162. 1973-06-10

90979 RFK 26:34

Philo Stomp at 7:35.
Elastic Ping Pong Jam at 10:08.
Main theme at 13:40.
First verse at 14:23.
Tiger at 21:58.
Goes into He’s Gone.


The second of two big, well-known outdoor shows with the Allman Brothers features the first Dark Star since the end of March. The band lays into it with a will here; Phil Lesh’s bass is quite loud on this recording, and he drives it along from the start. Godchaux is playing a Fender Rhodes electric piano now, which gives this Dark Star a little bit of a jazzy flavor. The first few minutes are rather textural, setting a mood without much development going on. Nevertheless, the music is driving and aggressive until about 3:45, when they shift into a more contemplative stage.

There’s a move into B minor around this time, a key that was visited the last two times out. There are several feints in the direction of an Elastic Ping Pong jam; Phil plays the lick aty 5:00, and again more strongly at 5:50, but then he goes wandering. The band hovers around him for a while, and then they recede and Phil takes over. I’ve marked this as a Philo Stomp, a throwback to 1972, although it varies a bit from the iterations of the previous Fall. Phil calls the band back with the Elastic Ping Pong riff and this time they launch into the jam, but it doesn’t last much longer than a minute before they wander off somewhere else.

At 12:15 they get into a three-note thing that we’ve heard before, haven’t we? Perhaps my colleagues will remember where. This sends Garcia off on a remarkable picking excursion, but this doesn’t last long either before they slow it down and slide into the main theme, and thence to the verse.

Coming off the back of the verse, they get right back into a place that’s similar to the very beginning of the intro jam, with a lot of momentum but not much forward movement in terms of motives. It gets a little spacier as it goes, with Garcia going to the wah but playing drawn-out lines with it, keeping them in the jam rather than moving toward a meltdown yet, until the sequence that begins, after a rather deliberate series of chords from Lesh, at 18:50. At this point Garcia starts playing what could be the lead-in to a Tiger jam, and Weir joins him. Lesh starts playing a fuzzy bass line, keeping things spacey for the nonce. A loose jam develops, with Garcia playing Tiger-like stuff, and Weir getting into some funky rhythms. At 21:30 Godchaux reasserts himself on the Rhodes, and the jam has a unique flavor.

21:58 brings a more decisive shift into Tiger mode, and this then simmers down into a rather spacey meltdown. By around 24:00 they’re in an exotic place, bursting with wild energy. Godchaux’s Rhodes adds to the sense of uniqueness throughout, as there’s a different palate of sounds than usual. They don’t seem to want to stick around these environs though, and as the jam disperses in waves of feedback Garcia starts strumming He’s Gone.

This is a perfectly fine Dark Star as far as it goes. There are rumblings of new sounds and new forces, but at the same time they don’t seem to have sufficient patience to let things develop to the extent that they could. So while this is very good, there are glimmerings of something more that is not quite allowed to develop.


What was said:

161. 1973-03-28

86459 Springfield, MA 32:08


Main theme at 18:30.
First verse at 19:00.
Goes into Eyes of the World.


As on the 21st, the band runs though the Weather Report Suite Prelude for a couple of minutes before kicking off Dark Star. It’s a mesmerizing (and somewhat out-of-tune, which seems to be more common than ever) lead-in, and in some ways is a bit like a (brief) successor to the Mountains of the Moon jam in this spot. The introductory Dark Star jam soars right away, majestic and stately. The mix on this Miller transfer is well-balanced, and it’s always nice to notice what a collaborative effort the jams are when everyone is clearly audible.


There’s a subtle shift, evident by 1:40, toward the E minor, as the jam becomes more subdued. On some versions they toggle back and forth between this and a Dark Star jam in A, but here they keep pushing forward with it. At 4:04 Garcia throws in the “it’s all the same” lick that JSegel has named—once you name something, it’s easy to keep noticing it! At 4:30 Garcia is pushing them back toward A, and the jam intensifies, but Lesh underpins it with more E and G. Then at 5:46 Garcia makes a more decisive push for the A, and Lesh let’s himself be dragged along.


At 6:04 Garcia’s rolling lick hints at Wharf Rat and Sputnik, perhaps in equal measure. The A tonality seems pretty well established now, with Lesh hammering on it. By 7:00 or so there are elements of a frenetic jam, but without a lot of tonal movement. Jerry’s triplets at 7:41 slide into a lick that may or may not be the beginnings of the main theme. It seems not, for now. At 8:15 Phil starts walking on the bass, which is not a typical maneuver; he lands on B at 8:43, pushing the band up a notch to where they spent much of the previous rendition (3-24).


The jam is becoming more dispersed, with Kreutzmann rolling all over the toms and Garcia wandering up and down the fretboard. At about 10:45 Garcia is hinting at Other One, still around the B, and Weir has engaged his wah pedal. This doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, and at 11:20 Jerry starts gesturing toward the main theme while Kreutzmann starts jazzing out on the ride cymbal. By 12:30 the music has subsided into a rather dispersed and transitional place, and at 12:54 the band gives way to Kreutzmann entirely. Weir comes in with some high soul rhythms at 13:05; no one joins him, so he plays around for a little while until Keith and Phil trickle back in.


By 14:05 it sounds like they’re getting something together, largely thanks to Godchaux, but it’s still a bit tentative. Jerry comes back at 15:04, the others take it up a notch, and now it really starts to get good. At 16:20 it starts fraying at the edges, but they bring it back up—they’re playing with a loose kind of intensity, and with a palpable sense of freedom and joy. A minute later they’re shooting into the stratosphere again, while maintaining the looseness. When they come down the other side at 18:14 it is clearly time for the main theme. Garcia takes us there, and brings us right to the verse.


As is often the case, the crowd sounds really into it, and as they come out of the verse there’s an audible ovation. Weir has said that by 1974 they were losing everyone with the long jams, but just about every recording that has audible crowd seems to belie this (so far). There’s a bit of throat clearing after the out lick, and Lesh comes swelling up with some fuzzy noise which he turns into a monstrous pulse, and as he pulls back the crowd again goes wild.


A thoughtful yet noisy space ensues rather than the potential throb-fest that suggested itself here. Lesh swoops in and out with the fuzz swells, and the other two string players hover around him—Godchaux and Kreutzmann seem to be absent so far. At 24:50 Garcia start some syncopated wah strafing, and the drums begin to tap at 25:20. They are carefully building a noisescape now, and Kreutzmann adds a bit and then drops out again. Lesh starts playing some heavy chordal stuff, and Billy comes back with the cymbals this time. This might be heading for a Tiger, by now a standard maneuver, but it’s an interesting trip so far. By 27:50 Jerry’s wah tone has gotten cleaner, which may signal a turn away from the expected Tiger.


At 29:20 Garcia starts running arpeggios, and the band has never crossed the line into meltdown territory. This circumspection has paid off with some truly interesting improvising. At 30:50, though, they might be out of gas, as the jam starts to meander. I thought Jerry had hinted at Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring a few minutes back, but it wasn’t distinct enough to note at the time; it becomes unmistakable at 32:38, however. These are dying embers, though, and pretty soon Garcia is strumming Eyes of the World and, as I like to think Gary Cohen might say, the Dark Star is over.


This is a wonderful half hour of music. The jamming is in a way more diffuse and scattered than usual, but that doesn’t come across as a weakness; the playing is casual but confident, and rather than offhandedness, this conveys a sense of freedom and whimsicality. It may be the case that the burst of creativity and excitement about the Dark Star form that came in with Keith in late 1971 is beginning to wane a bit, but for now there is plenty of juice left in the piece.


What was said:

160. 1973-03-24

139595 Spectrum ~25:57 (I. Truckin’ jam ~22:00>II. Dark Star 3:57).

Spanish Jam at I. 22:05.
Main theme at II. :00.
First verse at II. 2:09.
Goes into Sing Me Back Home.


The Truckin’ jam shifts into a different mode around 10 minutes in, and Garcia plays the Dark Star intro lick at 10:37, so we’ll pick it up there. (Track times are for the Truckin’ which is tracked as 32:37 on this recording, so something 30 seconds from where we are starting would be at 11:07). The band downshifts from the bluesy Truckin’ outro into moody and uncertain terrain at about 10:00, and when Jerry throws out part of the Dark Star intro lick shortly thereafter, it almost a quote, and it remains ambiguous whether the band is now playing Dark Star (or if they even gave this any thought, which is questionable).


Lesh starts riffing, and Weir lays in some choppy soul rhythm licks. At 12:12 Garcia asserts himself more and a jam of the type I sometimes label “frenetic” is underway, although this remains at the same time very laid back. Phil, somewhat uncharacteristically, keeps a fairly consistent funky groove going here, and it all comes together nicely. The jam seems a bit more centered on B than we’d want if we were intent on calling it Dark Star, but in any case I doubt they were worried about how people were going to classify it 50 years later.


Garcia starts to quiet down at around 13:45, and Godchaux comes to the fore. I can still hear Jerry a little bit up until about 14:20, after which he seems to have departed the scene. Then the jam starts to wind down at 15:30, and Lesh and Kreutzmann take over. Phil keeps doing a lot of the same kind of stuff he has been doing since this jam began, now accompanied only by the drums.


The others start trickling back in a little after the 18-minute mark, and again they launch into a jam that is simultaneously laid back and frenetic. Garcia’s playing here is somewhat jazzy, and he is starting to play the kind of licks that will eventually cohere into Slipknot—for instance, see 21:47. Right around then is when Weir starts leading them into the first Spanish Jam since 1970, with Bob starting up riff at 22:05. This works up a good head of steam, although compared to the early versions it has a kind of loosely relaxed feel (but one important thing about the Dead in general is that they can generate a ton of energy regardless of how mellow or aggressive the gestalt of the era).


The riff frays and disperses, and by 27:45 there are hints of a meltdown, but soon it seems like we’re headed into a mellow space section. Weir, Lesh and Garcia wind around each other; Godchaux is absent at this point. At 29:05 Weir starts playing a lick that is like a sped-up take on the Twilight Zone theme at first, and Garcia latches on with some triplets. Kreutzmann is back by now, mostly sticking to the cymbals, but Godchaux is still absent. Soon Kreutzmann drops out again for a while, and it’s back to the three guitarists, who weave together to mesmerizing effect.


At 31:57 Garcia’s line elongates, and there are hints of a resolution, which gets a favorable crowd reaction. Finally Jerry drops into the Dark Star theme; either this comes deep into the song, or at the very beginning, depending on how you interpret what came before; I doubt the Dead troubled themselves over this question at all. Next comes the verse, and then it’s just about over. There is about 20-seconds of throat-clearing, more or less, and then Garcia takes them into Sing Me Back Home.


Although this segment isn’t uniformly focused, it’s a very nice stretch of Grateful Dead music. Perhaps it was helpful not to focus on creating a Dark Star, but rather to let the music go wherever it wanted to until it seemed like a good time to bring in the song form and the verse. In this case, there is no post-verse jamming, so we have something a bit different here.


What was said:

159. 1973-03-21

29263 Utica 21:44

Main theme at :06, 8:20 and 9:13.
First verse at 9:35.
Goes into Eyes of the World


An early rendition of the Weather Report Suite intro leads into Dark Star, and the audience sounds really excited to hear it tonight. A few passes at the main theme follow the opening lick, and then we get a fairly standard two-chord jam. Godchaux is present in the mix here, which is always welcome. We can hear him being rather active, which is often the case when he’s sufficiently audible. He locks in with Lesh at 3:15, and they generate some drama with a sort of hanging chordal interlude that stretches out for about a minute, lending the music an unresolved feel.


The jam seems to hover for a while; Garcia hints at E minor, but there are no decisive moves. Weir adds some harmonics at 5:44, which contribute to the sense of hovering that pervades the early parts of the jam. There’s a bit of a crescendo beginning at around 6:25, and as everyone’s lines get louder they begin to feel a bit more decisive. Lesh starts playing around with the Elastic Ping Pong riff at 7:15, and things are now pulling apart again. They pull back and regroup, trying to latch on, but this segment doesn’t get off the ground; Garcia finally pulls the ripcord on the main theme at 8:20. They use the theme to pull together, and then they leave it behind; it seems like they’re going to have another whack at a jam, but they soon return to the theme and Jerry sings the verse.


After the verse there’s an interesting interlude where Garcia plays some rapid arpeggios to Keith’s quarter note accompaniment, before it all subsides into space. Keith generates a droney buzz in the left channel, and Kreutzmann taps out a beat on the cymbals while Garcia floats. When we reach the 16 minute mark this seems to be heading toward a meltdown as all four of the string players begin to generate a cacophony over Kreutzmann’s beat. The chaos here has a kind of cohesion, and for a couple minutes there is a very effective meltdown, which they keep at a low boil. At 18:40 Jerry initiates the lead-in to a Tiger segment, but they avoid the expected peak and let it continue to simmer. By 20:30 they’ve come out the other side, and once again a Dark Star ends just as the elements of a really interesting jam seem to be coming together. This is enjoyable in its own right, but it’s a shame they don’t give it room, as it dies out just as it’s beginning and Jerry starts strumming Eyes of the World.


The first half begins nicely, but nothing remarkable winds up happening, and they wind up getting a little out of joint. The back half is quite good here, though; it’s a shame they didn’t develop it further.

What was said: