165. 1973-08-01

92478 New Jersey 24:50

Main theme at 12:31.
First verse at 13:10.
Tiger at 23:50.
Goes into El Paso.


A cymbal wash sets the scene this time for the introductory lick, which gives the whole thing an almost tentative feeling that carries through into the opening bars. Weir contributes to this premonitory feeling with some harmonics. Godchaux plays the Rhodes from the outset this time, and he’s coming through loud and clear. In fact, the mix is fantastic overall, as all five musicians are well represented throughout the sound stage.


At 3:05 Lesh starts a repeating figure that gets everyone to latch on and the music kicks up a notch. They get louder and more intense, yet the sense of brooding remains at first, but the playing gets more vigorous until they come to a peak at around 4:40. They come out the other side and kick into a groove, with Garcia’s stabbing chords providing a focal point. They walked us into it, but suddenly one realizes that they’re on fire.


Another peak starts swelling up in the neighborhood of 7:05, and now they’re really going! Garcia brushes up against Bright Star at 7:24, and keeps cascading over the top. Then by 8:00 they pull way back, and here they seem to consider visiting the main theme. Instead they drop into another groove, a little less sure-footed than the last at first, but by 8:45 it has become something vicious and disjointed. Now that they’ve pulled it together, they have to pull it apart somehow…they opt for a little smoothing of the rough edges, and by 10:00 the music is again asking questions. Weir is playing out of his head here, playing a muffled line that bounces up and down, and Garcia is locking in and then bouncing out again until he hits a roll at 10:15 the groove here is again monstruous.


So, of course, it doesn’t last long; they start to strip it for parts and then it’s all clattering to the floor. At 11:20 they are taking a serious look at the theme, but at 11:32 Lesh has is toying with a Ping Pong-adjacent riff…but then he resolves the tension at 11:59 by serving up the theme with an exaggerated gesture. They don’t play it yet, as instead they luxuriate for a bit in the Dark Star space before Garcia, with an exaggerated flourish of his own, kicks off the theme at 12:31. They settle into it and head right for the verse, Lesh popping off with some up-the-neck stuff on the way in. They play through the verse a bit impatiently, accepting the structure but seemingly eager to get back out of it.


There’s something droney and hypnotic brewing out of the verse. Weir is once again a prime mover here, as he hammers on his A string. Garcia is skritching, but at 16:22 he starts playing drawn out, keening tones, employing the slide. Lesh gets his fuzzy overdriven thing going, and Weir starts playing arpeggios. Godchaux tinkles along quiescently, adding texture. Kreutzmann is heavy on the cymbals. This in a way mirrors the beginning of tonight’s version with its brooding feel, only here on the other side of the verse the weirdness and intensity is turned way up.


And, it gets turned up even more, as Lesh’s chords at 18:22 burst out of the speakers. Here one starts to expect some kind of move toward a Tiger or something like it, but so far this segment is sui generis. By 19:50 Garcia has laid aside the slide, and he’s getting a wah tone, but his playing stays melodic, and there’s no meltdown in sight. Instead, Jerry spins out the kind of lines that sometimes culminate in him quoting Bach…I don’t know how else to identify this particular mode of Garcia.


By 22:15 we seem to have reached a crossroads; the music is dispersing, and has gotten very free…then it kicks up into a kind of frenetic pre-meltdown jam, and at 23:50 the Tiger suddenly bursts forth. It froths over and pours down into El Paso, and this Dark Star has come to an end.


One could perhaps fault this one for being a little short, but this is Grateful Dead music of the highest order. The first half is magnificent. If they’ve perhaps become overly familiar with the Dark Star form by now, tonight they wear it loosely, and this familiarity becomes a source of power. The back half is unique and gripping, almost overwhelming in its power and grace. For my money, this is the best Dark Star of the year thus far.


What was said:

164. 1973-06-30

19903 Los Angeles 16:10

Main theme at 7:35.
First verse at 8:58.
Tiger at 15:08.
Goes into Eyes of the World.


This starts out slow and deliberate. Immediately one notices Keith, on piano, is reasonably high in the mix for a change. By 1:30, however, he has switched to the Rhodes. Lesh gets them out of the two-chord scheme pretty quickly, and they venture into a dense and exciting thicket of sound that sounds like it’s on the verge of going somewhere somewhat different. They take their time and let it build, and then a little after the six-minute mark they ease back.


This leaves us in a transitional place, with hints of the theme popping up. By 7:25 they’ve taken it way down to almost nothing, and Garcia drops into the theme. The feel here is very laid-back and mellow as they ease into the verse, with Godchaux gently tinkling as the band plays softly. The mellow vibe carries through the verse and into the immediate aftermath.


Dissonant elements begin to emerge in the oozy space directly after the verse. At 13:12, Garcia starts bustling around in a manner that suggests a transition to more forceful playing preparatory to a meltdown. It’s on a slow boil, though. Kreutzmann briefly drops out at 14:08, but soon thinks better of it, and it picks up from there until by 15:10 there’s a kind of mellow Tiger jam going on, and this flickers in and out a couple of times before we reach a denouement of sorts and Jerry starts Eyes of the World.


This is a really excellent segment, although it’s a little too brief—I wanted it to continue, but it’s a very nice quarter hour.


What was said:

163. 1973-06-24

99852 Portland 27:13

Main theme at :06, 15:13.
Elastic Ping Pong Jam at 6:22.
First verse at 15:50.
Tiger at 22:50.
Goes into Eyes of the World.


A languid entry into the theme sets them off on a typical (for the period) opening jam. This introductory section has been particularly mellow lately, though none the less effective for it, like gentle waves lapping at the shore of the deadhead mind. Garcia gestures toward the theme several times, which sometimes serves to orient the groove a bit, I think. Godchaux is inaudible or missing. At this point Weir is rarely doing anything that resembles rhythm guitar as the world knows it, yet the resulting polyphony is generally rather beautiful.

At 4:20 the jam starts percolating nicely, largely thanks to some bubbly lines from Weir and Lesh. At 4:35 Garcia gets into a Sputnik sort of thing; this soon settles down, and then he gets bubbly along with the other two, playing a one-note line that fades in and out. As this subsides into a transitional section at 5:22, Godchaux’s Rhodes can briefly be heard piping up, but then he’s gone again. 5:52 brings another Sputnik groove, and it sounds like they might get weird, early as it is. But then at 6:22 Lesh starts the Elastic Ping Pong lick. Weir is ready right away, but Phil pulls back and reorients himself before blasting off again.

They seem quite comfortable with it this time, and it gets going right away. This is in some ways a more flexible successor to the Soulful Strut jam, with its lightly mobile Garcia line. Not having to maintain a rhythmic chord pattern, Weir is freed up here in a way he never was on that earlier module, and he takes full advantage of this freedom, at times getting kind of crazy! The Dead in 1973 are developing a remarkable facility for developing a gentle groove until it raises the roof, but without relinquishing the mellowness. It’s the most anyone can rock without rocking hard, and they get this one going pretty good.

By 14:07 they step back and let Kreutzmann to do his thing for a little while. They come right back in on the theme at 15:13 in a way that may have resulted from an impromptu planning session during the drum solo, unless Kreutzmann’s beat was sufficient to plant the idea. Godchaux can now be heard on the Rhodes as they take it to the verse.

Garcia goes right to the volume knob as they come loping out of the verse, and accordingly they stagger-step into space. It’s a Lesh-dominated segment; he lays down heavy chords as the others make some accompanying noises. As it slides into near-nothingness, the crowd hollers appreciatively; more evidence, perhaps, that they did not hate the jams and the weirdness! Lesh is more placid now, and they start to weave a compelling skein of sound. Keith pops up here and there; particularly after 21:00 he becomes rather audible, still playing the Fender Rhodes.

A little after the 22 minute mark Kreutzmann begins to put his hand in, and this sends them rather rapidly into a meltdown. A Tiger pops up and slips back into the underbrush just as quickly, as they return to a region of spaciness. At 24:30 they start getting louder and harsher again, perhaps contemplating a second Tiger. A funky beat emerges instead, and Keith takes an active hand in shaping it with his jazzy electric piano. They have one foot in the jungle and one in the lounge, with Garcia’s mad scrapings roughening the edges. When this all subsides into a rather hairy space, Keith considers another funky rejoinder, but they instead slip into Eyes of the World.

A very nice Dark Star, in the manner of recent very nice Dark Stars—there seems to be more that could have been done, but what we have is really good. The second-half hijinks have been excellent lately, but at the same time they seem less interested in developing this aspect of Dark Star. Even though this is a full 27 minutes and change, it feels short. There’s a standard opening jam, and then the Elastic Ping Pong takes up the rest of the first part; the post-verse stuff is very good, but they don’t quite commit to the jam in the second half sufficiently to really let it bloom.


What was said: