140. 1972-08-27

16582 Veneta 32:20 (31:22 actual)

Main theme at 1:04 and 12:15.
First verse at 12:35.
Tiger at 29:17.
Goes into El Paso.


This one gets directly to business with a few runs through the main theme, after which they dig right into the two-chord Dark Star pattern and start mining for gold. At 2:57 the music takes a subtle turn into a moodier direction, and the two chords start to recede a little. Now there are waves coming in and drawing out, and the music is quietening a bit although if anything getting more intense. Keith is nicely audible as he releases little cascades that echo Garcia’s statements and propel them forward. The latter’s pinch harmonics at 5:53 begin his most extended train of thought yet, culminating at 6:12 in a descending figure beginning on A, repeated four times, which feels kind of like a stripped-down version of Bright Star.


Lesh walks Garcia up to another high flourish at 6:41, which brings this segment to its peak of mellow intensity; something else needs to happen now, as it seems they’ve now gone as far as they’re going to get with this current avatar of the group mind. They quiet down a little and at 6:54 Garcia starts worrying at permutations of the main theme in the upper register, but they’re not going there yet. At 7:39 Kreutzmann triggers Garcia’s triplets that usher in the next section, and there’s a new sense of urgency in the music. It is getting louder and more forceful; Godchaux is shoving a little, and Weir’s guitar squalls.


Kreutzmann drives this section, alternately hanging back and pushing with his snare, until at 8:24 he locks in with Garcia and they bring this section to a peak. At 9:08 Garcia starts signaling for the main theme, but no one is in a hurry—they all seem to know where they’re going, and they take their time, and there’s another little peak at about 10:08. As this is winding down, at 10:24 Garcia trades Sputnik licks with Godchaux, and then they paddle in place for a bit, still not ready to give in to the theme.


Starting at 11:31, there is some madness! Garcia briefly stabs out a fragment of a rock and roll riff, then bursts into a high rolling figure (11:49) which Weir and Godchaux underscore, and then Keith and Jerry lock into a descending line that puts an explanation point on the preceding matters and takes them into the theme at last. This leads to the verse very quickly; they don’t pull back on the tempo as much as they sometimes do, and the verse seems to clop right along.


As they return at 13:56, Keith seems to want to play something with a laid back jazz feel, and the rest pick up on what he’s putting down, building out a groove until Garcia comes in at 14:31 with some eerie volume swells. Lesh handles the melody here, with Garcia providing atmosphere and the rest grooving. At 15:28 Jerry starts to build a line, and they maintain the easy bounce as he elaborates.


At 16:27 Godchaux decides that it needs to get weirder, and as he throws in some stranger notes everyone responds as the groove starts to stretch and warp. At 16:50 Garcia starts an uneasy vamp, and Weir and Godchaux egg him on. At 17:22 Jerry hints at a transition to atonality, and perhaps a meltdown. Phil seems game at first, but then at 17:37 he changes their trajectory by hammering the A, the tonal center of Dark Star, and everyone rallies around as they come to a little peak, which then disperse into a frenetic jam in A.


This has run its course by 19:45, and we shift into a section with a Slipknot or perhaps Stronger Than Dirt flavor. This is starting to cohere nicely, but they don’t see a future in it and by 21:10 we’re down to Kreutzmann and Lesh. The latter blithely riffs away for a while until at 22:13 Godchaux joins in. They seem to be laying the basis for another vigorous jam, which is ratified by Garcia at 22:51, as he puts in some rather Weir-like high chords at first, then wriggles into a profuse lead line. As Weir returns, Garcia seems torn between keeping them in a funky jam and leading them into a meltdown, but the resulting hybrid seems to be ratcheting into weird-out territory.


Yet, it stays funky, largely thanks to Lesh, who eschews the monster movie chords and keeps walking briskly along, and Kreutzmann who maintains the backbeat. As we hit the 27 minute mark they start to break up the groove, and a meltdown seems imminent. But the groove will not die so easily; at 27:32, Garcia in one ear and Godchaux in the other whip up some fusion, which is more or less what you get when you cross a Grateful Dead meltdown with a strong groove.


At 28:49 Jerry seems to be definitely moving them toward a Tiger. He gives up on consensus at 29:17, unleashing the Tiger and letting the chips fall where they may. They don’t take it over the top or linger over it; at 29:58 Garcia’s done with it, and he starts playing some arpeggios, which Keith picks up, and then Lesh starts playing some slow melodic stuff which takes them into space. This briefly gains intensity as Phil throws in some distorted chords, but they seem to be ready to end it and finally Garcia starts playing Morning Dew, then he suddenly aborts as they go into El Paso. I had a hard time determining exactly what happened here—in contrast to the 21st, there wasn’t a strong veto, and Weir’s suggestion of El Paso at first seemed just as tentative as Jerry’s Morning Dew proposal, but in any case it is the former which carries the day.


It is rather difficult to evaluate this one, particularly because it is impossible not to be mindful, as I review it, of its reputation. It is certainly a great version, and they are in a peak time for Dark Star, so that is not said lightly. This is a version with lots of power and beauty, although it has a bit less depth and variety than the very top renditions of the year. Even though it is 31 minutes long, I sometimes am left feeling like something else should have happened in the second half, because this is rather groove-oriented in a way, and not that exploratory. I’d put this just below the top rank of 1972, in any case, but not by much.


What was said:

139. 1972-08-24

156469 BCT 27:08

Main theme at :9, 10:23.
First verse at 11:06.
Tiger at 20:10.
Goes into Morning Dew.


The second BCT Dark Star also begins with a few runs through the theme before getting down to business. At :36 Garcia asserts the high A gently but firmly, then some eerie and bendy stuff follows. The intro so far seems a bit more laidback than the one on the 24th with the band seeming at ease and in no hurry. At 3:33 they seem almost ready to stop, but it flows along at a trickle with Jerry laying out for a bit. He returns with some very quiet flurries at 4:29, and starts to ease his way back in while Weir takes advantage of the space by playing some tremolo.


At 5:17 some tacit signal seems to have them turning up the intensity again, and at 5:51 Phil starts riffing away as he often does. Weir clips along with some treble chops, Garcia throws in some pinch harmonics, and then they’re on to something else as a frenetic jam seems to be building. This gets underway in earnest at around 7:20; the band still somehow sounds relaxed as they dash through it. At 8:26 Lesh brings back a jazzy riff again and everyone else begins to draw out their lines a little more, bringing the music to a little peak before drawing back at 9:03 to bring the jam to a close.


Now there are some serious main theme vibes, and Lesh makes it explicit at 9:27, but instead of following him there they sink into a big D minor space, to which Lesh happily follows. This is short lived, and all this still seems like foreplay for the theme. Sure enough, at 10:23 Garcia brings it home. Soon after, we pull up at the verse, which is taken at a deliberate pace.


The riff issues forth into a Lesh-led segment, not quite a space nor yet quite a jam. This feels very transitional, in any case. Soon Garcia and Weir are emitting moans, and Keith I think has something electronic going again. At 14:19 Garcia starts the kind of sequences that generally seem preparatory to a meltdown or atonal jam. They keep it slow and mysterious for now, though, and this builds on what has preceded it such that it adds up to a rather remarkable segment.


At 15:59 Garcia seems to add a layer of wah, strongly hinting that he sees a meltdown in the future. This is still really spooky, but there seems to be a slow and steady ratcheting of intensity underway. At 17:09 Weir has taken the lead with some piercing notes, and Garcia starts playing some pre-Tiger stuff. Whatever Keith is doing, he is doing it sort of sparingly, but it is wild, and very effective.


At 18:12 they are driving toward some kind of peak, still atonal and wild. This seems to come to a peak at about 18:40 or so, and although I wouldn’t quite call this a Tiger it’s a similar idea. Weir is still very assertive here with the co-lead. By 19:30 they seem to have gone off the boil and the jam gets even stranger and spookier. At 20:05 it seems clear that Garcia still has a Tiger in his sights, and in fact I’ll mark the start of this one (somewhat arbitrarily, as always) at 20:10. Tiger comes to a peak by 21:02 and then we come down the other side; Garcia doesn’t stop, but rolls into a Sputnik-type segment as he clicks off the wah pedal.


The music is now rather scattered and sparse. Keith seems to have returned to a regular piano. At 22:02 Lesh starts another bouncing riff, and they seem ready to latch onto this one and ride it back to terra firma. This is the riff that is the basis of what is generally called the Elastic Ping Pong jam (thanks to Mr. Rain for noticing this for us!), about which more can be read in the Lexicon thread pinned to the top of the page. By 23:00 or so it’s bounding along very nicely, and the music is gelling. This one keeps rolling along for a while, and somehow it even seems to have some chord changes that they more or less come to an understanding about.


By 25:20 there are signs of encroaching disarray, but they hold it together a little longer until finally, at 25:40, succumbing to entropy. At 26:00 Weir is playing some kind of arpeggiated figure but this peters out, and Garcia does a little volume knob fiddle work while they all sort of wait around for a new idea. Although this doesn’t feel very stable, it’s quite beautiful nevertheless. Just after our track ends at 27:08, Phil starts Morning Dew this time, as if in recompense for the 2th (“See, Jerry? We don’t hate you!”).


What we have here is another top flight Dark Star. As with the previous one from this run, there’s a lot of weirdness and atonality after the verse. Also similarly to that one, it’s all totally engrossing. Improvised music does not get much better than this!


What was said:

138. 1972-08-21

139581 BCT 27:38

Main theme at :07 and 9:20.
First verse at 9:51.
Tiger at 16:15.
Goes into El Paso.


In August of 1972, right in the thick of the peak era for Dark Star, the Dead played two outstanding renditions at the Berkeley Community Theater. The first of these charges right out of the gate with a statement of the theme, and then at :21 Garcia starts to travel and the band goes to it. All the instrumentalists are nice and loud in the mix here, and they’re all working hard right from the beginning. They maintain a kind of equilibrium until 1:22 when Jerry goes high and distinguishes himself from the pack a bit.


The band ebbs and flows—but mostly flows—in waves of energetic sound. There is a continuous melodic dialogue going on across the various instruments: at 3:10 Garcia pauses on a B, and Weir interjects a triplet passage from Bb to B before Jerry picks it up again. At 4:34 Godchaux is in the lead, and then at 4:47 Garcia bursts out again. Most remarkably, in the space between about 5:00 and 5:25 the lead line rolls around among all four instrumentalists.


By 6:15 they are starting to converge and the band drives to a little peak, cresting at around 6:35. At 7:00 a little roll keeps going back and forth from Godchaux to Garcia, while Weir and Lesh punctuate. Jerry starts double timing at around 7:42, and then the music scatters…listen from 8:02, has Keith switched to an electronic instrument, or there an effect on the piano? There’s a little roar at 8:08 like he’s scratched the piano strings and it’s been run through an effects processor of some kind. At 8:43 the music quickly starts to swell, peaking at 9:01; Garcia plays a little figure (AAA GDE) that is somewhat reminiscent of Bright Star…they coast down the other side into the theme at 9:20 and cruise into the verse, bringing to a close an incredible intro section.


Coming out of the verse the music gets intense more or less immediately. They play some blocky swells, and then split off at oblique angles to one another, and it sounds like they are going straight to some kind of meltdown. At 13:23 Garcia starts playing a Tiger-like line, only with a cleaner tone. At 13:42 Godchaux takes off on a crazy trip around the keyboard; he again sounds like he’s playing with some kind of effects.


As Garcia and Keith zip around, Weir somehow accompanies them in a cogent way that keeps it all together. Lesh is likewise rambling around, but he starts putting out a groove at 14:32, from which he sometimes departs and returns. But at 15:30 a new thing seems to be on the horizon; Lesh’s groove is gone, and centrifugal forces seem to be dissolving the center. Then at 16:01 Lesh starts stabbing at the groove again, and Garcia’s frantic line seems to respond to it, until it suddenly veers into Tiger territory at 16:15. This time Keith goes along with Jerry, to thunderous effect.


Now we’re in a scary atonal jam; at 17:07 Garcia starts hammering a note and everyone joins him, taking the jam to a new peak of intensity. This crests and then starts to unspool, winding down at 18:18 into a little space where mostly Weir, Garcia and Kreutzmann are left to hold things together. At 19:39 Garcia starts playing a little melody; and for a moment it seems like they’re going to move into saner territory, but the weirdness still has the upper hand. Garcia at first succumbs, then gets melodic again at 20:25. Finally at 20:45, he starts playing Morning Dew. Weir tries to go along with him but no one else is having it. He goes through the intro riff twice and then again succumbs to the spacey undertow.


At 21:50 Godchaux is playing a little up and down figure…this doesn’t catch on at first, but then it becomes a new center of gravity, and they drive to a peak, which crests at 22:16 and then rather quickly disperses. Coming out the other end, Keith is still in charge, and he lightens it up a little as Lesh jumps in with a bouncy riff at 22:33. Keith and Phil lay down a base for a little while, and Weir trickles in. At 24:57 Jerry finally comes back, and they ride a bright and bouncy groove for a while. At 27:25 they seem to have had enough of this, and they trickle down more or less to a halt; Garcia starts comping a little in a way that suggests El Paso, so Weir kicks into it and the Dark Star is over.


All I can think to say in summation is, what an amazing band! Here we have an absolutely magnificent Dark Star. Before the verse they execute some of the most incredible improvising in the classic Dark Star mode that we have yet heard, and then after they bring their more recent harsh and atonal approach to perhaps its most satisfying development to date. This is the real stuff!


What was said:

137. 1972-07-26

87034 Portland, OR 30:47

Main theme at :51 and 9:19.
First verse at 9:45.
Tiger at 24:35.
Main theme at 27:57.
Second verse at 29:14.
Goes into Comes a Time.


This one starts with a chugging statement of the main chords. Garcia starts to tentatively cast about at around :24; at :51 he springboards off a single time through the theme, still taking his time, lightly soloing over the springy two chord cushion. The intensity slowly builds here, with the band sounding rather mournful. Garcia’s choppy triplets beginning at 3:22 are subtly mirrored by Weir. Jerry pierces the heavens at 3:43, and then immediately reappears at the lower end of his range. At 3:53 he plays a triangular little chordal figure that will reappear, most prominently toward the end of this rendition.


At 3:43 Garcia’s downwardly cascading line pools and then swells and ascends, and they hit a little peak at about 5:06 that’s drawn out until 5:20, at which point they regroup. Garcia takes advantage of the lull to muse about on the low strings again, and Weir pushes a little but draws back, as they maintain the ruminative feel, luxuriating in the beauty of this intro segment. A minor peak swells and recedes just before the 7 minute mark, and then it fragments again.


At 7:08 Lesh decides it’s time for E minor, and there is the barest suggestion of one of his jazzy patterns as Garcia kicks into a roll. Then at 8:02 the latter begins playing a chordal figure again, developing the idea first broached at 3:53; this hints at the chordal vamp Jerry plays as the introduction to Bird Song in this era, then builds into its own little jam which culminates with Jerry playing with the theme melody beginning at 8:50, and getting more explicit until at 9:19 he lets it fly in the high register. At 9:41 he brings it down to the midrange but, instead of playing the theme again, he starts singing the verse.


The music breaks up almost immediately out of the turnaround, with Kreutzmann’s toms taking the lead. Everything else drops out as Garcia accompanies him with some volume swells. As these fade out we seem to be headed into a drum break, but Phil and Jerry keep puttering along; the bass settles into a bouncy groove and Garcia eases out, with Godchaux now accompanying Lesh and Kreutzmann. Lesh builds a head of steam, playing some stabbing chords, and Weir joins them at 14:34, with Garcia jumping in at 14:52 as a rock jam begins to take shape.


It keeps growing, and soon they are grooving along with abandon, creating a scene that is very different from the introductory segment. The jam keeps getting more and more exciting, and there’s a bit of a peak around the 18 minute mark, and then they start to tail off a little. At 18:35 Garcia brings back the triangular chordal figure again, and then there is a kind of centrifugal scattering as Kreutzmann again comes to the fore, bashing the toms as Garcia spits some bluesy leads.


At 19:55 Garcia kicks on the wah, pointing them toward a meltdown, and Weir duly starts scritching. Lesh adds some doomy pronouncements, but the direction is uncertain as Garcia pulls back into more circumspectly melodic territory, adhering to the meltdown but resisting a full press toward the Tiger. They opt for spaciness here, until at 24:05, with no center to the thing at all, Garcia starts plunging toward the Tiger at last. This winds up a somewhat subdued beast, as they don’t attempt to bring it to a raging peak. Then at 25:13 Lesh’s ominous tones start to edge toward something resembling a groove, if a jagged one. This scatters again at 26:10; a few second later Garcia strikes up a kind of funhouse Sputnik. The tempo soon retards and the band again descends into chaos. They again pick it up and then retard (27:44) in an even more exaggerated fashion, until at 27:57 Garcia lurches into the theme leads us back to terra firma. To top it all off, we are treated to a rare second verse, which Garcia has almost forgotten at this point (“Daarrirror shatters”). They seem unsure what to do after this, so Jerry just starts singing Comes a Time, which takes a little while to coalesce but turns into a lovely version.


This is one hell of a great Dark Star. The first section is almost painfully beautiful, there is a rollicking jam after the verse, and a chaotic meltdown section leads to a triumphant return to the theme; this is followed by the first appearance of the second verse since May 4th, and the last until New Year’s Eve 1981! It’s difficult to say what more we could ask for.


What was said:

136. 1972-07-18

32678 NJ 27:13

Main theme at 15:25.
First verse at 15:52.
Tiger at 22:28.
Goes into Comes a Time.


Back in the States again. The Dead played in Hollywood on June 17th, a date which marks the last concert they played with Pigpen (before Bird Song tonight, Weir announces that Pigpen is sick and that he hopes to return soon, but of course he never did). After a month off, the summer 1972 tour began two days prior in Connecticut, so Dark Star had a bit of a layoff after seeing heavy action in Europe.


The first Dark Star since the Europe tour begins at a languid pace. Garcia is very active from the beginning, but he doesn’t sound like he’s in a hurry. The band stays close to the two-chord Dark Star progression, although they aren’t always entirely explicit with it. Jerry hints at the verse melody a bit, beginning around 1:45 and particularly at about 2:04, and then he starts a fairly long chordal lead. The band is rising and falling behind the lead guitar, and the effect is peaceful but at the same time very active. It may be a bit trite to say they seem like a living organism here, but in any case the relations between the instruments seem very sympathetic. Listen to the little bit that Jerry plays at 2:31, and then hear how Keith echoes him. By 2:50 or so Jerry starts to bend a little, hinting at a breakdown of the structure, but it snaps back together, and as it does it starts to gather a head of steam, coming to a little peak at about 4:02.


Coming down the other side, Lesh takes the lead and spins out some melodies for a little while. Garcia eases back in with some Sputnik-like rolls. They come apart and then get back together at 5:54, with Garcia again playing chordal stuff that hints at a move toward the theme. Instead, they move toward E minor, then back to the A, and to a space of indeterminacy in between. After some shifting, E seems to be winning out, with Phil in the lead again until 8:07 when Garcia reënters with some fast runs. The jam that follows is not exactly disorganized, but it is very loose.


Weir has been rather unobtrusive, and he seems to be low in the mix, but Keith is very audible throughout. At about 11:08 Weir starts to become a little more audible; the jam starts to gain momentum here, with Garcia getting more aggressive, laying in some repetitive licks, and the others kicking up behind him. At 12:57 Jerry starts playing a repeating lick based around an E, to which he insistently returns; then he spins off and starts to build around the A at 14:08, and the effect is galvanizing, with the sequence finally coming to a close at 14:34.


After briefly recharging, Jerry starts pushing again; it all comes to a head with the A at 15:13, at which point they simultaneously back off and we slide down to the theme, which quickly comes to the verse. By 17:30 they start heading into a space jam, led by Garcia and Lesh. Weir and Garcia make plangent noises while Lesh gets heavy on the bottom end, and then decides to join them as they sound like a pod of sick whales (in a good way!). Then at 20:14 Garcia kicks on the wah, which seems to indicate they are going into a meltdown; sure enough, at 21:10 he begins the preliminaries of a Tiger jam.


The Tiger arrives, albeit somewhat gently at first, at 22:28 as Jerry starts his double-time triplets. After about a minute these get really vicious, and Weir can be heard scrubbing away alongside him. At 23:53 Jerry begins some volume knob manipulation and the band quiets down a little. By 24:30 they seem like they might be heading into more structured jam, or even a song, but the meltdown picks up again, ebbing and flowing some more without much indication of where it’s going until 25:45 when Jerry finally hints at Comes a Time, which here follows Dark star for the first time. His line seems to phase in and out between this and Sputnik for a little while until Jerry finally strums the opening A chord and the Dark Star is over.


This is kind of an odd one—on the one hand, I want to say it’s sort of uneventful, but there are some really stunning moments, and Garcia is masterful throughout. In a way, the band seems almost too tuned into each other here, if such a thing is possible—there are shifts and micromovements, but no grand statements. They are certainly playing on another level compared to the last time America saw a Dark Star, but there are even better things to come.


What was said: