37. 1969-02-12

6285 Fillmore East 4:59 (cut)
Bright Star at 0:00.
Main theme at 2:02 and 3:03.
Second verse at 3:23.

Goes into St. Stephen.


This is a fragment only, presumably cutting in late in the between verse jam, but what’s here is pretty nice. It is kind of tantalizing, but there’s not much to go on.




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36. 1969-02-11

Youtube Fillmore East 12:29
Comes out of Mountains of the Moon.

Main theme at 1:22, 2:11 and 2:35.

First verse at 3:12.
Verse melody at 6:11.
Sputnik at 7:20.
Bright Star at 8:59.
Main theme at 9:36 and 10:43.
Second verse at 10:57.


The Dead were opening for Janis Joplin, and perhaps trying to be concise. Nevertheless, the pace is relatively deliberate this time. This is the first time that Dark Star comes out of Mountains of the Moon, with a nice little transition in between. Garcia keeps slipping in and out of the main theme during the ~3 minute intro. Garcia’s entry after the verse, after a short interlude with tolling bell sound, is striking. Here he eschews the 1968 lick, and he sounds rather fuzzy on the low notes. At some point here TC enters the mix. There’s a nice little duet between Garcia and Lesh starting around 5:40. This time Weir seems to initiate the Sputnik while Garcia is perhaps hinting at it. Again Garcia plays with a distinctive effect after the Sputnik, though again not for long. Bright Star seems to come out of nowhere this time, without much of a build-up, and it goes right into the main theme. The band gets a round of applause when Garcia goes into the second verse.

This sounds very together but there’s really nothing new or particularly noteworthy going on.


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35. 1969-02-07

137392 Pittsburgh, PA 14:07


Begins with an emcee saying he wants to thank the crowd “for all the solar system people,” which I got a kick out of (was that the name of a production company? otherwise, it seems kind of presumptuous! [pbuzby: Most depressed sounding emcee in history. "Solar System Light and Power Company" produced this show])

Main theme at 2:13 and 3:24.
First verse at 4:30.
Verse melody at 7:50.
Sputnik at 9:07.
Bright Star at 11:01.
Main Theme at 11:55.
Second verse at 12:34.
Goes into St. Stephen.


TC seems a little more at home at this point, I think…and we can hear him, which is always nice. Garcia sounds loaded and ready, he goes to the main theme rather quickly but then takes off again for a while. He briefly plays a wrong note (a major 7, I think) at 2:28 before bending up to the right one. I am sure he sometimes does this entirely by accident, but it sounds in a way fitting here, and I wonder if sometimes he is trying to push against the bars of tonality a little and taking a chance on purpose. This is far from unusual over the years, and I might even venture to say he plays more clams than most similarly accomplished players, although when I say that I also immediately recall that there is no one I am aware of whose work has been so extensively documented, so he may not stand out in that regard after all. In any case, listen to the continuously fluid outpouring of notes from 6:49 to 7:43; it doesn’t seem like the work of a guy who will accidentally land on the major 7th. With the verse melody in between, this passage is offset by Garcia’s increasingly choppy approach from 8:15 until the Sputnik at 9:07. Listen to how Lesh drones for the first part of the Sputnik, and then starts mixing it up; coming out of this section Garcia adopts a guitar sound we’ll hear again on the 27th (and I can’t swear we haven’t heard it before). The Bright Star at 11:01 begins very delicately, and although it builds, it’s not an occasion for the band to peak this time.

This one is pretty but seems sort of uneventful. It’s hard not to see all these February Dark Stars as stops along the way to 2-27 (and, to a lesser extent, 2-21 and 2-22, although saying that sort of vitiates the point), but of course they couldn’t have been thinking of it this way. But they are gathering ideas and building their capabilities, and this will come to fruition in a big way later in the month.




What was said:

34. 1969-02-06

 

137394 St. Louis 14:02 (cut at 8:49 of unknown duration)

Main theme at 2:39.
Main theme at 4:10.
First verse at 4:32.
Verse melody at 8:08.
Sputnik at 9:08.
Bright Star at 11:06.
Falling Star at 11:34.
Main theme at 11:52.
Second verse at 12:33.
Goes into St. Stephen.

Again TC seems reasonably audible, until Garcia comes in…it’s a good mix overall, though. Garcia is in fine form from the outset, and from about 3:14 he plays some of his best guitar, fluid and dynamic, before starting a little repeating motif at 3:38 that ends up at a little peak which he takes advantage of by plowing into the main theme. After the verse, Garcia states the 1968 outro briefly, and rather quietly, and the band plays in a subdued manner for a good couple minutes after the verse. Jerry is again using different voices and pickup positions to good effect; there is a cut at 8:49 that doesn’t seem like it is probably too long, but it’s hard to tell for sure (and note that my fellows seem to think it more significant than I did--it seems to me like they may have built it up pretty quickly, but there is a shift in intensity at the cut). At 10:35 Garcia starts toying with Bright Star, and the band hits a peak around the 11 minute mark before he finally breaks into it in earnest. This leads to the return of Falling Star, last heard (or at least last documented) in the fall of ’68. This is a kind of low-key version, and much of it is pretty mellow, even though it gets off to a typically bold start. If the cut is brief, then this is also another pretty short version, although to me it didn’t seem rushed the way the last one did. These are all pretty great to one extent or another, it bears repeating.


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33. 1969-02-05

8993 Kansas City, KS 11:40Intro is cut.
Main theme at 1:36.
First verse at 2:12.
Verse melody at 7:22.
Bright Star at 8:36.
Main theme at 9:28.
Second verse at 10:07.
Goes into St. Stephen.

This cuts in on an audible TC playing the ROR; however, Garcia is extremely loud here, and he quickly drowns out TC when he comes in. At 1:15, Garcia begins a sequence that has a Sputnik feel, and I was almost tempted to call it a Sputnik, but it’s only Jerry’s part, and it’s pretty brief. I’m not sure what the circumstances were here, but the band seems almost to be in a hurry, as this moves to the theme and the verse very quickly. After the verse Jerry again takes it out with the 1968 lick, and I sort of regret not naming it and marking it down when it happens, as it is more common than I realized. Garcia seems to be on the bridge pickup in the early going, as he swoops from brassy bass string licks to piercing high notes, and after the verse everything still seems to be moving rather quickly. At about 4:58 Garcia drops out and TC, again distinctly audible in the absence of Jerry’s loud guitar, takes the lead for a while. It’s possible Jerry broke a string, or else he just wants to give TC space for a change; in any case, the band rises to the occasion, and this lasts until, at 7:03, Garcia comes in with some Sputnik licks and a little chording, which he quickly abandons in favor of the verse melody section. At 7:56 Garcia plays a lead melody which we will hear again but I don’t think we’ve heard before, and which will feature in the famous 1969-02-27 Dark Star; I’m not sure if we should name this, or how often it will happen. It’s kind of a variant of Bright Star, in any case, which Garcia adumbrates left and right until finally it breaks out at 8:36, which basically shows how arbitrary some of these timings from the list up top are getting to be.
This feels rushed in a way, although not necessarily in the details of the playing in any given section, but just the overall trajectory. They don’t really do anything new here, with the exception (I think) of Jerry’s lead from 7:56. This is far from a bad version, and I would hesitate to call any Dark Star from this period mediocre, even, but neither does it stand out much.




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