SUPPLEMENTAL: 1973-11-21 (Dark Star Jam)

88612 Denver “Dark Star Jam” 3:26

After El Paso, the band sounds like it’s sliding back into a PiTB jam; instead they kick off Wharf Rat, but after a little bit it sounds more like Dark Star. At about a minute in, Garcia alludes to the verse melody. At about 2:20 it seems to me to shift back toward Wharf Rat, although they keep jamming for a little while longer. Part of an absolutely stupendous set.




What was said:

JSegel:


11/21/73 Denver, CO: 3:25 (instrumental)* – Road Trips Vol.4 No.3

This is a tease at Dark Star moving into Wharf Rat, within a longer PitB that enfolds El Paso and both the Dark Star and Wharf Rat and then moves on to Morning Dew. Some amazing playing and full-band improv happening in PitB especially. Bill Kreutzman is just killing it during this period. Keith is very active and Jerry is very on, fast and exact.

As for the Dark Star part of it, it’s coming off of a minute of some sort of PitB jamming, tailing directly from the last chord of El Paso, where there’s a tempo and mode/mood shift that happens very suddenly, and then they almost go into Wharf Rat, but Jerry starts bending around and Bob never plays the intro chord lick, so it sort of wanders into being Dark Star (this is debatable, I suppose it could be just considered an area of Wharf Rat, but...)

Jerry goes for slow leads and some feedback, it almost ends up at a Dark Star groove, not quite. Faster than they would get to it lately, I’d say! It eddies out like a DS after a couple minutes, and comes out into a long trill from Jerry, then they sound like they’re in a holding pattern as they consider where to go, and it goes back to the A and starts Wharf Rat instead.

And this goes off to PiTB again, without any jamming at the end in the Wharf Rat or Dark Star A-mixolydian groove, it just moves directly into an A-minor-ish area, speeds up and goes in off-kilter jazziness immediately. But then this gets into slow sparse atonal space with big bass noises after a few minutes, into more scary soundscape stuff and then into a Tiger Meltdown, so that’s very “Transitive Nightfall”…could’ve gone back to Dark Star, man. But they head over that hill into a lovely Morning Dew.


Mr. Rain:


I referred to the Miller source 97468.
El Paso comes out of Playing in the Band and moves seamlessly back to the Playing jam, with a slight country feel in the jam now. But after 45 seconds, they quickly wind down to a slower hovering feel. The band starts Wharf Rat, clearly....but Jerry feels like continuing the slow jam, and the others go along with him. The jam has a nice loose lazy feel, kind of bluesy, and after a minute starts sounding more like Dark Star than Wharf Rat. Really, from about :45-2:45 it sounds just like the kind of relaxed Dark Star theme jamming they'd get into just before Jerry sings the verse. The actual theme is never played, but it feels like it's right around the corner. But then at 2:45 Phil brings back his Wharf Rat riff, then thrums a little drone while Jerry decides on the next step. Finally Jerry starts strumming Wharf Rat.

So was this a Dark Star tease? It's kind of like Schrodinger's Dark Star: it might or might not be, at the same time. Dark Star is musically so similar to Wharf Rat (they were rarely ever played together, maybe because of this). I'd say it could equally just be considered a Wharf Rat jam, but there is that 2-minute stretch where it's a lot more Dark Starry. So I'd include it in the blog as a tease.


adamos:


I was curious if Jerrybase includes 11/21/73 on its list of Dark Star jams. It doesn’t: Dark Star Jam

However on the 11/21/73 page it footnotes the Wharf Rat with “[1] Includes a subtle Dark Star themed jam before”: 1973-11-21

I guess a “subtle themed jam” would be considered more like a tease. Or maybe more than a tease but not quite enough to qualify as a named jam.


As the brief return to PITB ends and this track starts it definitely sounds like Wharf Rat, which is clearly their intention. But they don’t seem in any hurry to get there. Instead they roll through a lovely preliminary jam. After 40-45 seconds it does start to venture towards Dark Star territory. If you were to jump into the middle of this track without any context or set list Dark Star would certainly come to mind. They glide along in this adjacent zone for a couple minutes without playing the theme itself. Then by around 2:45 it definitely sounds like Wharf Rat again, shortly after which they launch into the song proper.