96. 1970-02-08

19152 Fillmore West 26:13
Bright Star at :48.
Main theme at 2:49, 3:32, and 6:07.
First verse at 6:25.
Bright Star at 21:10.
Main theme at 21:59.
Feelin’ Groovy/UJB at 22:40.
Main theme at 24:00/24:18.
Second verse at 24:30.
Goes into St. Stephen.

The recording here sounds kind of rough, but we can hear everything that’s going on. Garcia plucks around a little and almost immediately goes into a Bright Star variation, which seems close enough to the real thing to mark above. He then repeats the pattern on the bass strings, and then gets into some chordal lead stuff. There seems to be a clear trend lately of building the intro more explicitly around theme-like stuff, which can at times make the identification of waypoints a bit difficult. This one hews pretty closely to the basic song pattern until about 5 minutes in, when it starts to wander a little, but as usually happens lately, it’s reined in pretty quickly again.

When the band hits the theme again at 6:07, they take it almost immediately to the verse. This is a gong-heavy affair this time. Afterward, they seem to take a little longer than usual getting to space, but that’s where it heads, of course. Space is a rather percussive, noisy thing tonight, with lots of feedback. They forgo the descent into silence that often begins this section, making a lot of noise throughout. At 13:18, Garcia seems ready to start his line, and this time there is no hint of Sputnik. By 14:00, he is asserting himself more strongly, and the band starts coming out of it.

A moody, broody jam comes together, with hints at the Dark Star theme in the guitar throughout. We find ourselves at a bit after 16 minutes in a rather rocking jam that has at some point coalesced; again, there is no modular jam here, but a quite structured thing nonetheless. At around 17:45 there is a bit of pedaling which often suggests the advent of a module, but they continue on with a kind of boogie thing that seems to have no recognizable pedigree. At 18:45 it starts to sound like Dark Star again; recent history would suggest we are heading toward the denouement, but here we have 7 minute to go.

Garcia starts winding up Bright Star and the band kicks up behind him. Instead of Bright Star, though, a little after 20 minutes the band sounds like its firing up The Other One. This continues until 21:10, when they swing back into an obvious Dark Star groove, with Garcia again suggesting Bright Star, which this time he follows through on, until it takes us into the main theme. The band gets funkier with this and then, unexpectedly, they swing into a Feelin’ Groovy jam that this time starts to sound more like Uncle John’s Band before Garcia starts to superpose the main theme on it, to which the band soon acquiesces. This brings us to the second verse, and the end of the song.

This is a really interesting version. The jamming here is fluid, and the band seems locked in and capable of unexpected permutations. A lot happens in this one.


What was said:

JSegel:


Audience “yeahs!” from the introductory riff, into a ponderous intro jam. Shaker is taking the rhythm. Jerry is hypnotic on a few note clusters, moving slowly. When he hits a thematic statement, Phil wanders away and then Bobby goes into weird substitution chords, like a long drawn out dissonance (based on G, the “other” chord, away from the root of the A mixolydian) so that when the tonic A comes back, it’s strong. All of them are throwing in more country-music chromaticism and Jerry uses a bunch of chordal 6ths in the jams. Long build with many scalar bits back to the thematic world, great full-band, forward-moving togetherness, with a nice return to the theme at 6 minutes and the verse thirty seconds later.

It’s a very moderate tempo, the verse is strong in that tempo right up until the cymbals crash on line 2 where the rhythm breaks. Phil does the wandering on line 3, can’t hear any keyboards… wait, there’s a tiny note of the bedoop bedoop after the Shall We Go lines maybe? Way low in the mix. It’s not a great tape.

Classic counterpoint intro to the jam, heavy cymbals, they break it up and break it down. I do hear some held organ chords in the background. Into volume swells and sparse note space, cymbals heavy. The percussion comes out, you can hear him picking it up and shaking a bell tree. Feedbacks, a rolling low end tremolo. Waves of different sounds crash out at 10:30, then the slide-bouncing on strings and feedbacks, interspersed with muted-cymbal hits. String scraping taking over, slowing it down, some sort of ratcheting sound? Isolated notes start coming in at 12:30 or so, atonal space notes, building in intensity, and more waves of cymbals. I think these sorts of space jams would make nice pictures, if you tried to describe it by drawing it. JG starts some short phrase playing, eventually making a more definite statement at 14 minutes, melancholy melodies, the drum set starts a little groove and the bass comes in, but JG stretches out of the path a few times, though they are alluding to the theme after a while and it gets grooving with the claves and drum set, they start in on full band jam at 16 or so, with some 6/8 stuff as if they might go into TOO again, but it’s still in Dark Star territory. At 18 minutes the tape quality changes and there’s more bass and he’s essentially walking the 6/8 into a swung 4/4. Continuing the jam with the Dark Star chords and some feints toward a bright star, sort of spread out a bit, and they play back and forth with the swung versus 6/8 "The Other One" rhythm. They hold onto this for a long time, and the theme comes in strong at 21:15, slow against the walking-style bass.

Ok weird, at 22:30 it cuts to the soundboard tape and directly after this they start a slow Feeling Groovy area. It only lasts a minute and a half or so before it’s back in Dark Star chords. Verse 2 at 24:30, sort of abruptly. Delivery is similar to verse 1, same arrangement but a little more from Bob on line three. Backing vocals are rough on the outro, the counterpoint outro is slightly off rhythmically, and they take it through the chords to St Stephen, which gets some yells from the audience as they start it—and it goes into Not Fade Away for a while in the middle!

This is actually a really good version, nice space and return to reality, really excellent 6/8 (or swung) Dark Star jam. Too bad about the tape quality.


adamos:


Full, deep bass sound as they get started despite the poor recording. Jerry begins slowly, playing some sporadic notes and then starting a gentle line. Bob's rhythm is fairly delicate too. The guiro is prominent. They're creating a nice vibe. It's dream-like but in a different way than the previous performance. It also sort of feels like they're playing in the great hall of a castle many moons ago. The slow, delicate Bright Star variation fits in with that theme well. They start to get a little momentum going, still fairly low key but building and there is a bit more edge to Jerry's tone. That eases up and they continue to wander gently through this space, returning to the theme at various points. There's some nice interwoven flourishes with Jerry, Bob and Phil after 5:00. They rev it up a little before shifting back to the theme again and on to the first verse.

Jerry's vocal seems a little shouty at first and not fully aligned with the mood of the opening segment but he settles in and the gong washes bring some mysticism back in.

After the verse there's a nice swell with Bob adding some texture. Things start to go lower and the dissolution into space is upon us. It starts off with a brooding feel, briefly coming to a quiet before the jangly chimes and various feedback-y sounds come in. Things get nice and weird and kind of bangy. String scraping adds its usual creepiness. Around 12:26 they hit some low notes and something starts to rise up. It sounds like a jam is beginning but space swallows it up again. Then at 14:00 Jerry breaks out with a gentle line and things slowly start to coalesce. They are patient with it, letting it slowly build and then by 16:00 it's picking up. To this point it's had a Dark Star feel but it starts to sound Other One-ish for a bit. They keep things rolling and have some pace now. The intensity has grown but it's still more of a rocking groove than something fierce.

Eventually they find their way back to a more Dark Star-ish zone. Jerry goes high and it feels like they're starting an ascent to Bright Star. Phil's got his own complimentary thing going though and they stay in the foothills for a spell which sounds nice. Around 20:08 it really sounds like they might start up The Other One but they shift back into an intermediary space and then by 21:10 they slip back into Dark Star and bring on a brief, understated Bright Star before returning to the main theme. Then all of sudden around 22:30 they shift into Feelin' Groovy which is accentuated by a change in the tape source. As bzfgt noted it has some UJB flavor as well and then before too long they transition it back in the main theme and start the second verse.

I liked this one. The opening segment has a nice feel and there's a lot going on.


Mr. Rain:


Decent audience recording -- the guitars are captured pretty well and the inevitable guiro is loud & clear! Nice floaty opening that drifts here and there but sticks close to the theme, which keeps bobbing up as usual. Around 6 minutes, they hint at the switch to the Other One rhythm that happens later on. Big gong in the verse (which makes me wonder if the gong was much louder for audiences than we've been hearing in all these SBD tapes).

The trip through space is protracted here, it's quite a voyage. It sounds louder than usual, they don't stay quiet for long (though this could be an automatic level control on the tape-recorder making the quiet parts louder & diminishing the dynamics). Lots of cymbals, feedback, noisiness, and screwing around with the strings. By around 12:30 bits of musical notes are plucked, submerged in the confusion, sounding like a crazy cartoon band. Around 14:00 they've gotten the noise out of the way and Jerry leads them up to prettier heights. (The usual Sputnik transition here is skipped again...it may be a thing of the past now!)

They quickly get a nice slow groove going with Bill on drums. (Mickey enters later with the claves.) They stay away from a definite structure and just drift along in a mellow Dark Starry mood, leaving the full theme unstated. After 16:20 Phil pushes for the Other One and they stray there for a little bit, but then they're back in the Dark Star jam, the pace quickening. They tumble along and Phil starts a walking bass line (unusual for him; I'm not sure if he's done this even once in Dark Star before!)...the tape quality drops a bit here and gets more bass-heavy. No definite theme to the jam, just pure Grateful Deadness. They get closer to a Dark Star feel and after 19:15 Jerry teases Bright Star for a whole minute. After another feint at the Other One at 20:15 they seem a little uncertain which path to take, but the decision is made at 21:15 as they dive into the Dark Star theme. Jerry gives us a whole Bright Star now, sounding rather casual and over quickly -- he's ready to return to the main theme. While they're in the theme, the SBD tape starts at 22:30.

Phil & Bob suggest the Feelin' Groovy theme -- an odd place for it, now that Jerry's all but teed up the verse, but he says okay and joins them for a plucky take. (Mickey's on a shaker now.) This provides the relaxing finale for the Dark Star jam, with a deft transition back to the theme again, and the verse. You can hear how much quieter the gong is on the SBD tape, a good example of how even a clearer source doesn't indicate quite what the audience was hearing. Visually, Mickey would have been an even bigger contributor to Dark Star than he is on tapes.
This was an interesting version; it peaks in space and then pleasantly de-escalates for the next ten minutes in a kind of diminuendo, rather than going for a powerful finish like other versions. The walking bass & Other One teases also give it a different feel.
One thing about all these versions lately, the opening Dark Star jam based around the theme is kept very different from the jamming after space, where they seem to deliberately keep clear of the theme. If you were to hear a random minute from any of these Dark Stars you could immediately tell which part of it you were in.