Main theme at 1:53.
Bright Star at 3:24.
Main theme at 3:55.
First verse at 4:35.
Verse melody at 6:44.
Sputnik at 8:40.
Bright Star at 9:08 (begins as main theme, more or less).
Main theme at 9:46.
Main theme at 11:13.
Second verse at 11:35.
Goes into St. Stephen.
It’s 1969! Does it sound different? For one thing, TC is a bit louder this time out, although he’s still a bit too low in the mix (spoiler alert: this will change in a big way, albeit temporarily, on the 25th!). This is another mix dominated by Garcia, to the extent that even when he’s barely hitting the strings you can hear him quite clearly, and his playing is pretty aggressive. There is an uncharacteristic pre-verse Bright Star this time, and Jerry plays with the timing of the ensuing main theme which starts at 3:55. Again the exit from the first verse is calmer and more meditative than it had been for most of 1968, and of course in the future this will be a place where the band often breaks it down into a space jam. This passage winds up with a statement of the verse melody, and note Garcia’s forceful runs over the following minor chord from about 6:55; at 7:10, he winds up big but then pulls way back, and the band responds, opening up a space into which Garcia starts dropping Sputnik-like lines (with Garcia and Lesh in lockstep as they manipulate the tempo and the rate of notes), which become even more Sputnik-like at 7:55, until we get the real McCoy at 8:40; throughout this section, the drums trickle in, and gradually they become more forceful. In general, we have more feints, adumbrations and variations of the various themes, so that labelling them is at times more difficult. The Bright Star I’ve tagged at 9:08 begins more as a statement of the main theme in a high register, until it stretches itself around into the more syncopated Bright Star theme. Lesh takes his time locking in, playing a pretty descending run under Jerry before dropping to lay a foundation under the theme. The following main theme I have logged as beginning at 9:46, but a case could be made that it starts at 9:43, where Garcia lands on the tonic and pauses; he hints at the tonic again without really playing it before starting the main theme, so that the mind reaches back and places it where it would be expected; this phantom note could also mark the start of the theme, and that’s where I’ve placed it, at 9:46. Notes that are lightly and almost inaudibly played will increasingly become part of Garcia’s style, and these are not always just grace notes but, as here, sometimes the foundational tones of a theme. At around 10:46 Garcia starts spinning out a high rolling figure that discharges itself into a near-Bright Star at 11:00, after which he tumbles into another statement of the main theme at 11:13 that is syncopated and sufficiently oblique that I hesitated over the attribution above (during this passage Weir does a lot to stir up excitement by bubbling along under the lead without directly calling attention to himself). This does not resolve into a more straightforward rendering of the theme, but leads directly to the second verse at 11:35. In general this write-up is doubtlessly too Garcia-centric, but he is the dominant force here, and the mix makes it at times difficult to sufficiently concentrate on the rest of the ensemble, but the entire band is playing very dynamically and responsively. Nothing happens that seems unprecedented, exactly; rather, Dark Star seems to be developing and becoming more subtle and assured, so that if we were to go back to one of the last few renditions we might not notice a stark difference, but compared with early versions this is a much richer, more varied and narratively gripping experience.
What was said:
