16089 London 29:59 (29:32)
Main theme at 1:31 and 17:20.
Feelin’ Groovy (feint) at 15:48.
First verse at 17:54.
Tiger at 24:11.
Goes into Morning Dew.
We start off with a little fanfare before the main theme, hence the two times listed above. Some nice playing with everyone involved leads to an early but brief landing in the theme. At 2:10 Garcia seems set to kick off a frenetic jam; Godchaux takes up his line as something rather marvelous starts happening, but it cools off quickly and gets back to a gentler vibe. They build on this, picking up steam.
Garcia keeps returning to the repeating note gambit which seems to progressively inject more energy each time it comes around. Lesh tosses in a few of his jazzy runs, and everything is bubbling along. Jerry gets into a repeated note with pinch harmonics, stretching it from 4:36 to 5:05 when it turns melodic with a hint of Bright Star. At 5:53 Garcia goes into a Sputnik roll and things quiet down. By 7:00 they have almost ground to a halt, and as is typical recently, although this seems like an obvious place for the theme, they hold off. Jerry sustains some floaty notes, and then he kicks on some sort of effect at 8:36, with Lesh playing distorted double stops. At this point we enter a full-blown space section.
Space gives way to a drum break at 10:45, but Phil keeps futzing around throughout. At 13:25 the others start to trickle back in. The makings of a poignant jam quickly start coming together, with all four lead players spinning contrapuntal lines. This gains momentum, and by 15:00 or so they’re going along really nicely. Garcia wails and howls his way into a Bright Star quote at 15:38, and suddenly it seems like a Feelin’ Groovy jam is in the works. They hit it at 15:48, but quickly pull back, exploiting the ambiguity as they come to a peak. At 17:15 as they’re coming to a halt Lesh signals the main theme, Garcia takes him up on it, and at long last they arrive at the verse.
The next segment is gentle and mysterious, as they eschew the heavy weirdness in favor of a contemplative sojourn in quasi-space. There is a fascinating interlude from 21:42 where Garcia, Lesh and Weir seem to lock in on a sequence of notes. Jerry quotes Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring at 21:52, and then slips on the wah, seemingly signaling a meltdown, which seems to be looming ever larger as a second half strategy. Things get gradually stranger from here, but they’re not in a hurry until they suddenly plunge into a Tiger at around 24:11. From here they edge into an energetic and dissonant jam that peaks and subsides a couple times until it starts to pull together into something bouncier at about 28:25. At 28:59 Jerry tosses in some Sputnik-like rolls, and then they all pull together at 29:30, sounding like they’re heading into the main theme, until Jerry starts strumming Morning Dew, and the rest is history.
This is a really good Dark Star. At times they seem to be losing the plot, particularly around the drum break, but they always pull it back together into something memorable. Some of these jams are downright magical.
What was said:
adamos:
Really nice pre-opening segment that has a Renaissance feel. That vibe carries over into Dark Star proper and there's a pretty quality to the proceedings. Jerry floats out on a line and the collective interweaving is lovely. At 1:31 they briefly return to the theme and then continue to glide on. Phil is prominent in the mix and his articulated notes stand out well. Nice textures from Bob and Keith too.
Around 1:45 Bob plays a repeating note and then Jerry jumps in and makes it more prominent with Bob and Keith sometimes mirroring. It creates a bubbling, swirling feeling as they float upwards. The prettiness of it all continues as they wind and build while loosely harkening back to the theme.
By 3:30 the pace picks up and they are cooking along. Around 3:58 Jerry starts reaching upwards with high, repeating notes that Bob adds to in a lower register. Phil is working a good line underneath and the jam has got some legs. Jerry brings in some pinched notes that he works for a good spell. Around 5:03 they downshift briefly but then keep right on rolling. More spiraling runs from Jerry and Bob is quite active too. After 5:45 they ease up again and Jerry dabbles gently in some Sputnik notes. This provides a soft landing and they continue to interweave in mellower fashion.
Some stretchy notes enter at 6:22; they collectively quiet further although Jerry is still fairly active. Phil, Bob and Keith play off this and they wander for a bit in a semi-spacey but still melodic zone. Lots of flourishes from Keith and things slowly get spacier. By 8:00 it feels like they are considering their options; there's a hint of the theme in Phil's bass line starting around 8:15 but they continue to float on. Some feedback enters around 8:35; Phil adds some thundering notes and things get weirder. There are sustained spacey notes from Jerry as Phil marches through some prominent staggered playing.
The revving fury builds until around 10:45 after which Billy steps forward and they shift into a mostly drum break. Phil can still be heard throughout and Bob sticks around for a little bit at the beginning too. By 13:30 Jerry has gently re-entered and Phil steps more forward giving them something to work off of. Before long Bob and Keith are back too and you can feel the jam percolating. The collective groove comes together and they start to build some momentum.
Around 14:55 Jerry starts working some melodic notes and then reaches upwards with just a touch of Bright Star as bzfgt mentioned. Right after that the makings of Feelin' Groovy become apparent but they bypass it and instead rise to a building peak that is thematic and a bit Bright Star-ish again. This crests after 16:50 and they slowly start bringing it down, finding their way to the main theme at 17:15 and then moving on to the first verse.
After the verse they reset, work around the theme a bit more and then cut the engines and drift into the ether. Jerry plays a gentle wah-ish line as Phil hits some prominent notes accented by Bob's rhythm. There's a pretty feel again as they drift along patiently. Jerry, Phil and Bob interweave nicely as Bill and Keith lay back. There's a brief Jesu quote that bzfgt noted and then Jerry starts to shift into something stronger and spacier. Phil lays down some heavier notes and the vibe becomes more foreboding. Bob does some complimentary picking as Jerry heads for wah-ish weirdness.
They take their time working in this freaky but still relatively subtle zone; after 23:00 it starts to build more and by 24:00 the Tiger is being unleashed. The frenzy builds and they scream and howl into the night, stretching out the meltdown for a good spell. Around 25:45 they ease up but Jerry keeps rolling and they work some more weirdness and build it up again. Keith and Bob are quite active in the freaky tapestry too.
Around 27:05 the feel shifts and a stronger groove starts to emerge. They put some muscle into and begin to take it for a ride but before long they pull back and let it get weirder again. This rises to another peak and then around 28:20 they shift into a mellower groove. Jerry winds his line a bit longer as Bob adds some nice rhythm and Phil steps forward too. This has the makings of a nice melodic jam but Jerry opts to shift into a Sputnik-esque line at 28:55 which leads to things winding down. The theme begins to reemerge but after some fuzzy descending lines and brief hovering Jerry signals Morning Dew and they create an opening for the transition.
I like this one quite a bit. The opening segment is lovely, lots of collective interweaving and there are some good jams. I would have liked the Feelin' Groovy to have materialized but it's not what they wanted on this night. The meltdown section isn't their most intense but it still gets there and they keep it going for good while.
JSegel:
London: 29:54 - Europe ’72 Complete Recordings
Long shows, a full set of them with NRPS in London, this is the first night. There’s already some spacy wandering after Ramble on Rose, before Jerry starts Dark Star, Phil joins in and they start the mellow groove, it winds on with lovely tones from the instruments. Jerry plays around the 2nds and 9ths of the scale, theme restated a minute or so in, then they get caught up in some climbing eddies and back to a groove that gets some speed going.
They rock out on this for a while, climbing and falling and finding little riff areas, a great one at 4 minutes in. After some relentless pinch harmonics, they take it more jazzy. It sputters out at 5:40 and sounds like a background Sputnik is happening, coming up. It spaces out, Jerry has some nursery rhyme melodies in the space, he ends up favoring a B for a while into near emptiness, the band quietly making sounds as he finds small feedbacks with it. Phil starts some big chords but plays it back to Jerry moving to an E and finding feedback, Phil starts a more dissonant slow line with rolling drums behind him. Eventually Jerry drops out and the drums and bass continue, Phil soloing in a sort of e minor thing which goes through a bit with the opening notes (B-Bb-B D).
Band back in at 13:40 they continue in mode, using more b minor and e minor before heading back to an A mixo root a minute later. Pretty quick groove again, an almost Bright Star at 15:20, back up there a minute later. Organ is in.
At 17 minutes, a sudden shift in tempo and to the theme heading to the verse 45 seconds later. Groovy first line, big fermatas on line two and a long roll back to line three with lots of motion from the bass and Bob. Refrain is perfect until a chromatic slide right before the next section intro.
The band starts the section with long held notes, arhythmic. It dies down to small sounds, a very sparse and quiet modal melodic section, Jerry with tone rolled off, focusing some on the D major aspect of the mode for a while before it goes to a song-like section in A major that goes off chromatically after a bit and gets scarier. There’s a long quiet atonal section that plays like a tense underscore, building in volume very slowly. The wah gets wahing a bit more as it piles up on itself, speeding up and getting louder in the 24th minute, it gets very noisy and chaotic for a minute, then insistent chromatic melody takes it down again, though Jerry continues pounding out an endless stream of chromatic eight notes.
So they go ahead and build it up again, sounds like Phil and Bill trying to get it into a groove, which seems to succeed somewhere in the 27th minute for a while, though it threatens chromatic weirdness for a long time still. In the last minute of the track they’ve gotten it reined in to a chordal groove, back in A and seems to end as Jerry brings it in with a slightly Dark Star-y bit to land on the A chord and then goes to the D and then insinuates Morning Dew again, and they eventually all figure that out and start the song.
Neat fast jams in the first part and a long and fast chromatic weirdness in the second half. Lots of energy and inventiveness, a great version.
There's a nice little pre-Dark Star jam that fades in before they play the starting riff, kind of like the start of Live-Dead...very neat!
The opening jam's engaging. They speed up for a bit between 2-2:30, then slow down again, then Bill gets more active on drums and the jam picks up speed again. Just a few minutes in and time's lost all meaning already; they're carried away in a Dark Star rush. Jerry's repeated pinched-harmonic thing after 4:40 is unusual and quite cool. After 5:50 Jerry spaces out and the music gets more quiet and sparse in kind of a free-flowing trickle. The spaciness increases, Jerry sounding quite desolate after 8 minutes, and by 8:50 it's taking a turn toward a full-out spooky Space. This part is mostly a Jerry/Phil duet (with some quiet Bob and drum rolls), Phil doing his doom chords and Jerry with feedback cries. Very evocative, but at 10:45 they stop for a drum break. Well, Bob & Phil are still idly puttering along, but I'd still count this as one of the drum breaks that were a regular feature of Dark Star in May '72. Phil's pretty unorganized and boring in this part; it hasn't really developed into the bass/drum duets that would take shape later in '72, and it really kills the momentum in this Dark Star.
But at 13:30 Jerry comes back in, Bob & Keith follow, and the music gathers more purpose. Phil's got a propulsive bass line around 14:50 and the jam's getting promising again; he even briefly teases Feelin' Groovy around 15:50 but it's just a feint, they're getting swept along in the stream again. The jam's percolating nicely and things are kickin', but around 17:10 they sort of stumble into a pause and Phil brings up the theme. The others go with it -- the transition is smooth but kind of abrupt -- and the theme feels warm and welcoming. Soon, the verse. Well, this was one of the longest jams before the verse so far...I think only 5-11 went longer until a verse.
Once the verse is over, this time they go for a pretty flowering rather than a doomy space. It's a nice contrast! After 19:50 there's a delicate Jerry/Phil/Bob trio, with almost a classical chamber-music feel -- oh wait, Jerry's even quoting some Bach! This Dark Star has taken an 18th-century direction...Bach-Style Dead. But by 22:20 Jerry's got the wah on and he's spiraling back to modern times, pointing toward a Tiger. They take their time in a slow & patient slide, Keith adding piano stabs, gradually getting freakier until the full Tiger bursts forth at 23:50. This one's almost funny, like a giant robot chasing after small fleeing creatures. It eases up at 25:40 but they land in a stretch of tense jagged weirdness, the Dead not ready to give us relief yet; the Tiger still lurks. (Around 26:45 it sounds like a parody of itself.)
But by 27 minutes a sense of melody starts appearing, a new form is taking shape under the freakout, and after 27:30 a more coherent jam roughly emerges around Jerry's up & down riff that he's been doing for a minute, trying out different variations of it, only to peter out again by 28:20. Now we're in a more relaxed jazzy mode, Phil & Keith putting on their jazz shoes, Jerry subsiding to a sputnik-style pattern. Notice how well Bob follows everyone here! Jerry sounds like he's searching for a grand melodic hook to finish it off but not quite finding one. At 29:30 he's signaling Morning Dew to the others -- but the transition's awkward and not as good as 5-18; the others are slow to catch on, thinking they're heading for the main theme again, and they putter around for another half a minute before landing the Morning Dew intro.
This struck me as a loose meandering Dark Star, not very heavy in spite of the noisy Tiger stomp. It's mostly really nice...just not that transcendent, it doesn't catch fire. Maybe I'm left feeling that the post-meltdown ending kind of fizzles without a payoff after the promise of the first ten minutes. It's kind of a kaleidoscopic Dark Star, they rotate different flashes of what Dark Star can be.
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