180. 1978-12-31

139554 Winterland 12:26 (1. Dark Star 11:21; 2. Dark Star Jam 1:05)

Main theme at :00
First verse at 6:48.
Verse melody at 2. :23.

Goes into Other One, then Wharf Rat.


Four years have gone by; apparently it was at the request of Bill Graham that they dusted off Dark Star for this New Year’s show after not playing it in their previous post-hiatus shows. The intro sets a quick and bouncy pace. They start with the theme, which Keith keeps tinkling away in the background. Garcia lights into some fine cascades, and Keith joins him for a bit approaching the minute mark, but the band is still cranking out the two-chord pattern.


At 1:56 Garcia plays some beautiful variations on the verse melody. It’s not an inauspicious beginning, and Garcia is outstanding, yet one wonders if they still have the wherewithal to break out of the basic theme pattern and move into some more adventurous territory, which may prove more difficult with a second drummer back in the fold. Lesh plays some intriguing little runs to mirror Garcia, for instance at 4:40. At about 5:00 Jerry’s tone rounds off into a hornlike sound; in later years, he’d have switched on the MIDI here. The band gathers intensity; at 6:00 they are peaking, and Garcia is playing something very like Bright Star; they take it back down into the theme pattern here, and move right to the verse, complete with harmonies from Donna Jean on “Shall we go…”


They play the beginning theme after the verse, and go right back to a two-chord jam. Again, most of the focus is on Jerry. At 9:30 Phil pushes them away from the chord pattern a bit, but they don’t stray very far. At 10:10 Garcia initiates a Sputnik-like pattern that seems to herald a change; the thing could really take off here, were they not almost out of it. But it doesn’t end as quickly as the tracking indicates—they’re still in no man’s land at :20 of Other One when Lesh starts pushing toward the latter-named song, and the transition is still fairly gradual until 1:20, when there can no longer be any doubt. Similarly, there is no definite return to Dark Star where it is tracked to be; at 2. :23 Jerry plays the verse melody a few times before heading into Wharf Rat.


This cannot be said to be a particularly adventurous version, and in a way it feels even shorter than it is. It wouldn’t be fair to call it perfunctory, however; it must have been wonderful to hear Garcia spinning out his lines with confidence and power, and for what it is, this is fine and dandy.


What was said:

JSegel:


FOUR YEARS LATER, we’re back in Winterland. 1535 days since last Dark Star! (...says the banner the heads are holding.) The song itself is about eleven years old now.

Ok, so big differences in sound: much more compression, for one thing. The drums (back to both dudes) are bigger in the mix, the bass has much more low end.

After the intro, Jerry starts running scales and Phil holds down a low end, dropping to that A all the time, it’s strong on the downbeats. The drummers sort of shuffle along. Keith is on a real piano (compressed.) Jerry’s tone is clean (and compressed.) They move into a nice jam on the groove, following the lead guitar in intensity, it goes up and down.

Jerry does some funny licks outside the mode ~3:30, just to play with it. They keep building, he plays super fast runs in minute 4, Phil still holding it down and very much in the 4/4 thing until he starts with some high stuff in between low notes by 5. Keith is also really holding it inside the Dark Star theme world most of the time, occasional little tinkles, but often a very straight reading!

It just keeps plugging forward. Nice playing, not extremely exploratory. At 6 minutes it starts to let go a bit and drops in intensity, heading to a verse maybe. Jerry gets toward the theme more and more, Bobby has little chip chords. Verse right before 7 minutes, the drummers just play right through line one and into two, a snare roll into line three, just plugs along. Almost no fermata even on the refrain, they just keep playing through it. Donna on harmonies on the refrain! Yikes.

And it rolls right on into the ‘nightfall’. Continuing the low A on the bass, groove from the drums, chips from rhythm guitar. Jerry takes it a bit quietly off, but they keep chugging away. He goes back to fast runs.

At 9:20, the mode starts to falter, Phil starts moving away a bit, but they come back. It backs off into a Sputnik arpeggio from Jerry at 10 minutes, emphasizing the threes, drummers start rolling around more. The melody appears and rolls on, then Phil goes to the E and they start really going for the threes which takes them to The Other One groove for 5 minutes

This builds for a while, gets very intense in the middle of it before landing heavily on the rhythm E chord and the verse. Comin’ around, y’all.

After that one verse of TOO, they drop down and chug away at the 6/8 stuff for a couple minutes, where it peaks into a quiet repeated note that brings them back to a more “Dark Star” mode and they enter it again, Jerry plays the vocal melody in a lilting way, song-form jam! They do line one and two and where they once had taken off on line three, instead, they casually enter Wharf Rat.

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Yeah, Mickey Hart really ruins everything, doesn’t he? (Sorry.) There’s no subtlety in the drum parts, just continuing along sort-of in time with each other. There’s a lot of decent guitar playing, but for the most part it’s just up and down fast scales, when the band comes along with the intensity of the lead playing it gets good, but it doesn’t really explore much. Phil is really just playing bass these days I guess. Lotta root notes. That does ground it a bunch, but again, not super developmental. I guess the developmental stages of the band are over at this point and the just-keep-playing stages are happening. That said, the actual musicianship of the guitarists is quite amazing, they're both still learning things.


pbuzby:


Keith was playing the Yamaha CP-70 at this show. Yes, from this version on the drummers play a slow shuffle beat together and it limits how much exploration the others can do. In some cases (mainly the '89 versions) they abandon a steady tempo entirely after the verse(s) and it gets more interesting.


adamos:


They kick off the theme to crowd applause and then glide along at a tight, bouncy clip. The presence of two drummers is immediately apparent. Jerry works a line moving up and down the notes while Phil interweaves with a full, buoyant sound. Tinkling away is a good descriptor for Keith. Bob blends in some textures but he's not as apparent in the mix.

The keep working in and around the theme, cruising along. After 2:00 Jerry soars upwards in lovely fashion and the comes back down to lower territory. They work the groove nicely but don't seem inclined to venture further out. Jerry soars again and continues to wind and weave along getting into some faster notes around 4:00. Keith continues to be quite active and Bob occasionally pokes through like at 4:30.

Around 5:00 Jerry's tone changes as noted by bzfgt. He weaves lower and then starts moving delicately upwards again. They collectively rise up and Jerry gets a little Bright Star-ish and then things quiet in a pretty way before they refocus around the theme again and move on to the verse. The drummers keep working away as Jerry sings and Donna joins in starting with "Shall we go".

After the verse they go back to the starting notes as opposed to the more typical reset and then continue rolling along. Jerry spins out a line and they work the groove somewhat mellowly. Jerry plays some quick but low-key lower notes and they saunter along. Phil comes forward and it sounds like things could potentially get more spacey. Jerry picks up his intensity before shifting into some Sputnik-like notes. He then continues upwards and it feels like something is being spun up but then they ease up and after a bit of transitional hovering move into The Other One.

The Other One lasts for less than five minutes but it builds to a nice peak and briefly does its thing. There's some ebb and flow in the final minute and then they return to Dark Star territory for just a minute or so. Jerry plays the verse melody accented by Bob and Keith and then they gently shift into Wharf Rat.

A short, simple version played fairly close to the vest. But it's an enjoyable performance nonetheless. We don't know how interested they even were in playing Dark Star on this night and the event itself may have been too much of a happening for them to want to really focus in. But they say a quick hello to an old friend.


Mr. Rain:


So, it's about 4 or 5 in the morning at a Winterland New Year's party, Bill Graham's demanding the band go out for another set, so what do they do? They roll out Dark Star, which has been gathering dust for four years. (Or two years, if you count the 7/18/76 flirtation.) The crowd's excited to hear it but they quiet down quickly.

The opening sounds sloppy and rushed, but after a minute they've settled into it. With two drummers thumping away, and Keith pounding out chords on his Yamaha, this is kind of a bouncy Dark Star with a beat! Phil's perky and spirited with a thick tone, hitting the low end a lot along with some high licks....he's acting more like a regular bassist than he used to. Bob's hard to make out on Miller's transfer, like he's using his "invisible guitar" tone; but he comes out better on other copies. Jerry has a beefier tone than in '74, but his playing is a lot more one-track, getting lost in speedy runs sometimes.

The opening jam passes by pleasantly enough, staying close to home without the exploratory detours of yore. After 6m they're finally getting more mellow & spacey, and even Keith's loosening up with some pretty tinkling. But rather than space out some more, Jerry feels it's time to settle down for the verse, which comes at 6:48 without further ado. His voice is noticeably wearier than it was in '74; he already sounds like a tired old man! Donna & Bob join in for harmonies on the verse to bolster him, a surprising twist. (Aha, it means they rehearsed this!)

After the verse, there's no space, and not much of a jam either....they just trickle right out into noodling without any changes. Jerry flitters away pleasantly, just kind of passing the time with his fast runs, and Phil can't really push him out of it. Hey, kind of a Sputnik arpeggio coming at 10:20, some energy's building -- could this push them into new territory? No, they subside into old territory, settling into the Other One (the kind of move they'd make back in '69). The interesting thing is, this is a very gradual segue; for about a minute into the Other One track, they're kind of in between the two, merging them until Phil lands firmly on the Other One riff. (So it's debatable just when Dark Star "ends," and other sources time it closer to 13:40). Probably the highlight of this medley comes 2m into the Other One track, when they build up to the intro peak.

Now that they've more or less blown off Dark Star, will there be some hot Other One jamming? Well, no....Bob sings the verse right away, but they sound too tired to make anything happen, and there's some light Other One vamping for a minute. When it sounds like they might be building to another peak, Bob & Jerry take a surprise turn and they start playing an instrumental Dark Star verse, which is pretty. (Keith obliviously keeps playing the Other One through half the verse, until he catches on.) This had been a feature of Dark Stars back in '69, but I think this is the first time an instrumental verse substitutes for an actual sung verse -- something they'll do a lot more in the '90s. Then Jerry collapses into Wharf Rat.

As a Dark Star on demand, this sets the mood without doing much more. The Dark Star>Other One pairing, vanishingly rare after 1970, isn't all that exciting here since neither is played all that great on its own; the best part is probably the transition between the two. I can't be too hard on what's basically a quick warm-up run-through of Dark Star, but the band sounds way less together & inventive than they'd been four years earlier. The endless spirals of the Other One seem to fit their decaying skill set at this point more than the cosmic journey of Dark Star.

I prefer the sound of the transfer of the FM broadcast, which has more energy -- plus you can hear a guy call out for "Dark Star!" just before it starts. There are also a couple good audience tapes.
And of course there's a video! Bob's loudest in this mix; Phil looks excited, and Jerry's bobbing up & down in his own little isolated haze.