143. 1972-09-21

150281 Philly 37:18

Main theme at 11:30.
First verse at 12:05.
Tiger at 24:55.
Mind Left Body Jam at 33:49.
Goes into Morning Dew.


A bubbling start with the theme chords and some plaintive Garcia, who at first lays back and adds color, and then at :34 gets mesmerizingly active. This is a classic intro, beautiful and understated, with the vigorous but relaxed feel that they have perfected at this point. The playing is very dynamic with little swells and flurries; a beautifully languid stretch begins at 2:49; Keith seems to be playing with a volume knob somehow here, it sounds like a guitar but I can hear everyone else.


Garcia suddenly gets louder at 4:12 and the band kicks up, rather surprisingly. At 4:34 Jerry states the theme, almost, but he backs off before anyone follows him along that route. Instead they get quiet again, and again Garcia seems to be in the lead at 5:04 as some triplets lead into a more assertive jam section. This reaches a small summit at about 5:42, and then more decisively at 6:05 or so. They are playing with degrees of intensity in the way that they first perfected in 1969, so that the dynamics are shifting quite frequently.


At 7:25 there’s a kind of pause; rather than go to the theme, Jerry plays some rolls, hinting at a minor shading, and starting at 8:05 it is quite reminiscent of Sputnik. Coming out of this, Garcia draws out a feedback shriek from 8:25 all the way up until 8:43, and then comes back at 8:49 with a light tremolo. There are traces of Bright Star at 9:12, and then Garcia starts hinting at the theme, but it is still not time for that.


From 10:12, Weir and Lesh feint back and forth with touches of an out-of-sync funky jam, playfully refusing to commit. Godchaux starts a tremolo at 10:20, and Garcia joins him at 10:25; they draw it out, and Lesh again bounces around with one of his funky licks (10:40) without expecting anyone to follow. As it finally starts to come apart, Garcia enters the breach with the theme at 11:30, and this leads pretty quickly to a confidently perfect reading of the verse.


After the riff there’s a quietly bustling little jungle scene, with Keith laying on the wah; Garcia and Weir start playing somewhat frenetic lines, and a bouncy little jam develops. This comes to a head a little after the 15-minute mark, and then attains a steady simmer. There’s a kind of knotty peak beginning at 15:33 where all the threads come together, and as they come out of this there’s a kind of transition—Garcia disappears at 16:00, and now Godchaux comes to the fore as they play a more subdued version of the preceding jam.


At 16:54 Lesh strikes up one of his funky riffs. It’s always remarkable to me how, without ignoring him, they usually forgo the opportunity to settle into a groove, and the riff recedes without leaving too much of a mark. He brings it back around 17:35, and they rally around him a little before he lets it go again. After a couple minutes this jam starts to feel a little aimless, though…not unpleasant, but exhausting itself nonetheless. And just before we reach the point of exhaustion, Garcia is back, coming in at 19:04, and perhaps heralding more excitement in what follows. He’s got a little wah going, and might have a meltdown in mind.


As we cross the 20-minute mark the intensity is increasing, but gradually at first, and by 21:00 Garcia is flashing some Tiger licks. But they take their time; Godchaux’s wah-wah piano and Weir’s little squalls are flashes of weirdness in a slow burn, with no one in a hurry to bring it to a head. Rather than a Tiger, this is a freaky jam with Tiger-like bits scattered throughout. They seem to have harnessed the power of a meltdown and channeled it into a more consequent and coherent stretch of music.


Finally, however, they seem ready to take the next step at 24:55, and we seem to be headed for a true meltdown here. The Tiger is brief and a little subdued, relative to others, and we reach the other side pretty quickly, into a slow meltdown taking place from around 25:35 to 26:38. At 26:46 Garcia is losing some of the wah, and we are at an inflection point; many Dark Stars would end here, but there is still 10 minutes to go. They ease into a gently twinkling jam, ratified by Phil’s easy melodic line. By 28:20 they could almost be shifting into Morning Dew or Stella Blue, but there is no clear referent here yet. It’s just gentle, melodic Dead, a little bent out of shape for good measure.


At 30:10 Lesh and Weir are adding little syncopated stabs and bending the music further toward something else. 30:50 sees Garcia start a fingerpicked roll, echoed by Lesh. This develops with some gorgeous country licks, and Weir and Lesh pick it up and push it forward. It really snaps together at 32:00, and a new jam emerges. Jerry keeps going around and elaborating his fingerpicked roll with ridiculous facility; at around 33:05, he even strikes a figure where he’s playing an ascending run on the bass strings and an ascending run on the higher strings at the same time. Then he bears down on it and the band kicks it up some more, and at 33:49 they break into the chord pattern known as the Mind Left Body Jam, which last made its appearance in a Dark Star (for the first time) when it was played double-time in the end jam of 1972-04-08. They go around a few more times, and Garcia strikes up Morning Dew.


This is an astounding ending to a gorgeous, magisterial Dark Star. This one is rightly well-known; it’s one of the high points of the entire corpus. It moves slowly compared to some, but there is plenty of excitement to be had, even outside the stellar end jam, for anyone who cares to listen closely.


What was said:

JSegel:


Lovely plaintive* stretches from Garcia as he starts after the intro goes. Relaxed feel, a lot of interplay between the players, everybody sort of bopping along. Everybody’s instruments has a good sound, even Bob’s got a decent tone here, and he’s playing with some licks in between chordal bits. Jerry sneaks in some little jazz licks in a bassier tone, then he starts playing with volume swells, leading to a plateau, though still with the underlying pulse. The plaintive stretches come back a little bit, leading to some small repeated melodic nursery-rhyme melodics, and it starts to build from there, still referencing the Dark Star thematic world. At about 5 min, Jerry starts plugging away at something that is a new build up to a Brighter Star at 6 min, that contains a little circle around the theme. Nice. That wave comes back down and Jerry goes back to some volume swells on his plaintive stretches, and into a new area.

This section has a latent Sputnik, or at least a 6/8 feel, but Jerry brings it into some light feedback, with whammy bar! (Whammy bar? How often does that happen?) Wow, that was unexpected, and then he rolls away on tremolo single notes. Still in the circle-around-the-theme world, Keith and Phil play with that idea in half time against Jerry, really nice counterpoint. The some pull-offs, Keith mirroring.

A lot of tremolo and trills from Jerry and Keith, then piano with wah on this also. They back off, leaving small gestures of the theme and then Jerry starts it for real at 11:45, the band falls in and they head to verse 1.

Nice delivery, very emotional sounding, highs and lows, long held first syllables of each line. The refrain with strong answers from the instruments, and in the outro Bob has some little appoggiaturas as the band mutters around, they start the next section. Jerry on light and fast low volume stuff that starts to insist itself more and more. The drums seem to roll along haphazardly until about a minute later and then by the 15th minute they are in a fast jazzy jam. Some little eddies of close notes, and out into a lighter area, Bill on side-stick rhythm. Piano and bass accompany, a little bit of Bobby, but Jerry is stepping back to take stock. Or light a cigarette, perhaps.

Phil starts a more driving riff, still mostly piano for high melody stuff. Jerry slips back in at about 19 minutes, wah pedal on but rolled back. Bill starts rolling more on toms, he and Phil start a Bo Diddley beat underneath, Jerry starts to take the mode outside, Keith happily follows, as does Bob with some dissonant chords. It’s getting tense, he has some little riffs that lead up and some Tiger pull offs already inserting by 21 min. Wah on the piano stays with Jerry, it starts to sound very Miles Davis of the similar era (or maybe some combo of John McLaughlin and Keith Jarrett era?) Both Jerry and Keith on a chicken riff at about 22:45 and Phil doing the walking bass type stuff.

Chromatic fast riffing is building up the volume and tension, up and down, and then from the bottom a Tiger meltdown starts for real by 25 min. Strong low chords from piano and bass, super dissonant, ending with stretched bass notes and pinch harmonics playing out atonal melodies. Big bass chords. Volume swell chords from Bob. Odd notes from everybody as it dies down.

At 27:30 or so, Jerry seems to want to take it back to a sweet melodic area, Keith plays around it modally for a bit and they land with some side stick attempts at pulse, Jerry takes a new melodic whirl as they seem to play in D major/e minor while he stretches to a Bb, it never really gets its stride until after 30 min, Jerry has some bluesy/country licks, and it stays in the D major area and he plays some banjo-type stuff. Who knows how they’ve come to this point! (To me it seems like Dark Star is pretty much left behind at this point and they are moving on to somewhere else.) Jerry is still playing with that Bb in the D major world, moving up and down in contrary motion simultaneously. They go full into this for a Mind-Left-Body jam, (which sort of sounds like that part in Music Never Stopped, now that I hear it here) with the dropping line, C-B-Bb-A on a D major chord.

Over the hump of this jam, it starts resting a bit and quieting down, and they head to Morning Dew, with only a brief moment in between.

________
Really beautiful playing, some new explorations. The plaintive aspect that Jerry set up seems to stick with it for a long time, and then the whole thing has a trajectory toward the Tiger area, and it comes back to the world with folksy music references. Great piece of music.

*(I actually had written this, with the word "plaintive" describing Jerry's stretched notes before reading bzfgt's post, so I guess we are in the same space this week!)


adamos:


A very plaintive start from Jerry. It really is though; his playing is patient, smooth and bendy with just a touch of mournfulness. This is counterbalanced with a bouncy vibe from Phil. Nice complimentary textures from Bob and Keith with gentle cymbal action from Billy; the collective interweaving is lovely. Jerry starts going higher and there is occasionally some more bite to his tone. He's spinning beautiful lines, high and low, and the momentum ebbs and flows fluidly.

After 2:50 they pool up and there's some volume knob action and things get quieter and more introspective. Gentle, pretty notes from Jerry that Bob continues to compliment well. I hear the volume fluctuation from Keith that bzfgt pointed out too. Then around 4:12 they suddenly burst forth and it feels like a big upswing is underway but they pull back again fairly quickly. Jerry touches on the theme but they keep winding on, continuing with the lovely ebb and flow. Jerry gets into a climbing, repeating thing that Phil plays off of well. They rise up to a Bright Star-ish mini peak around starting 5:50 and the mellow powerfulness is enchanting.

From there they wind downwards and briefly find a quiet space before wandering forth. Jerry's guitar cries out into the night and the mellow, introspective playing continues on. It's all rather lovely. After 8:00 they get into a Sputnik-esque zone and then start winding up. Bob works some repeating notes and the momentum builds and there's some sustained feedback from Jerry, again calling out into the night. Jerry then starts spinning up some repeating notes that Bob plays off and there's a touch of the theme again but they roll on, finding a mellow, pretty zone.

More ebb and flow and around 10:10 Keith starts blending in some pretty piano runs that Jerry jumps in on and they mirror each other for a spell while Phil works it gently underneath. Keith then shifts into wah and Phil hits some intermittent notes with a bit of rev but it's all still mellow lovely and then around 11:30 they start shifting into the theme and then on to the first verse. Keith continues to add wah at the beginning of the verse.

Afterwards they reset and then drift into a transitional zone. Bob is fairly prominent initially. Keith gets into some wah and then Jerry starts spinning up a winding, repeating pattern. Phil then starts coming forward more on the recording and they work up a jam. It builds and gets cooking pretty well with some repeating patterns and then around 15:50 they ease up. Phil, Keith and Bill continue to work it quietly with some accompaniment from Bob.

They keep this going for a while. Phil gets into a funky riff as noted by bzfgt while Keith keeps working the wah. They're keeping it on the low burner but it continues to move along. Phil gets more assertive around 17:35 and then again at 18:05 and they continue to work in this territory for a while more. Then after 19:05 Jerry comes in and works his own wah for a bit.

They start to build momentum with a prominent bouncy line from Phil and Jerry starts on a path that will eventually lead to meltdown territory. Lots of textures from Bob and Keith is active too. By 20:30 a meltdown feels imminent and the intensity ratchets up further after 21:00. The Tiger is nearby but still being held in check and they continue to work this jam that's melt adjacent but still groove.

After 23:00 it starts to ratchet up again and with more frenetic rev. Jerry gets into an intense repeating thing that winds it up but then he eases up again. Keith's wah is prominent and Jerry starts to unleash more although there continues to be some ebb and flow in terms of the frenetic energy. Then around 24:55 they go all in and let the Tiger rip. Jerry's guitar screams out and there are thundering notes from Phil. It peaks around 25:30 but they continue to keep it weird; semi-mellow at first but then Phil thunders through again.

By 26:40 it feels like it has run its course and they hover briefly. Things take on a melodic feel and they find themselves floating into a gentle, pretty section. It sounds like a natural transition space for a ballad but there is also a kind of medieval vibe to it. They take their time in this lovely, gentle zone that has just a touch of rev at the edges.

After 30:00 they start moving in a new direction with Phil and Bob most prominent initially. Then Jerry starts playing these lovely, bendy, patient notes and things start to coalesce into a new jam. There's a down-home, twangy feel that is nicely accented by Bob. Jerry reaches upwards and the momentum builds and they get a country-fide uplifting thing going that feels celebratory and pulls you in. They take it for a good spin and then around 33:49 they shift into a Mind Left Body Jam that punctuates this section triumphantly. Bless them! They take their time winding it down and then briefly find a slightly weirder space that creates an opening for Morning Dew.

Wonderful performance. A lovely, compelling all timer.

Mr. Rain:


1972-09-21. An excellent mix and recording. Having just listened to 9-24, this opening strikes me as more meandering, more languid & less rollicking. This is a relaxed & leisurely Dead. Jerry uses the volume knob a lot in the opening jam for an extra-plaintive feel. One good instance of his approach is after 2:50 when he gets quieter and quieter while Keith seems to be using his own volume knob for a moody backdrop! Then at 4:10, bam, Jerry kicks up the volume again...he almost heads into the theme at 4:30, defers it, gets into a noodly passage, reaches for the high notes, and plays a quasi-Bright Star around 5:50; then they get more subdued again.... And so the tides of the jam gently rise and fall. The rest of the band bounces right along, but I get the sense they're following Jerry's lead in this one.

After some more volume knob twirls at 7m, Jerry hints at the later country feel at 7:30 -- just a small hint, but it's there, a brief foreshadowing. Then at 8m Jerry & Bob enter a cool arpeggio drone, which Jerry ends with a lovely twist of feedback. A tense feeling is starting to creep in, though the jam's still laid-back. After 10:15 there's a neat example of Keith/Jerry mirroring as they both play the same tremolo, Keith turns on his wah to make it more cackly, then Jerry does the same! But just as things are getting weirder, at 11:30 Jerry starts the main theme and the band slowly joins him, order restoring itself very nicely. Keith stays on the wah through the verse for an interesting & unusual contrast.

Instead of getting more spacey, there's a busy stirring of activity after the verse and a choppy jam quickly emerges after 14m. It turns into an upbeat fast jam like they've often done in Dark Star lately -- but then after a big flurry Jerry leaves at 16m (gotta be a broken string?). So it's time for a light jazz quartet, Keith tinkling away pleasantly (with the wah at first) over a low-key backing. It's really striking how, just about every time in these Dark Stars Jerry steps aside for a string change or whatnot, nobody ever really takes charge or grabs the chance for a solo, they're obviously just filling time until he returns. It's like without Jerry there, they really long to be a little combo in some cocktail jazz lounge.

Then finally Jerry comes back at 19m, on the wah, joining their groove. With his biting tone things get more intense, and by 20:30 a Tiger is obviously in the works. Keith growls on his wah. But they stretch out the Tiger prelude: rather than speeding up to a meltdown, they slow down and spend time exploring this semi-tigerish freaky skitter, which seems to be the part they really enjoy. Jerry keeps bringing in a Tiger spiral then tugging it back in repeated teases. The tension seems to dissipate, but the Tiger arrives for real at 24:45 -- this one's not very noisy or doomy but it slides deliciously at 25:20 into a semi-apocalyptic ooze. Phil & Jerry lead the meltdown with frightening notes. Around 26:30 Jerry starts a pretty line in the embers, which seems like a typical heading-out-of-chaos duet with Phil at first, but he persists with it, Keith calms down, and by 27:30 the rest of the band is coalescing in a relaxing pretty glow. By 28m they've settled into a slow & soothing mood, quiet healing music. Recently this gentle kind of jam has been really rare late in a Dark Star, almost never heard after the meltdown when usually they head to a fast jam or quick transition instead; I can't think of anything really similar to this since Europe. You'd think they'd segue to a Jerry ballad at this point but they're in no hurry, they'd rather stay in this mellow spot for a while.

Jerry's playing slow and mournful leads, but around 30m Bob & Phil start to perk up a bit with a little syncopated riff. Jerry responds and after 30:40 he jumps into some snazzy country rolls; the others gradually work up nice complementary parts, and within a minute they're in a full twangin' toe-tappin' country jam (all it lacks is a pedal steel!). They're down in a rich musical silver mine now, all aglow with delight. Around 32:50 Jerry implies descending chords, switching to a sharp lead line at 33:30; Bob catches on and brings in the Mind Left Body chords, spurring Jerry to greater heights. This one hits hard, they attack it with lots of fervor and it turns into an exuberant Mind Left Body Stomp. Then after 35:30 it quiets down into the kind of plaintive melancholy version with Jerry's slide-like playing that they would do in '73. It starts to break up in the last minute as they run out of steam, and they maneuver into a heavy-handed transition to Morning Dew.

This Dark Star mainly stands out for its ending, the last ten minutes which are like an extra bonus tacked onto an otherwise pretty normal '72 Dark Star. The rest of it isn't really out of the ordinary for that month, going through the usual paces; if they'd just started Morning Dew after 27 minutes this wouldn't even be considered a standout version for September '72. ("Just another fall '72 Dark Star, yawn....") But for whatever reason, Jerry & the boys decided to take that extra step at the end into the extraordinary.

Another way to look at it is, because of the improvisational way they were tackling these Dark Stars, really good endings are not that common in '72. It's not like they're aiming for a specific uplifting jam culmination like they did in '69-70, or even a satisfying verse reprise. No, it's going to be some kind of brand-new on-the-spot transition to a song they only decide on when they get there. Some of the transitions work really well; others are just kind of hammered on more or less abruptly, or sound like the result of a little jam fatigue or tug-of-war....but what you rarely get in '72 is an actual Dark Star ending that rounds out the jam with a solid conclusion before they head to the next song. This one is one of the best. And of course, having done it so well, they decided not to do it again.

(Not for another year, anyway.)