8836 Central Park 11:26
Main theme at 5:49.
First verse at 7:23.
Main theme at
Second verse at
Goes into The Other One.
This is a pretty bad audience recording that cuts in to a Dark Star in progress. We can hear a conversation in progress that is almost as loud as the music, although I couldn’t make out what was being said. At 2:35 you can hear Lesh kick in with his part for the main theme, but this doesn’t last long. The jam is pretty straightforward although there are spots (such as around 3:30) when it threatens to get a little weird. At 3:54, there’s some Sputnik flashes, but they soon pass by.
At 4:39 Garcia starts playing a repeated figure and things weird out a bit for a while. Then at 5:39, everyone but TC comes to a stop—the audience applauds a bit, perhaps thinking it is over, but they come back in with the main theme. Garcia varies the theme a bit with some triplet runs this time. At 7:23, the first verse arrives.
This is a lot of stuff before the verse even with the cut. The intro seemed pretty spacey, but it’s hard to judge with the sound quality here, as the band sounds kind of distant. They go into an interesting interim jam after the verse (the jam before the jam, where they usually build tension)…at 10:22, they seem like they’re breaking out of it, and it seems there is a cut about here …but it keeps at a weird and broody thing, although the cadence of Other One starts creeping into some of the licks...on the other hand, you could argue that Dark Star continues until about :40 into the next track, when Phil starts to play The Other One.
This is another one that is difficult to evaluate, with the sound quality and the cuts. Much of it seems rather languid.
What was said:
Mr. Rain:
Not the greatest audience recording, no.....kinda hurts the ears, really. But if you figure it was a guy recording outside in a park in '69 surrounded by chattering hippies, it's not the worst recording either....you can adjust your ears after a while. I'm surprised the band actually sounds pretty well-balanced, they're not lost in the distance; even TC can be heard, and the inevitable guiro.
The tape cuts in sometime after the start. The opening jam is really mellow....maybe too mellow, it doesn't seem to be holding people's attention. This isn't festival-in-the-park sunshine boogie music. But the Dead are standing their ground, maintaining the relaxed mood; they keep it up for a long time before going to the theme. Jerry even shakes off an initial move to the theme at 2:40, and the music gradually gets quieter and more delicate! Bold move. But after 4:30 a gust of intensity sweeps through the music and they enter an intense passage. When that ends after 5:30 and the band falls silent, they get some appreciative applause. Now the main theme comes in....and this is done differently than most of the pre-first-verse themes, the band keeps the theme going until 7:20, getting more intense as it goes, Jerry elaborating on the melody...and they get more applause before the verse!
The Dead dip right into a nice spacey spot afterwards...usually they go for tension and mayhem in this spot, but this time they're keeping things cool and relaxed, letting the music get quieter again. After 9:30 it even sounds like they're playing the outro, and they fall into a quiet space. Feedback and gong, we're starting to take off! But then there seems to be a cut here....there might not be much missing, but then again it might be a whole full-blown Space missing. The same bass drone continues after the cut, so I'll guess it was just a brief tape pause. Now Jerry's playing his usual coming-out-of-space type lead, and the band's starting up a new jam... Unfortunately now that the band's getting louder, the crowd is getting louder too, and the intrepid taper's having trouble.
After 10:45 I'm hearing hints of the Other One from Jerry -- at first it's just a flash, they continue on with Dark Star, but they're increasingly getting sucked into the Other One, like both tunes are being played at once. :40 into the Other One track, Phil relents and the band exits Dark Star for good. (Too bad for us, some loudmouth near the taper is having a super-important conversation during the transition.)
This Dark Star is mainly notable for being one of the first (after 5-30) to jam into another tune without the second verse. It's also interesting in that, just from the music, you'd never guess it was out in Central Park. If anything this Dark Star is far more patient, atmospheric, and intimate than (what exists of) the one at the Fillmore East the day before.
Jsegel:
Outdoor show, Dark Star comes in to serve as the transitional song between the country-folk tunes and the rock trip out. Interesting choices of sets of notes to play with to gain some entryway into a jam. JG steps on some odd ones on the way, and then steps again to make sure he heard it right. It’s a mellow intro in the park today. I’m guessing nice June weather, they’re sort of meandering with the shakers/guiro beatnik vibe for a while. I hear TC on some higher, longer phrases, nice juxtaposition. Sone cool whirlpools. Despite the bad quality recording, everybody is audible, so you can hear nice play between them, Jerry really isn’t playing super hot today, very relaxed. He gets caught in some weird pull-off eddies and into odd arpeggios, Phil seems to want to take up the lead-slack. Nice exit from the whirlpool at 5:40 or so, into Dark Star proper and the verse on its way. The audience seems to have been not super into the jam, but once it catches as a “song” they cheer and then clap (slowly) along.
Nice first verse, obscured by lots of cymbal crashing. I like TCs new verse maneuvers.
Classic intro to the middle section (the “nightfall”). Some Bobby and Phil jamming, Jerry isn’t going for the bell this time although the cymbals are sort of trying to go there. TC on his standard swells and arpeggios. Until it goes south by 10 minutes into noise jam in the park, kids! And feedback, but then suddenly it’s in an actual Jerry lead jam for a few seconds. (Sorta sounds cut, actually.) But he is caught up in small sets of notes, little eddies int he stream today and no big gestures.
And odd version, park/daytime space jam with tiny little statements and no great sweeping improv. I guess JG wasn’t feeling it and wanted to move on to The Other One.
ianuaditis:
I alluded to it in a comment a few days ago, given the setting of this one I think it's a fair supposition that chemical enhancements are involved, that would certainly explain the mellowness and the noise jam, that angular way Garcia is kind of ticking along before the Other One shows.
It sounded to me like Phil was the one who started the Other One, Garcia was very much playing Dark Star stuff when Phil hits the riff, though he is pretty quick to take it up. Maybe he thought they would come back to it. The 'loose' Other One was still a relatively novel thing, I note 6-21-69 as the first of those. (Maybe a case for 6-8 though that one at least started with Cryptical Envelopment.)
Mr. Rain:
Yeah, way too early to call the one-verse Dark Stars a trend, this is more like the groundhog poking his nose up to check his shadow and diving back into his burrow.... They'd happen occasionally, but not for two years would the one-verse Dark Stars become a regular thing. The Dead were still pretty committed to their regular format in '69.
5-30-69 was the one-verse example before this one, where they go into Cosmic Charlie mid-jam....personally I thought that was a cooler transition than this one.
5-7-69 was the first, I believe, but the intent is debatable.... In that one, they've all but finished Dark Star and are probably close to the second verse, when Jerry breaks a string and can't fix it quickly. They decide to stop for a drum break and, perhaps wisely, don't resume the last verse afterwards.
Oh, and 5-7 also features a 'loose' Other One that goes into Smokestack. (A tapecut omits the start, so it might have started with Cryptical Envelopment.)
It looks like loose Other Ones became something of a trend in mid-'69...I spotted several examples from the rest of the year as the Cryptical bookend became, at least for a while, more optional.
Thinking some more on this, I noticed that the three really short outliers in this period were all outdoors venues -- 6-22 Central Park, 7-12 Pavilion, 8-21 Aqua Theater. Hmm, a trend?
But then I realized the Dead also played quite a few other outdoors shows that summer too -- 7-7 Atlanta festival, 8-16 Woodstock, 8-23 Bullfrog Fest, 9-1 New Orleans pop fest -- which all had Dark Stars of respectable lengths, and are all over the place in quality too. So, like you say, it's hard to generalize!
One possibility we were batting around earlier was that the outdoors Dark Stars might have some different characteristics than the indoor-theater Dark Stars. But so far, I haven't really heard any specific difference the environment makes to their playing. The 5-7 Golden Gate Park Dark Star is nothing like the 6-22 Central Park one.
ianuaditis:
5-23-69 was another outdoor show that had a regular-sized Dark Star.
Regarding 5-7, the setlist in Deadbase is wrong, so I copied the setlist from the archive listing into the book, which lists Cryptical>Drums>Other One>Smokestack, so when I went back to hunt for the first loose Other One, that one didn't get counted because it had Cryptical listed.
That loose Other One is really loose, as they don't even do verse 2...highly unusual in any era.
Adamos:
As the tape cuts in a somewhat mellow, wandering groove is in progress, although Jerry’s guitar is screaming out around 1:20 so it’s not completely tame. TC can be heard fairly well and adds some nice color. There’s a touch of the main theme around 2:40 but it’s sort of reabsorbed into the groove.
Jerry gets a low repetitive thing going around 3:30 that sounds pretty good. And then starting at 4:40 he’s kind of winding up and Phil is playing off of him and then they launch forward into this lovely sounding passage. By 5:38 they reach a lull and everyone applauds and then they head into the main theme and things build up with some edge before they head into the first verse.
Post verse we get the gong washes and Phil and Bobby start them on the trail but it quickly gets spacier and oozier. They’ve weaving around each other and hitting some low notes. Things are swirling and revving and ominous. Hopefully some of the non-chatty people in the audience were digging this ride! There’s a tape cut around 10:18 and they seem to be in a more meandering passage but still with some edge. This continues on to The Other One track and things evolve from there.
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