122. 1971-12-05

131532 20:17 (DS 8:01>MAMU>DS 12:16).
Goes into Me & My Uncle and Sittin’ on Top of the World.

The sound starts out a little boomy on this Charlie Miller transfer, but it seems to get a bit better almost immediately. Either they’re taking it slightly faster than they have been, or I’ve gotten used to the slower tempo—mine is not a scientific approach, I recognize. Garcia and Lesh are very prominent, with Jerry playing beautiful runs with pinch harmonics and little flurries. We can hear Keith, but he’s a little reticent.

The intro starts to get a little weirder at around 2:35, and soon Lesh is playing a morse code pattern of the type they’ve been fooling with lately. This leads to a burst of vigorous jamming, but it doesn’t last long, as they seem to be a little restless here. Eventually, at 3:55, a kind of bouncy thing emerges and gathers force. There’s a nice peak beginning at about 4:20 leading the jam into a sort of behind the beat swing.

At 5:10 this is all coming together, and the band is going like gangbusters. 5:35 sees Feelin’ Groovy hints come and then go, and everything falls apart a little and by 6:37 is heading into weirdness. A small meltdown follows and builds in intensity, then recedes, until at 8:00 the band sort of magically drops into a nice version of Me & My Uncle.

The last chord of MAMU drops almost immediately into a jam that is recognizably some form of Dark Star. After about 25 seconds the band backs way off into a drumless contemplative space. Garcia plays some rolls, and Godchaux asserts himself a little more here. Jerry’s line starting at 2. 1:49 is particularly beautiful. This leads him into some volume knob stuff, and Phil echoes him with some plaintive notes while Weir and Godchaux provide more active counterpoint. At 3:20 the music becomes more insistent and we seem to be heading for a meltdown.

It proves to be an intense one, and has many of the characteristics of what is usually called a Tiger jam, although Garcia does not hammer the wah pedal. It recedes and then comes roaring back, and by 5:10 Weir is furiously scritching, then Garcia starts some tremolo stuff, but the band has backed way off. They proceed to weird out for a while.

By around 7:00 this seems to be heading into a more structured jam, although they seem reluctant to regularize it too much at first. Keith starts playing a riff that holds it together, while Garcia and Lesh pipe along with one-note patterns as it migrates into a rock thing. But then by 8:30 it is all coming to an end again, and the band descends into a kind of oasis of weirdness again. At 8:54 Garcia starts another morse code line, but he quickly abandons it in favor of some noodling. At 9:22 Garcia starts a Sputnik line while Lesh begins the main theme. Garcia wins out this time, and a sort of Sputnik-like part comes here.

By 10:45 there is a beautiful little jam underway, and this picks up cohesion briefly, and then falls apart again, with Lesh again trying to assert the theme to bring them back together. Jerry briefly considers joining him, but instead he starts Sitting on Top of the World, and we’re out.

Although there is no main theme and no verses, this clearly seems to be a Dark Star. As I said earlier, however, I am unscientific; it may help to have clear criteria to distinguish a Dark Star from a Dark Star jam. There is a lot to enjoy here, but one thing that sets the Dead apart as improvisors is how they pull it all together for cohesive and tonal jams, and these are in short supply here, at least if we’re talking about jams of any length. There is a lot of great music in these 20 minutes, though.


What was said:

121. 1971-11-15

youtube Austin, TX 20:40 (Dark Star 12:55>El Paso>Dark Star 7:49)

Main theme at 6:44.
First verse at 7:05.
Goes into El Paso and then Casey Jones.

The music begins with a confident languor that is quite affecting. Keith is a bit louder this time out, which is good. There is a glorious peak beginning at 1:33; nothing too strenuous, everything flows nice and easy. Coming off the other side, they almost go into Sputnik at 2:17, but it winds up being a little eddy in the current and the music sweeps along. Perhaps in part due to the mix, this rendition presents the Dead at their polyphonic best, with four instrumentalists intently spinning out lines, and it all winds up fitting together perfectly.

At 3:56 Garcia starts a morse code pattern, and the music heads into a minor-sounding passage for a few moments until a frenetic jam begins to develop. It sounds like they are gathering steam for a modular jam here, but instead they keep going until they decide to start the theme at 6:44. This seems to be a unanimous decision, although Garcia kicks it off. They head to the verse rather quickly from here.

They seem inclined to weird out a little after the verse, and we get something like a space jam this time, although it is one that features a lot of frenetic activity and quickly solidifies into another active jam. At 9:40 Weir starts playing El Paso, but we don’t get there yet, and the jam keeps taking off. At about 11:00 we get into a holding pattern, and then the jam gets even more frenetic, ebbing and flowing until everyone but Kreutzmann, Garcia and Lesh drop out for a bit. At 12:51 Weir again asserts El Paso, and this time the band follows suit.

El Paso briefly comes to a full stop, and then we are back in Dark Star or something like it, as a kind of atonal space jam begins. At first this is largely a duet between Garcia and Godchaux with Kreutzmann tapping the cymbals, and then everyone gets in on the act and things get even freakier. This becomes a full-blown meltdown until at 21:15 Garcia starts some Caution-like strumming and brings it back to earth, although Keith provides some dissonance here. The jamming here is ferocious and exhilarating. It starts slowing down and getting weird again at 24:00, and things begin to sound transitional, but they stretch it out a bit before Garcia suddenly starts Casey Jones.

This rendition is utterly magnificent, and in fact this is certainly one of the best Dark Stars to date. If anyone wanted to know what Grateful Dead music is about, this would be as good an example as any. It is at times unruly, but to my ears always in a pleasing manner.




What was said:

120. 1971-11-07

9570 San Francisco 15:27 (14:00)
Main theme at 5:26, 7:26, and 9:08.
First verse at 9:35.
Goes into The Other One.

The late-1971 Dark Star boom continues with this short (14 minutes) version from the Harding Theater. The tempo is again relatively languid, and the band eases in without much sense of purpose it seems to me, although there are some nice lines going on. Keith is a bit quiet in the intro here, although he is audible if you listen for him.

At 3:37, Garcia initiates a rolling passage that does not achieve the intensity we would usually expect here; the band still sounds like it’s biding its time. It builds a little after about a minute, but no one seems eager to kick it into another gear, and the music eases back again. Garcia finally starts the theme, although this seems a bit out of joint. Lesh sounds like he’s trying to push it to a different key to avoid the theme, until at 6:15 he starts hammering on the A repeatedly. Garcia tries to get the theme going again, then wanders off, and by 6:30 they start easing into a B minor thing, although without much conviction.

This all seems like it could get terribly interesting at any moment, if they decide to get it together, but after some musing in this direction Garcia comes back to the theme at 7:26, and this time the band seems willing, if not eager, to go along with him. At about 8:10 Garcia starts repeating an A, in a reiteration of Lesh’s gambit of a couple minutes before. Phil hints around at a jazzy bass line of the type that will soon become common. Keith creeps in a little more; Garcia plays a ritardando build-up to the theme at 9:08, and this time everyone comes along, taking us to the verse.

The post-verse jam starts with some tremolo from Garcia which Weir and Godchaux take up, and then Jerry starts pumping a repeated note that seems intended to start one of the frenetic little jams that are becoming common. By 12:00 or so this seems to be coming together nicely, although in keeping with the overall mood tonight it’s rather gentle. As this goes on, everyone seems to be getting it together in a way we haven’t really heard yet tonight, as it sounds like they’re all playing on the same team, for the most part. But by 13:20 it seems to be fraying a bit at the edges, and another transitional section emerges—if that’s the right word, since the transitions seem to just lead to other transitions tonight. At 14:28 Lesh starts indicating Feelin’ Groovy, but then at 14:36 Garcia starts playing The Other One, and that’s all for Dark Star. This threatens to congeal, but then it disperses into a drum break before they’ll get back to it.

The Grateful Dead sound lovely in general, which is the saving grace of this thing. This would make one heck of a tuning break, in any case. They never sounded all that interested in Dark Star here, though.


What was said: