86: 1969-11-08

17433 Fillmore 21:06 (1. 14:43 [14:01 actual], 2. 1:05, 3. [UJB Jam] 2:34, 4. 3:24)
Main theme at 1. 5:18.
First verse at 1. 6:07.
Sputnik at 1. 9:45.
Feelin’ Groovy (sort of) at 1. 13:21.
Main theme at 2. :07.
Main theme at 4. :02 and 4. 1:04.
Second verse at 4. 1:25.
Goes into The Other One and St. Stephen.

Here they do something new, weaving Dark Star around The Other One (and another Uncle John’s Band jam, which is again tracked separately at this source). This will never be standard operating procedure, but they will sometimes do things like this in the future.

This swells into life with a slightly askew statement from Lesh and Garcia flashing his little bass string lick that reappears every so often and then taking off with a trebly lead on the Stratocaster. There is some feedback early on; I think it’s from Garcia, as it is rather loud. Several times in the early going the band sort of winds down into a kind of tentative holding pattern and then cranks it back up. Garcia states the main theme at 5:18, and this time it goes right to the verse.

The current M.O. is a soft landing out of the verse into space, and this is what they do tonight. From about 8:45 it sounds like Garcia, Lesh and Weir are all working the volume knobs, although Weir soon switches to some beautiful descending lines. At 9:45 Garcia starts softly playing Sputnik; he gradually gets louder, and after a moment where it seems like he’s heading back to space he starts playing the Sputnik lick in double time. The rest of the band is still more or less in space, or at least it’s a very spacey Sputnik, and at 11:40 Garcia starts a new line to lead the way out.

At 12:15 or so Garcia seems to be subtly hinting at The Other One. The band gains momentum; at about 13:21 Lesh starts playing Feelin’ Groovy, whereas Garcia still seems to be heading toward The Other One, and then there are hints of Uncle John’s Band. At 14:15 they seem to be finally committing to Feelin’ Groovy, but this suddenly disperses and they pedal along for a bit before Lesh decides to strongly assert The Other One and they finally make the transition.

After a twelve minute Other One, they dip back into Dark Star for a minute before going into another upbeat Uncle John’s Band jam. Once again, this begins and ends with the end riff, sandwiched around an instrumental version of the main song.

They exit into the main Dark Star theme, and slow the tempo considerably before going into a brief Dark Star jam before hitting the second verse on the way out.

This is an intriguing development insofar as they use Dark Star as a jumping off point for exploring other songs and themes. On its merits alone this is a middling version, however. Each section feels a bit short and underdeveloped; after the initial 15 minute segment, they only touch on Dark Star long enough to state the theme and get out.


What was said:

JSegel:


After a particularly rousing Good Lovin’, complete with drum jams, some intro stabs from various musicians and then they start for real, at a decent tempo this evening. TC has a little motif he’s playing with at the intro chords. Jerry is playing on some harmonic content, and they start rolling on it all together, then it comes back to the groove. Lots of playing around on the Dark Star chords and groove, in and out of time, but all very relaxedly (though not as slow as the night before). It stalls a few times, like at 4 minutes in, and starts back up again. Phil seems to be exploring, trying to find a new thing, bringing the band up and down. He starts a new root-on-the-beat sort of progression (1-2, 1-4) before 5 minutes, but then they go into the theme proper at 5:30 or so, and head toward a verse at 6 minutes.

TC contributes some long lines on the first vocal line, oddly. The entire verse's rhythm statements seem to be on Phil’s shoulders. Nice outro to the middle jam.

Shakers and some bell tolling from Bob start the middle section, TC rolling around on the keys, Phil bringing up some volume on noisy notes, then it backs off again to nearly nothing after a short time. TC still rolling around, less high-harmonics on his stops now, more flute tone. The percussion takes over with sweeps and cymbals, then backs off to the new world. Volume swells, cymbal sweeps, odd notes coming in and held. Some odd chords, TC now going chromatic with more spectral organ stops. Space jam with sparse sounds, a sputnik threatening quietly from underneath at 10 minutes! It backs off, sparse sounds occur, then the arpeggio sputnik idea starts up again, but on odd chord notes. Phil beats some blasts out of the bass, lands on a low note and Jerry starts a rhythmic line. He’s already suggesting some “The Other One” rhythms and licks in here, telegraphing, but going back to 4/4 and back to the 12/8, they start up a jam in the Dark Star mode but TOO sort of rhythm. Bob is comping some chords, it’s gonna get somewhere else, it’s a I-V-IV-V Feeling Groovy thing. It breaks down again after 14 minutes and then Phil takes The Other One more seriously and begins it for real, then band falls in. Good example of refuting the suggested cue and going elsewhere for a while! (Or, can't turn on a dime with that rhythm section.)

They takes this off into a long up and down 6/8 jam which takes many minutes to get to the song. They get to the first verse after 6 minutes, then off they go again, and after another 5 or so of TOO, they start to head back to Dark Star melodically, still in the 6/8. This breaks up rather quickly as Jerry starts a Dark Star theme and the band switches the pulse into more of a swung 4. It’s fast and only “Dark Star” for a minute before heading to the Uncle John’s Band riff from Phil, everybody goes there, Jerry on a melodic thing above it for the first few times through, then they go through the song chords and JG plays the (future) vocal melody on guitar. It’s a whole song statement, really, minus the vocals.

Back to the riff stuff, and noodling comes out of it and it winds down tempo-wise with the Dark Star intro theme, then to a little quieter DS jam area.

Verse 2 comes in and it’s mostly bass and vocals, small guitar accompaniment. More wandering from TC on line 3. It seems to be continuously slowing down during the verse and chorus. Outro gets to the stately dissonant chords, which go on a bit long and off toward St Stephen again with a Jerry-only start there as it seems like Phil was still moving around while working on those chords.

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(complain, complain: I must say, I really don’t like the way these bits are separated on Archive.org, it always gaps out on playback for me plus it screws with our attempts to calculate times for the Dark Star! )

This is a pretty intense multi-layered set as a whole, regardless, lots of ins and outs of various songs, and even of future song tries, telegraphing Uncle John’s Band and even Playing in the Band that will come in later years. It's like the set of songs is a kaleidoscope where bits of songs pop out in the middle of others and then the mirror brings back the initial song on the flipside. Really creative, very cool stuff.

adamos:


It starts out a good pace with TC doing his riff and prominent guiro in the mix. Fairly quickly Jerry hits some deep, low notes and then swings upwards with some biting lines. Phil is playing off this with a nice full sound before pulling back a bit. TC is swirling with Bobby adding some subtle texture and Jerry is sort of screaming out and spiraling around. Phil comes in more strongly again and they ebb and flow a bit before spilling out into the main theme and then working their way to the first verse. Jerry’s singing has some more power to it compared to some of his gentler deliveries of late.

After the verse Phil and Bob start out and then in comes a little feedback and ferocity but just briefly; within a moment they bring it down to near stillness except for TC still working away. Out of this comes some string scraping and cymbal washes and volume knob twirls and it feels like they’ve entered some strange new dimension, spacey but also melodic. Jerry starts bringing in Sputnik and it slowly builds and gets louder and then seems like it will dissolve back into space. There are also little hints of The Other One interspersed. And then Sputnik bursts forth again moving very quickly and they build to little peak of weirdness before easing up and shifting into more of a rhythmic groove. By now the impending TOO is more pronounced but first they divert into a little Feeling Groovy with its own flavor before downshifting for the transition into TOO which comes on strong.

As The Other One comes to an end Phil and Jerry are playing off each other and they take it up one more time and work some repeating lines and then shift back into Dark Star at a pretty good clip. They’re cooking along with an uplifting vibe but after just a minute or so they pivot into an Uncle John’s Band jam. It’s also pretty fast paced and at one point you could almost picture it becoming La Bamba. It shifts back into the ending portion again with some prominent Phil and they work this a bit before transitioning back into Dark Star.

At this point they might have carried the momentum forward into a Bright Star ascent but instead they opt to slow it down and work the theme a little before moving on to the second verse. Nice group vocals to close it out.

This was a fun and interesting performance and I like the experimentation but working The Other One into the sequence probably diverted some of the energy and focus that would have gone into the Dark Star itself. Still cool though especially in the context of the full setlist.