177. 1974-07-25

12656 24:00 (1. Dark Star 20:57; 2. Slipknot Jam 3:03)

Goes into Stella Blue.


This rendition feels a tad slower than other recent ones at the outset, although these things should of course be scientifically measured. Garcia is doing some outrageously great things in the first couple of minutes; otherwise, it feels like a holding pattern at first. Lesh is very active and assertive in the higher registers of his bass, which generates a little excitement. Overall the first five minutes of jamming has lots of pleasurable twists and turns, although it doesn’t have a lot of direction yet.


At about 4:50 the band threatens to break into a groove, with Lesh pumping an ostinato line, but then he drops out and things get more dispersed. At 5:40 Kreutzmann seems to be bucking for a drum solo, and everyone plays as if they’re just tossing in a few more ideas before subsiding. Lesh returns at some point between 6:00 and 7:00, but only to throw in a few scattered comments. At around 7:20 Garcia has thoughts about instigating a frenetic jam, and as Lesh cooperates this comes together for a little while. But Phil doesn’t really commit and it gets scattered again.


At 8:25 Garcia and Weir have a Sputnik-like idea, and they let this play out for a little while. Lesh is mostly absent again. At 9:23 Weir starts playing Let it Grow, or something very like it. This brings some cohesion, except that Lesh wants no part of it. By 10:45 they seem to have no ideas left, and the jam is sputtering to a halt. Lesh is nowhere to be found. At 11:12 it’s down to Godchaux and Kreutzmann.


Weir gamely starts comping at 11:29, but he can’t really get it going and he drops out again. Garcia and Lesh remain absent. At 12:05 Lesh tries to pick up on what Keith is doing. Weir invents a little descending part, and Garcia adds some chiming chops. It seems to be getting somewhere now, a kind of fusion jam that doesn’t quite take off but isn’t half bad either. By 14:15 it seems to have run it’s course, but they’re all still working together, and now a frenetic jam is layered over Kreutzmann’s heavy beat.


This runs down at 16:25, and Lesh lays out again. Jerry is tremolo picking, perhaps hinting at a Tiger although his tone is as yet relatively clean. At 17:45 Keith wants to get funky, and there is a desultory attempt to oblige him by the others (save Lesh, who seems to have left the building) but this doesn’t really take off, and we are left with a kind of aimless chaos. Garcia kicks on the wah pedal, perhaps thinking a meltdown can pull this one out of the fire. It seems like it’s about to get there, but the energy drops again, and at 2. :15 Jerry starts playing Slipknot! licks. This pulls them together a bit (just a bit), but there’s still no bass and no real center of gravity.


As always there are interesting moments, but overall this one is a mess. It’s too scattered to ever really hit, and it has to be regarded as one of the lesser versions of the era.


What was said:

wavethatflag:


Garcia is doing some outrageously great things in the first couple of minutes

To me it's Jerry being Jerry, so it's only great.

Lesh is very active and assertive in the higher registers of his bass

This is how Phil always plays, he's the second lead instrument. BURN.

Overall the first five minutes of jamming has lots of pleasurable twists and turns, although it doesn’t have a lot of direction yet.

Agree with everything before the comma. As to après comma, this is Dark Star so it travels in every direction and in no direction. (I like to pretend I understand theoretical physics.)

At about 4:50 the band threatens to break into a groove, with Lesh pumping an ostinato line, but then he drops out and things get more dispersed. At 5:40 Kreutzmann seems to be bucking for a drum solo, and everyone plays as if they’re just tossing in a few more ideas before subsiding. Lesh returns at some point between 6:00 and 7:00, but only to throw in a few scattered comments.

I more than nominally approve of these comments. Who am I to approve or disapprove? Who do I have to be?

At around 7:20 Garcia has thoughts about instigating a frenetic jam, and as Lesh cooperates this comes together for a little while. But Phil doesn’t really commit and it gets scattered again.

Emphasis on "thoughts" because I can't identify any audible information that ratifies this observation.

At 8:25 Garcia and Weir have a Sputnik-like idea,

I can't verify or critique what I don't understand. Well, I can, and do, but understanding allows me to take a jab at making objective sense.

By 10:45 they seem to have no ideas left, and the jam is sputtering to a halt. Lesh is nowhere to be found. At 11:12 it’s down to Godchaux and Kreutzmann.

I agree with everything after the comma.

It seems to be getting somewhere now, a kind of fusion jam that doesn’t quite take off but isn’t half bad either.

Agree with everything before the comma and with "a kind of fusion." If you imagine this part to iTunes visualizer, it clearly takes off. I think it's all good (responding to "isn't half bad").

Although, I have a problem with the implied assumption that all this has to "get somewhere" in the context of a Dark Star. Let's get nowhere!

This runs down at 16:25

I'd say 16:37 when it turns into just Bill and Jerry.

At 17:45 Keith wants to get funky, and there is a desultory attempt to oblige him by the others (save Lesh, who seems to have left the building) but this doesn’t really take off, and we are left with a kind of aimless chaos.

Agree with Keith/funky, I don't know what desultory means (half-hearted?), yup, can't hear Phil, and I don't know that there was a take-off attempt. I feel like you're clouding your review with personal aspirations to take flight, as I cloud mine with a need to critique. It's way better to approach Dark Star with a blank slate. That goes for me, too.

Jerry starts playing Slipknot! licks.

Yes.

[N]o real center of gravity.

Yes. But I think that's a good thing right before a Stella.


JSegel:


No verses here. A slow intro riff into the Dark Star world, Phil almost immediately goes off-piste, though the band manages to hold it mostly together following a sidestick rhythm from Bill, but the runs move up and away pretty quickly, so the groove barely holds together—just barely, but it does, and continues forth. It seems to go outside and then back again a few times, Jerry switching up tempos of his runs, from slow melodicism to fast jazzy licks, though staying in the A-Mixolydian world for quite a while. An eddy forms at 3 minutes on a few notes, the band moves out of it into new depths of the groove, Bill still chugging along.

Jerry moves into low register in the 4th minute for a while, and sounds some blue notes in the scale, the band has some tremulous rhythmic bits, Bill rolls to and fro on the drums, taking the groove somewhere else, by 6 minutes Jerry also finds a new rhythm with some chordal leads.

It sort of dissipates as Jerry runs away and pulls some descending blues picking pattern out of his hat. The band all drops down by 7min and Jerry starts playing with new modal notes. He leads Keith and Bill into a new rhythmic area of endless lines, and then this cedes to a plateau of sputnik-y chordal picking on some F# to G thing. They seem to find a way out of this when Bob hits on a chord pattern, but it doesn’t hold together for long and by 10 minutes is heading back to the two note alternation, though then Jerry steps on the wah pedal and warbles out some notes. Drums go free jazz.

Some call and response after it dies down, from Keith and Bill, electric piano riffs answered by drums. They continue together for a while, a duet. Phil joins in, sort of a jazzy bluesy riff, guitars seem to be picking up on it, with a repeating descending line moving into diminished chord outlines. They’ve moved into an E Minor sort of world and from this emerges a new fast groove at 14:30, Jerry moving on quick lines as the band picks it up and hustles for a while. Sounds a little lick each of them sort of fritters away, and then Jerry is back with quick endless lines, but lower volume, he heads into tremolo’d notes and back to odder lines with a diminished scale, which leads them to a jazz-fusion interlude in min 18. Keith is sounding very Jan Hammer.

Jerry comes out of this with statements of a d minor scale, but back to diminished chord planing and diminished scale runs. They enter a sparse space with extra-tonal arpeggiating for a bit before entering what is labeled the Slipknot jam, when Jerry starts the riff (a-c-e-d, a-c-e-d, e-g-b-a, then the outburst into the diminished chord outlines). Obviously not everybody is exactly onboard with the full expression of this yet, but Jerry seems adamant about practicing it, after a minute, you can hear Keith learning it.

It peters out into soft jazzy chords and ends up heading into Stella Blue.

----------------------
Not really an ultra-bad performance, some interesting stuff. They actually stayed on the Dark Star groove for a while, relative to other recent performances, though it is very disparate. The theme and chord progression are more “implied” (like abstract jazz, where the entire chord progression is implied by substitutions and never plainly stated) but it remains within the Dark Star world for a while. Some new little riffs to play with but nothing seemed to really stick and get hammered out; even the Slipknot was just stated a couple times and then dissipated. Cool to hear it being worked out, to some extent.


Mr. Rain:



Listening to the latest GEMS remaster. There's no audience tape available; deadlists says "there's a horrible quality AUD," which must be too horrible for the Archive!

The opening is slow & serious, and it seems a grand version is underway. Keith's on Rhodes, and Phil sounds perky at first. The first minutes are quite pleasant, Jerry playing eloquently, but gradually after a few minutes the jam just seems to aimlessly drift along. The initial enthusiasm seeps out, and Phil drops out too at 5m, leaving us with a rather low-energy quartet. Though Phil comes back a minute later with a few feeble remarks, Dark Star's already pretty much run aground.

At 7m Jerry hints at the theme but wanders off again -- the energy rises after 7:40 for a little unexpected peak, but the charge dies after a minute. At 8:30 Bob tries out an interesting chord pattern, but Phil stops playing and nobody else seems too interested. This doesn't build to anything so Bob drops it and switches to random Let It Grow-type chords at 9:30. Jerry warbles along on the wah, but the jam's totally directionless at this point. After some spacey wah outbursts, Jerry drops out at 11:10, then it's just Keith & Bill puttering along by themselves! (Not a common duo.) Phil comes back at 12:10 to play along with Keith, and this inspires Bob & Jerry to return, Jerry playing chords in kind of a loosely funky jam. Things remain very low-key; Jerry embarks on a brief wah lead after 13:30 but this doesn't go far; he seems totally out of ideas.

At 14:30 Bob starts a descending chord pattern (kind of a sped-up Mind Left Body) and this finally gets a rise out of the band. They sound engaged for a little while; but it's telling that Jerry's lead playing is kind of sporadic, he keeps reverting to strumming chords. By 16:30 this runs out of gas as well, and Phil leaves once again, for good this time. Then it's just Jerry trilling along with the others, getting kind of Tigerish. Keith keeps up a choppy groove, which the others play around in their oblique way. It all sounds really unfocused. At 20m Jerry returns to the wah and half-heartedly makes some Tiger suggestions; the others seem briefly stirred-up, but rather than carry on, Jerry starts playing Slipknot at random. The other guys know this theme, and Keith & Bob follow along pretty well. It's an okay laid-back rendition that runs its course after a couple minutes, with Jerry staying on the wah -- an interesting moment for Slipknot historians but the last gasp for this Dark Star. Then Jerry drifts quietly for a bit until he settles on Stella Blue (and Phil quietly returns).

This Dark Star's a bit like the air slowly leaking out of a balloon, pfffftt.... Nobody's too fired-up or inspired, and they seem totally bored with the whole idea of Dark Star. Phil only plays for about 12 minutes total. Keith gamely tries to keep things afloat, but Jerry's not having a good day either, and nothing settles for long; ideas dissipate almost as soon as they're brought up. You could take this as a very laid-back jazz session, but in a way this sounds more like rehearsal-room practice than a live show!
To be fair, almost all the reviewers of this show on the Archive just love this Dark Star, so perhaps its sleepy jazzy charm just eludes me.






pbuzby:


My main memory of this 7/25/74 version is hearing it for the first time on the Grateful Dead Hour while I was driving somewhere, and I ended up sitting in my parked car for a few minutes to hear the end.

I like these 1974 Stars but at times I can understand Weir's concern that they were losing the audience (even if Weir doesn't seem to be stopping the strange jamming at the shows, and sometimes contributes to it).


adamos:


They open into a slow roll, taking their time as they stroll along. Phil is clear in the mix and sounds buoyant. Jerry works a subtle, winding line that slowly grows in strength complimented by textures from Bob and Keith. It feels like something is blooming with everyone interweaving nicely. Jerry works his way higher than lower and winds about in lovely fashion. Keith is somewhat in the background but adds well to the feel.

There's some ebb and flow and then around 4:00 it sounds like they are trying to wind something up. Bill peps it up and Jerry works the lower ranges but it doesn't fully take off. Phil then steps back and they cast about for a bit. Billy starts splashing the cymbals and then working his kit and Keith becomes more prominent while Jerry continues to do his thing. After 6:00 minutes some momentum starts to build and they rise up a little (almost with a Truckin'-esque feel briefly) but then let that go and continue wandering on.

Starting around 6:45 things sound a little Dark Star-ish but there's not too much happening. At 7:25 Jerry starts bubbling something up and they gather around it seemingly ready to take it for a ride. But before long it dissipates and again they wander forth. Jerry and Bob bring in a touch of delicate sparkle around 8:30 and Bill is doing some work but it doesn't feel like anything is coming together. Then Bob moves into Let It Grow territory which sounds good. Jerry adds some low-key wah and they explore things in a mellow way getting a bit more spacey.

By 11:10 it's just Keith and Bill. Keith keeps it pretty mellow but they work it a little. Slowly the others come back in and it feels like something is coming together. Bobby brings in a repeating figure and Jerry adds some staggered notes semi-quietly before moving into wah. Things start to simmer but they don't seem interested in letting it run. It starts to dissipate but then Bob starts working a riff and by 14:30 they've pivoted with Bob doing his thing and Jerry adding some fast moving runs. Now things rise up and they start to give it some oomph, relatively speaking.

They work it for a couple of minutes and then not surprisingly let it go. Things quiet somewhat with Jerry and Bill still going but the others laying back. Jerry gets into tremolo that Bob and Keith compliment and things start to get freakier. It's not quite pre-Tiger territory but it's somewhat in that vein. Keith starts asserting himself more with electric piano and a funky groove starts to emerge. However it doesn't fully come together with everyone still kind of doing their own thing. Phil seems to be absent and Jerry keeps working some fast moving lines with a touch of edge.

Slowly things start to get freakier again but in low key fashion. After 19:30 they quiet down and then around 20:00 Jerry shifts into wah. A closing meltdown is up for consideration but again they don't fully commit and instead Jerry starts playing Slipknot. This makes for an interesting and noteworthy addition. They work it in semi-mellow fashion for two and a half minutes or so before letting it go and moving on to Stella Blue.

There's not a lot to be enamored with in this performance but it does have it moments. I like the opening segment which seemed promising. From there they never seemed to fully commit to exploring anything in particular, although some good things did bubble up along the way. Perhaps they were reaching a point where they felt they’d done it all before or maybe something entirely different was at play.