Road Trips 4.1 Florida 18:55
Main theme at 6:28.
First verse at 6:48.
Sputnik at 11:52.
Bright Star at 15:56.
Main theme at 16:57.
Second verse at 17:21.
Goes into St. Stephen.
This one gets going right away; the band sounds kind of busy, and Garcia adopts an angry tone. Someone is playing a vibraslap (thanks, pbuzby!), which sounds cool. For the first few minutes there are peaks and valleys, as several times they come near to a stop, and then start banging away again. There’s a nice moment from 4:10-4:18 where Garcia starts playing a little lick and Lesh quotes it back to him.
At 4:41, Garcia pulls up hard and seems to announce the advent of the main theme, but then they take off again. Check out Garcia’s drunken licks from 5:08 until around 5:22, which elicit an appropriate response from Weir. For a relatively short Dark Star, they don’t stint on the intro this time, finally pulling up to the verse at almost 7 minutes in.
The middle jam starts at 7:54. The usual tension building gives way to some weirdness at around 8:30, and Garcia comes in very quietly with his lead line at 8:48. Things suddenly start to build at 9:45, and we come to a peak and then level off for a while, then build some more…at 10:59 Garcia again starts to stagger along drunkenly, then they feint at a peak, then start to build again, and then hit another peak at about 11:30. They pull right back from this and come down the other side, and at 11:39 Garcia starts playing a staccato repeated note, which leads soon thereafter to Sputnik.
Tonight Sputnik alternates between arpeggios and jabs, until at 13:00 Garcia brings it to a close with some percussive jabbing. The band latches on to this and starts to stagger along, but at 13:24 Garcia pushes it somewhere else with a fire alarm blast that then turns into a more usual lead line. But at 13:54, he switches on the insect weirdness, which I don’t think we’ve heard for the last little while. By 14:28 he’s done with it though, and he returns to a jabbing motif. Then, at 14:45, Garcia and Weir start blasting, with Weir playing a high droning note which Garcia plays around. Then TC gets in on the act for a little while, but it all drops back down rather soon.
At 15:40 Garcia starts to sketch in Bright Star; this comes on gradually, I’ve somewhat arbitrarily marked the beginning as 15:56. This attains a modest peak and then comes down, and soon we’re at the main theme and the second verse.
What to say about this one? It’s not one of the most momentous versions, and doesn’t stand out for intensity or weirdness. However, every version is different, and this certainly has parts that are noteworthy. They don’t seem to stick with anything for very long this time, but there are some nice moments.
What was said:
Mr. Rain:
This struck me as a playful, not-very-serious Dark Star that trades deep intensity for high spirits.
The opening has some percussion counting in the beat, which I hadn't noticed before. The vibraslap might be a new instrument in the Dark Star repertoire, but like all the other pieces of percussion the Dead have laying around the stage, it fits right in.
The lengthy & relaxed opening jam is dominated by Jerry & Phil, as usual....TC is mostly low-volume but sometimes rises to the occasion. There's one passage around 3-4 minutes that's almost a Hartbeats-like Phil & Jerry duet, with only little touches from the others. It has a nice emphatic ending at 4:42, when Bill joins in and they get back into Dark Star mode. (Bill stops within 20 seconds, perhaps feeling the moment is too soon for him!) A bit of feedback at 5:27 announces the entry of a loud woodblock, backed by cymbals....oddly enough the music gets deeper at this point, Jerry quiets down and Phil sneaks in the main theme, and after 5:50 they're traveling in a soft cloud of mystery. Jerry nicely joins the theme.
He sings the verse very emphatically -- I don't think I've noticed "searchlight" sung like that before!
They jump right into tense turbulence after the verse. Jerry does a bit of bell-tolling but prefers to play with feedback through the crashes. Then a cute contrast when he starts this quiet little delicate lead coming out of the noisy chaos. After 9 minutes Bill's drums and Pigpen's congas come in, sensing their time has come. The jam quickly gains strength...there's a neat unusual moment at 10:10 when Bill & Jerry play off each other. TC's also playing with more emphasis by now. It sounds like Jerry's pushing everybody to get more loud and wild, especially after 11 minutes. But as always, he soon tamps things down to a little staccato beat that turns into a Sputnik.
Sputnik seems kind of subdued, the band isn't going wild with this. Mickey's doing his wood tapping but no guiro-scratching this time. Jerry's getting carried away lately with his repetitive jabs, and the others just have to go along with it. But at 13:24 Jerry finally breaks out with a dramatic burst, and we're back to the regular jam. But then he remembers: "oh wait, isn't there something I used to do here?" And it's time for an insect-weirdness flashback! Mickey switches to gong to make it weirder. The jam resumes in a high frenzy, Jerry repeating his high notes from 13:24, leading to a big noise peak at 15:00!
As the waves subside, Bob & Phil start up the main theme again, figuring it's time for the verse. But Jerry's not done yet -- he slowly pieces together the bright-star figure in a long final climax. Both drumsets & congas going strong now and TC's full-blast, but Jerry doesn't play it very fiercely, it's more relaxed. I like how he lets it drain away in a final note of feedback. That of course sets up the last main theme in a nice finish.
Pigpen keeps his conga patter going through the ending (and into St. Stephen).
Well, not a Dark Star for the ages but an enjoyable one, many fine passages.
I didn't mention him much but TC sounded a lot more loose than usual in this one....it's like he's playing more chordally, like Pigpen would normally do. I noticed that TC's keyboard sound is quite different than it used to be. I believe he's switched to the Hammond B3 organ by now -- it may be one reason he's cutting more through the mix lately and fitting in better. Judging from the sound, I think 5-10 was his first Dark Star with the new organ.
JSegel:
Bright and cheery intro into a beautiful singing set of phrases from JG, really nice playing from everybody. JG is really upping his playing here, he’s playing the sounds I’m seeing, man! TC on chords mostly, Bobby with some beautiful fluid chordal playing. Oh boy. The hand percussion vibe is right-on here, though apparently there’s a vibraslap happening, which is weird. JG continues with neck pickup tone while the band plugs away at the rhythm (perhaps ignoring the vibraslap)
Lovely windup into 3” mark. New more sparse accompaniment, JG still grasping notes out of thin air and bringing them to our attention. Bobby spaces for a while in some feedback or something, but JG is still wandering around in this new garden of flowers. At 4:45 or so, he switches to a nasally tone for a bit and tries out some old riff, they’re bringing it back up and he’s got some new riff ideas to play out before it settles. Oops, percussion mic feedback then some tapping weirdness from the percussion. Inspired by that feedback, they’re finding some frequencies floating in the air. TC has been chordal this whole time, I believe? Into the intro at 6:30, to verse 1.
Lovely delivery with the cymbals washing behind.
Strong intro to the next section, Bobby playing it very directly. We’re expecting the bell and it’s coming, bringing some feedbacky tones with it and some strong cymbals washing from both sides, when this has blown the world away, we’re left in a small place with Jerry exploring introvertedly. We have the whole band here, Bill has joined, but they’re holding back from any forward propulsion until JG takes it upwards and TC starts with his riffing and arpeggios. At 10” Jerry starts some fast runs, TC following behind. Like butterflies chasing each other. The waves of sound build up and down, but it’s not dying out at all, they are building and building until JG takes a staccato approach to some notes, heading to a Sputnik right before 12”.
This one is also going into some choppy rhythmic statements, but they die down to a tiny little chittering before settling into a new set of notes with a flat 5.
They burst forth into a theme statement, but so brief that it seems like only TC tried to hold onto a song-form backing set of lines. He gives up on that and Jerry moves right away and on then into the Insect Weirdness tone at 13:50! Freak out, people! This band is going somewhere not of this earth.
TC comes down with some cool trills up and down, they band is holding steady, Jerry hits some strong notes, they bring it way up and it blossoms on into a Dark Star chord and them jam. “Theme” in quotes I mean. It’s always a restatement of the thematic idea, some great sense to it this evening, the hand drums are jamming along. And back to the intro with some cool little timbres from the organ.
Verse 2 comes in nicely. Very performative. Hand drums still live and active during the verse/chorus.
Nice outro, with one flat clam on the counterpoint. All in all an amazingly creative and fluid version, really upbeat and happy-sounding! They were clearly enjoying themselves.
bzfgt:
I finally figured out what you mean by the "spy theme" thing during "reason shatters"...I listened for it this time. It does sound like a spy theme....I never really noticed it before, I think I often tune out during the verses...
JSegel:
Yeah, I know I keep making up my own nomenclature, I think it's just so I can settle the parts in my own brain and understand what's where. The verse/song form seems really important to me for some reason. In the "proto" Dark Star single version and very early live versions, they use the three-line form often as the basis for the jam, and the rhythms keep that structure: first line is basic, second has that offbeat "spy theme" thing, third line goes "casting" and wanders off. They do it in a lot of the jams (till lately anyway, it hasn't appeared much in the April/May 69 versions).
Mr. Rain:
Yes, a happy-sounding version, not so much the "this is serious" vibe of other Dark Stars. The Seminole Indian Village seems to have had a cheerful effect on them. I don't know what the venue was?
So you noticed TC playing differently too. My theory is the new organ helped him sound, well, more like an organ player....there were a lot of points where I thought "wait, this isn't Pigpen again?" It's quite a shift in style, and he sounds nice in this. His playing is very supportive of Jerry's....though you could say the same of everybody else too, they all stick close to wherever Jerry goes.
Adamos:
It starts upbeat with some pace; there's a little edge and fuzz to Jerry's tone. Plenty of Phil underneath and nice rhythm textures from Bobby too. A touch of vibraslap adds something different as has been pointed out. A couple minutes in and they are cruising along, things are moving quickly, Jerry seems to be playing a lot of notes. At 3:02 they ease off and Jerry continues on, weaving in and out, complimented by Phil with small, occasional flourishes from Bob. By 4:45 they're picking it up again and moving pretty quick. Jerry seems a little sloppy around 5:10 but they right the ship by 5:20 and carry on in more subtle fashion, hitting the main theme at 6:28 and then the first verse.
Post verse they start to head out quickly, in come the gong washes and a bit of bell tolling but then they pivot into some weirdness at 8:30. Starting at 8:50 there's a gentle passage, TC steps in a bit more and Phil can be heard well too. This starts to build and by 9:55 it's pretty intense again. Some repeating flourishes from Jerry at 10:12 with strong drums; TC is getting in some complimentary runs too. At 11:00 Jerry does a jabbing thing that hits a mini peak. From there he continues on with a driving feel that spills upwards at 11:28 before easing up, after which he plays a repeating note and then they head into Sputnik.
Sputnik is relatively mellow, TC adds some color, more jabbing from Jerry kind of like winding up, then at 13:25 he launches out and they continue on through familiar territory. They briefly pause at 13:50 and then at 13:55 they break into insect weirdness; hello again. This dissipates and then at 14:30 it's more jabbing guitar notes, fairly low key, with some TC color and a bouncy bass line. At 14:45 they quickly ascend and sustain a collective high before shifting back down again. They continue on with the jam and slowly work their way into Bright Star which is a relatively mellow version but it carries on for a little while, with lots of congas and drums. That resolves and then it's back to the main theme and second verse.
I wouldn't describe this performance as particularly remarkable in the context of other recent versions but it's a good one nonetheless. And the circumstances of the festival may have had something to do with that.
There's some information about the festival in the liner notes to Road Trips 4.1. Sounds like it was a crazy time:
"But let’s see---where can we stage a hip little music festival where we don’t need the approval of uptight city authorities or require a gaggle of local cops looking for any excuse to start breaking heads or busting folks? The answer to those questions was the Seminole Indian reservation in Hollywood, just north of Miami, and the event was the three-day “Big Rock Pow Wow”--May 23-25 1969--featuring the Grateful Dead as headliners the first two days (Rhinoceros on the third), as well as such acts as Johnny Winter, Muddy Waters, The Youngbloods, Sweetwater, Joe South, NRBQ and Aum. Timothy Leary, who had recently announced his candidacy for governor of California, was also a ubiquitous presence the whole weekend. City cops and Federal agents weren’t allowed on Native American soil without permission; indeed “the authorities” had no jurisdiction over anything that went on there.
For their part, the Seminoles were happy to make a little bread from the event, which drew somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 people at its most crowded. (If that sounds small, remember that in the spring of 1969, the Dead were barely known outside of California. They only had two albums out--Aoxomoxoa would be released shortly--and hadn’t gotten much FM airplay yet, so their reputation in Florida was based primarily on their appearances at Thee Image and at the Miami Pop Festival on December 28, 1968.) Many folks camped for a buck in nearby fields and woods on the reservation grounds; others just came in for one of the three shows. A make-shift group calling itself Together Inc., which included a Timothy Leary associate named Anthony, whose brother ran a Miami “head” shop, put the festival together, and some of the people from Thee Image helped with staging and other logistical matters.
The heart of the sprawling reservation was a re-creation of a traditional Seminole village where members of the tribe would demonstrate and sell native crafts and also perform ceremonial music and dances. One of the odder (but most popular) features was a swimming pool where every hour a Seminole brave would “wrestle” a rather tired-looking alligator, which lived in a nearby pen with a couple of his comatose brethren. Alas, there was no alligator-wrestling during the Rock Pow Wow, but the Seminole crafts and music were happening during the daytime, and various non-Seminole artisans and hippie groups were allowed to set up booths and sell their wares. As Denise Fesko’s account of the weekend in the Miami underground paper Strawberry Fields described, “There was a fresh fruit and juice stand, a flower shop and a record concession on one end of the walk bridge. Around the other side of the campfire area were chickees [traditional Seminole huts] operated by Indians making pumpkin bread and stringing bead rings and bracelets and sewing brightly colored clothes…
“The people came and the music began. A sort of perfumed smell filled the air and rose up through the piney trees. The grass covering the ground was so soft and clean that most people dared not mar its face with trampling shoes, but entwined their toes around the clean grass blades. Peace and freedom were no longer trite, overused words, but a reality and a precious gift to the people.”
But that idyllic description doesn’t mention perhaps the key element of the weekend: the orange juice. “There was a huge orange juice machine backstage that probably held ten gallons or more--complimentary orange juice; it’s Florida!” recalls John Blackwell, who was mostly known as Sgt. Pepper back then, and had worked at Thee Image and was wired into the hippie scene in Miami. “So someone got this great idea: Let’s put acid in the orange juice.” Appropriately enough, newly minted “Orange Sunshine” LSD had been spreading like wildfire since the beginning of the year and there was plenty around in South Florida. Blackwell also recalls being given a fistful of mescaline tablets to distribute in the crowd gratis, courtesy of Leary’s entourage. Eventually, cups and containers of the electric juice made it out into the crowd, too, and, Blackwell says, “There was a mass dosing of hundreds of people.”
Wayne Ceballos, leader of the S.F. group Aum, and a friend of the Dead’s from the Warlocks days, recalls, “Everyone who drank the orange juice got messed up. My nephew and I had been drinking Wild Turkey before we drank the orange juice, so you can imagine… Me and Pigpen, who I was really tight with, were drunk and stoned--oh, my God! I remember Bill Kreutzmann and I had this huge deep, conversation about I don’t know what, but they had these big ropes that held up the tarps over the stage and we were holding on to this rope and talking, and all of a sudden I said, ‘Bill, you know what? I try to let go of this rope and I can’t.’ He goes, ‘Wow, I can’t either!’ And we just stood there and laughed and laughed. It was that kind of a day. When [Aum] went on, we were so wasted, we were spittin’ orange juice at each other and laughing our asses off. But then we ****in’ kicked ass. It was one of the best sets we ever played.”
Banana of The Youngbloods remembers drinking some orange juice during a soundcheck, then heading back to the hotel and spending half an hour or so trying to extricate the band’s hopelessly high drummer, Joe Bauer, from the bathroom. “We were pushing and pulling on the door,” he laughs. “Then it finally occurred to one of us to turn the doorknob.” A couple of acts never made it to the stage at all or had to quit early.
As for the Dead, well, the orange juice was not a problem--just another day at the office! But it’s also easy to hear the bold, slightly reckless psychedelic edge in their playing on these two sets, which feature a healthy chunk of the group’s mid-’69 repertoire, from a ferocious recitation of the (future) classic Live Dead sequence of “Dark Star” > “St. Stephen” > “The Eleven” > “Lovelight,” to “Doin’ That Rag,” “China Cat,” “Alligator” (of course!) and the lovely and relatively rare “He Was a Friend of Mine.” Though the playing on both Dead sets was at times positively feral, writer Fesko noted: “The Grateful Dead were amazing as the final act that [Saturday] night. The people moved smoothly to the serene sounds and sweetness of their notes and then could not keep from standing and dancing and clapping each other’s palms when the Dead played their happy, loud, moving songs.”
Meanwhile around a campfire backstage one night, Leary, members of the Dead and a few others passed around more orange juice and yukked it up. Nearby, Blackwell relates, “The Seminole chief--whose son was a musician, and who led a dance through the grounds for three days straight--was swappin’ lies with a Hell’s Angel, and eventually our crowd [the Dead, etc.] merged in with the chief’s groups, and at one point he gets up and he made us all--this whole crowd, including the Hell’s Angel--honorary Seminole braves! Which frankly we were very honored by at the time; we took it seriously.”
For the Dead, after the Pow Wow it was back to the West Coast for a series of shows. In Florida, though, the impact was profound. Fesko again: “A lot of the good from the Pow Wow has lingered with us and we will take it with us to the next scheduled gathering in Atlanta, Georgia, July 4th and 5th. In fact, this goodness has become embedded so deeply that we will carry it and contain it within us throughout our lives.”
Mr. Rain:
What a scene! I guess that orange juice made for some happy musicians.
And at these shows, someone could shout "Alligator!" and not mean the song. That reminds me of Bob Weir's jokes about the alligator living in the NY Academy of Music.... "The guy hollering "alligator" is serious, dead serious. There's an alligator in the Academy of Music, he lives under rows CC and DD, and he wakes up for the rock & roll. So there's always some dude back there hollering "alligator!" and everybody else thinks he's making a request."
Or when Pigpen said at the Fillmore East to more cries of "Alligator!" -- "Don't be hollering out emergency warnings in a place like this. An alligator loose in here could chomp off a bunch of feet. Especially yours, buddy!"
But still, the Dead obliged with an Alligator at the Seminole Indian Village. Of course Bob had to preface it with a yellow dog story, which no audience could escape, even in the Florida swamps.
notesofachord:
Wow, so the consensus on 5/23/69 Dark Star is that it’s “okay”? “Alright”?
IIRC, my memory of it is that Garcia is jamming his ass off like a madman. A top Jerry version. Yeah, it’s not as deep and spacey as the best 1969 versions, but Jerry goes off.
Or so I thought. I should spin it again. Perhaps it’s not as amazing as I recalled.
JSegel:
...guess you had to be there...
Actually, I thought it was incredibly good, upbeat and happy sounding. The outdoor Dark Stars are really something, taking the whole world into space like that. And these stories are incredible. I can't even imagine trying to play after Orange Sunshine, though I guess you get 'used to it' if you do it all the time? My limited experiences of trying to play or perform on hallucinogens were few and far between (and long ago) and never went well—tuning and timing were, well, ...difficult—guess I just didn't do it often enough!
I was reading Joel Selvin's book on Altamont (quite good) a while back and there was a throw away line about somebody in Jefferson Airplane eating some acid in the helicopter on the way, like they were just smoking a joint, and I just couldn't wrap my head around the casualness of eating acid as if it just "got you high". I had to assume that that was Selvin's misunderstanding of the effectiveness of drugs in general, but I know that he isn't that clueless, so in the end I was just confused by the statement.
That said, perhaps if you have so much in your system all the time, I expect eventually you must level out somewhat. Haven't tried that route, personally. Yet.
Mr. Rain:
Considering the Dead had Owsley using them as acid guinea-pigs since '66 and it was practically part of their daily diet, I'm sure they had very high tolerances. They were used to playing through the hallucinations! Check out 6/8/69 for a show where they got extra-dosed and were so high they could hardly stand, and Jerry had to sit out part of the show.
bzfgt:
I don't think any of us said "OK," did we? I'm not going back to look. It seems like the consensus was it's really good, but not as remarkable as some of the other ones immediately preceding it...
Mr. Rain:
Yeah it's just alright! Compared to the other spring '69 Dark Stars. Which means it's still amazing. Even the weakest Dark Star in this time period is still quite a trip. But we're not listening to these in isolation, so it's natural to compare them, that's what this thread's about...you get high standards after listening to all of these. Personally I think this version is left in the dust by the Dark Stars coming up soon. But it's still a wonder! Like JSegel said it's really upbeat, very spirited Jerry -- every Dark Star has its own mood, something distinct to offer.
This struck me as a playful, not-very-serious Dark Star that trades deep intensity for high spirits.
The opening has some percussion counting in the beat, which I hadn't noticed before. The vibraslap might be a new instrument in the Dark Star repertoire, but like all the other pieces of percussion the Dead have laying around the stage, it fits right in.
The lengthy & relaxed opening jam is dominated by Jerry & Phil, as usual....TC is mostly low-volume but sometimes rises to the occasion. There's one passage around 3-4 minutes that's almost a Hartbeats-like Phil & Jerry duet, with only little touches from the others. It has a nice emphatic ending at 4:42, when Bill joins in and they get back into Dark Star mode. (Bill stops within 20 seconds, perhaps feeling the moment is too soon for him!) A bit of feedback at 5:27 announces the entry of a loud woodblock, backed by cymbals....oddly enough the music gets deeper at this point, Jerry quiets down and Phil sneaks in the main theme, and after 5:50 they're traveling in a soft cloud of mystery. Jerry nicely joins the theme.
He sings the verse very emphatically -- I don't think I've noticed "searchlight" sung like that before!
They jump right into tense turbulence after the verse. Jerry does a bit of bell-tolling but prefers to play with feedback through the crashes. Then a cute contrast when he starts this quiet little delicate lead coming out of the noisy chaos. After 9 minutes Bill's drums and Pigpen's congas come in, sensing their time has come. The jam quickly gains strength...there's a neat unusual moment at 10:10 when Bill & Jerry play off each other. TC's also playing with more emphasis by now. It sounds like Jerry's pushing everybody to get more loud and wild, especially after 11 minutes. But as always, he soon tamps things down to a little staccato beat that turns into a Sputnik.
Sputnik seems kind of subdued, the band isn't going wild with this. Mickey's doing his wood tapping but no guiro-scratching this time. Jerry's getting carried away lately with his repetitive jabs, and the others just have to go along with it. But at 13:24 Jerry finally breaks out with a dramatic burst, and we're back to the regular jam. But then he remembers: "oh wait, isn't there something I used to do here?" And it's time for an insect-weirdness flashback! Mickey switches to gong to make it weirder. The jam resumes in a high frenzy, Jerry repeating his high notes from 13:24, leading to a big noise peak at 15:00!
As the waves subside, Bob & Phil start up the main theme again, figuring it's time for the verse. But Jerry's not done yet -- he slowly pieces together the bright-star figure in a long final climax. Both drumsets & congas going strong now and TC's full-blast, but Jerry doesn't play it very fiercely, it's more relaxed. I like how he lets it drain away in a final note of feedback. That of course sets up the last main theme in a nice finish.
Pigpen keeps his conga patter going through the ending (and into St. Stephen).
Well, not a Dark Star for the ages but an enjoyable one, many fine passages.
I didn't mention him much but TC sounded a lot more loose than usual in this one....it's like he's playing more chordally, like Pigpen would normally do. I noticed that TC's keyboard sound is quite different than it used to be. I believe he's switched to the Hammond B3 organ by now -- it may be one reason he's cutting more through the mix lately and fitting in better. Judging from the sound, I think 5-10 was his first Dark Star with the new organ.
JSegel:
Bright and cheery intro into a beautiful singing set of phrases from JG, really nice playing from everybody. JG is really upping his playing here, he’s playing the sounds I’m seeing, man! TC on chords mostly, Bobby with some beautiful fluid chordal playing. Oh boy. The hand percussion vibe is right-on here, though apparently there’s a vibraslap happening, which is weird. JG continues with neck pickup tone while the band plugs away at the rhythm (perhaps ignoring the vibraslap)
Lovely windup into 3” mark. New more sparse accompaniment, JG still grasping notes out of thin air and bringing them to our attention. Bobby spaces for a while in some feedback or something, but JG is still wandering around in this new garden of flowers. At 4:45 or so, he switches to a nasally tone for a bit and tries out some old riff, they’re bringing it back up and he’s got some new riff ideas to play out before it settles. Oops, percussion mic feedback then some tapping weirdness from the percussion. Inspired by that feedback, they’re finding some frequencies floating in the air. TC has been chordal this whole time, I believe? Into the intro at 6:30, to verse 1.
Lovely delivery with the cymbals washing behind.
Strong intro to the next section, Bobby playing it very directly. We’re expecting the bell and it’s coming, bringing some feedbacky tones with it and some strong cymbals washing from both sides, when this has blown the world away, we’re left in a small place with Jerry exploring introvertedly. We have the whole band here, Bill has joined, but they’re holding back from any forward propulsion until JG takes it upwards and TC starts with his riffing and arpeggios. At 10” Jerry starts some fast runs, TC following behind. Like butterflies chasing each other. The waves of sound build up and down, but it’s not dying out at all, they are building and building until JG takes a staccato approach to some notes, heading to a Sputnik right before 12”.
This one is also going into some choppy rhythmic statements, but they die down to a tiny little chittering before settling into a new set of notes with a flat 5.
They burst forth into a theme statement, but so brief that it seems like only TC tried to hold onto a song-form backing set of lines. He gives up on that and Jerry moves right away and on then into the Insect Weirdness tone at 13:50! Freak out, people! This band is going somewhere not of this earth.
TC comes down with some cool trills up and down, they band is holding steady, Jerry hits some strong notes, they bring it way up and it blossoms on into a Dark Star chord and them jam. “Theme” in quotes I mean. It’s always a restatement of the thematic idea, some great sense to it this evening, the hand drums are jamming along. And back to the intro with some cool little timbres from the organ.
Verse 2 comes in nicely. Very performative. Hand drums still live and active during the verse/chorus.
Nice outro, with one flat clam on the counterpoint. All in all an amazingly creative and fluid version, really upbeat and happy-sounding! They were clearly enjoying themselves.
bzfgt:
I finally figured out what you mean by the "spy theme" thing during "reason shatters"...I listened for it this time. It does sound like a spy theme....I never really noticed it before, I think I often tune out during the verses...
JSegel:
Yeah, I know I keep making up my own nomenclature, I think it's just so I can settle the parts in my own brain and understand what's where. The verse/song form seems really important to me for some reason. In the "proto" Dark Star single version and very early live versions, they use the three-line form often as the basis for the jam, and the rhythms keep that structure: first line is basic, second has that offbeat "spy theme" thing, third line goes "casting" and wanders off. They do it in a lot of the jams (till lately anyway, it hasn't appeared much in the April/May 69 versions).
Mr. Rain:
Yes, a happy-sounding version, not so much the "this is serious" vibe of other Dark Stars. The Seminole Indian Village seems to have had a cheerful effect on them. I don't know what the venue was?
So you noticed TC playing differently too. My theory is the new organ helped him sound, well, more like an organ player....there were a lot of points where I thought "wait, this isn't Pigpen again?" It's quite a shift in style, and he sounds nice in this. His playing is very supportive of Jerry's....though you could say the same of everybody else too, they all stick close to wherever Jerry goes.
Adamos:
It starts upbeat with some pace; there's a little edge and fuzz to Jerry's tone. Plenty of Phil underneath and nice rhythm textures from Bobby too. A touch of vibraslap adds something different as has been pointed out. A couple minutes in and they are cruising along, things are moving quickly, Jerry seems to be playing a lot of notes. At 3:02 they ease off and Jerry continues on, weaving in and out, complimented by Phil with small, occasional flourishes from Bob. By 4:45 they're picking it up again and moving pretty quick. Jerry seems a little sloppy around 5:10 but they right the ship by 5:20 and carry on in more subtle fashion, hitting the main theme at 6:28 and then the first verse.
Post verse they start to head out quickly, in come the gong washes and a bit of bell tolling but then they pivot into some weirdness at 8:30. Starting at 8:50 there's a gentle passage, TC steps in a bit more and Phil can be heard well too. This starts to build and by 9:55 it's pretty intense again. Some repeating flourishes from Jerry at 10:12 with strong drums; TC is getting in some complimentary runs too. At 11:00 Jerry does a jabbing thing that hits a mini peak. From there he continues on with a driving feel that spills upwards at 11:28 before easing up, after which he plays a repeating note and then they head into Sputnik.
Sputnik is relatively mellow, TC adds some color, more jabbing from Jerry kind of like winding up, then at 13:25 he launches out and they continue on through familiar territory. They briefly pause at 13:50 and then at 13:55 they break into insect weirdness; hello again. This dissipates and then at 14:30 it's more jabbing guitar notes, fairly low key, with some TC color and a bouncy bass line. At 14:45 they quickly ascend and sustain a collective high before shifting back down again. They continue on with the jam and slowly work their way into Bright Star which is a relatively mellow version but it carries on for a little while, with lots of congas and drums. That resolves and then it's back to the main theme and second verse.
I wouldn't describe this performance as particularly remarkable in the context of other recent versions but it's a good one nonetheless. And the circumstances of the festival may have had something to do with that.
There's some information about the festival in the liner notes to Road Trips 4.1. Sounds like it was a crazy time:
"But let’s see---where can we stage a hip little music festival where we don’t need the approval of uptight city authorities or require a gaggle of local cops looking for any excuse to start breaking heads or busting folks? The answer to those questions was the Seminole Indian reservation in Hollywood, just north of Miami, and the event was the three-day “Big Rock Pow Wow”--May 23-25 1969--featuring the Grateful Dead as headliners the first two days (Rhinoceros on the third), as well as such acts as Johnny Winter, Muddy Waters, The Youngbloods, Sweetwater, Joe South, NRBQ and Aum. Timothy Leary, who had recently announced his candidacy for governor of California, was also a ubiquitous presence the whole weekend. City cops and Federal agents weren’t allowed on Native American soil without permission; indeed “the authorities” had no jurisdiction over anything that went on there.
For their part, the Seminoles were happy to make a little bread from the event, which drew somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000 people at its most crowded. (If that sounds small, remember that in the spring of 1969, the Dead were barely known outside of California. They only had two albums out--Aoxomoxoa would be released shortly--and hadn’t gotten much FM airplay yet, so their reputation in Florida was based primarily on their appearances at Thee Image and at the Miami Pop Festival on December 28, 1968.) Many folks camped for a buck in nearby fields and woods on the reservation grounds; others just came in for one of the three shows. A make-shift group calling itself Together Inc., which included a Timothy Leary associate named Anthony, whose brother ran a Miami “head” shop, put the festival together, and some of the people from Thee Image helped with staging and other logistical matters.
The heart of the sprawling reservation was a re-creation of a traditional Seminole village where members of the tribe would demonstrate and sell native crafts and also perform ceremonial music and dances. One of the odder (but most popular) features was a swimming pool where every hour a Seminole brave would “wrestle” a rather tired-looking alligator, which lived in a nearby pen with a couple of his comatose brethren. Alas, there was no alligator-wrestling during the Rock Pow Wow, but the Seminole crafts and music were happening during the daytime, and various non-Seminole artisans and hippie groups were allowed to set up booths and sell their wares. As Denise Fesko’s account of the weekend in the Miami underground paper Strawberry Fields described, “There was a fresh fruit and juice stand, a flower shop and a record concession on one end of the walk bridge. Around the other side of the campfire area were chickees [traditional Seminole huts] operated by Indians making pumpkin bread and stringing bead rings and bracelets and sewing brightly colored clothes…
“The people came and the music began. A sort of perfumed smell filled the air and rose up through the piney trees. The grass covering the ground was so soft and clean that most people dared not mar its face with trampling shoes, but entwined their toes around the clean grass blades. Peace and freedom were no longer trite, overused words, but a reality and a precious gift to the people.”
But that idyllic description doesn’t mention perhaps the key element of the weekend: the orange juice. “There was a huge orange juice machine backstage that probably held ten gallons or more--complimentary orange juice; it’s Florida!” recalls John Blackwell, who was mostly known as Sgt. Pepper back then, and had worked at Thee Image and was wired into the hippie scene in Miami. “So someone got this great idea: Let’s put acid in the orange juice.” Appropriately enough, newly minted “Orange Sunshine” LSD had been spreading like wildfire since the beginning of the year and there was plenty around in South Florida. Blackwell also recalls being given a fistful of mescaline tablets to distribute in the crowd gratis, courtesy of Leary’s entourage. Eventually, cups and containers of the electric juice made it out into the crowd, too, and, Blackwell says, “There was a mass dosing of hundreds of people.”
Wayne Ceballos, leader of the S.F. group Aum, and a friend of the Dead’s from the Warlocks days, recalls, “Everyone who drank the orange juice got messed up. My nephew and I had been drinking Wild Turkey before we drank the orange juice, so you can imagine… Me and Pigpen, who I was really tight with, were drunk and stoned--oh, my God! I remember Bill Kreutzmann and I had this huge deep, conversation about I don’t know what, but they had these big ropes that held up the tarps over the stage and we were holding on to this rope and talking, and all of a sudden I said, ‘Bill, you know what? I try to let go of this rope and I can’t.’ He goes, ‘Wow, I can’t either!’ And we just stood there and laughed and laughed. It was that kind of a day. When [Aum] went on, we were so wasted, we were spittin’ orange juice at each other and laughing our asses off. But then we ****in’ kicked ass. It was one of the best sets we ever played.”
Banana of The Youngbloods remembers drinking some orange juice during a soundcheck, then heading back to the hotel and spending half an hour or so trying to extricate the band’s hopelessly high drummer, Joe Bauer, from the bathroom. “We were pushing and pulling on the door,” he laughs. “Then it finally occurred to one of us to turn the doorknob.” A couple of acts never made it to the stage at all or had to quit early.
As for the Dead, well, the orange juice was not a problem--just another day at the office! But it’s also easy to hear the bold, slightly reckless psychedelic edge in their playing on these two sets, which feature a healthy chunk of the group’s mid-’69 repertoire, from a ferocious recitation of the (future) classic Live Dead sequence of “Dark Star” > “St. Stephen” > “The Eleven” > “Lovelight,” to “Doin’ That Rag,” “China Cat,” “Alligator” (of course!) and the lovely and relatively rare “He Was a Friend of Mine.” Though the playing on both Dead sets was at times positively feral, writer Fesko noted: “The Grateful Dead were amazing as the final act that [Saturday] night. The people moved smoothly to the serene sounds and sweetness of their notes and then could not keep from standing and dancing and clapping each other’s palms when the Dead played their happy, loud, moving songs.”
Meanwhile around a campfire backstage one night, Leary, members of the Dead and a few others passed around more orange juice and yukked it up. Nearby, Blackwell relates, “The Seminole chief--whose son was a musician, and who led a dance through the grounds for three days straight--was swappin’ lies with a Hell’s Angel, and eventually our crowd [the Dead, etc.] merged in with the chief’s groups, and at one point he gets up and he made us all--this whole crowd, including the Hell’s Angel--honorary Seminole braves! Which frankly we were very honored by at the time; we took it seriously.”
For the Dead, after the Pow Wow it was back to the West Coast for a series of shows. In Florida, though, the impact was profound. Fesko again: “A lot of the good from the Pow Wow has lingered with us and we will take it with us to the next scheduled gathering in Atlanta, Georgia, July 4th and 5th. In fact, this goodness has become embedded so deeply that we will carry it and contain it within us throughout our lives.”
Mr. Rain:
What a scene! I guess that orange juice made for some happy musicians.
And at these shows, someone could shout "Alligator!" and not mean the song. That reminds me of Bob Weir's jokes about the alligator living in the NY Academy of Music.... "The guy hollering "alligator" is serious, dead serious. There's an alligator in the Academy of Music, he lives under rows CC and DD, and he wakes up for the rock & roll. So there's always some dude back there hollering "alligator!" and everybody else thinks he's making a request."
Or when Pigpen said at the Fillmore East to more cries of "Alligator!" -- "Don't be hollering out emergency warnings in a place like this. An alligator loose in here could chomp off a bunch of feet. Especially yours, buddy!"
But still, the Dead obliged with an Alligator at the Seminole Indian Village. Of course Bob had to preface it with a yellow dog story, which no audience could escape, even in the Florida swamps.
notesofachord:
Wow, so the consensus on 5/23/69 Dark Star is that it’s “okay”? “Alright”?
IIRC, my memory of it is that Garcia is jamming his ass off like a madman. A top Jerry version. Yeah, it’s not as deep and spacey as the best 1969 versions, but Jerry goes off.
Or so I thought. I should spin it again. Perhaps it’s not as amazing as I recalled.
JSegel:
...guess you had to be there...
Actually, I thought it was incredibly good, upbeat and happy sounding. The outdoor Dark Stars are really something, taking the whole world into space like that. And these stories are incredible. I can't even imagine trying to play after Orange Sunshine, though I guess you get 'used to it' if you do it all the time? My limited experiences of trying to play or perform on hallucinogens were few and far between (and long ago) and never went well—tuning and timing were, well, ...difficult—guess I just didn't do it often enough!
I was reading Joel Selvin's book on Altamont (quite good) a while back and there was a throw away line about somebody in Jefferson Airplane eating some acid in the helicopter on the way, like they were just smoking a joint, and I just couldn't wrap my head around the casualness of eating acid as if it just "got you high". I had to assume that that was Selvin's misunderstanding of the effectiveness of drugs in general, but I know that he isn't that clueless, so in the end I was just confused by the statement.
That said, perhaps if you have so much in your system all the time, I expect eventually you must level out somewhat. Haven't tried that route, personally. Yet.
Mr. Rain:
Considering the Dead had Owsley using them as acid guinea-pigs since '66 and it was practically part of their daily diet, I'm sure they had very high tolerances. They were used to playing through the hallucinations! Check out 6/8/69 for a show where they got extra-dosed and were so high they could hardly stand, and Jerry had to sit out part of the show.
bzfgt:
I don't think any of us said "OK," did we? I'm not going back to look. It seems like the consensus was it's really good, but not as remarkable as some of the other ones immediately preceding it...
Mr. Rain:
Yeah it's just alright! Compared to the other spring '69 Dark Stars. Which means it's still amazing. Even the weakest Dark Star in this time period is still quite a trip. But we're not listening to these in isolation, so it's natural to compare them, that's what this thread's about...you get high standards after listening to all of these. Personally I think this version is left in the dust by the Dark Stars coming up soon. But it's still a wonder! Like JSegel said it's really upbeat, very spirited Jerry -- every Dark Star has its own mood, something distinct to offer.
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