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.




What was said:

oh, dropped right into a bad cassette tape during a beautiful bright star already rolling along in sputnik-like arpeggios, the band is playing very sensitively, going up and down in volume right with each other. A quiet setting for it, Jerry takes advantage with very sharp tones, and mellows it out from there. JG going into new areas on the low strings at about 2:40, bringing Weir in with a blues lick, and then he plays with the pickup selector before a quick theme and into verse 2. Crap, wish we could have heard the rest, this one seems like it would have been more interesting than the night before.
(I can completely imagine hearing this (this quality, this much of it) as you walked into somebody’s dorm room and it’s playing on their boombox, and you’re like, that seemed cool but this super slow version of that song St Stephen afterwards is weird, I’m outta here. Sheesh, live tapes.)




I'm with JSegel, this little 5-minute fragment should be considered alongside 2-11. It picks up at the very end, with the Bright Star, sounding a lot slower than the night before. The interesting part is that Jerry keeps the jam going for a couple more minutes, like he doesn't want it to end, in fact it keeps getting better right up to the verse! If we had the rest of this Dark Star, my guess is it was probably longer and more exploratory than 2-11.
The sound quality is gorgeous, a good companion to the 2-11-69 CD (and the mix is almost the same). Jerry's just piercing here...like you said the playing's very sensitive with lots of quiet space, I feel like they were adjusting it to the Fillmore East stage. I find this 3-minute bit of jam ravishing....Bob's feedback when Jerry slips back into the main theme is delightful. This is full-on Magic Dead. (The rest of the set isn't too shabby either.)


What we’ve got is good! Bright Star is a compelling place to break in as it makes you wonder even more what led up to that point. It’s sort of like digging up a small portion of a hieroglyph except that we have the benefit of many other performances to serve as a Rosetta Stone. I agree that it feels like this one was likely more exploratory and there is some magic and emotion in the five minutes that we have.