Crystal Ballroom Portland, OR
Introduction theme still staggered. Garcia comes in on lead at :18. Staccato main theme at 1:15. First verse at 1:29. Verse melody at 2:47. From 3:10 to 3:16 Jerry ascends to a high A; at 3:21 one iteration of Falling Star. Then at 3:34 the Bright Star theme emerges. Second verse at 4:00, and out…goes into China Cat Sunflower. At 5:06 Jerry (or Phil?) says “Leave the lights on, would you?”
What was said:
Or is that Phil who says "Leave the lights..."? Now I can't tell, but it seems more like a Phil thing to say for some reason
I believe that it does sound like Phil's voice, although there is a bit of a lilt in it that is like Jerry.
I like this moment, in any case, because I've been in the Crystal Ballroom and like to imagine seeing the Dead in that space. The picture below (found online) was taken from the balcony at the back of the room. You can see that there's just a small stage at the front-left, and the stage lights are just above the performers, but I don't suppose that Phil/Jerry was talking about those. Maybe someone turned off the chandeliers, and he just enjoyed having them on?
As a performance, this might be a little more together than the ragged 2/2 version, but is more subdued....the drummers don't come pounding in this time! These early Feb '68 Dark Stars are in kind of a holding pattern -- Jerry's decided not to go exploring for now, but to keep Dark Star nice & short & sticking to the script....this is one of the shortest of the whole tour I think. The highlight here is after 3:30 when he hits on the new theme, sounding much more coherent than just the day before, using it to slide right into the verse.
Yeah it seems like it took him a while to crack things sometimes, judging by songs that expanded over the years...
2/3/68 I agree with @Mr. Rain’s description of more together yet more subdued than 2/2. And even though the song is still in its infancy at this point it’s neat how some of the parts/themes are coming into being and starting to evolve at least a little. Learning to identify those is an enjoyable part of this project for me.
link:
ReplyDeletewww://archive.org/details/gd1968-02-03.sbd.miller.97346.sbeok.flac16
SJR writes:
"Crystal Ballroom, Portland, OR, 03/02/68 -- Nice pacing. No big drum whack halfway through this time! A neat and concise version which is too short, not really allowing any time for exploration."
KDubATX writes:
"5:23, at a brisk, toe tappin pace. A lot of Mickey with a shaker sounding percussion keeping the tempo up. Short Garcia solo between the verses. No jam after the second verse, they just let it kinda trail off then after a beat pick up into China Cat. Pretty timid overall. The energy jumps significantly once they move into China Cat and The Eleven."
pbuzby writes:
"I don't think it has a name (or needs one necessarily) but there's another melody Jerry plays a lot in the early "Dark Star"s, right after the first verse, that goes D-C#-D-C#-A-G#-G (sometimes plus or minus a few notes, or played in more than one octave or a few steps down). 2/3/68 has a nice set of variations on it from 2:28-2:38."
Archtop adds: "I'm hearing that (from 2/3/68) as G....F#....E D C # B back to the form. Just a descending D Major scale which is the source of the | A | Emin | basic harmonic structure."
Mr. Rain wonders: "That melody's followed the first verse in every early Dark Star since the studio version, right? I wonder how long he'll keep playing it.
The 'bright star' theme (which first emerged on 2/2) is starting to sound recognizably like the later versions."