112691 Vallejo 22:19
Main theme at 4:42 and 6:43.
First verse at 6:54.
Verse melody at 10:06.
Sputnik at 14:05.
Bright Star at 18:57.
Main theme at 20:15.
Second verse at 20:41.
Goes into The Other One (Cryptical Envelopment).
This is preceded by a stupendous version of Mountains of the Moon and, unusually, goes into The Other One. The little jam after MOTM is a bit longer this time. Dark Star seems maybe a tad slower than usual, it has a stately feel to it. Garcia’s opening lead gradually intensifies into an authoritative groove, and TC seems a little more textural in the early going, as opposed to the noodly swirling he often purveys. This results in a relatively thicker sound, and things come to a sort of miasmic head at around 2:12—2:20 where everything seems to condense for a little while. The cohesiveness of the day before is in evidence as the band again sounds very much together, able to converge and bring things to a peak at will. An early highlight is the somewhat Sputnik-y series Garcia initiates at 3:36, which goes from descending arpeggios to double stops before bursting into a sunlit clearing at around 3:11. After the main theme a minute or so later, Garcia unleashes a wonderful little series of leads before heading to the verse, and just after the 6 minute mark the band sounds like they’re ready to explore a bit before they reel it in. At 6:30 this has become a little segment that is obviously pregnant with the main theme, which returns at 6:43 and quickly goes to the verse. They’ve taken their time with all this, but it all feels preparatory; as good as it is, the main effect is an adumbration of possibilities, as they seem a little restrained throughout the introductory part. Weir follows the verse with a bright, bouncing series of double-stopped lines in his usual inimitable fashion, and Garcia plays what sounds like a variation on the 1968 lick out of the verse at 8:13, and then launches into a lead that picks up in the same vein as it was left before the verse. When he turns up the heat a little at about 9:27, the others are in lockstep with him, and Garcia takes the power fed back to him and leads them to an emphatic statement of the verse melody. This keeps things simmering, as it seems like there are potencies here that are at the ready, but have not yet been tapped. After the verse interlude the band’s intensity has increased, but in a rather controlled, incremental way, as Garcia plays repetitious figures and then sets off on an ascending run at 10:57 which seems to point the way to a freer space just ahead. At 11:14 he is toying with the main theme but, perhaps realizing that it is early yet, he sets off for other climes. Garcia’s rolling lines from around 11:37, and particularly at 11:54, sound like something rehearsed or familiar, yet I don’t think we’ve heard it before, and he quickly moves on to other things. It’s probably happened very gradually, but Weir sounds utterly at home here…his playing is vital and creative, and he manages to vary his parts to suit the required intensities of the moment without ever sounding forced or out of place. This may be the biggest factor in the way that Dark Star sounds so cohesively mobile at this point; again, though, there is the sense that it has not yet gone everywhere it is capable, just now, of going. At 12:39 Garcia sounds like he’s going to head toward Sputnik, and again the band picks up on it immediately. But instead of Sputnik, there is a sparkling, twinkling peak, and it’s just a beautiful moment. The band then takes it down, and Jerry takes another run in the general direction of Sputnik, which finally comes in for real at 14:05. Garcia goes to the tolling bell sound at the tail end of Sputnik, and then Lesh suddenly sounds like he means business, firing off some darkly melodic runs as Garcia puts on the weird post-Sputnik effect, and we are almost in a little Space interlude. Garcia plays a melody with this that sounds like what he does on Live/Dead, but Lesh keeps thing spacy and Jerry starts playing with his volume knob. Immediately after, the counterpoint between Lesh and Garcia is magnificent, as Weir wisely keeps things simple with a binding chordal part in the middle of it all, until he begins to syncopate a little—this sets Jerry off, as the band goes into a variation of the main theme with offset rhythms that is one of the most sophisticated things we have heard in a Dark Star, if somewhat brief. This seems like it’s heading toward a Bright Star, which is one way to get everyone back on the straight and narrow without a mishap, and that is exactly what happens at 18:57, although the Bright Star theme is only briefly stated. And, soon enough, we have arrived at the verse.
The highlight tonight is, I think, the pre-Sputnik section.
The name of the Dark Star game, these nights in Vallejo, is cohesion and controlled experimentation. There is intensity here, but not in the form of explosive peaks; the band sounds very much in control of things and capable of peaking, should they choose, but they forgo such theatrics and keep things simmering; or, perhaps its more accurate to say that when the intensity increases it does so continuously, rather than breaking out as a sudden cloudburst. In this sense there is still something propaedeutic about these Dark Stars, yet they are very satisfying in their own right, and even exciting insofar as they show us a band and a song that now seem capable of feats that would not have been possible months, or even weeks, before. If the band was wiped out in a bus crash after the Vallejo shows, I think that the discerning listener may have surmised that the world had been deprived of future Dark Stars that would have reached new heights, and feel this as a loss for humanity. Fortunately, no such thing happened; my point, however, is that there is both palpable development here, and at the same time attainment, as the Dream Bowl both points to what is yet to happen, while at the same time displaying a power of execution that had not hitherto been reached.
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