky, for example, when doing arpeggiated things, to say nothing of the incredibly fast runs and things.

xxx 1976-10-18 Dark Star tease in Let it Grow.

Well, maybe they dip a toe into Dark Star for 20 seconds, but then out again. That’s it, it moves off to Wharf Rat. Let It Grow cedes to a few minutes of drums, then comes back with a chorus and then moves off. In this part it tries out the em and A chords, sort of quickly. After a few minutes of eddying around and some lead playing, it quiets down a bit, a long descending line brings it to Wharf Rat/Dark Star world, but it’s not exactly a real Star, though Jerry plays some slower Star-like melodies for a second. It pretty quickly becomes Wharf Rat.

180 12/31/78 Winterland: 12:21 (11:21 + 1:00) – Closing of Winterland (also AUD)

FOUR YEARS LATER, we’re back in Winterland. 1535 days since last Dark Star! (Says the banner.) The song is about eleven years old now.
Ok, so big differences in sound: much more compression, for one thing. The drums (back to both dudes) are bigger in the mix, the bass has much more low end.
After the intro, Jerry starts running scales and Phil holds down a low end, dropping to that A all the time, it’s strong on the downbeats. The drummers sort of shuffle along. Keith is on a real piano (compressed.) Jerry’s tone is clean (and compressed.) They move into a nice jam on the groove, following the lead guitar in intensity, it goes up and down.
Jerry does some funny licks outside the mode ~3:30, just to play with it. They keep building, he plays super fast runs in minute 4, Phil still holding it down and very much in the 4/4 thing until he starts with some high stuff in between low notes by 5. Keith is also really holding it inside the Dark Star theme world most of the time, occasional little tinkles, but often a very straight reading!
It just keeps plugging forward. Nice playing, not extremely exploratory. At 6 minutes it starts to let go a bit and drops in intensity, heading to a verse maybe. Jerry gets toward the theme more and more, Bobby has little chip chords. Verse right before 7 minutes, the drummers just play right through line one and into two, a snare roll into line three, just plugs along. Almost no fermata even on the refrain, they just keep playing through it. Donna on harmonies on the refrain! Yikes.
And it rolls right on into the ‘nightfall’. Continuing the low A on the bass, groove from the drums, chips from rhythm guitar. Jerry takes it a bit quietly off, but they keep chugging away. He goes back to fast runs.
At 9:20, the mode starts to falter, Phil starts moving away a bit, but they come back. It backs off into a Sputnik arpeggio from Jerry at 10 minutes, emphasizing the threes, drummers start rolling around more. The melody appears and rolls on, then Phil goes to the E and they start really going for the threes which takes them to The Other One groove for 5 minutes
This builds for a while, gets very intense in the middle of it before landing heavily on the rhythm E chord and the verse. Comin’ around, y’all.
After that one verse of TOO, they drop down and chug away at the 6/8 stuff for a couple minutes, where it peaks into a quiet repeated note that brings them back to a more “Dark Star” mode and they enter it again, Jerry plays the vocal melody in a lilting way, song-form jam! They do line one and two and where they once had taken off on line three, they instead casually enter Wharf Rat.

Yeah, Mickey Hart really ruins everything, doesn’t he? (Sorry.) There’s no subtlety in the drum parts, just continuing along sort-of in time with each other. There’s a lot of decent guitar playing, but for the most part it’s just up and down fast scales, when the band comes along with the intensity of the lead playing it gets good, but it doesn’t really explore much. Phil is really just playing bass these days I guess. Lotta root notes. That does ground it a bunch, but again, not super developmental. I guess the developmental stages of the band are over at this point and the just-keep-playing stages are happening.

181 1/10/79 Uniondale, Nassau Coliseum: 18:28

(though really it goes into “Drums” and “Space” which are part of the whole thing, so it’s really more like 33 minutes. And after this, to Wharf Rat and then St Stephen [-note St Stephen is dropped from the setlist until 3 more times in Oct of 83, then gone].)

A sprightly intro lick into a relatively fast groove. (Lotta clapping here from this audience tape.) They stick with the theme for a few times through and then Jerry starts moving along, the rest of the band stays in the groove, I guess picking it up where they left it off a week and a half ago, just chugging along in the groove, with notable downbeats per four bar sections. Jerry is really jamming around, he keeps building up and down and playing really fast bits over the four-square rhythm section, boom-boom-chack. This goes on for several minutes, it’s nice. Very different that the versions from 5 years previous. Jerry is really playing his heart out going faster and faster in the mode, then stretching it out, getting caught in odd eddies of leading tones and outside arpeggios that resolve to modal notes.
They bring it down a bit at 5 minutes but then a slow build again over the next couple minutes, really nice full band jamming, Bobby gets his weird chords on as Jerry stretches it upwards. Over that hill, people clap and yell, and they continue onwards at a little mellower intensity, though Jerry is still playing really fast often, to a sort-of-Bright Star area at 7:30, leading to a falling riff, which cedes to some low soloing, landing at the theme statement at 8:30 and into the verse at 9:10.
Harsh vocal entrance, ahem. Drums still chugging right through the lines, no pause on line two though a little build at the end into line 3. Remember when they played only hand percussion? Even chugging through the refrain with kick and low toms. Finally a pause into the outro, and then they head off into the Transitive Nightfall, with the groove right back and Jerry moving through intensely fast lead playing.
Electric piano chords hover above the sparse but intense grooving background. Lead guitar is just continuing an endless line, various chordal bursts behind him, Phil and drums just plugging along. Jerry is getting faster if that is even possible, caught in a little whirlpool and taking it up to a high tremolo at 13, they mostly come along for the ride towards a downbeat resolution to the theme, strong band statements, they are coming down on the root hard.
The band lowers its intensity and Phil starts a descending line, Jerry going chromatic. Keith moves back to piano, they are holding some latent freakout down, Jerry quietly moving along very quickly still, though the volume is lower. Bobby starts some more jazzy chords, drums still pounding out the kick on every beat.
A Sputnik area is developing with both guitars toward the 16th minute, arpeggios plateauing the groove, it goes on for a while and dies down a little but they hold the plateau, drums start laying back a little. The plateau of arpeggiated notes continues all the way up to the end of the track, though Jerry goes back to fast quiet runs against it. The drums build up again and they move into duel drum solos. Or drum duet I guess.
Mickey seems to have some sort of hand drum while Bill is playing the trap set. People sound pretty into it.
They move through a build on traps and it goes into hand drums from both of them (I think). Possibly it’s just Mickey? His rhythm sorta sucks. At 6 min into this track, they move back to the trap sets and roll around with a combo of toms and cowbell. People try to clap along. At 7:20 they start a low roll that builds to rolling over the toms, suddenly everybody erupts with cheering, I’m guessing the band is walking back on stage. Rolls and stops, cheering, rolls, now Mickey has moved to a tuned percussion thing like a log drum or something.
Jerry tries to find some notes to work with, and starts playing along. (Track separation here also.)
A few sparse electric piano notes, volume swells from Bobby or possibly an electronic drum? Jerry turns on the auto-wah pedal and wobbles around against tuned percussion rolling and sparse bass notes and such. Jerry still in high gear. Bobby makes some car-horn sounding swells and echoes. Bass is playing string noises and scrapes. A fuzz pedal is engaged, but it’s fairly quiet back there, wah-backed-off with fuzz sort of tone on chromatic riffing, odd high squeals from Bobby. Scraping continues against the running guitar which heads to wah-freakout screams, they build it all up to a head late int he 4th minutes of this track.
It comes down the other side with odd bass notes and screaming sparse atonal guitar bits to another build to tremolos, then suddenly drop off and start Wharf Rat. Nice one!

Really a tour-de-force of lead guitar playing. Quite incredible and amazingly quick playing. I am sort of glad (at the moment) to hear the band back to playing the theme groove fairly cohesively, though I have to say that it’s relatively straight, which is odd for the Dead. Phil still doesn’t seem to want to explore much, he’s mostly just keeping the low end down. Bobby’s playing is good on the chordal melodics, Keith seems to be mostly stuck in just chords, but man Jerry Garcia is ripping it up! Phenomenal. I sort of expected this to be crappy bringing it back in the late 70s, but this was a really good version.

182 1/20/79 Buffalo: 9:16

Last Dark Star with Keith, last one with Wolf guitar.
Ten days later (it’s an every-10-days thing!) they are in Buffalo and from Estimated Prophet jamming comes The Other One. Jerry is still in the mind-boggling speed world, with his now-well used custom-made guitar, which he will be replacing with Tiger later in the year. The shots of him playing in the films show that he really knows Wolf well. The Other One moves into a drum jam which heads from trap sets to hand drums for a good ten minutes, to “Space” for a few minutes, the band joining in with the tuned percussion (Jerry again hits his auto-wah for a second, then he plays up and down tonal melodies in 6/8), bringing it back to the Other One’s second verse, a little low jam for a couple minutes and then off to Dark Star, already hinting at it before the end of The Other One track, though they pause and start with the intro riff.
Immediate clapping in time and they head into the groove. Jerry skips around in the mode, he’s got some sort of octave pedal or something widening his lines. Again, Phil is holding it down, the drums are solid. They keep it mellow for a while, in the groove, while Jerry plays falling arpeggios.
At about 2 minutes into this track, the vibe goes sort of soft jazz. Jerry is jazz-rocking around, quickly, Bobby holding arpeggiated chords, Keith also playing chords and holding them into arpeggios. It takes a while to build this vibe to a theme statement at 3:30, and they fall in and move to the verse at 4’, funny stretch from Jerry on guitar and vocal melody in crash-uh-es. They chug through the line two again without fermata, slight build into line three. Jerry playing funny stuff in the melody double on guitar again. Drums play right through the refrain which seems to add a few beats to it. They finally almost allow a pause in the outro, but don’t really, and it just heads right back into groove with Jerry speeding all over the melodic lead lines as the band chugs onward.
In minute 6, Keith starts heading upwards as Jerry gets caught up in a little whirlpool before continuing in the quick lead lines. Bass and drums are still in foursquare world, though a few chromatic excursions are happening. In the 7th minute, Jerry takes the mode sideways with some whole tone action, then back to quick little atonal runs, the band starts making odd notes happen more. The drums start rolling around more. Keith sounds like he’s just playing chords, they build it up to 8:30 and plateau a bit though the four-beat drums are still there and it sounds like they are just playing through. Keith starts a 6/8 riff which Jerry joins in and they build it up to start Not Fade Away at 9:20 into this Dark Star.

Sort of short but sweet, not the most incredible but fairly good. Drums are getting sort of boring just playing a square beat the whole time—it does really ground the song, but they do it the entire time (even the verse and refrain.) So it’s sort of a heavy Dark Star from the band, while Jerry skitters quickly over the top with fast running lines.

on to the Tiger guitar

183 1981-12-31 Oakland, CA: 14:50

OK, so I was at this show. I remember the surge of excitement when they started playing Dark Star, banner and all stating how many days since the last one. By that point in the show, however, I was pretty tired (and sadly, unenhanced). The first hour of the show was horrible with Joan Baez and all that—she was going out with Mickey Hart during this period. I saw another show they had done with her earlier in the month, it was definitely not my cuppa at the time. Well, even now, I’d say. Plus, this Dark Star happened in set 3 (set 4 if you count Joan’s set) after a great set 2 with PitB and Terrapin Station that I was very caught up in.
The Tiger guitar is used here and throughout the 1980s, though only 2 Dark Stars with it, here and July 1984.
Dark Star is actually teased earlier, right at the end of the PitB jam, sounds like Bobby who plays the intro lick a couple times, then Jerry starts Terrapin Station instead. This heads back to PitB after 14 minutes before “Drums” and “Space”, though there’s still several songs in store before they actually play Dark Star (space goes into TOO, Not Fade Away, GDtRFB and Morning Dew, before some tuning and then some more intro riff teases. I guess they had planned to do it… or somewhat planned? But yeah, the drums/space thing is its own phenomenon at this point, I have to admit.)
They hit the intro riff all together, very tight and with all the parts, and move into the groove. Since Mickey is here, it’s just going to chug forward forever like a hippie drum circle. (I apologize for my Hart-bashing, but seriously. I lived in Santa Cruz at the time, and the hippie drum circle thing was no joke.) Brent on electric piano, grooving out, Jerry keeps with the theme for a bit before slow cascades of notes, then some interplay between piano and lead guitar as it moves forward. At 2 minutes Jerry finds a wide arpeggio and eddies out on it, then finds a lower one. He’s taking his time to go for it. Some bass soloing for a tad interspersed with lead lines, and back to the theme for a touchstone at 3:30, off again as Brent takes the theme groove for a bit. Verse happens almost immediately at 4:30, the drums again just plow through it, slightly pausing in the middle of line 2. Jerry plays a bit with the melody on guitar while singing, Brent plays out the searchlights casting around (and seems to play a wrong modal note in the outro “transitive nightfall” line!).
On to the middle, Jerry starts building a line upwards, over several times and to lead playing, though at a leisurely pace. He backs off at 6:30 (string break or tuning maybe) and it’s just the piano and Bobby for a bit, but he comes back in with more leisurely playing, though he catches the band up in it and they build it in intensity and volume, into a high eddy before 8 minutes. A slow hill, they wander on up and over the other side to a lower eddy, before 9 minutes it’s back in quiet mode, drums go side stick, electric piano goes for the lead playing while the guitars mostly arpeggiate. Sputnik-like, but then into a trill for a bit before more relatively quiet Jerry soloing, getting faster and jazzier.
They start to pick up the pace a bit in minute 10, more swing to it. More eddying out, before Jerry steps on his fuzz pedal at 12 minutes and goes for fast playing, Brent following him. Some Blues-for-Allah type licks in there, turning around and landing on odd notes. By a minute later he’s back to normal tone and bringing it down again, and back to the theme. Band comes along …and they go into the second verse! Mighty.
Verse at 13:50, he’s remembering the words. Drums again move straight through all lines, bass is on roots. They move to the refrain with a strong pace and big drums and the suspensions on the chords. To the outro, they move into a groove again for a few seconds before starting Bertha.
Well! That was something.
Notes: A couple years ago, back about when we started this thread I listened to this, thinking, here’s one I witnessed! —and I hated this version. Now it seems not that bad, I quite like it! It’s not super great, but it holds together (and they actually do both verses!) When I listened back then, I hated the ultra-mellow hippie vibe groove, I don’t mind it as much today. Same with the clean compressed tone that everybody has in the era of big-time shows, I didn’t dig it.. Listening to it now I can’t believe I was there, the band is really good and this Dark Star has some great playing in it.

184 7/13/84 Berkeley: 15:54 (standalone encore)

My best friend in high school played bass in our band, I used to borrow his bass to play in a cover band with older guys who played a lot of Dead. I showed my band’s bassist the songs, he subsequently became a full-on, often-traveling Deadhead for years. He moved to Humboldt, I moved to Santa Cruz. We’d meet sometimes, usually in Berkeley (his sister was managing the UC Theater), unsurprisingly on dates such as July 13, 1984, his 21st birthday.
That said, I have nearly no memory of this concert except the environment of the Greek Theater and the sky.
So it’s the encore here, with a shooting star going overhead at the time. They start with the intro lick, fumbling into it a bit, into a relatively quick-paced groove. Phil is actually playing lead bass again instead of just holding down the roots, the jam has a lot of off-beat interplay but lands on the one often.
Verse almost immediately, at 1:20. Sort of haggard vocals, drums chugging the four-square beat right through it all. Nice descending piano lick on line three. A slight pause punctuated by tom toms for the refrain, and the outro moving directly back into more groove jamming as if it never stopped. Jerry hits the fuzz for a bit, though the lines are making arches over the continuous accompaniment. Good playing in general, Jerry ends up finding some feedback tones for a minute, the band keeps going, he goes back to lead playing, heading toward very plaintive stretches at 4:30, when they come down from this area, it starts to move toward a lower intensity, lots of electric piano runs, they band takes it down a bit.
It’s sort of a new area, Phil is more on syncopated lower tones, the band in general gets a bit sparser before beginning a new climb over a small hill and back to the theme at 7:30, they stretch it apart and play with the song, Phil maneuvers some heavy downbeats for a couple lines as if it were a song-form section, but it wanders away.
They bring it to a plateau at the end of minute 8 and up into a higher intensity jam area for a while, Jerry playing high Bright Star-like licks. Coming down the other side, back to the theme proper, they might have headed to the verse there at 10 minutes but Jerry steps into a low Sputnik and they continue forward.
They continue in the jam chugging away endlessly. Jerry heads back to a higher octave version of the theme at 12’, then they hold it there for a bit, Brent playing some planing chords against it, like a new chord progression. The theme holds but the band comes down a bit and the second verse happens at 13:20.
Phil is on a riff throughout the lines, Brent is mirroring the melody. Drums pound through the refrain, endlessly. The outro riff is started by Phil, the others join in and it ends with a coda of holding little licks and notes warbling around. Jerry turns his fuzz back on to stretch it out at the end with some fast little runs and tremolos, the drums finally turn to cymbals and the guitars extend a feedback note.

To me this is still an odd version, very straight in a lot of ways, endless (but quite good!) jamming on the groove and that’s about it. Ah, for my complaining about the spaciness of the early 1974 versions, this is what I get I guess. It was a great way to end the concert, of course, and nice to hear the song for the only time in the mid-1980s. I guess they weren’t really gonna take it out into space for the encore, despite the space background projections.

185 10/9/89 Hampton: 19:23 – Formerly the Warlocks

(Wolf guitar again. I saw a show in CA a week prior to this one, no more Dark Stars for me. I mostly liked the drums and space parts at the show, hated most of the rest of it. )

Sort of a messy intro, so many people cheering on the audience tape, for quite a while. They move into a leisurely groove, Jerry starts a lilting lead and Brent comes in on a key cascade into it. Thy hit the verse almost immediately at a minute in.
Of course, the band is pretty square over the verse, no fermatas, only slight upward wandering from the bass. Jerry sounds pretty raspy. He’s old these days.
Into the middle, more up and down leisure leads form Jerry, swingin’ it. He finds a couple little eddies, the piano-synth thing is tinkling around. Bill starts chasing them a bit after a few minutes. Jerry switches his tone up by 4 minutes, they get into a more jazzy area. At 4:40 or so, he has his midi-follower on and goes through some tones, first one with a long reverby sparkle and then a pseudo-marimba. Wow that sounds very odd. Guitar is starting to sound like a lot of weird midi instruments, bassoon, etc. Bob has some effects like an octave up thing fuzz or something. He stays on bassoon for a while, and starts to go outside the mode. Drums attempt to follow in waves. The lead strays to a new tonal area and organ comes in, the drums and bass start rolling on a groove for a minute. The guitar sound starts changing tone again, more synthy. Also sounds like Mickey has some awful clap and electronic tom samples from an e-drum. They bring it up to a crest right after 8 minutes. Dow the other side, we rest in a valley with scary synth chords falling against tuned percussion swells. The guitar at least sounds more guitar-like for a while, he’s still playing lead and brings it back to the Dark Star groove by 10 minutes. Second verse? They stay at it for a bit and second verse at 10:40. All right!
Band is chugging their way through the verse again, with some upward wandering again on line 3. Drums play into the refrain, finally allowing a space if only for a second.
The refrain outro plays out into a descending bassline and back to scary synth sounds, now with stabs from Bobby, it goes full on monster movie for a bit, then he switches to a brass sound while the drums start with their weird stuff, and keys go wild. Fuzzy doubled tone on the low lead guitar sounds like he may go to Tiger world, but he takes it high in to a solo stretchy wailing section with feedback and big pull offs. The piano goes wile behind, Bobby clips away. At 14 minutes more feedback is coming in from bass maybe, the fuzzy lead is tigering out. Guitars, piano strings and garage door springs being slid around on with lots of feeding back guitars. Odd triggered echo sounds come over. The bass starts a scary descent. The lead guitar has changed to a reverby trumpet now and seems to be playing jazz form the back of a hall against the sliding tones and feedback, piano madness.
The lead changes to a flute organ sound, drums start up an attempt at something for a second at 17 min, settling into a bongo rhythm. Strikes on piano strings and bass, stretchy guitars. It fades off, bongos back in again, other hand percussion being swatted at, bell trees and goat toenails on a string. Piano strike effected through some massive spectral sweep, guitars still background noise, they fade and allow the drummers to move into their own rolling groove.
New track, Drums, they roll against a drone, grooving on big toms. Suddenly a minute in, a hugh electronic noise sound with echoes, it happens a few times before they bring it down to smaller sounds.
They build it back to a groove, rolling along, both drummers, then it sounds more like only Bill after a few minutes, working out his rhythmic frustrations before Mickey comes back in with talking drums and some electronic drum hits or board echo playing in the large space (I’m listening to a matrix, I believe.) They hold a steady groove here for a while. The track is 9 minutes. Bill fades in and out a few times, the talking drum gets fed into the echo unit and then some spectral sweeps start messing with it in the 7th minutes, very weird. Fading in and out, the drummers play with the echoes. It gets even more weird as more musicians start to come in with feedbacky weird sounds.
New track, Space, guitars come back, Jerry with midi-triggered sounds again. Bobby making chordal noises. Talking drum with echo continues. The audience is again yelling about it all. The guitar sound is a weird hollow tube percussion thing for a bit, then he switches it up to a more jazzy snap bass sound with echoes taking off from it. (Board maybe?) Also (electronic) tuned percussion happening, and dumb e-drum claps and whips. Hard to tell if the actual bass is coming it, Bobby has a modulating echo on his guitar stabs. Guitar goes more like fuzz guitar in the background, huge synthy sweeps take over in minute 4 into this, and then to flutey sounds. Lead guitar in and out in little riffs. When the waves crests, there are more spooky synth sounds underneath lurking. From this emerges a more guitar-sounding guitar occasionally, and back to the low fuzz.
This last noise segues to Death Don’t Have No Mercy. Nice!
Good version, all told, (Here I’m considering the whole sequence through Space!) though I have to say, both then and now, I don’t like the dumb midi-triggered sounds much. The idea is good, the implementation of classic orchestral synth sounds sounds cheesy to me. Did then, still does. But it did allow Jerry to continue exploring. And Mickey, as well.

186 10/16/89 East Rutherford: 16:59 (11:36 + 5:23) – Nightfall of Diamonds

This is good sequence, Dark Star starts off the second set and moves into PitB (which encloses UJB) before heading to Drums and Space, though comes out of them to I Will Take You Home and I Need a Miracle before coming back to Dark Star, moving into Attics of my Life and then back to a PitB reprise. Wow! Nesting dolls. In some ways I still think of both the drums and space sections as egested sections of Dark Star, you know.
They futz around for a while before actually starting the riff and moving into the groove. Audience cheers massively. Jerry hits the start note of the vocal melody and takes it away, the band follows in bits with a blooping around rhythm section, lead guitar plays shorter phrases with echoes from both echo units and from the keys. Sounds like a diffusion on the echo signal. Drums sort of plug away, Phil bobs up and down. They’re mostly keeping in time with the echoes. Sparkly digital FM keyboard sounds doubling the guitar midi now. Bobby’s got some weird filter/wah thing.
Melody at 4:50, guitar with its midi follower sounds. Some dumb licks from Bob and Brent at 5 min, Jerry gets down with some more echo weirdness in fits and spurts and back to more guitar-like melody, verse comes in at 6 min.
Wow, Jerry sounds pretty aged at this point, raspy on the higher notes, sort of deep on the low notes.
They sort of give way for a fermata at the end of the verse into the refrain. Crowd yells and they make it through the outro into yet more medium tempo drums and bass while Jerry and Brent doodle the higher registers. The guitar is more guitar like, though there’s still a lot of echo on it. He starts to add some more midi sounds by 8 or so minutes, oboe and then some percussion, it all goes a bit sideways about 10 minutes in. Atonal chords, weirding out echo midi stuff. Odd keyboard chords. They move into fast chromatics at 11 min, it holds in the fast freneticism for a while, then gives out at 12 and they move into Playing in the Band.

Later in the set, after I Need a Miracle peters out, Jerry picks up the Dark Star thread again, with a sparkly midi-follower, though he heads off to a more distorted tone for a few seconds, then back to the guitar with midi-follower, Dark Star melodics by a minute into this section. Bobby goes for some distorted tones, while Jerry plays with the sparkle-follower. Are we getting another verse? They play around for a while while we wait, chasing their tails. Verse 2 at 3:40 into this section, almost a fermata on line 2, but not everybody goes with it. They finally allow a rest at the end of the verse into the refrain. They go through the outro and back for a second into a groove that peters out almost immediately into applause, and they begin Attics of My Life.

The midi-sparkle is tough to listen to.

187 10/26/89 Miami: 27:59 – 30 Trips

They start with the riff and settle into a relaxed Dark Star groove. The drums are panned in the system as usual and it really brings out the flams. Jerry heads off with mid-tempo noodles against cascades from the keys. Phil is sort of digging into the down beats, keeping a pretty root-centric bass going on. Verse almost immediately at 2 minutes in. Lines are punctuated by key cascades, Jerry sounds pinched and ragged. They head to the refrain and allow a fermata. Keys cover the melody lines and they build the outro riff into the next section start, with rhythm section back chugging along.
Jerry adds a midi-follower sound that adds sparkly reverb to his guitar. Keys are still doing falling arpeggios and cascades between things, Jerry eddies out for a bit and gets into some melodic tidbits that he needs to explore. At 5min, he’s in fast modal runs world, punctuated by pull offs. The band sounds like they are moving into a new groove as Jerry plays a sputnik at 5:44, just for a bit.
FM bells strike at 6 min. Oh, early digital keyboards. Jerry winds around things. At 6:50, they bring it to a standstill, Jerry adds a midi voice of an oboe or something, and begins his journey stepping through presets for a doubling voice. Bobby starts some stabs, the drums and bass are doing wilder things, exploring a bit.
At 8min, we get bass alone on some strong notes, Jerry with a flute sound, the drums start to come back in, they build it a bit, keys still doing falling figures, Bobby still with stabbed odd (and very compressed) chords.
A minute later they almost have normal sounds again, guitar and (very bright) electric piano. Jerry starts weaving a series of figures, the band leave some more space for the eddies. Brent starts playing with his pitch bend on the keyboard, Bobby find some little riffs. At 10:45, Jerry steps through to an odd echoey percussive preset for a bit and then wanes to more tonal sparkly sounds, they start to go off the rails, mode-wise.
Now Mickey has a tuned percussion thing but instead of ceding to a drums/space thing yet, they almost bring it back to a Dark Star -style groove, though with some odd sounds still on the guitar.
Back to a mellow groove in the 12th minute, relaxed soloing, though the mbira or whatever is still going and Brent is still playing with his pitch bender. Mickey starts playing something with a lot of reverb, maybe a garage door spring. The band heads back to the pre-verse groove for a while.
Verse 2 at 14 minutes. Jerry still sounding raspy and ragged and almost silent by “Shall we go”. A long tail to the first line of the refrain with ritard on drums. Second line elicits the outro lines in a shambles, and the band heads to spaciness! Outside modalities, odd sounds, atonal wandering, arhythmic. Some small feedbacks, distorted tones, atonal choral things from Bob. The piano starts crashing around, Jerry plays a fake bass patch for a bit, weird digital trumpet tones playing odd licks. Crashing wild piano bits in between. Back to a flutey sound. Keys go into a synthy pulse and then sweeps. An eddy occurs in minute 18, I think Bill has stepped offstage to pee, Mickey is playing a tuned percussion thing. Bobby finds an arpeggio to stick to for a bit in between chords, Jerry goes for FM-string sounds, stepping through presets still off to something else.
Brent starts his pulse chords again, maybe that’s a built-in patch also. They bring up a slow set of half-tones against a lot of digital noises from keys and now drums. Arhythmic stabs from people. Stupid syndrum sounds and more digital noise from drum pads. Keys and guitars respond with atonal sounds and stabs. Bigger piles of noise start to happen, more freneticism.
23:30 a midi trombone starts making notes loudly against a sea of syndrums and scraped keys, chromatic bass. Big sweeps follow, and giant orchestral stabs. Noise bursts. It tails off in the next minute, keyboard filigree with quieter bursts from percussion and guitars. Mickey back at his percussion thing. The guitars all are quiet and relatively atonal. Cascades from keys and percussion and more noise burst lead this track into “Drums” as if that were a separate thing (?)
I sort of feel like the drums/space coming out of this jam are essentially part of it. The drums have wide stereo weirdness tremoloing and echoing with odd noises speeding up and down. Very weird. Drumming emerges, but cedes to the odd pulse from a mic’ed and treated percussion instrument of some sort. Drumming finds a pulse and starts the kick and then comes in for drum solo from Bill with Mickey playing bells and shakers. It’s a pretty mellow drum area, but nice. Mickey picks up a talking drum, it’s mic signal is still panning about in the stereo field. Sounds like they both go for hand percussion after a while, it’s a little tripped out by the effects, but fairly solid while being slightly mellow. They roll around and roll it on, on the big toms or kettle drums or whatever they have these days. Distortion comes in on one of the rolling toms at about 8:30 into this track, as if that were normal. They give way to clicking edges of drums, and a low drone comes in and this track give way to “Space”.
Key pad sounds come in, and Jerry is back with his midi-guitar business. The lick he plays at :40 in sounds like a Dark Star lick! The guitars have odd tone, but they are playing like guitars mostly. Low drone comes back in. They play around with some modal chord shapes and slow melodic lines. At 3min in Jerry is back to fluting it up. It’s mostly just the guitars with the flute sound and then and oboe sound, Bobby on pinched chords looking for some high feedback, and that drone in this space.
At 5 min, they start playing with two chords, but it doesn’t last long, and then the thing all sort of fritters away as the bass comes in with walking lines. This gives way to a Jerry wind-up lick and then he heads into a mellow tonal lead area that eventually The Wheel.

Well, I guess it’s a lot of weirdness for a big arena in the latter 80s, and that’s cool. Long! But man, those midi-tracked synth sounds are awful. Even the DX7 or whatever Brent is playing is awful. Yuck, the 80s really sucked ass tone-wise, for everybody: guitars with over-abundant rack gear, FM-synthesis keyboards, syndrums. I don’t blame Garcia for having fun doing a pitch-follower and having it play bad synth tones, but the just-stepping-through-preset-sounds thing is irritating. If he actually spent the time to develop some sounds that were decent and used them in different places rather than just clicking through bad orchestral models, it might have been better. Though the quality of the timbres is still pretty bad during this period.
Jerry’s singing is really ragged. He barely makes notes above the rasp.
In this sequence, I do feel like the drums and space sections were a literal outcome of the Dark Star improv, they really stretched out the odd jam here to over a half an hour! (Plus, to add an argument to this end, on 3/29/90, the same sequence happens, with a few minutes of actual Dark Star between the end of “Space” and the beginning of “The Wheel”.)
As one of my friends said, “So cool that they do Space and Drums so you can make to the bathroom and back at a big show!”.

moving to the Rosebud guitar

188 12/31/89 Oakland: 15:05

Jerry is on the “Rosebud” guitar now. The ending of Victim or the Crime has some arhythmic noodles with a midi-trumpet sound and big crashing cymbals and toms, held pitch-bended keys. Bob starts a little Dark Star intro and then they actually do it, and drop into the groove, though it’s sort of dissipated, the drums are slow. Guitar back to almost being a guitar sound, and Phil actually bubbling around more, the groove funks up a bit after a minute. Brent is still on the cascading riffs. Jerry is mellow on his leads, Bobby has a very distant sounds compressed guitar tone.
At a couple minutes in, Jerry steps on the suck pedal and the guitar starts sounding like a trombone, but just for a second, and back to more guitar-sounding guitar. They wander around in the Dark Star mode world, and into the pre-verse theme area. But then Jerry steps on the pedal again and becomes a jazz flute and then there’s more digital keyboard sounds in there and Jerry is playing guitar. Maybe Bob has the midi-pitch-follower today? Or is there someone else playing.
Halfway into the track, Jerry starts some fast runs, the band just mellowly chugs along. They continue. A lull and then they dig back into the pre-verse
Verse at (unknown, no time readouts on the new player. Maybe 7 minutes?) Jerry is small sounding, but has most of the notes. Bass holds it together through the verse, the drums are light. To the refrain, they jumble it all up, but get it together for the ending into the outro. After the riff, back to a groove, though it starts to ebb a little. Keys arpeggiate downwards, some digital noises start in the background, big swirly reverby things. The track switches to “Spacey Jam” at 9:13 as things get atonal.
The pulse falls apart, the pitch follower has a ghost voice sound. Bass keeps low mostly, they start to get a bit more frenetic and atonal and build up to a peak. Everybody is making weird noises. The piano goes to free jazz all-over-the-place bits, Bobby has a very pinched distorto sound, and then Jerry goes for distortion also and gets wild. They build to a high wild place int he middle of this track and then let is cede to little picking and odd riffs at a lower level, though Brent still has some bits all over the keys. Distorted guitars play with feedback. Dumb-ass FM bells comes in. Jerry switches to an oboe tone, the drums start building up a rhythmic pulse. The instruments make noisy phrases while the drums continue and then 5:30 into this track, they give it over to the drummers, who continue a groove with bass and some odd percussion. Piano is warbling around for a second, then it’s all drums and percussion.
Somebody is singing or yelling into a mic that is pitch-shifted in the drum world. They roll onwards through some hand percussion and then back to tom toms, rolling on. Bells still in the mix. Mickey strikes up the triggered digital drum sounds occasionally, they roll it onwards taking this track past 10 minutes long.
Some odd distorted sounds come in from a vocal mic with some ring-mod treatment again. Rolling on big drums, hand percussion. Audience says, “whooo!”
Toward the end some pitch-bends on some echoed instrument come in, leading to the “Space” track.
A note from guitar with the percussion underneath leads the percussion to a sparser area while some pitched instruments make isolated little runs with echoes. And then the preset switch goes to a sax-sound for the guitar. Reverby noises take over the back, synthetic keyboard-ish sounds plinkle around. I think it’s both guitars with pitch-followers playing awful FM synths. Some syndrum hits.
Halfway through, a low drone starts. A guitar emerges under it, with distortion but at a low volume, playing runs and arpeggios in a major key area. Another instrument is sounding like an electric piano playing sparse notes. I can’t tell who’s playing what, but there are occasional sounds that appear to guitars, though most of the time it’s synthetic voices. Then some low distorted rock riffing by itself followed by odd synth bell-bloops and low notes, some loud “bells” and then Jerry starts the riff into Dr Mr Fantasy. Yikes.

Well, ok Dark Star is 9 minutes of this, and it leads to the drums/space biz. The drums segment is decent, but space is filled with those awful synthetic timbres. These last few have been pretty tough to get through because of that, it’s not the sort of timbral world I want to devote my listening time to! I like electric guitars, you know. That 1980s FM-synth biz was all started by John Chowning at Stanford, it really invaded the whole sonic palette of the 80s—even Miles Davis’ band had a DX7.

189 3/29/90 Nassau: 21:05 (18.18 + 2:47) (with Branford Marsalis) – Wake Up To Find Out

Bobby starts the lick, people join in on the second round and they drop into the song. Yup, saxophone is in there as they play the theme, he’s riffing. It makes the lounge vibe, keys go with soft electric piano sound. Jerry finally comes in with the post-Prophet auto-wah for a minute, then back to regular guitar sound and rising scales. A nice little eddy with keys and guitar by 2 minutes, then keys start going outside a bit. Bobby’s got a super compressed tone so he really sticks in the mix. I think Jerry is switching to midi-controlled sounds off and on between long guitar runs? There’s a lot in this mix. Phil is staying pretty low, and plays with low note resonances. Keys and drums go on a workout in the 4th minute, and then Brent goes with sax for a bit. They’re all pretty rife with energy and ideas here, it’s kinda cool. They bring it up and land at 5:30 on the theme again. Verse at 5:50, Jerry sounds relatively good, though still raspy. The drums play through the lines, no fermata on line 2. Nobody really moving much on filigree except sax. Finally a long fermata and flubby entrance on the refrain. Bobby is hopped up moving into the outro, then he cools off.
It drops a bit and Jerry and Branford go all jazz mode, so Bobby plays with weird chords and whammy bar. It descends into atonality and short bursts and phrases. Rhythm falls apart, but the drummers start going wild on rolls and everybody makes sound, rolling into sustained atonal chords and fills, for a while! It even gets more frenetic in the 9th minutes, whirlybird keys and tremoloed guitars. Drums pushing it forwards into complete chaos, they hold it in the chaotic loud swirl for a long time, Jerry goes distorto. It finally ebbs at 11 minutes, though drums are holding an odd beat going on down low. They maintain the atonality and sound-making. Phil comes in with a walking bass for a sec, Bobby comes along, it almost takes and the drums start a swing. Oh no, Jerry is in on midi flute at 12 minutes. It’s hectic jazz flute and sax with digital piano, yay. A minute later the swing goes ragtime for a bit, then starts to go off the rails and the drums fade it a bit.
At 14 minutes they get very low, Jerry is sorta cool swing jazz, they keep working on descending patterns.
Some piano flourishes and then somebody is triggering random percussion sounds. In the 15th minute somebody has a horrid bright trumpet synth sound, maybe Bobby? Now Jerry goes back to midi-marimba and bassoon, it’s pretty frightening as a soundscape, super bright digital barroom piano and all. They settle into a horn piece with midi bassoon and sax, eventually finding some rhythms and then bringing it down before it cedes to “Drums” at 18:20
Drums is 10 minutes itself, with big drums for a while, a pulse eventually finding its way in while the filtered echoes and weirdness on the sound start. They build the bass up a lot on the tympani, resonating. The echoes come in and out, the crowd gets moved by the low end, they cheer. They drop the level, keeping the roll going on til 4 minutes in, then breaks on a hand drum of some sort, punctuated by low tympani, which distorts the system.
Garage door spring at 5 minutes, with echo. (This was my favorite part of the one show I saw in latter ’89.) Odd little sounds in pulsed phrases. Severe flanging on the signal at 6:30. More weirdness with scrapes and echoes. The sound system seems like it’s just filled with flanged echoes and distant signal panning around, at a low volume. The bass resonance is looming, the flanged thing is still coming around off and on. Super trippy stuff, man! It fades in and out for a couple minutes before the Space track starts. People cheer at 10 minutes and the sound starts to come back with a synth tuned-percussion sound coming in.
Space has guitars, making low feedback and midi-controlled short riffs of synthy sounds. There’s an echoed thing in the background, the flanged drum thing still flies in and out off and on. A marimba starts plunking away. The flanged drum gets bigger. A distorto-sax-guitar and then a real sax come in, Bobby starts wringing his chords into submission, it’s all non-tonal still, short bits from different sounds. Sounds like a bell ringing from somewhere, guitar maybe? Everybody else fades down after a while and the bell keeps tolling, then it goes slightly awry. Keys tinkle. Sax sings around, things fade in and out, then extreme volume swells of the flanged echo thing again,. Bobby comes back in with evil little chords and then holds while the other things fly around. Phil is back plucking his bass for a sec, more midi-controlled guitar sounds and then finally a real guitar sound for a second and it fades out into band and Jerry picks up a little Dark Star lead which eventually leads them back though the flanged drums still threatens to blow reality away.
And 8 minutes later we’re back, another 3 minutes of Dark Star groove. Verse 2 at 1:50 into this track, adequately performed, Jerry sounds even better on this verse. They play it through and hit the refrain strongly, up and down each line, sung very nicely by Jerry alone, to the outro. They land on the A as if going to continue the groove but it falls apart nearly instantly and then they slowly pick the threads up to start The Wheel.

Well. That’s a lot of sounds. That drum flanged echo thing really blows away the reality of the arena and eventually brings it back, that was cool.

190 7/12/90 Washington, D.C.: 24:55 – View From The Vault II

Sort of a peppy intro, takes a bit to settle back into the groove, rolling keys tinkling lead Jerry in and he mostly keeps it to guitar type tone, though Bobby has a distortion sound he’s playing with, highly compressed. Jerry plays a nice lead and they head over the first crest by 2 minutes, into an area where the midi is preparing, sort of spacey reverbs, he comes back in with pan flutey sounds for a bit and they move into some chromatic chords and jazzy syncopations. Nice playing. Jamming gets more intense in short waves. Nice modal exploration as it rolls along. More jazz chording from Brent at 4:30, they move slightly sideways modally, though Phil is sort of grooving it on a root with the drums.
Moving into a continuous forward moving groove, bringing it slowly higher and louder over several minutes, they are in good form here, Jerry brings it back down to the A at 7 minutes, and the theme in variation, verse at 7:23, he sounds less top-end raspy, but the low end has a tear. They roll through the lines, but with a big downbeat on line three and no e minor, but with cool rising bell tones through it.
The make it through the refrain and in to the outro, to the next jam.
It starts as a normal groove, continuing from before. It starts to dissipate a bit in the 9th minute, but makes it back. Some weird mellotron like voice sounds come in during some little runs from Jerry. They back it off a bit then bring it back up and over a little hill, where Jerry goes for Midi Trumpet. Bob has some heavy distortion, aping it. Trumpet solo continues, changing timbres a couple times to other brass, then back to guitar and into heavily chromatic odd runs, moving atonally. Bob is squawking away. Phil starts a faster walking style bass thing while the drums fade out to use odd samples occasionally. Then it builds frenetically in minute 13 to arhythmic jumbles, when this fades, it’s a muted brass sound then to distortion, it remains frenetic, wild keyboard sweeps and hits, pounding drums, atonal guitars. Sustained until 16:40, with ups and downs, ceding to wild distorted guitar lead lines and then stretches from Bob, they finally bring it down and slower, and Jerry picks up the Dark Star theme, but moves to alternate harmonies a couple times before they settle into the groove again.
Verse 2 at 18 minutes, sort of surprisingly, voice is as before, but the verse is played lighter so it sounds more fitting. A little climbing funky thing from the bass on the lines. They, play the refrain all together, with tinkly keys. Outro and as with verse 1, back into the Dark Star groove. I was gonna say that if they had already played verse, I might agree that the following Drums and Space could stand on their own and not be part of it, but they are clearly moving forward with Dark Star into the groove.
It’s got interesting bendy lead stuff from Jerry, sometimes with country blue notes. He goes into a fairly mellow set of sixths melodically before playing more lead snippets, though it starts to fall apart rhythmically by minutes 22, and fades to just held notes. Phil tries to spur a 6/8 sort of rhythm, drums come rolling up underneath. It never gets far, though Jerry does some sputnik-y picking. They keep with it, the drums come back and fade out, bringing the intensity up and down, it fades to drums and occasional wah-guitar, then only drums.
Drums: They play a rolling rhythm together for a while, moving into the echoes and then resonance buildup, it’s pretty exciting. When it comes down in volumes it gets very cinematic with low tuned springs being bowed, a fifth apart. At the end it builds with rolling on the reverbed springs and adds goat toenails rattling and moves into the track Space.
This starts with a low drone and then some atonal guitar wanderings. Everybody starts contributing odd sounds, including buzzy sliding synths and distorted guitars and phase woops. There’s wild fast panning of sounds in the mix. Bass comes in with some pithy comments. This starts a little warbly conversation. It all sounds like an alien dinner party. The pan modulating thing gets so fast it starts sounding like a ray gun. Atonal lines in different abstract timbres, blurring the line of agency: is that the guitar? Eventually Jerry seems to settle on an oboe like sound and goes for odd arpeggios. I guess in higher registers it’s more like soprano sax timbre. This goes on for a while. Then they start to play with the echoes by 10 minutes and it gets lighter for a bit. It’s a slow build to the end, staying abstract, but they move into All Along the Watchtower to get out of it.

The band sounds good here, I think, they are all playing relatively interesting things and doing it well. (Though is was the last one with Brent…)

191 9/20/90 MSG, NYC: 27:12 (12:01 + 15:11) – Road Trips Vol.2 No.1

Continuing the series of hot band jams, they are coming from China/Rider/WomenAreSmarter/Drums/Space to the start of Dark Star. Which goes into PitB and back to Dark Star!
Here, the Drums track is really moving up top as a continuation of the Women Are Smarter beat for a while, then they go for drum soloing. Second half gets electronic and echoey. And melodic. And echoey. It’s long, 15 minutes of pee break for the guitars. Actually, bass comes back in when it starts to get weird on the garage door springs. The track switches to Space when whale voices come in. But fairly quickly it goes midi orchestra Sea of Holes. Then to jazziness and back and forth. I hear strains calling for Dark Star about a third of the way in already, but it spaces out with generally arhythmic swells, that all lead toward Dark Star. Phil tries to pull some rhythms into a 12/8 and they end up big waves. They sort of play with the Dark Star intro riff and then finally begin it together, big cheers.
Dropping into the groove, this recording is hi-def, lotsa range on bass and guitar. It seems, well, groovy. Sort of comforting and benign. Bob has a background low-vol high-compression “Cali” distortion tone, Jerry has the straighter tone, but keys are doing both. They drive on it. For minutes. Oh, there are two keyboardists… I get it. It’s Bruce Hornsby and Vince Welnik. This is moving into a phenomenal jam that finally lets go to the Dark Star world again at around halfway and Verse 1 happens.
Jerry chokes out on the first sung note, but holds it together as the band is keeping it steady to hold him up and then they switch it up to the e minor on the third line now. The refrain comes in shambolically, every which way.
The outro melody goes into Phil riffing, Jerry comes in with leads, he and Bob trade a bit, cool. Keys are overbearing and very 90s.
They move into a rolling groove, though, until a sudden switch to midi bassoons and crap. Everything goes sideways. Into a holding pattern groove with odd chords, when guitar emerges it’s still moving between sounds, and moving atonally. He goes into fast little runs. Everything breaks down, short phrases, cries. A flute sound. Then they begin Playing in the Band, sounds like a Mellotron holding chords behind? It halfheartedly limps toward the song after a little jam and finally gets there, amazing.
But no verse here, it goes through changes and to the chorus! It’s the end of PitB, from some unknown beginning of the song? The previous night? Anyway they come down from that trip and space out and then find their way back to Dark Star. Though it goes into weird jam first. Bass riffing with long key chords and then spacing out before dropping right back into the groove y’all.
They even go through a song-form improv! Dropping to the e minor on line 2 as used to be normal. The line three exploring goes on and on. Bob insists on the chords after a while and verse 2 happens.
Jerry sounds, well, better, in that he holds the notes on both guitar and voice. And he remembers the words. They groove til the last moment and let the refrain happen, which goes into more Dark Star riffing, though keys go south a bit.
Bass goes wild, drums follow. Keys are trying, and the bassoon-thing, but they sort of suck in this tonally. It goes into the movie theatre. My dog is leaving the room, I mean really. She’s left. Atonal skronk goes on, building to who knows what climax which erupts all over the keys and finally takes the tempo down.
Drums catch a beat for a sec, but everyone walks all over, guitar-as-synth is going all over the place. It’s all very cinematic. They build it up, lots of abstract tone getting intense. Drums build it up into a pulsed duh-dat duh-dat and it goes completely atonal. When it moves down the bassoon is back mocking the guitar.
Dog came back in, I guess it’s ok. Lower intensity but still atonal. This has got to be a trip for the MSG crowd, seriously. They bring it down and it’s back to guitar sounds as if the band were right there this whole time, no way!
They cruise around in a sort of minor mode until finally going with Throwing Stones (into Touch of Grey and short Lovelight.)

It’s a pretty cool Dark Star, all told. I like the straying into PitB, that was weird.
Sort of similar to the last one, this time Dark Star encompasses the Drums and Space tracks and then again moves into Throwing Stones (and Not Fade Away to end the show).

192 10/20/90 Berlin: 17:44 (13:06 + 4:38)

(I don’t seem to see times on the player…so no accurate time points.)
A month later in Germany, this one encompasses the Drums and Space tracks and comes back to Dark Star. A slow feint and then they begin the intro riff and drop into the groove. People cheer. Jerry start out relatively slowly on a lead while the keys play the riff over and over with a very digital bell-flute-sort of sound. Trying to be an organ I think. A couple minutes in he adds some stops that double the riff in fourths, but it comes in and out, Phil develops it into a punchy jam.
Verse comes in, Jerry sounds pretty good, even his playing along with the voice line is spirited. The drums keep chugging along through until the second half of the refrain, Phil drops to the em for a rising line on line 3, and holds for the refrain. They move at slightly the same pace through it. To the outro, and into the groove again, though mellower by a tad.
Jerry is backgrounding the little runs, organ thing is soloing a bit and Bob tries his harmonics with whammy bar stuff. The guitar is in midi world but it’s low in the mix, which is sort of cool as he rejoins the mix when he plays with normal guitar tone. It’s a spacey and mellow jam, nice, Bobby tries out some dissonnant chordal tones, Phil eventually lands on an f# for a bit changing up the mode, then drops to the E and they dissipate a bit. They play more less atonally around E or B roots and it goes into spaciness. Synths come in
Jerry is back in midi land so he’s blended in more, so Bob has more lead guitar bits, stretching the tonality. The start to go more chromatic with no set rhythm. I hear the midi bassoon jamming along now. In conversation, the levels are good on everybody so you can hear them reacting to each others moves. They build it up in intensity and hold a tension, a full freakout.
When it finally breaks, they leave the drums to start up their section.
The drumming is exciting and upbeat for several minutes, rolling along on big tom toms. Eventually it’s Bill on a sick kick and snare beat, while Mickey wails on bells. This gives way to a trippy area with some unintelligible shamanic chant or slow drum syllables with flanged echoes and other odd sounds filtering in. There’s an echo of the beat fading in and out which eventually stays in and they start to build over it, drumlining it on. This goes on with bits of tweaking, even a full stop at one point, then back at a low level flanging out. They end up leaving a flange cycle and playing within that as the bar, but it falls apart into low echo feedback and warbles and begins Space.
Here are the amplified garage door springs, rubbed slowly educing a major overtone. (Does he have a name for this instrument?) Bobby comes in on slide with wah and echo but then hits various clusters. I hear Jerry back there with an echoed melodic line, I think Mickey has the live drum mic with echo picking up stage sound and tweaking it.
Keys try for a harmonic progression of some sort and they insinuate a 6/8 that doesn’t really gel. Everybody plays short phrases for each other that echo off. It sounds like a collage of songs. Bass and drums come back after several minutes and threaten to do something but sort of stay in a holding pattern. Jerry still tries for a 12/8 sort of thing, but it remains static until Brent starts a rising progression, Bob tags along and then when Jerry joins in it heads to the Dark Star riff. Some awful bendy stabbing sounds as Bobby insists on his dissonant chromatic find. He even sticks it in when they’ve moved into a mellow Dark Star groove.
Verse comes in but I can’t hear Jerry at all on the first line, and he flubs the guitar a bit on formless reflections. Be’s closer on line 2, they switch to the em rise for line 3. He does a nice chromatic lick down to the refrain. The whole thing is better played than the first time, and then go to the outro and then a tentative slow move into a Dark Star vibe groove. Lead organ, bendy harmonics, little runs on guitar, descending. They fade it and stop. Start Throwing Stones.

193 11/1/90 London: 21:10 (10:10 + 11:00) 

At Wembley, they do a PitB sandwich with Dark Star inclusive of Drums and Space, then on to Wharf Rat.

They jam out on the PitB thing for a number of minutes till it fades out and they start the Dark Star intro. Dropping into a mellow groove, Jerry takes his time to make a statement, he starts low and mellow. Bobby goes off on his harmonic bendy thing and stabby chords. This is Bruce Hornsby playing a normal piano and then Vince Welnik on other keys sounds… sometimes.

Verse comes in and is light and mellow, a brief bit of intensity on the line three drop to em, keys go vibraphone sound, into the refrain, they get to the last riff and it’s a bit bubbly, to the outro seamlessly into more groove, no fermatas. They sound like they are plugging away at something, Phil is breaking out a bouncing bass line, sort of jazzy but solid, keys are nice piano warbling. He moves into more synth sounds as Jerry gets it higher and more chromatic, to an eddy up top circling around a few notes. 

It gets more and more sideways and cedes to arhythmic space with short phrases of atonal melody. Drums eventually come up under it with a tom rhythm. They bring it over a little crest into the next valley and Jerry plays the Dark Star theme, what? but quickly spaces it out as he doesn’t feel like getting there yet. Cuz he has to take a piss or something and the guitars all leave the stage and drums continue on with a heartbeat-tempo rhythm. They play on it and build it up and down for a while, contrasting sections. The scrapy echoey sounds don’t come in until maybe 7 minutes, interrupted by echoed fills. It goes into a relatively quiet flangy section that threatens to take reality away occasionally into timelessness, the drumming/percussioning coming in and out. Toward the end it winds it up into a feedback flanged echo. 

The Space track comes from this. Really weird sounds are echoed and flanged around the stereo spectrum, tweaking fast modulation and slow, it comes and goes. Piano comes in with Schoenbergian chords, moving into a modal melodic thing that builds into a mirror of the Dark Star [shall we go] “you and I while we can” melody. This stays in the modal world and builds to a more rhythmic thing with the guitars playing along. (Not exactly Space…) It only lasts a couple minutes and they bring it down and swirl around Dark Star notes, piano on the riff, they finally drop back into it. Crowd cheers!

Verse 2 at once, Jerry sounds like he’s barely there. Bobby on harmonics on the line 3 em. They sort of cede at the refrain, but the drums don’t fully drop until the second part of it, the Transitive Nightfall. The outro and back into sound, Jerry goes midi-marimba, keys go organ. Wait a sec I hear the guitar also, is it Phil on midi marimba? They don’t stick with it as Bill goes to tha-thump thathump, and the drums go all syndrum and everybody steps on their midi pedals. The bassoon is back. Yay it’s syndrums, midi bassoon, marimba and sparkly sound thing, very technological. It gets chaotic and the rhythm that was being kept by Bill leaves. Bob goes back to more distorto guitar like sounds. Keys tinkle.

There’s a lull and the guitars take it, Jerry switching to flute sound. I guess it must be Phil on the low voice that is some synthetic sound. Bobby stretching notes. They remain atonal. It dwindles and the flute plays arpeggios, bass goes with drone pedal notes. Bob is in with the pitch follower, Jerry goes for the distorted guitar tone. It lulls at times, but somebody keeps it going. It moves into a sparse midi trumpet section. Toward the end of the track, Jerry makes ambiguous lead statements as if leading to something, moving into a light ascending line eventually getting the PitB lead in licks and they move there. 

Some nice parts. I like the piano based jam in the Space track, though it was a bit new agey. Hornsby.

194 12/12/90 Denver: 13:46

Multi-night run in Denver. This Dark Star is after Aiko Aiko, and goes into Terrapin Station, with the Drums and Space following. A few hints and they start the intro riff, and go trippingly into the Dark Star groove. It’s a nice exploratory jam, Jerry stretches out with rising phrases, keeping it a guitar. Some great soloing, just keeping it going for several minutes. He settles into an arpeggio eddy (Sputnik-y), everybody swirls along.
Coming over this crest they move to the groove again and set up for the verse at about 7 minutes. Jerry sort of yells it out, trailing off on each line after a strong first note, Phil on a riff for line 3. The refrain is nice, and to the outro riff.
Jerry sticks some notes right off so they rally to a low groove, keys on the riff for a bit. Jerry goes for the distortion box. He pulls some nice licks out of the hat, up and down, fast picking. Then he switches pickups to a tone-rolled off thing, but then that marimba sound comes in, must be Phil. To a warbly synth thing, so Jerry moves to the song form riff, the vocal melody, three lines and then he goes off again. They groove along and it eventually goes back to sounding like their regular instruments. Phil is moving around on a complicated riff, Jerry is soloing and keys are mirroring him, Bob also to a certain extent.
When it dies down, he switches to midi flute thing, drums fade. Phil goes into an octave riff, Jerry finds a melody. I guess the flute is leading us to medieval land, though the band is still taking it a bit sideways. A keyboard fades in and out on a pad.
Jerry comes from underneath with the Terrapin intro chords.
Nice playing, a pretty good version.

195 12/14/90 Denver: 9:10

Denver gets a second Dark Star in a couple days, this one comes out of a long He’s Gone into the Drums and then Space and then as “Dark Star”, which last 8 1/2 minutes.
As usual the Drums track has the shape of being both drummers rolling on a rhythm for the first half and then moving into hand percussion and then electronic weirdness, though it appears to be a Bill solo at the top.
This track is only (“only”) 7 minutes and the following Space is ~9 min, as is Dark Star. Space follows as the flanged echoes get ultra weird, (some audience hoots) and then little guitar snippets come in and then noisy scraping high pitched sounds… I think the midi follower trying to interpret bridge or string scraping. Anyway, tonal sounds, a synthy flute and almost-a-guitar-as-a-bass bounce around for a while. It’s atonal and rhythmically idiosyncratic to each player. The midi voice presets get stepped through, saxes and bassoons, etc. As it moves on it gets more spatial and prettier, more florid and eventually cadential lines leading to the Dark Star world, by way of variations on the theme, though then there’s a little play with the intro riff from Jerry as well, just in case someone wasn’t picking up on it. At this point, it’s Dark Star, though it’s mostly just guitar and bass and one spacey keyboard. Sort of nice and mellow, rolling around the theme, until he decides to play the vocal melody on midi trumpet. That’s sort of weird. It goes on with this for a bit, Bobby comes in.
A couple minutes in, they sort of start over with the theme, though with actual guitar sounds. They hold it until some drums come to join them, and a verse approaches.
And it’s verse 2! A wavering “Mirror shatters” but it starts to hold together by line two, with an insistent pulse from the kick drum and bass, drop to the em on line three and into the refrain, it takes until the outro before upper drum sounds are heard, he keeps on with the tha-thump, tha-thump on the kick and no real snare until the jam develops. Keys start to go clustery, Jerry takes the jazzy notes.
It’s a sort of latent jam, like it’s building to something but instead eddies out on little circular bits. It sounds like the rhythm section has one idea of the beat and Jerry has another. They try another build, ostinato bass and Jerry steps on the distortion pedal and they jam out bringing up the intensity, but it’s a quick little thing and then some chord hits signal that they move into “Need a Miracle”.

As far as Dark Stars go, it’s a weird one. Nice mellow guitar and bass version of the theme jam and a decent short jam ending it, but the rhythmic element is odd: propulsive but understated, most of the time only kick drum. Plus, while they do a verse, it’s verse 2! Where did this one start, was it two nights ago? Everything in between, including the entire show on Dec 13, has been encompassed by this Dark Star.

196 12/31/90 Oakland: 20:39 (with Branford Marsalis)

Interesting show. I probably shoulda gone! Oh well. Lotsa guests, there’s a Ken Nordine track right before the NY countdown, after which they go off in a series of jams, NFA, Eyes, then Dark Star, followed by Drums, Space, The Other One and Wharf Rat back into NFA. Eyes is fully jazzy with Marsalis playing, and goes on for 16 minutes. As Eyes of the World fades in it’s last jam into repeated phrases, Jerry winds up a lick and heads to the Dark Star intro riff, people join in and they drop into a mellow version of the groove. Sparse lead bits from guitar or sax or keys, it sort of rolls along gaining momentum, building righto to verse 1.
Jerry comes in with such an incredible rasp that his voice sounds distorted, but he holds the note, and it gets nicer over the first line. They groove along for line 2, and start the em riff climb on line 3, to the refrain and a little sax filigree on the in betweens. To the outro, which is pretty ragged, they drop back into a groove and Jerry holds down some guitar sounds for a while on his runs. Keyboard cataracts.
After a little downturn, the begin a slogging groove with nice ups and downs from guitar and saxophone, over a mostly steady quarter-note bass, building to an eddy with the keys arpeggiating as the rhythm moves from swung into a stronger 12/8 with a climbing TOO style riff.
When this dissipates it does in chromatic waterfalls, then moves into a lighter version of this groove. Sax takes some leads. They move into different rhythmic bits and it all falls apart into more chaotic phrases and bits, landing in a weird area that then starts the Dark Star theme again and attempts to hold itself together, with verse 2 coming in.
It’s about halfway through the recorded track, Jerry still comes in very ragged and sounds better and better as he goes on, Bobby is trying his compressed harmonic bend things in the verse. The sax lingers over the changes, the refrain is mild chaos, but the sax makes it on the melody for the outro.
When they move into the next section, Jerry starts off with a whole tone scale and then some sax licks follow, it’s going to get weird. The drums mostly drop out, the midi pedals get stepped on, fake bassoons go to town. Sax jams out (he’s got a decent tone, thank the gods) so the midi stuff sounds like orchestral backing for the sax. Keys have some cool fade ins and then some kittens-on-the-keys movement. Bobby is making some weird little sounds, Jerry moves back to guitarishness, though it’s all very swirly and ill-defined. This is akin to the Space track, very similar to several versions of it.
Jerry goes for the midi-slap-bass sound again, sax continues, Bob plays with odd chords and volume pedal. They all build to a more frenetic peak, but Branford finds a swing in it, and it dissipates. Jerry back to guitar sound. Keys like a marimba sound. Sax plays octaves in a slow sequence, moving up as the band climb a bit and then relinquish the intensity, but it starts a cascade of trills, and that starts a new wave. Now I think Bob has his midi-pitch-follower on with chunky chords, drums come in and start pounding out a rhythm, they build to a good freak out, Tiger-like. Ceding to an eddy of notes, then a downward riff which has elements of TOO also, but eventually leaves the drums alone, for a 16 minute Drum track with electronic drums right off the bat.
Drums plays on a cadence with e-drums and toms, but it only lasts a few minutes before moving into a long sequence of weirdness. Tuned percussion and big toms with echoes and flanged echoes for minutes. Then it gets quieter for the rest of the track. The some mellow tribal hand drums (with chant singing after a while). Not sure who this is, actually, different language. Mellow hippie drum circle stuff. Toward the end of this, there are some instruments playing along. Is this Hamza El-Din? Anyway, it cedes to “Space” after a while, which starts small, with melodic playing from the guitars and sax. It turns full space after several minutes and the midi instruments are back and they go all polytonal and chaotic. It has its ups and downs and ends up with the 12/8 in chromatic atonality, but makes it to The Other One and strikes it well.

197 4/1/91 Greensboro: 26:19 (23:34 + 2:45)

Aprils Fools Day concert, three months after the last Dark Star, this is the full space-out, 23 minutes up top, into 17 minutes of Drums and Space and then another few of Dark Star closing it out—moving into a reprise of PitB that never had a before-part, similar to doing the second verse of Dark Star as if the song were started days prior, as they did in Denver Dec 1990.
A spritely intro again and they’re off into a pretty quick groove, (for a Dark Star!), people repeating the falling riff in various ways, then the piano starts with cascades upwards and Jerry goes a bit, keeping an actual electric guitar tone, Piano moves back to the riff to let the lead guitar go, and they move back to upwards waterfalls. Phil is mostly keeping the downbeats on the root, so it’s pretty structured, takes a while till Bobby gets his little trills going, Jerry is just noodling around for the most part. He plays with a Bright Star area about 3 minutes in, and after that they seem to start to move into a new area, everybody plugging away at their various continuities. Jerry is very bouncy today, hopping around on his lead riffs. Some nice eddies in the 5th minute before the MIDI flute starts up. It’s jazz flute time. They do some little workouts with this combo, changing the mode a bit when Jerry introduces new notes to it. He’s back to guitar sound by minute 8, and it sounds like they want to make a new section, bringing it down and back to the riff.
Verse 1 at 8:50, vocals start out scrappy, but line 2 is nice. They do the chord change on line 3, with Phil on a rising riff. Into the refrain, they all sort of peter out on the lines and land on the vocal lines, to the outro, which leads to more of the riff but it slows down quite a bit. Sounds like Phil has a pitch follower and is doing and off-beat outside melodic thing, with chromatic notes bringing it to a different mode. Jerry hits some distortion and plays against the new minor-ish mode, though he starts to stretch the tonality after a bit also, and everybody starts moving chromatically. This is an odd jam, nice notes but rhythmically chaotic. Oddly I only seem to hear Bill, and not much of Mickey but the occasional tom tom.
At 13, the bassoon appears, and more percussive sounds from Phil’s pitch follower. Bob is sticking with guitar distortion but they are all atonal and chaotic. The drums roll around and the keys head from piano to synth sounds and echoes. It’s getting crazy in here! Now the midi is a voice sound for a sec, then to more trumpety stuff. Bob is stretching notes, Phil is tremoloing. It’s almost monster movie.
They’re all back to guitar sounds, though with distortion, keys are still on the echo synth. They’re all riding some choppy waves here. At 16:20 a big midi marimba sound takes over. They bring it down a bit. Ah, bassoon came back. They’re still in atonal noise land, but each sort of in his own world. Now the guitar is a midi sax, then it cedes to weird bass riffs and keys, and something floating through a modulating echo. The echo has some feedback bits, everybody is making shorter statements, little stabs of notes.
At 19:30 there are drum hits and electronic drum hits, not sure who’s playing what, but the keys and guitars are still in making slower sounds against it, and a low synth tone drones off and on. It moves into a more rhythmic bit with the drum sounds, hand drum and synthetic drum, and the players keep at it, especially Phil who finds a riff to move with. Eventually they cede to the drums alone as people clap and seem to understand that the song is changing.
Drums starts with rolling toms from Bill after the instruments leave, and a high percussive thing riffing from Mickey. Bill backs off for the percussion thing to come out, and comes back on toms again, and plays more drum solo-type stuff for a bit. Then the electronic bits start to come in, syndrums and echoes/reverb. It fades to bits of loops of the percussive thing (springs?) and gets into the spacey part of this track, eventually it’s just low drones of echoey feedback, moving around the stereo spectrum.
Some isolated hits and scrapes on the big springs with feedbacking echoes, nice and weird. This section goes on for several minutes, though some high tones come in underneath in minute 9, not sure exactly what it is, sounds like synthetic voices. These lead to the Space track. I guess it’s guitar?
Bobby is playing with a slow envelope filter of some sort as well, and there are low bubbles, which become a bass after a bit and then heads back to synthy drone. It’s a slow lugubrious sea of big creatures barely stirring.
Guitar notes from Jerry, mostly atonal but clean, at a little after 2 minutes in, he seems to be heading to some sort of romantic melodic world. Now Bobby is making hits on his guitar that become very synthy and move back to distortion sounds. I believe the drummers are both offstage at this point.
At 4:40 into this track, Jerry moves into a descending arpeggiated thing, Phil is sort of jazz-bassing it. With a long echo picking up the guitar bits. Keys come in to play with it, it’s starting to move into pretty music land. Somebody is midi-fluting, but it can’t be Jerry because he’s on guitar sound still…? By 8 minutes they’re back in the key/mode of Dark Star and playing around. And it comes back, with some variation on the Dark Star melody area at first, and no drums yet…
At 50 sec into this track, Jerry has a definite Dark Star melodic bit and slowly the drums start coming back and they mold the theme groove from all of this, though Phil is very funky on it, and they hit verse 2!
It sort of slides into it directly, voice sounds ok, they don’t exactly change the chord for line 3 but sort of. Phil is still sort of strumming through the refrain, lotta pick noise, and he leads the outro and they all move directly into the PitB riff!
This is actually just a few more minutes of jamming, though in the different key—after a minute and a half, it does the riffing chord changes and back into the PitB chorus! “What the heck. Did we miss the entire song earlier in the set? Was I here?” Ask confused audience members. (Similar to the Madison Square Garden show the previous July, and probably others.) So they play out the end of the song as if they’d been playing this song the whole time. And then Jerry starts Black Peter, which gets rocking.

Well, pretty ok version, less midi stuff except where it’s like 20th century atonal music. The lead guitar isn’t spectacular where it’s guitar, but it’s pretty good. Bobby has some interesting bits in there, and I liked the keys with echo parts.

198 6/14/91 Washington, D.C: 10:58 – View From The Vault II

Nice sequence with Help on the Way, Slipknot, Franklin’s and Estimated Prophet (with intro hints at the end) leading to Dark Star. A lot of jazzy jamming happening throughout that. They were playing with Dwight Yoakam! After a real intro they drop into a pleasant groove in the mode, big compressed guitars twinkling. Jerry lilts through it, beautiful bouncing licks. Bob comes in with some odd little lead bits as well, with his whammy bar. Verse at 2 minutes, Jerry sounds pretty good, relatively. They go for a scary line 3, Bob with big swells on the drop to em. To the refrain, a nice one, led by Phil through the changes, and to the outro.
They drop back into the groove, organ has the riff with Jerry, and then he starts up new lead parts, slowly building it while the organ jams out a bit. They eddy out in the fourth minute and it starts to stir up a hazy psychedelic stew which spins faster and faster over then next minute into a 6/8 sort of thing, then at 5:50 a major key descending chord progression and lick! But it doesn’t stick and they keep on at the quick paced picking till it peters out a bit, they stick with it and bring it lower, Jerry goes for the anthemic lead line again at 6:45 while Phil is scrubbing away and again a bit later. Everybody is quickly spinning this major key thing still and they start to bring it up to a frenzy, organ moving over the chromatics, to a head at 8 min, where the drums keep pounding and the band goes tonally sideways.
Coming out of this frenetic space, they sound sort of like going into TOO, but it sorta keeps rolling on in a mellower space and gets back to the Dark Star mode a bit. Jerry and drums pick up on a triplet fall and melodicize it, taking it out and to the Drums track.

Nice playing on everybody’s part! A lot of good decent tones and upbeat guitar licks.

Drums starts with duo tribal beat stuff, actual rock drum solo type stuff!
Halfway through it changes as usual to the weirder quieter stuff with e-drums and echoed springs, Bill’s drums still underlying it all.
Space begins when distorted guitars swell in. It’s not really part of Dark Star perhaps this evening, just another atonal space jam. Full on with ring modulators and the midi stuff by midway.
It moves on to Stella Blue.

199 6/17/91 East Rutherford: 1:31…1:16…3:35 (several instrumental teases)

First tease is Bobby starting the chords to the groove section. He abandons it after a short time and they fizzle out and bring it up to a short eddy and then move off to When I Paint My Masterpiece. Second tease is after Might as Well and is just messing about. Hard to say it’s Dark Star, or if it is it’s coming in from far away and weakly. They hold an extended segment up for a minute or two and cede to Saint of Circumstance. The last tease is almost a melodic bit of the verse after Ship of Fools, but again it never goes full on but gives way to the outro in slow motion, which leads to Truckin’.
I don’t know if this all counts as a real Dark Star.

200 6/22/91 Chicago: 7:30 (instrumental)

Here, we have a Dark Star instrumental jam for 7 minutes after the Drums and Space tracks, which are inside PitB after a long Terrapin Station. I guess he gets the midi bassoon out of his system, as he’s quietly jamming in mode with guitar tone by the end of Space. A brief riff and allusions to the melody comes out of this, and settles into a Dark Star groove which goes to a song-form jam on the melody, em on line 3, and into the riff groove again. Minimal guitar lead.
Seems like halfway through they are setting it up for a verse, but it doesn’t come and instead they keep going again and building the intensity a little in waves with sparse leads in between areas where a verse could potentially pop up. Maybe he couldn’t remember the words. Anyway, they end up moving into a PitB reprise.

201 6/28/91 Denver: 1:28 (instrumental tease)

Here’s a tease in the middle of Wharf Rat. Is it actually Dark Star?
Well, the melody does come in in the jam in the middle. Nobody goes to the em in the song lines. It exits back to Wharf Rat.

202 8/16/91 Mountain View: 10:17

A bunch of futzing about before they make it into any semblance of Dark Star. Finally somebody plays an intro lick and they move into a groove. Keys are doing jazz chords on the riff, in fourths. It eventually comes into a sort of bouncy vibe. They sort of hammer out the theme riff, and get to a fairly buff verse. Jerry sounds in control, singing with some vibrato. The refrain is ragged, though the vocals are nice. The outro gets out of sync with itself but they lock into a groove again afterwards, and the midi-follower plays through song form theme. Almost an eminor on line 3. After these lines, the midi trumpet goes on as they groove. Piano is playing some nice things, and follows Jerry’s cascades when he switches back to guitar tone. After a bit the piano takes the lead. Jerry flies up out of mode and Bruce follows, then they make it back and it moves on with more lead guitar. They bring it down as if it will move elsewhere, and where it goes is oddly to Promised Land. Ok, that was sprightly but short.

203 8/17/91 Mountain View: 1:18 (instrumental tease)

Well, it’s a tease after Drums and Space, which came out of a jam following He’s Gone. Dark Star hits pretty fast into the riff and theme, sounds like they are halfway through a song-form, it devolves right after the melody lines and lasts a whole minute before going on to Morning Dew.

204 9/6/91 Richfield: 3:25 (instrumental)

Here, there’s 3:25 of Dark Star between Space and All Along the Watchtower. I suppose you could argue that the presence of Dark Star after the Space section indicates that Space was part of it the whole time… Like several previous times, perhaps, acknowledging where the evolution of the Space section came from. Or something. The whole sequence starts with Crazy Fingers into PitB into Terrapin Station and moves into the Drums and Space thing, which leads to the Dark Star melody from Jerry out of an arhythmic space end with droney synths. Piano picks up on the melody and plays it in chords, the drums eventually come in and they go through the vocal melody, a song form instrumentally. Line three sort of just signals a continuing jam, everybody plugs away on the groove for a bit, over a little hill, where Jerry then takes an odd chromatic lick that takes it to a b-minor to A chord progression. They stay with this, it’s not exactly Dark Star anymore, and Bobby starts All Along the Watchtower.

205 9/8/91 MSG, NYC: 9:05 (instrumental)

Here, they have been playing Saint of Circumstance and as it ends they hold out the last coda bits into a new jam, which is labeled as Dark Star jam, it starts very lightly and delicately with slightly lilting lines intimating perhaps a Dark Star… the audience reacts as if it really is going to be. The guitar has some nice licks against the mellow background. Drums slowly and quietly edge in, they move through some small eddies in the current, Jerry still moving forward, keys and bass following as they build it up. At about 3 minutes in they all have found an odd little rhythmic riff to pull apart (though Mickey seems to just be pounding on some rhythm in his own head.)
They build the intensity to a wave that crests at about 4:20 in and it starts to swirl around more. Drums seem to lose the pulse and just hit, so the keys go back to the dit-dah rhythmic riff they had. At about 5:30, the drums start heading into a 6/8 thing and the band backs off a bit into a more TOO type jam, Phil is pumping away. Jerry seems to have disappeared so Bobby goes atonal and pseudo-jazzy. Bruce takes a solo. Bass, drums, piano and squawky guitar, it moves forward for a few minutes and then they drop out to the Drums track, followed by Space and then they do make it to The Other One finally, and onward.
To be honest I don’t feel like this is really much to do with Dark Star, though there was some nice lead guitar at the front end.

206 9/10/91 MSG, NYC: 24:40 (12:24 + 12:16) (with Branford Marsalis) – 30 Trips

The intro lick comes out of a jam following Estimated Prophet, Branford is already in, and he picks up on it, soprano sax. They play with the riff, passing it around the band for a bit before it makes it to a groove and it takes a good minute before anybody even ventures from the riff. Jerry starts pulling short licks out and they all eventually settle into a more groove-like area, though Bobby’s “rhythm” guitar playing isn’t exactly rhythmic. Jerry goes for flute for a sec, opts back to guitar. It’s sort of swirly on all parts, a swirl of timbres. Sounds sort of like only Bill K is playing drums. A verse comes in from the theme riff at 3:35, raspy-voiced Jerry softly gasping it out. Some holes are left on the third line and then into the refrain, though it’s sort of sloppy. To the outro, then Jerry picks it up with some lead guitar, but he brings it down quickly and it moves back into the soup. Even with the soprano sax moving around on top, it doesn’t sound like anybody is really playing melodically.
At about 6 minutes the mode starts to move sideways and Jerry softly picks out some lead lines, the band mellows back, though Phil is still sort of plugging away. By 7 minutes it’s mostly guitar noodles and organ and bass slowly walking. Some odd little whammy-swells from Bob. Sax come back as Phil tries to rally it to a pulse. Drums sort of fade in and out.
At 8:45 it sounds like they are going to try to build it to some wave, and then Jerry moves to midi-bassoon for a bit, and they start to build intensity a bit, though Phil goes rhythmically awry. It’s becoming more collage-like, short bits of overlapping things. Bill and Mickey start to pick up the intensity, and Bobby almost starts playing rhythmically on his chords. It makes it over the crest and oddly at 11 minutes moves to a song-form area, with a planing harmonized melody on the piano, though it seems to only go through two lines and then falls apart. This leads to the drummers stepping up and the band giving way to them.

Drums track is only 5 minutes, starting with medium tempo rolling around, building up over the first couple minutes with an almost-Bo Diddley back beat idea. Echoes start before 2 minutes in., but they still keep pounding. They bring it to mostly snare rolls and down before the real e-drum and echoes thing starts, with panning, starting low and bringing it up to a sci-fi space battle in the 4th minute. From this, we move to the “Space” track, as a midi flute with echoes comes in and more synth sounds. Various synth sounds, slap bass, flute, saxophone, all with echoes freaking out and panning around. The drums, however, are continuing under this. Bells now, even. They all cede to a ticky drum rhythm after a couple minutes and it gets low.
Weird sounds start to come in, the garage door springs I think. This part of the track is much more like the second half of previous “Drums” tracks.
Odd bird-like flute sounds come in with echoes as the noises fade out, but they get caught up in the echo unit as well. More springs or bowed cymbals come in, this stuff all flies around the echo unit. A buzzy guitar comes in as it fades, swelling into notes. Some pitch-bending keys back it up and other keyboard-like sounds tinkle away slowly in the swirl.
At 6:30 into this track, more instruments come in, sounds like Jerry is playing a guitar sound at first, but perhaps Phil with midi-follower crushes it and the atonal soup gets deep. Guitar lines start to emerge, with echoes, it remains arhythmic and atonal as it becomes Dark Star again with an allusion to the theme riff, Jerry starting it and keys picking it up, drums and bass fall in and we’re back!
Nice, right back and right to verse 2 immediately, Jerry still raspy but sounding a bit stronger. A big hit on Lady in Velvet, with held chords from the keys where they had been riffing. To the refrain with bending keys, and the sax is in there again. The outro riff is sort of together as it starts and falls apart as it continues and the band cascades to chromaticism.
Not sure where this is going, in the lull Jerry steps on the midi bassoon, sax follows and then keys, into a new arhythmic atonal area, everybody trading phrases. It’s modern music time, fairly chaotic but not super intense. By 5 minutes into this track, the lead guitar has just an octave patch, so it’s more guitar-like, and Bob starts playing random chords. Sax still warbles up and down. Bobby tries to build it with a rhythm, but nobody really picks up on it and they stay outside. Finally people start getting faster and more intense, building it up. Bob goes for some loud midi-follower sound for a bit. At 7:20 Hornsby is playing really odd atonal versions of the Dark Star riff and harmony, surrounded by stabs from the guitars. Jerry has some massive echoey sound, sax is blowing over it all, it comes to a lull at 8:30 and jazz chords emerge, Brandon is still blowing over it all, keys following him.
Over this wave, at 9:50 the guitar starts some jazzy lead playing and the keys get more chordal. It sounds like it’s winding down but it’s gonna take a few ups and downs to get there, and goes into a more bluesy section toward the end. Eventually Bob is fed up and starts “I Need a Miracle” out of this.

Really soupy swirly version, must have been very odd to experience in the large Madison Square Garden. That’s a long time to spend in the soup with a ton of people and sound bouncing around. I generally like the soprano sax sound, sort of more hollow than an alto, and his playing is fine as a color ingredient in there. Hornsby’s grasp of atonal chromaticism sounds very 20th century art music and less free-jazz, which is quite amazing and helps Jerry channel the atonality in a different way, Hornsby’s odd harmonizations of the theme riff have been really cool. Bobby’s sound these days is that weird compressed distortion which isn’t great for his position in the band. Jerry is still futzing around with the bassoon and flute stuff, but I don’t think his playing is very spectacular at all in this version. Overall, not my favorite, though I really like bits and pieces of it.

207 9/24/91 Boston: 14:40

Jerry is already in the headspace at the end of Ship of Fools and plays a bit of the intro then starts a melodic line. He’s ready for it, and is off after they go to a real intro riff into the groove. It’s mellow but nice, Phil starts bouncing along after a little bit. Jerry’s off on a nice melodic lead getting higher and continuously moving along. After his climb over the crest, Phil does some lead bass and then Jerry comes back in with higher stuff with echoes. The organ is providing a nice bed for the piano to do little swirls in. He ceded to the keys and they set up verse one.
Slight fumbles between guitar and voice on the first line but the second is clean, they drop for line 3, and Jerry leads to the refrain, and Phil to part 2. Sort of a mess falling into it but they move into a new slower groove. Jerry comes in on midi flute. Alto flute, more like, he sounds like he’s getting better control over the tones. Back to guitar for the next section, as they level out. Holding pattern.
It becomes more swirly, everybody moving at different speeds, Jerry goes back to flute. It dies off into a brief atonality, back to mode, then introducing chromatics as it becomes more atonal and disparate. Sea of Holes.
Phil roots it at the lull and they go back more modally.
They quietly speed up and go more jazzy, rolling toms and fast bass and guitars. Pianos arpeggiating and Bobby squawking. Jerry riffs it down and moves it back to the melody, once, like pick up on where we are cats, then he starts the old endless melody. It settles out into the theme groove in a very delicate way, Lighter tones from the guitars. Keys still a bit wobbly. Things slowly fade to a background melody on guitar and then bass. Jerry drops out. The other guys flail around for a bit till they leave and the drummers to start the Drums track.

Drums are drumming away for a while, pounding. Heavy duty, heaviest I’ve heard, I think. E-drums come in after several minutes, as they usually do. But the beat goes on. Finally it moves to small hand drums in shorter bursts. And the springs.. lead to Space, which starts very quietly with sustained tones from keys and guitar. And then the bassoon, or English horn is in there. Echoed by 20th century art music piano. It does get a bit Terrapin in there at times. Back to guitar for a phrase and back to oboe-y thing. I think it’s also the digital reverb on it that bugs me about a lot of the synth tones. Eventually it backs off to a more acoustic renaissance sounding bit with evil low synths, nice. Very 70s. Soft holding patterns in major feeling. Then Phil has to go and do Jesu, and Jerry does it. They get to a slightly sideways take on it and then hover, with a coda of synthy guitar halos. Into Foolish Heart.

Nice version, I love the endless melody playing and when Jerry is on a roll like that, it’s the best. I love it when he’s like, play it once and then expect the band to pick up on it while he goes off immediately. Challenging but results in good music. A lot of good playing here, including the heavy drums section!

208 9/26/91 Boston: 21:40 (15:27 + 6:13)

Big preamble at the top of the second set makes it pretty certain that Dark Star is happening, pianos all getting there in the tuning area. Laziest opening yet, of several downright tropical. It really gets going into a swirl of anticipation, when the opening riff comes 2 minutes in it’s great. Jerry continues his melody into the groove, pianos cascading after. He starts again low and builds another wave. Vince sounds like he’s just playing chords on synth organ while Hornsby cascades around on piano. I don’t hear much Bob in this mix, he’s got this sustained distortion sound that sets a bed for the sound. Nice puzzle at 5 minutes, deciphered and back to the task at hand, which is Dark Star, and Mr Garcia takes us for a ride all the way back to the theme at 7 minutes, but he’s still in his “say this once and then I’m gone” mode, and he skitters off into new solos. Hornsby is really on his accents. They bring it over the crest and to the verse at 8:40 and he’s pumped (relatively) to sing it. Sounds hoarse but intent. But they make it through the verse to refrain, which is mostly together.
The outro is very smooth, but clockwork, so they move into a groove that moves like gears intertwining. Jerry gets faster and they move out of mode and toward a jazz world but it sidesteps into cinematic atonal tension and tonal release. But everybody is piling on the modal runs. It moves into a jam but seems like there’s a difference of opinion on the beat, so the band splits allegiances and then waits for a drummer’s resolution, which sounds like it’s Mickey wanting to go into the drumming track. Last minute effort from the band brings it back to groove for a second. Bobby directs it to Saint of Circumstance and it dies off.

The next track on my recording sounds entirely different.. Anyway, from there into Eyes, to Drums and Space and into TOO before getting back to Dark Star. The end of Eyes gets super mellow, bongos and low guitars, then the rhythm goes into a different accent and the guitars fade to sparse drumming on big drums which goes to rolling tribal drumming on big drums. After a few minutes a bass instrument comes in, possibly a tuned electronic percussion thing. this goes off into much midi-synth sounds with echoes. Back to big rolling drums with echoed electronic sounds, this builds for a long time, lots of clapping and yelling and stomping in the audience. They bring it to a head and then a slow pulse which leads to garage door springs. Things get scary, mostly low volume but occasional bursts. It gets super weird and then guitars come in for the Space track. Lots of space echoing. It’s very cosmic opera setting, and the tenor (bassoon) comes in of course. Though he goes back to guitar sounds and at 4 minutes even a descending chromatic bluesy thing, but that goes into more descending chromatics and pitch following high octave sparkles. It eventually levels out into a pad, a early morning misty meadow. Um, with ghosts.
At some point Jerry decides to move on and they hop into a 6/8 which is apparently TOO. They do get to verse 1! Cool harmony vocals on the third line. Into a jam, and to verse 2, where they end it and move back to Dark Star.
Jerry takes the melody out of the ashes of the last crash in TOO, does the first part and goes off, comes back to it and heads to Dark Star verse 2, a mellow reading, slow groove. Voice is similar to verse 1, nice version despite the ancient voice. To the refrain, with a delicate and slow reading, the outro has some odd notes, and then they move into another theme groove, very slow and low.
At 3 minutes they move into a downward spiral, which leads to a well of sparkles, slow ups and downs, down to a very low and slow area with a delicate guitar figure emulated by piano. Hornsby settles into planing chords and Jerry does short lead bits, Phil is holding a couple notes. Trying to figure out where to go, Jerry spaces out quietly and then moves into a stop that goes to Attics of My Life.

Again a really nice version for Boston, nice playing and intense weirdness in Space.

209 10/31/91 Oakland: 13:46 (10:32 + 3:14) (with Ken Kesey, Gary Duncan on guitar)

This is the full halloween adventure, Spoonful into Dark Star with Kesey, etc, into the Drums and Space and then back out to Dark Star.
It comes from the last fading notes of Spoonful, rolls out and the intro melody emerges and they drop into a groove. Bob’s/Gary Duncan? been soloing blues in Spoonful so he’s still working it out a bit, then Jerry comes bopping along. They move off to the melody riff, and off for more. It gets a little boppier and swirlier, into eddies of intensity and Gary takes it off with more bluesy soloing while Jerry winds it down and heads to the verse.
Decent entry, guitar and piano doubling the melody, em on line 3 and off to the refrain, with a pulling keyboard between lines. A nice lull for the end of the refrain and a together outro riff (for once) and into the mellow groove again with sparser soloing. It gets a bit chaotic as it goes along, then fades back to small skittery movements, sounds like Phil is trying to start a new groove. Bobby does with whammy bar things, and Ken Kesey starts up telling a story about his son dying and the greater ramifications of this sort of thing. Phil keeps plugging away and they build it to a rocking little jazzy underscore. Kesey reaches a peak and the band takes it to a jazzy high, and then back down ceding to Drums, which is 13 minutes, and Space which is another 14!
Drums start rocking and rolling away. It gets sparser pretty soon, and e-drums start interjecting, but it moves off to wind chimes as well by 3 minutes in. Spacey synthy chimes. It moves into waves of moving echoes synthy marimba things. For several minutes. Eventually a swirl of reverby echoes and low toms come back in. Low rolling toms go on, building to a head and bringing the crowd to cheer a bunch, to a pounding accelerando, to a lull, leading to garage door springs at 11 1/2 minutes in. Spacey springs for a while, eventually people come join them for the Space track.
It starts with a warbling spring and then scary long synth tones come in. It’s quiet and weird for a while, some crashes start happening breaking it up. Some really distorted guitar or something is in the soup, and a guitar starts making stabby notes, then moves back into the texture. More guitars come in low, atonal noodling. Bells add to the crashes, still soupy, then more electronic percussion things. Some guitar noodles from various parties, monster movie-ish, with a clomping low pitch-followed synth sound and tinkling keys. The soup disperses at 6:40 or so, leaving small guitars with short phrases and odd echoes. Eventually someone moves to jazzy chords, but the bassoon comes in and spices it up with some atonal chamber music. He leaves that behind for guitar tone with echoes, and more Gary Duncan bluesy soloing.
They bring it down again in the 9th minute and it seems like it might do a slow descending blues thing for a sec, but goes sideways a bit into chromaticism and drone synths. Again someone is trying to riff in there and they finally force it into a bluesy riff by 12 minutes, and they sort of move it along for a bit, though Phil starts steady, he goes staccato sometimes to screw it up. Bluesy guitars swinging over it all. Toward the last minute Jerry does little noodley solos, and they seem to be able to steer this back to Dark Star with a little hint of the melody. This almost immediately brings everybody back to the Dark Star groove.
A short mellow bit of sparse soloing and grooving along, back to the theme with falling cascades of piano lead to verse 2, delivered softly and in the continuing groove. E minor on line 3, they slow rise on the line, to the refrain, it goes scatteringly, again the pitch-gliding organ between lines, a Bobby harmonic on the end, and the outro riff delivers them right back to the groove, dying out now, small solos and tinkling pianos, comes to a last chord at 3:20 and Jerry starts “The Last Time.”

Interesting version, not as musically upbeat as the Boston shows, but had a nice long interlude of drums and space. Blues-modes probably courtesy of Gary Duncan, the Quicksilver Messenger Service guitarist who wasn’t John Cipolinna.

210 3/9/92 Landover: 11:03 

Sort of a rolling jam sans Jerry after Corrina, the keys insinuate the Dark Star opening theme already, but it spins out, Jerry joins in and they actually make the thematic statement and start Dark Star for real. Mr Garcia joins for a light lead, sounds like his mind is elsewhere. The band is sorta bopping along, it’s a mellow groove with light lead lines and lots of organ, lots of relying on the riff. Verse 1 comes in fairly easily, a little falter between guitar and voice on line 2, classic ascending bass line on line 3, sort of crashing into the refrain and through it. To the outro, it drives right into riff theme jam. Organ is pretty stagnant riffing, and it slowly dissipates a bit and Jerry comes in with a delicate lead, following closely by piano. Piano and bass build up a set of circles, keys start to get swirly and chromatic.
Keyboard solo, both of them going mildly feral for a while. It dives off into a cyclic rhythmic thing, and the drums lower intensity to a quieter shuffle, pseudo-walking bass. We enter the jazz club, there’s a midi trumpet jamming back there. Jazz organ. When it’s back to guitar sounds it’s like low blues licks picked out underneath and then Bobby on quiet distortion wailing. This Dark Star is not cohering together, and is spacing out into the Drums track.
It takes a while to let go, swirling away instrument by instrument. Weirdly it goes into a quick keyboard shuffle for a second and then it all fades away and leave the drums. Pounding a low rhythm latent with power on big toms. They play this into drum solo land, but only for a couple minutes, then they bring it down. Oops e-drum thing was too loud for those first couple hits, that was a shock! Now we’re in in echoland with a quiet slow beat. Synth melody in there now, the power of a major pentatonic. It eventually slows down as if to stop and moves into a darker spring-laden space. More synth sounds too. This goes into a crashing mess with flanging. And dramatically down again to milk it and they crash it back up to a swirling flange droning synth.
This lasts for a while and move to Space track (featuring Shenandoah!) Hard to tell, possibly guitars are coming in under the droney flange thing, at least a bass sound is moving around a bit.
A scary caught echo loop and guitars are making themselves known, lotsa echoes there in space, the droney synth is still there like a forcefield that they slowly pass. Now we can hear the pitchfollowing system that Jerry has is with some octave freaked out sound, and Phil’s is multiple octaves up and down. This is some intense sound as they navigate notes in the aural environment. Sounds like some high amount of feedback on somebody’s short delay is jumping in occasionally.
Jerry switches to midi orchestra sounds while Phil snaps out notes to a shadow echo. Sounds like a keyboard doing a slow slightly tonal melody, Jerry feels like it’s safe to play actual guitar sounds again, lightly along with the melodies. Lots of swirly sounds joining in as they go to major key and Shenandoah emerges… ok guys. That must have scared some people.
Though I do hear some of the Dark Star intro lick on keys as it moves away… though they never really go back to Dark Star this evening, but they do make it back to Shenandoah for the finale. But it’s sort of a spin out for several minutes (separate track on the recording I listened to.) Even midi trumpet came back.

So anyway, Dark Star happened, Jerry did not seem all there, he was fading off a lot. The keys did a lot of sound, and the Shenandoah bit really took over the whole thing there. Eventually they move into I Need a Miracle.

211 3/20/92 Hamilton, Ontario: 14:13 – 30 Trips

Here Dark Star comes after Women Are Smarter and goes on a whole trip through Drums and Space to The Other One.
The intro is funny cuz Bobby does his high harmony with a distortion sound, then they move into the groove, organ still covering the theme riff, it takes a bit before Jerry starts playing melodically. They move in and out of the riff and he starts verse one almost immediately. Forcing out the lines, it’s sort of a dark and desperate reading. Long tones from the organ in the verse, into the refrain, they heighten the volume as the refrain lines are sung, and Vince does the pitchbend organ between them. Outro is ok, and dropping into a sparser version of the groove, piano spacing out the chords. Jerry doing short runs, it’s sort of static, hovering, swirling. Phil is grooving on octaves for a long time. Waves of long tones come in and out, and there are echoes on the lead guitar’s phrases, it undulates in shorter phrases, some eddies of little melodic repeated fragments. Some chromatics enter, traded around as the primary instrument shifts around between guitar and organ and piano. Bob has weird little distorted squawks in there.
They bring it down in the middle, it’s more of a mellow guitar area now, though nothing spectacular, then it starts to warp out chromatically into odd riffs, into a slightly more ambiguous area rhythmically. Big planing chords from piano lead Jerry back to the riff, and they go through a song form section. Lines one and two deliberately articulated by the lead guitar, then line three a little held, and they play the refrain instrumentally, with all the parts, and the outro is stuttery, as they slip into a new pumping rhythm from Phil and Bill. Still mostly descending lines in the melody instruments. They hold onto this rhythm for a couple minutes and then it starts to roll away a bit. Jerry sounds like he’s still playing the sixths of the refrain a bit, playing with it. The drums start pounding toms, while the guitar and piano play with the refrain melody line.
Eventually the piano sets into a rhythm with one of the drummers (the one that plays in time.) Bobby squawks with them. They pound this for a couple minutes and then it cedes to Drums.
Drums is 12:45, follows the usual few minutes of pounding up top, to a lower area, into electronics, pan flute sounds with echoes, shakers, e-drums. Moving to more synth sounds with the echoes, then back to shakers and big drums, with the e-percussion stuff, into echo/flange world which leads to about 7 minutes of the Space track with several crashes into a long droney synth sound. Punctuated by crashing drum sounds with modulating echoes. Space is really more drums for a while, it gets pretty frenetic and whooshy with pounding percussion and flailing synth tones warbling around, panning at almost audio rate. It’s a Space track with drums and keys for most of it, some guitars make their way in toward the latter fourth of the track. It gets crashy and noisy again at the end and somehow amidst the midi trumpets and crap, Jerry starts a little melody line on guitar in 6/8 and this develops into The Other One. It takes time, sounds more like Space for a while there, but he keeps at the rhythm and they all come in eventually smoothly over the first few minutes.

Dark Star itself is pretty nice and tropical sounding, short waves of little melodic bits up front. Nice verse and then instrumental verse 2 in its entirety with refrain and all! It’s a nice sequence through the noisy space to TOO as well.

212 6/8/92 Richfield: 8:46

This is following a long, long Drums and Space. 16 1/2 minutes of drums, and another 9 of Space. Drums is pretty formulaic, with the pounding drum solo followed by electronica, though the bulk of it is in a rhythmic groove. And maybe real vibraphone? (Though echoed.) Or just better samples. Latter half is echo feedback play. Sudden entrances of other instruments signal the Space track, bass and guitar. Mostly sound like themselves, atonal wandering. Jerry with a distorted tone. It takes a few minutes before keys come in and it gets louder and weirder, but then Phil goes for a walking bass thing and it skews jazzy, with piano melodies. It gets a bit weird again, but then drifts to Dark Star, which starts when Jerry does the intro riff and they sink into a drumless version of the theme groove. Organ plays the riff over and over, drums sort of fade in, the band takes time to get there, but only a minute in verse one comes. Decent singing, Keys playing the riff continuously through lines 1 and 2, they sort of gap for line 3, but continue through the refrain. It’s sort of fast. To the outro, and back to the groove, keys continue, Jerry noodles about, gets caught up in little eddies and finally the organ breaks to held chords changing the feel. Out of this with pitch-bending organ to several waves of intensity, Jerry slowly building it up and down.
At 4 minutes, he switches to a distorted tone, keys play more sporadically and they build it up more, which is nice, heading to a bigger crest. It goes slightly sideways at the top and then on the way back, goes to a repeated line, sort of a song-form area. Leaves off to more organ playing the theme. To a sparser area, quieter.
More organ bending against guitar noodling. Drums drop down and then out. Weirder midi synth sounds appear in the back. Jerry starts a new build, drums in again, organ on long odd chords, piano too.
Then at 7 minutes, Jerry plays the theme again and they move to a mellow jam on it, maybe setting up for verse two. But no, instead they move into “The Last Time.”
Sort of quick and not particularly good, there are some nice parts in the middle there, but nothing develops really.

213 6/18/92 Charlotte: 6:00 (instrumental)

Again after Drums and Space (which follow He’s Gone) this time just remaining instrumental. This time, Drums is 13 minutes, starting with only 3 minutes of drumming before 10 of electronic weirdness, lots of quiet droney springy sounds. When Space starts, more weird synthy sounds come in, bells and strings, odd e-percussion. Slow start. Guitars are in quietly, slow atonal licks moving to pseudo-tonal bits. It’s pretty mellow and quiet. Then the bassoon and all that, but it’s mostly almost solo, very 20th century atonalist. Back to distorted guitar with echo for the last couple minutes, sparse accompaniment. It winds down and Jerry quietly starts the intro riff, with echoes, first high then low, bass accompanying. Keys filter in, other guitar, etc, it’s quiet and echoey and minimal. He plays the theme a bunch before going to delicate noodles. Then by 1:45, the rest of the band seems to figure out that it’s Dark Star and they also play the riff. So Jerry solos more, with a weird filtered pitch follower sound. Phil goes into a pedal tone on the A.
At 2:30, he does the song form, playing the melody on guitar with a pitch -follower singing along, odd accompaniment. No refrain, just continuing the “groove” as such, though Vince does the pitch-bend organ between lines as if it was the refrain.
More noodling soloing, back to the theme riff all the time. Some ascending modal lines. Guitar gets a bit more swinging, the last couple minutes are kinda cool. Then it moves back to repeating the theme riff and falls out and into All Along the Watchtower.
Sort of a tepid attempt at Dark Star, it never gets there. Phil just keeps an odd pulse throughout. Weird one, sort of nice though.

214 6/22/92 Pittsburgh: 4:05

They start it from the intro riff, into the theme jam, organ takes the riff, and Jerry plays around. It’s very mellow. It builds into a nice jam by a minute and a half or so, sounds like it could be a good one. Over that little crest, back to mellow area, organ still plugging away at the riff. I wish he would have learned Pigpen’s old line if he was gonna be repetitive about riffing on the organ.
Jerry picks up the riff again, they really love it lately. He used to do the ‘play it once and move on’ but not lately.
Verse at 2:50, and it’s verse 2! Whoa. Where did this one start? A very quiet mellow verse that finally pegs the landing on line 3 with a big sound. To the refrain, they pound it, Vince pitch bends the organ, to the latter half of the refrain, and the outro, which lands on a big drum hit and everybody drops out, cool! Drums start the drum solo immediately.
16:20 of Drums, in the formula of starting with drum solo and moving in the third minute to e-drums and percussion and then it stays there forever. It gets low and rhythmic and weirdejr as it goes on, ending in the full slow panned echo feedback. Space starts with more synths, buzzy guitars, it stays quiet and low for 4 of 7 minutes, then suddenly it’s loud bassoons. Etc. Oddly this moves into a version of the Spanish Jam (with a TOO rhythm, and midi trumpet) for a couple minutes before heading to The Other One.

Quick and dirty, nice little version. Of verse 2!

215 12/12/92 Oakland: 17:32 (12:57 + 4:35)

Encompassing Drums and Space this evening, after Women are Smarter. A little solo noodling up top, Phil joins and it leads to the intro riff, to the theme riff a couple times, Jerry sounds clear but a bit stumbly. The guitar has a nice clean tone, he’s playing some interesting melodic runs, keeping with a descending play on the them in between little space eddies, a nice quiet high one before the 2 minute mark. It has a quiet and sort of melancholic feeling to it. Bob is following the lead patterns nicely, it lilts and keeps coming back to the theme riff.
Verse (1) at 3 minutes, decent delivery, Jerry is actually holding the notes out. Vince is playing the theme riff through the lines. Line three almost doesn’t change to the e minor, they run to the refrain and pause, more than usual. Drums pound out the spaces between lines, Vince does the pitch bend thing, though after the second line of the refrain instead of between (due to drums, probably), they go to the outro and into the theme groove again.
Jerry is delicately running up and down, nice stuff, but a few flubbed notes in the quick bits. Odd, you don’t usually hear him flub notes. Nice playing from Phil as well, especially when the guitars back off a bit. It sort of lopes along in the theme world. They start to pick it up a bit in the 6th minute, some outside notes creeping in, piano making itself known, Phil going somewhere else, Jerry starts the jazzy chromatics. They move into a weirder section for a couple minutes, Bob plays with his weird swells. Jerry drops and the keys back off for some Phil and drums action, with Bob’s swells. It’s getting scarier.
Piano riffing comes in, atonal weirdness. This goes on for a while with Phil leading the jam, Mickey switches to hand drums and goes to a groove, piano goes jazzy. Bob tries some jazz riffing. Jerry has dropped out apparently. Weirdly in the 10th minute it’s more of a rhythm jam that sounds like early/mid-70s Miles, pretty cool! They bring it down and there’s an interesting keyboard melody happening that brings the drummers into an aggressive roll. The instruments drop out bit by bit as the drums take over and the track switches to the “Drums” track after a bit.
This track moves on with aggressive big drums for a bit before leaving Bill on his own for a real drum solo. Of course Mickey has to go and pull up the synthy things after a minute, and they go into more electronic stuff for real with small hand drum punctuations, then it’s many minutes of the e-drum synth stuff, eventually giving way to actual keyboard sounds for the Space part. Some spring swishes in there and guitars come in quietly underneath. Very spacey and weird, small sounds in the swirl. Eventually some distorted guitars come up with atonal bits then some Dark Star suggestions, switching to cleaner tone, it seems to come back to Dark Star space. The other sounds let go and it’s mostly slow guitar leads and drones from keys and bass. A slow bass line with the lead guitar and a swirly echo, Bob providing odd low wails and things. Jerry actually plays the Dark Star theme quietly once and riffs around moving to the vocal melody, with swirly space accompaniment. Very cool, a sort of collage of drums/space and Dark Star. It gets very quiet with little lead eddies and the swirl coming in waves. They move into another 4 or 5 minutes of a jam that is perhaps considered Dark Star before starting I Need a Miracle. It starts slow and sparse, then Phil starts into a rhythm, with Jerry going to a more distorted tone. It’s a fairly mellow jam, da-dum, da-dum, with Mickey on hand drums. They stretch it outside a bit, with big ringing clangs from the piano. Dunno if this is still really Dark Star, but it’s a jam, and it lasts a few minutes and then they move on and Bob’s insistence. Jerry has some fast high playing in there till it becomes bluesy as needed for INaM.

Nice playing from Jerry up top, and cool that the Dark Star theme came back at the end of the Space section. If you consider the drums and space part of Dark Star, it’s a big one.

216 12/16/92 Oakland: 7:09 – Dick’s Picks 27

Later in this multi-day run at the Oakland Colosseum, they do it again. Or finish what they started, maybe. This one follows the (27 minutes of) Drums and Space that come out of (12 minutes of) Playin’ in the Band and heads off to All Along the Watchtower. So it’s just 7 minutes of Dark Star, really. Enough Drums/Space time to get to the bathroom and back at the Colosseum.
PitB is nice, it leaves the drummers to start the Drums track, which is of the usual formula of rolling drums up top giving way to e-drums and springs, but then they go on to the flanged echo thing at a very quiet level for a long time, into the Space track a ways before other instruments join, which are midi-synth things. Flutey, sort of classical sounding, against Bob’s distorted little bits. Other sounds enter as well, it remains pretty quiet a lot of the time. About halfway through Jerry strikes up the trumpet, and then moves through other horn sounds, in sort of jazzy/classical riffing. Somebody’s got a harmonizer on their echoes, creating upward waves. Then everybody’s a horn. Last couple minutes get back to almost-guitar tone, it builds a little with wandering tonality lines. After some modal play, it gets prettier, and winds down to Dark Star, but with no intro riff, just that on an A chord, Jerry plays the riff once, the keys pick up on it and they move into the groove. Audience loves this, super mellow groove with no drums for a while, allusions to the theme riff and Jerry noodling above it mellowly.
Drums slowly enter after a minute or so, Jerry tries some distortion, organ warbles around. After two minutes in, they riff toward a potential verse, but it sort of takes its time.
And it’s verse 2, four days later! At 2:40 into the track, a nice quiet version of the verse lines, Jerry doesn’t sound raspy, but very soft. To the refrain raggedly, Vince’s pitch bend after and before the outro riff. They move into a relatively stronger version of the groove with some nice lead guitar. Bob does some wailing swells, and they eddy out at one point, drums keep chugging away quietly. Jerry catches another eddy of ascending notes at 5:15, then over into the stream again, slight alterations to the mode. Weird chromatic keys move in in minute 6 and it starts to get more frenetic, distorted guitars, Jerry goes to a tremolo and then they start All Along the Watchtower.
Sort of a nice mellow, very low version of the Dark Star part of all this, but short and sweet.

217 3/17/93 Landover, MD: 10:15

In spring, they’re out again and here in Maryland they move through a long endless second set with Dark Star emerging from PitB and heading off to Drums and Space, to TOO.
There’s 5 minutes of improv after the song part of PitB, mostly in the groove with some fast runs from Jerry on lead with his various effects, autowah sometimes and distortion sometimes. As it settles, it’s more classic band sound. It gets slightly atonal and aggressive, with Phil chugging a note right at the end there as Jerry suddenly plays the Dark Star intro and everybody switches gears. Unexpected. They drop into the groove, Jerry plays the theme a couple times, Bob’s got his compressed distortion sound, to some puzzling lead guitar action up and down. At a couple minutes in, Jerry arpeggiates his way upwards and then comes back to the riff and they go for verse 1 at 2:30. Oddly he ends the first line flatting the C# to a minor C, oops, but they hold it together and all change to the e minor for line 3 with repetitive accompaniment. More pausing on the refrain than usual, they hold the last pause and to the outro, they move right into the groove again with Jerry picking up the lead lines, outside/inside mode stuff, alternating between fast runs and slow melodic bits.
At 4:30 he switches to midi-flute biz. Piano becomes a bit more prominent, though they all continue the groove.
They go for an upward climbing chromatic thing that every joins in on. Then at 5:40, back to guitar sound, we’re pretty chromatic by this point, piano is on all sorts of chords and trills. Phil is back to pushing the beat, but it sort of dissipates to pseudo-walking bass and tinkly piano, it sounds like it’s falling apart at 7 minutes. Drums start dropping out a bit. Little waves of things against Phil’s continuing. Phil seems to be leading it forward, he’s low and strong. By 8 minutes he’s starting a new section, Mickey has go to congas. Piano is jazzing around, Bob is strumming distorted dissonant chords. Jerry has dropped out. They hold onto it til the 10 minute mark and it segues to the drummers.
Drums follows the normal pattern of drummers rolling around for four minutes and then giving way to sound play of electronic stuff, here for only another 4 minutes, with hand drums in for a bit before the big flying flange comes along. With a melodic koto or guzheng-sounding phrase caught in it. Eventually Jerry starts jamming along with this and it becomes the Space track, with a sort of major-key folky feel, even with the pitch-follower sounds. In fact this folkiness of Space leads to a “Handsome Cabin Boy” jam. OK, Dark Star is far away now, so I’ll just sum up the Dark Star portion by saying that it sounded a little forced to go into it and didn’t really seem to hold together as a version very well, but there you go. It contained interesting odd lead bits up top and degenerated into Phil pushing it all over the place.

218 6/23/93 Deer Creek: 7:13

The summer version for 1993, this is a giant rolling second set segment with 25 minutes of Terrapin Station going into a half hour of Drums and Space before 7 minutes of Dark Star, heading off to The Wheel and Good Lovin’ to end the set (before a Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds encore.)

Space contains big soaring leads from Jerry up front, with a distorted tone, moving into the midi-orchestra tones afterwards. It’s pretty wild but mostly semi-tonal melodically. By the end of Space/beginning of the Dark Star track, everybody is swirling around and somehow Phil suggests the Dark Star riff, accompanying Jerry on a riff he’s on and they slowly move toward it with the band. Bob has his distorto tone, and the drums are sparsely entering the groove, keys seem to arpeggiate a bit before settling to the riff. Jerry noodles a bit between iterations of the riff, bringing it together more each time. After a couple minutes he starts the verse, very low raspy, sounds right with the distortion from Bob, Phil is still very staccato on the riff, through all three lines, nobody moves to a second chord for the third line, even Phil stays pulsing his A, but they agree to sort of hold it for the refrain. Vince does a new higher pitch bend after both refrain lines, then back to the riff groove with a very staccato bass.
Phil seems to be constructing something out of his staccato riff notes, Jerry starts building a scaffold for something around it, then moves off to faster runs again. He eddies out a couple times on groups of notes, Bob finally gets a bit sparser, and Jerry moves to a melodic eddy moving downward before some choice licks and runs, but it’s heading sideways by 6 minutes in and they start to fall apart, Jerry is leading it with a bizarro world version of the riff for a sec and then moves off to The Wheel.
Sort of a cool jumpy little version, with Phil’s odd staccato bass playing in there. Jerry had some interesting ideas, and nice little runs. Short but sweet.

219 9/13/93 Philadelphia: 5:36

This is with the Lightning Bolt guitar now, I believe. This autumn version is stuck in between PitB and Terrapin, for a big 5 minutes. So far my impression of this guitar change is that this one is a bit more twangy, like a Telecaster.
Playin’ in the Band is a little chaotic to start, but gets into a cool jam that starts in the usual key and then gets pretty outside before winding up after 8 1/2 minutes, and Jerry does the Dark Star intro riff. The band falls in, and he pretty much drops out and lets them settle the groove, it’s an interesting groove with Bobby’s odd rhythm (and distorto tone), keys doing slow cascades more then just paying the riff. Jerry comes in again after a minute and soars up and down, very nice playing. Vince settles back to the riff with little filigrees, they move over a big wave and into a mellow area by 3 minutes in and back to the theme riff, verse at 3:15.
Decent verse, sort of raspy but nice. A little flip on line three in the melody. To the refrain, Vince does the high pitch bend down between line. To the outro, they sort of pulse through it and continue to the groove. It only lasts a minute, though, before dissipating and heading to Terrapin Station.
Nice playing from Jerry, way too short! What a tease.

220 9/22/93 MSG, NYC: 7:44 (with David Murray on Saxophone.)

David Murray joins on sax for the set, which brings a Dark Star that leads to Drums and Space. Mr Murray was so pleased that he even made an album of Grateful Dead music 3 years later and titled it “Dark Star.”
Coming after a long (16 min) Estimated Prophet jam with a lot of crazy keyboards and squealing saxophone devolving into wild atonal skronk, they move into Dark Star in the jazz-comping breakdown, Phil starts a riff that is similar to the intro riff, and Jerry and Phil sort of bring it into the Dark Star theme, though it takes a minute or so to settle. It eventually becomes the Dark Star theme groove and Jerry starts the verse. Everybody plays the riff through the lines, to the e minor on line 3, they crash into the refrain and pause, not everyone together on the downbeats. To the outro, it seems like Phil is in his own tempo and the rest of the band isn’t quite with him as they enter the next groove section. Sax comes in low and starts a solo at 4 minutes, Jerry is sort of backed-off for most of this. Sax builds to a crest, Jerry has a few little fats jazzy runs, it’s all a bit chaotic sounding. Some back-and-forths in the 6th minute and atonal weirdness, it starts to die down, Jerry takes a short mellow solo as it dissipates and they all drop out and leave the drummers to the Drums track.
Drums is 13 minutes, followed by 10 of Space before they enter Wharf Rat. Mickey plays hand drums and Bill plays an odd rhythm on his kit for a good 6 minutes before the electronic weirdness comes in. The hand drums stay in or come back after a bit, with echoes, and at the end it cedes to the springs and manipulated echoes that lead to the Space track. Guitars come back in, quiet at first with the midi stuff, building with artificial horn sounds in weird melodic fragments. After a couple minutes there’s a lot of stuff in there swirling around, sax and guitars and keyboards and it gets very weird. It gets quiet int he middle and Jerry is back sounding like a guitar, in duet with sax for a bit, and odd e-percussion sounds. Very free jazz. Jerry goes for midi-flutes and horns again and they build it up for a big wave of sounds that comes back down and moves into Wharf Rat.

Sort of a minor Dark Star section, a little chaotic and skronky. Not the best. None of the following Space really relates to it. Even though I do like the free jazz, I wasn’t really into David Murray’s contribution here.

221 3/16/94 Rosemont: 11:14

They start with the riff after Long Way to Go Home, it’s pretty spry and they bop around, Phil is bubbling away, Vince is covering the theme riff. Jerry is skipping over the top of the rhythm, they sort of go into a new type of rhythmic groove. It almost sounds like a different song, it’s so upbeat!
Up and over the leads and back to the theme, they stick with it and jam out on the rhythm for a while, Jerry using some blue notes, cowboy licks and chords, it’s a boogie.
Verse 1 at 4:30, raspy sounding Jerry, starting at an off beat, they move through the first two line and settle to the e minor on line three, and rush to the refrain where it pauses, Vince doing his pitch bend thing between lines. Out to the outro and into a new hoppy little groove, a little mellower, and Jerry starts off again, climbing around with his twangy Lightning Bolt. They move into a more spacious area with higher little licks from Jerry and more swells from the keys. They go on, bopping it, it’s got a lot of forward momentum, and Jerry keeps playing the endless melodics with Bobby on his distorted little interjections. Some nice playing in there.
At 9:20, Jerry moves back to the theme and they bring it down to start a new section, it spins out a bit and the drums build up a bit but the other instruments start dropping out leaving them to it.
Drums track is normal for the era, starting with Bill on traps and Mickey on hand drums led into by a feedback swell from Bob. They stay with a very upbeat and hectic drum wailing for several minutes before the electronica comes in with the solo talking drum at about 4 minutes in. Then it gets weirder with the electronic stuff, but it quiets down to a bouncing low synth sound at about 7 minutes, and the flanged echo things swirl around. They go for these synth sounds and echoes then until “Space” starts at 12:30 into Drums.
Space begins when some guitars join in quietly, and keys, it’s droney up top with plucky odd synthy sounds and a low drone. Quiet flute sounds are floating around (from Jerry I think) becoming quiet background bassoons. Drums have dropped out. Bass comes in after a couple minutes, it’s sort of tonal though Bob is playing dissonant chords. The bassoon becomes a guitar at 3 minutes in and the drones are still there with odd squirrely synth sounds popping up around the drones. Some more odd pitch-followers add to the mix as it intensifies, harmonizing, so Jerry does pedal steel licks! It turns into more fast chromatic atonal riffing at 5 minutes into this track. Odd ring modulated sounds at 6:40, then silent movie tension from piano while the guitars start slow chordal bits, almost leading it to Dark Star again, it gets mellow and quiet, and then at 8:45 moves into almost a groove, bass and Bob coming in to hold it into a song almost. I could see this moving back to the Dark Star, but after a couple minutes, the bluesy notes start and they go to I Need a Miracle.
When I listened to an audience tape I thought this last bit of Space was very Dark Star like, but the soundboard makes it seem not quite as much that way… Who knows. Anyway, Dark Start itself was very upbeat and bouncy, almost boogie. Cool and decent playing from the band.

222 3/30/94 Atlanta: 10:29   

The last Grateful Dead version of Dark Star. Coming from PitB, it moves into 5 minutes of Drums and then 22 minutes of Space! PitB is pretty mellow, relative to other versions. Jerry isn’t really playing much for a bunch of the jam, he comes in slowly, it’s nice playing but sparse and low. It’s pretty latin-jazzy and with some odd phrygian chord progressions going on. It breaks down entirely by the end of the track and the band noodles around for a minute as if it will go to Space, but then amidst the chaos they start the riff and move into a relaxed Dark Star groove.
Vince starts the riff on organ after a bit and then Jerry starts playing more mellow guitar lead, it’s nice, almost the old 70s tropical beach feel. Jerry isn’t really soaring, just low noodles so Bob starts playing with his whammy bar and making weird noises. Jerry backs off and eventually has some sliding pedal-steely bends with some synth sound. A harmonizer or whammy pedal maybe? Some of the harmonized notes bend out of the mode.
It drops back into the groove with an organ solo for a sec before more guitar stabs and verse 1 at about 4:50, Jerry sounds relatively strong, though dying off at the ends of the lines, they move to the em on line three and a lick to the refrain, pitch bending between lines. To the outro, then they drop back to the Dark Star groove. Bob is still playing with the phrygian chords, and this only goes on for a minute or so and they drop the level down, drums go for side stick, it gets very delicate in the 7th minute.
It seems to almost end at 7:30, everybody is slow and low, warbling around. Little chromatic phrases come in and out, the drums pick up a hand drum, they move into a holding pattern, with little guitar bits and hand drums, keyboard chords occasionally. The drums start to roll underneath and are preparing to take over.
Then it’s Drums track and we’re out of Dark Star. Drums use echoes right off the bat. Rolling drums last for less than a minute and then it’s all e-percussion and garage door springs. It goes into a groove with e-perc bass and triggered synth sounds. Toward the end of this track it’s back to percussion with echoes before other instruments come in for a long Space, which starts on a long drone chord pad. Then they add a recording of monks chanting and various voice samples at different triggered pitches. Midi guitars come in to play along and feedbacky bends. Very droney and sparse and echoed. By 5 minutes, Jerry is in with a guitar+pitch follower. Then big organ sounds from it and e-percussion, stepping through presets again like opening doors to little scenes and then moving to the next, back to organ tone, it gets more intensity, scary church. Some big Bob distortion cutting through and it dies off to droney synth for a sec, still mostly atonal. Waves of this with various timbres, some super weird synth sounds popping around in the 14th minute. Drums come back in playing free jazz, they build to a big crest at 17 min with wild bass and pseudo trumpet, then back to low volume, drums drop out and midi melodies slow and a distorted bassoon is the lead. Short swells and bits from everybody, back to guitar sounds but in free atonal weirdness, e-percussion. This goes on until they go to distortion guitar sounds and get a bit bluesier and I Need a Miracle starts.

I liked the Dark Star part of it all, but Jerry was really not playing much besides casual noodles. The feel was good, that old relaxed feel.

There you have it. I didn’t cover the post-Jerry Garcia versions, the “Dead and Company” have done it, and I suppose other incarnations with various existing members. There’s also the incredble 1995 “Grayfolded” album by John Oswald, where he has manufactured a piece out of multitudes of recordings of Dark Star, it’s sort of got all of them in it.