83. 1969-10-25

150136  Winterland 22:02

Main theme at :29 and 2:34.
Bright Star at 2:49.
Main theme at 3:56 and 5:25.
First verse at 7:02.
Feelin’ Groovy at 12:28.
Soulful Strut at 14:50.
Main theme at 19:18.
Second verse at 20:20.
Goes into St. Stephen.

Garcia has switched to a Stratocaster that he will play until April, 1970. The main theme comes in very early here, and this will become more common in the future. As is often the case, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly where the band starts to stray from the two chord pattern, but they play it pretty straight for a while here, with Garcia building his line around the theme and returning to it often. Bright Star, which is a variation of the main theme, makes an early appearance at 2:49. It’s not really what I’d consider a full Bright Star, but it’s pronounced enough that I noted it in the list above. The timings there are perhaps kind of arbitrary because of the way that the intro section sort of revolves around the theme this time.

At around 4:20, though, things start to get a little strange as the band slides toward E minor and then, less expectedly, A minor. At 5:25, Garcia starts to play the main theme over this implied A minor, and then the band sort of migrates back to the usual A mixolydian/D major but not, as far as I can tell, all at once; at least, it seems like something different is going on here for a while. Pretty soon we get to the verse.

The jam out of the verse begins very straightforwardly, but it still has a unique kind of feel—I don’t feel like we’re back in 1968 for a moment here. Lesh starts subtly emphasizing B and E, suggesting E minor and reëstablishing the unsettling tonal ambiguity that began before the verse. At 8:55 Garcia plays some high chiming double stops that point the band toward space, which we are coming to expect at this point. It doesn’t arrive, however; about a minute later, Jerry’s volume knob maneuver gives them another nudge in this direction, but they opt for a spooky jam rather than a full-fledged space excursion.

The intensity builds, and at 11:42 Garcia broadens his tone and begins an assertive lead line in A mixolydian that soon brings back the theme/Bright Star references. They start to coast, regrouping so that at 12:28 Lesh can start Feelin’ Groovy, which seems to have been anticipated here. This wraps up at 13:59, but the momentum carries through until 14:18 when Weir starts hinting at Soulful Strut. This hasn’t fully materialized at 14:41 when they slide back into Feelin’ Groovy, but then by 14:50 they are heading back into Soulful Strut! Lesh seems to look back at Feelin’ Groovy once or twice before they finally settle into it.

Only the Grateful Dead would incorporate modular sections like this, mixing and cutting them up until it’s almost impossible to determine exactly what they are playing at times. This can make the whole enterprise seem sloppy sometimes, but tonight this is all rather impressive. Finally, at 17:35 Garcia starts leaning on an A7 chord, and this takes us into a charming but short interstice that opens up into a remarkable Garcia/Lesh duet beginning at 18:13. This winds up with Garcia hammering a high G and then climbing to the A, suggesting the Bright Star that almost arrives at 19:07, but instead they crash into the main theme at 19:18 and pound on it. They slow the tempo considerably before returning to the verse.

Like any good Dark Star, this captivates while expanding our sense of the possibilities of human expression. It seems like nothing quite like this has happened before, and we are glad that it happened—what more could we ask for? There are no weak moments here, and the Feelin’ Groovy/Soulful Strut handoff is a major high point. These two jams have introduced new possibilities for structure in Dark Star, but tonight we see that it is not as simple as that, and that they have also introduced new opportunities for productive chaos in the interchange between the two. With the forces of chaos and order both thwarted, the Dead can consider this a job well done.


What was said:

Mr. Rain:


An elegant opening. Deep bass & guitar tones, right up front. TC starts out playing his new opening lick (I think he started this around the end of August, taking over from the old ROR). I think there's some brief conga tapping at the start but then it goes away. Is this the end of the congas in Dark Star? The guiro's barely present too.
The opening jam's a long meditation on the theme...Jerry kind of accidentally wanders into Bright Star after one theme stop but it's just for a few seconds. Around 4:20 Jerry gets into some volume twirls which takes the band in an interesting minor-key direction. Mickey brings in the gong to emphasize it....it sounds like the fog swirling in. But by 5:30 the theme comes back, and now it has a bit of a kick to it with some drums and extra-rhythmic guitar work...like a Dancin' Dark Star for a minute.

The verse sounds more minimal with TC at very low volume. You'd expect space afterwards but instead Jerry hops in to continue the jam. After he does some bell chimes they get into an older-style space segment with slashing chords & tension. (TC sounds irritatingly like a telephone.) But the storm soon passes and they float on calm waters. It gets quiet & pretty for a minute; but they don't stop there for long, they're still aiming ahead.
The jam gets strong fast; they're not waiting for a slow build this time. The drums accompany them and they crank up the volume, playing harder...Jerry almost trips into Bright Star again, but swerves away in time; then he coasts on one note. It sounds like they know Feelin' Groovy is coming -- Phil & Bob tease it a bit, but they're waiting for the right moment to bring it in. Once it starts it's kind of low-key, but gathers strength. There's a cool point around 14 minutes where they pause while Jerry feeds back on a harmonious note. Then they combine themes: Bob starts Soulful Strut, they ponder it for a bit, then go ahead with more Feelin' Groovy, with a sweet lead from Jerry. Then all of a sudden it turns back into Soulful Strut before our eyes. (My guess is this isn't totally spontaneous....they've played these themes before.) Jerry plays close to what will become his regular Soulful Strut lead line.
Then something happens to Jerry and he stops playing for a bit. (It's too quick for a string change....quick tune-up, maybe? TC steps up briefly.) When Jerry comes back he sounds ready to move on, and signals the end of Soulful Strut with big chords around 18:40. He changes the rhythm in his strumming and does a quick free-time duet with Phil (Bob stands by til he finds a structured moment to come back in). It sounds like Jerry's going for Bright Star but instead he & Bob hit these high harmonized notes Allmans-style, then bam, they're back in the main theme. They have to slow down for the verse, like ballooning down from the heights.

Nicely done. It continues the trend of tightened-up feel-good Dark Stars we've had lately.
I don't follow you on "productive chaos" though....this sounds like a highly organized Dark Star to me. If anything perhaps they've nailed down the structure too much....they know exactly what's coming and they're willing to toss out some spacy weirdness & risky improv detours to get there. But this may just be a step in getting the new structure down before Dark Star gets longer & looser again....


bzfgt:


They have added two modular jam segments to Dark Star over the last month. Here they play one of them, then start to go into the other, then the two are going simultaneously, then they go back to the first, then they finally move on to the second. This would happen with no other band. The jam segments in this case do not domesticate the improvisational madness of Dark Star in this case, then.


ianuaditis:


Exactly, the madness is to stretch the framework by conflating the two segments. It would be an interesting comparison to look at Alligator>Caution because the action in that is typically moving between a simple modal theme and various other tangentially related melodies, whereas with the 'thematic jams' they don't really have a set melody (though that's where the improvisation comes in,) but instead play simple chord progressions that are harmonically related to the DS theme.



JSegel:



Nice to be back at Winterland and starting off with a Dark Star. After Stills/Nash? Relaxed intro, nice little repetitive motifs from TC, Jerry comes in slowly with motion around the theme, playing down into his strings, Phil trying out some low string ideas. Nice tone from everybody. This is another where they can hear each other and themselves well, so it’s got a lot of room to play. JG teases a theme and then switches tone up for some darker area, comes out into some stretching outside the mode. Really nicely exploratory, settling into little tidepools before teasing theme ideas again at 2:30 or so, heading brighter (and tuning) and into little rhythmic riff areas. It comes down from this wave, TC does some upward flourishes against Jerry’s downward ones. Jerry’s and Phil’s tone are both great on this recording, and they are relaxed. To the intro theme and TC takes it to do some solos. It sounds like it will head to a verse, but Phil takes it sideways into arhythmic lulls, and the cymbals wash away the scene. We’re in a harmonic static space. I hear some pokes at theme material, and drums sidestick their way in to a jazzy/funky Dark Star area, sliding into the chords from a half step below, building it up as a chordal jam on the intro theme.

Verse at 7 minutes, Jerry sticks the notes, no warbling. Phil takes the line two rhythm, casually, on line three it wanders a bit but not excessively, then it slows considerably for the chorus. "Through the Transitive Nightfall" is very slowly stated, but after the jam intro, they hop right back into it and Jerry starts soloing, the whole band grooving along. Some new chord ideas enter before 9 minutes and then suddenly some splashes, from cymbals and Bob and then Phil kicks it in, they’re manually killing the groove by pushing it under the waves. When this quiets down, Jerry goes to the volume knob swells and they each settle on some small figures in a sparse pool. This picks up a bit with Jerry on a delicate but bright-tones lead entering, Bob on very outside chords, struck in an odd sequence, but they build it up like this over the next few minutes. JG kicks it up with a pedal of some sort at 11:45, they are stating things strongly, but Bob is keeping the harmony very outside the mode, very atonal. The groove is still underlying but not super evident with everybody off on their own. TC still plugging his arpeggios. They go into a chordal jam section for a bit at 13 but it keeps falling out of it with Phil not keeping the roots intact until he starts the descending “Feeling Groovy” thing for a bit. This moves along semi-together for several minutes. It eventually becomes fully the new section by 15 minutes, with an upbeat rhythmic and major key melodic feel (as I said before, I dunno about Soulful Strut, this still sounds more like “Grazing in the Grass” to me) to a build up in the 17th minute and they strike big chords and kill it off at 17:45, Jerry slowly leads it out and back toward Dark Star territory, but when it gets there it’s got harmonic lead stuff from JG and BW, weird! Theme hits hard at 19:20 and then they slow it down, slow it down, slow it down and back to the verse 2 intro are, at a much slower tempo.

A delicate verse 2, hardly anybody wandering on line 3. The outro vocals are ok, the instrumental counterpoints sound kinda like they’re just throwing their fingers at the instruments to make it happen. Off to St Stephen after only a few chords.

Nice one in that they extend it and play with new sections, odd that they don’t play entirely together though they obviously hear each other, and some very atonal stuff from Bob. Weird usage of harmonies in the theme stuff toward the end, and the serious rubato heading back to the verse. I started out thinking I would love it with this recording and stage volumes, but didn’t really in the end.




Mr. Rain:


I didn't notice Bob being atonal before, but listening again to this, he does seem to be on his own path as they build up the jam. I like the way bzfgt puts it, "tonal ambiguity." But still, he & Phil are able to lock in to some extent, and Bob can still harmonize with Jerry when the moment calls for it, so he's not just wandering obliviously off on his own. But he may be "playing ahead" in a way, fixed on his own patterns (which he does sometimes in Dark Star). He & Phil have some trouble getting Feelin' Groovy started in unison so it is "semi-together" at the start....and I wonder if he had that early Soulful Strut flash prematurely and they decided to roll with it, making it sound like an intentional little detour before they commit to that theme. There could be some struggling & uncertainty happening onstage, but they pull it off well enough so we go "wow! they're playing two jam segments at once!" Phil in particular is a pro throughout at making sense of what Bob's doing and pulling him into the whole...but then Phil's always playing two things at once anyway.



Feel free to stand your ground and stick with "Grazing in the Grass"! I dunno about that one, but Bob's chords have inspired so much debate (and don't perfectly match any source), the label's just a matter of convenience. Might as well keep the one you're happy with.




bzfgt:




I definitely thought that was what was happening...I think they are relaxed enough about it that they can sometimes pull it off like that, but I don't know that anyone was thinking "Let's mix these up!"




adamos:


Lovely opening. Everyone is clear and present in the mix and they weave together a nice, relaxed groove like cruising along a country road. It’s mellow but still has some pace to it. They touch on the main theme early on and then play off of that before coming back to it again a couple minutes later followed by just a bit of Bright Star. Jerry, Phil and Bob really sound wonderful together complimented by TC and percussion accents. Coming off the last recording that was so poor this one is symphonic.

Around 4:20 Jerry hits the volume knobs and things slow down and get a little more abstract. Phil keeps it going while the others hover a bit and then wander gently out. They regroup at the theme again and then work a nice groove on their way to the first verse. Bob adds some enthusiastic flourishes in this passage.

After the verse Jerry comes back in quickly, joining Phil and Bob to continue the jam. After working some lines he shifts into some minor bell tolling and TC steps in with some prominent swirls. The intensity increases and they stir up some freakiness but it quickly subsides and they briefly hover in a subtle, gentle zone. Jerry works the knobs again and then cuts through with a sharp line and then he, Phil and Bob start to weave around each other as a new jam picks up in intensity.

They’re playing powerfully and there are hints of Bright Star again but they roar past it then ease up a little and start signaling Feeling Groovy which comes together nicely and then revs up as they keep it going. Soulful Strut starts to emerge but then suddenly Feeling Groovy has more to say and they’re kind of working both before Soulful Strut fully blooms and the whole thing just sounds glorious and triumphant.

They keep it going for a while, slowly easing up, and then once its run its course they pivot into a big upward swing. This lasts for just a moment and then they take it down lower but still have some pace as Jerry and Phil in particular play off of each other. This ascends to another peak along with the Allman-esque sound that Mr. Rain pointed out before shifting into the main theme and then gently proceeding to the second verse.



A compelling version indeed!