113446 ** Nassau 18:24
Main theme at :07.
First verse at 9:09.
Goes into Drums.
Having revived Dark Star at Bill Graham’s request, they briefly kept it in the repertoire, playing it again 10 days later, then once in 1981 and another time in 1984, before finally bringing it back in the fall of 1989. They again go right into the main theme out of the intro riff, and they hammer away at the two chord pattern for a while—the beginning of Dark Star has become a more predictable groove now rather than the launching pad it once was. Garcia’s playing is starting to evidence the flurrying style that will become more prevalent—perhaps too much so—in the latter part of the year. Godchaux is much less discursive then he once was; since his playing is not quite as rote here as it was on the New Year’s version, however, the chord framework is a bit less foursquare this time. In short, the early innings see them getting into a somewhat looser groove this time, although they’re still pretty close to home.
By the five-minute mark the potential for things to get interesting is manifested. Two factors seem to keep them earthbound, however—the relentless two-drummer groove, and the relative quiescence of Lesh, who is quite low in the mix here, and seems to be playing almost like a bass player in any case. Nevertheless, Weir is throwing up some tense chords, and Jerry’s busy guitar work is never without interest. By the time we’re seven minutes deep Dark Star has evolved into a hefty and propulsive jam, compensating with forward momentum for a lack of real surprises. By 8:30, however, Jerry is broadly hinting at the theme, and it seems like we’ve traveled as far from home as we’re likely to get before the verse hits.
Once again, Garcia doesn’t actually state the theme again before singing, but we’ve never left it very far behind. Might I say that I kind of like Donna’s harmonies on the refrain? I have a feeling I’ll be in the minority on this. On the other hand, it does seem to contribute to the more “normal” feel of the whole thing in this era of the band. For whatever reason, they bring back the usual post-verse lick—maybe they discussed it after New Year’s Eve—and they crank right on into a jam that isn’t too far from where they left off.
As they go on, they allow themselves to get away from the two-chordedness of it all; they hit a remarkable peak starting at around 13:00, with Garcia blasting a tremolo and then crashing them back into the chord pattern for a bit. The drummers keep plugging away—we’ve sacrificed exploration for power. At around 14:40 the jam settles down and becomes more diffuse, and we’ve entered what will become a familiar space for the rest of their career—a liminal place between a full-blown improvisation and a drum break, with the band adding what feel like addenda to the main body of the piece, with one foot out the door.
At 15:45 Garcia gets into one of post-Sputnik rolling figures we sometimes encounter, and he stretches it out for a couple of minutes. Weir mirrors him, but Lesh is at this point inaudible, although at a few points he pops back in—I get a sense that he’s been playing a bit, but that he’s not coming through the amps, because his line is very quiet in those few spots where I can detect it. The unravelling of this pseudo-Sputnik section takes us all the way to the drum break.
There’s nowhere near enough Phil, and the drummers keep the beat nailed down in a way that’s somewhat stifling. On the other hand, we get the late-70s Dead pursuing an extended instrumental segment in a pretty satisfying way—it’s good music, man! I suppose I’m trying to say that it’s not a peak-era Dark Star, but it’s not half bad.
**Note that I've moved to Relisten. I hope this is temporary, but the Internet Archive is currently unusable, as they've removed the timer bar. For previous versions, the timings on Relisten should be the same.
What was said:
JSegel:
18:28 (though really it goes into “Drums” and “Space” which are part of the whole thing, so it’s really more like 33 minutes. And after this, to Wharf Rat and then St Stephen [-note, St Stephen is dropped from the setlist until 3 more times in Oct of 83, then gone forever].)
A sprightly intro lick into a relatively fast groove. (Lotta clapping here from this audience tape.) They stick with the theme for a few times through and then Jerry starts moving along, the rest of the band stays in the groove, I guess picking it up where they left it off a week and a half ago, just chugging along in the groove, with notable downbeats per four bar sections. Jerry is really jamming around, he keeps building up and down and playing really fast bits over the four-square rhythm section, boom-boom-chack. This goes on for several minutes, it’s nice. Very different that the versions from 5 years previous. Jerry is really playing his heart out going faster and faster in the mode, then stretching it out, getting caught in odd eddies of leading tones and outside arpeggios that resolve to modal notes.
They bring it down a bit at 5 minutes but then a slow build again over the next couple minutes, really nice full band jamming, Bobby gets his weird chords on as Jerry stretches it upwards. Over that hill, people clap and yell, and they continue onwards at a little mellower intensity, though Jerry is still playing really fast often, to a sort-of-Bright Star area at 7:30, leading to a falling riff, which cedes to some low soloing, landing at the theme statement at 8:30 and into the verse at 9:10.
Harsh vocal entrance, ahem. Drums still chugging right through the lines, no pause on line two though a little build at the end into line 3. Remember when they played only hand percussion? Even chugging through the refrain with kick and low toms. Finally a pause into the outro, and then they head off into the Transitive Nightfall, with the groove right back and Jerry moving through intensely fast lead playing.
Electric piano chords hover above the sparse but intense grooving background. Lead guitar is just continuing an endless line, various chordal bursts behind him, Phil and drums just plugging along. Jerry is getting faster if that is even possible, caught in a little whirlpool and taking it up to a high tremolo at 13, they mostly come along for the ride towards a downbeat resolution to the theme, strong band statements, they are coming down on the root hard.
The band lowers its intensity and Phil starts a descending line, Jerry going chromatic. Keith moves back to piano, they are holding some latent freakout down, Jerry quietly moving along very quickly still, though the volume is lower. Bobby starts some more jazzy chords, drums still pounding out the kick on every beat.
A Sputnik area is developing with both guitars toward the 16th minute, arpeggios plateauing the groove, it goes on for a while and dies down a little but they hold the plateau, drums start laying back a little. The plateau of arpeggiated notes continues all the way up to the end of the track, though Jerry goes back to fast quiet runs against it. The drums build up again and they move into duel drum solos. Or drum duet I guess.
Mickey seems to have some sort of hand drum while Bill is playing the trap set. People sound pretty into it.
They move through a build on traps and it goes into hand drums from both of them (I think). Possibly it’s just Mickey? His rhythm sorta sucks. At 6 min into this track, they move back to the trap sets and roll around with a combo of toms and cowbell. People try to clap along. At 7:20 they start a low roll that builds to rolling over the toms, suddenly everybody erupts with cheering, I’m guessing the band is walking back on stage. Rolls and stops, cheering, rolls, now Mickey has moved to a tuned percussion thing like a log drum or something.
Jerry tries to find some notes to work with, and starts playing along. (Track separation here also.)
A few sparse electric piano notes, volume swells from Bobby or possibly an electronic drum? Jerry turns on the auto-wah pedal and wobbles around against tuned percussion rolling and sparse bass notes and such. Jerry still in high gear. Bobby makes some car-horn sounding swells and echoes. Bass is playing string noises and scrapes. A fuzz pedal is engaged, but it’s fairly quiet back there, wah-backed-off with fuzz sort of tone on chromatic riffing, odd high squeals from Bobby. Scraping continues against the running guitar which heads to wah-freakout screams, they build it all up to a head late int he 4th minutes of this track.
It comes down the other side with odd bass notes and screaming sparse atonal guitar bits to another build to tremolos, then suddenly drop off and start Wharf Rat. Nice one!
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Really a tour-de-force of lead guitar playing. Quite incredible and amazingly quick playing. I am sort of glad (at the moment) to hear the band back to playing the theme groove fairly cohesively, though I have to say that it’s relatively straight, which I at least consider odd for the Dead, especially in Dark Star. Phil still doesn’t seem to want to explore much still, he’s mostly just keeping the low end down. Bobby’s playing is good on the chordal melodics, Keith seems to be mostly stuck in just chords, but man Jerry Garcia is ripping it up! Phenomenal. I sort of expected this to be crappy bringing it back in the late 70s, but this was a really good version.
adamos:
They kick things off and move right into the theme to the great delight of the audience. The crowd slowly settles in and the band cruises along, working the groove with some pace. Jerry works a high winding line with some enthusiasm, accented well by Bob. The two drummers do their thing and Keith is pretty active too. Phil is less forward in the mix but still present. Lots of notes from Jerry as he moves up and down. He settles down briefly and there's some ebb and flow as they move along. Phil surfaces more fully at times but he does seem to be keeping things fairly straightforward.
They keep at this for a good while, working the groove with Jerry in the forefront. Some more ebb and flow after four minutes and by 5:00 things seem to be loosening up at least to a degree. Jerry visits lower regions and the kick drum(s) hammer away. Things start to build upwards again and suddenly it’s quite energetic with Jerry climbing into the clouds. This crests around 6:30 and they hover briefly but then keep right on rolling. Jerry works lower territory again and Bob and Keith continue to add color. They spin things up and then ease back again, heading back towards the theme around 8:30 before moving on to the verse.
Jerry's voice is a little bumpy and the drummers keep right on rolling but we get some light vocal harmonies again. As the verse ends they briefly reset and then head right back into working the groove. Jerry plays lots of quick notes again and Bob's licks come forward intermittently. More cymbal action and they seem to be working up a collective head of steam. The feel of the jam starts shifting a bit and it could almost get fusion-y if they wanted it too. But they don't give it that much rein and instead build towards a powerful peak that fully unleashes after 13:00. Lots of tremolo; it's not quite frenetic but they let it rip and reach up to the sky and then slam back into the theme at 13:28. Good stuff.
After this they ease back and glide along a bit with the drums most forward. There are hints of a move towards spacier territory and by 14:40 it feels like a shift is happening. They quiet down somewhat although Jerry is still playing a lot of notes and then pick it up a little. It's not quite insect-y as the groove is still there too but the possibility for weirdness is at least in its DNA.
They reach a hover point and then Jerry and Bob get into a sparkly Sputnik-ish thing after 15:40 while the drummers keep working away. They keep the sparkle going for a good spell. The drummers ease up around 16:43 creating a quiet opening for the crowd to express it's approval. Jerry and Bob keep going and the drums come back and the collective shimmering continues, slowly dissipating over time. And then by 18:24 it gives away to Drums and Space and then Wharf Rat.
A fun performance with a celebratory vibe that is emphasized through the crowd response. The first half is mainly working the groove and the peaks are more rock show-ish than exploratory but these are still enjoyable things. The big peak after the verse is really good and the extended shimmering passage near the end is good too. And as JSegel noted if Drums/Space are factored in there’s some more weirdness in the larger sequence as well.
Mr. Rain:
Soundboard tapes for the Jan/Feb '79 tour have mostly vanished, but there are a few different audience tape sources for this show (Bob Wagner, Keith Gatto & Jim Cooper, in various transfers), all of comparable quality. They all have the same PA mix, so it doesn't matter which you choose; Wagner & Gatto are probably tied for best sound (Gatto's the clearest, with less audience noise), but Cooper's fuzzier tape (cut at the start) has more low end and conveys more of the energy flow.
There's some tuning before Dark Star begins -- Phil telegraphs the lick, and some in the audience recognize it and start bellowing, "Dark Star!" Lots of crowd excitement when it starts.
The opening minutes have a kind of sedate getting-reacquainted-with-Dark-Star feeling. There's a lack of adventure here; this is pretty background music. Jerry has a tendency to go off into his flurries now & then, at everyone else's expense. Phil isn't doing anything audibly interesting, just puttering around the low notes. Keith & Bob keep up an active chord texture but kind of blend into each other. Bob has a bright guitar sound; his interaction with Jerry is deft as always, though a little obscure in this mix. A loud kick drum is really distracting -- Dark Star does not need someone thumping all through it. Mickey used to know that!
Around 6 minutes the energy finally rises in a little swirling peak, which subsides with a crowd cheer after 6:30. After that the jam seems to be dissolving, like they're already giving way to a drum break; but after 8m Jerry starts bringing it back to a Dark Star feel, and at 8:30 the theme resurfaces. The verse arrives uneventfully at 9:10, to many cheers. The drum thumping continues through the verse, good god will it ever stop? Harmonies in the verse again.
After the verse, not even a nod to space, they just resume the same jam again. Dark Star used to be full of variety, but currently plods along in a one-track mode. They've built up more energy and the jam gathers up some strength as it rolls along. Around 13m they churn up another peak, fanning furiously & diving into the theme again at 13:30, the high-point of this version. (Phil even surfaces briefly with a lick at 13:40, then recedes again to keeping time with the drummers.) After that, the momentum gradually trickles away and they're just quietly noodling, Jerry in what's becoming his typical pre-drums "I'm gonna play lots of little notes while I slowly back off the stage" routine. Phil's hardly playing at all anymore, just low sub-notes I guess; and Keith also disappears. What might seem like a welcome Sputnik revival by Jerry & Bob around 15:45 is just idle fingering at this point, as Jerry fades away into nothingness under his opiate cloud, covered up by Bob's arpeggios. However the crowd still seems very excited through all this, carried away by the moment.
The band's firmly in the Drums/Space era now. After Drums, the rest of the group returns for a vigorous Space with lots of weird noises. They sound a lot more awake and adventurous than they did in the Dark Star -- Phil's come alive at last, Bob's making freaky horn sounds, and it rises to a giant chaotic wah frenzy, more exciting than anything that happened in Dark Star. It's like a '73 meltdown again, the roar of a Tiger that quickly calms for Wharf Rat.
Well, this was a lame Dark Star. The Dead seem to have lost their ability to take it anywhere. Phil's all but comatose, Jerry's fluttering on a path to nowhere, and the drummers mindlessly batter the jam into submission. It's okay for a few minutes after the verse when they climb to a nice emotive '78-style peak; then they give up on it and it becomes generic pre-drums noodling. The freaky space part of Dark Star has now been siloed off to its own area, leaving Dark Star itself as kind of a rusty nostalgia piece. My recommendation: skip the Dark Star and just listen to Space.
Ha, I guess you guys liked this one more than I did.
I'd agree with adamos that there's more of a rock-show than exploratory vibe here. They stick to the groove (the drummers force them to) and don't really explore at all... Keith has more of a background contribution at this point, but what really hurts is that Phil's not doing anything, he's fallen asleep. Compare to his exuberance in Space, and the difference is glaring.
I'm not as taken as JSegel with Jerry's lead guitar playing here... It's kind of like a thread has broken between him and the band; he's playing decoratively with lots of flurries, but the sense of a communal bond has gone missing. Or maybe it's just that I'm bugged when he gets lost in his sprays of fast notes (my least favorite Jerry technique)!
It's the reviewer's choice I guess, but I would say they are different things: Drums-Space was its own formal routine, and once the Drums start we're out of Dark Star. Of course Space had its origins in Dark Star, and can be compared to what is (or isn't) played in Dark Star itself, but it has developed its own stylistic language, and I see it as more of a separate piece than a continuation. But the boundary might be fuzzy & debatable....I suppose the test will come in '89 when we start seeing Dark Star>Space>Drums>Space.
bzfgt asks: "As for the Nassau version, I think Phil is surely playing some of the times that we can't hear him? It seems like he drops out entirely but once in a while you can hear a little rumble which leads me to think there was a problem with the live mix."
ReplyDeleteMr. Rain replies: "He's playing throughout until the last few minutes. Just a little rumble, as you say, and sometimes sticking to one note....like he just has one string on his bass and arthritic fingers. On the Wagner tape you linked, Phil is the least audible; but on the Cooper & even the Gatto tapes, the bass is more clear.
Could be an issue with the live mix, or not. If you check out the Space on 1/10, it's a totally different story, Phil's popping out of his speakers and demanding to be heard. Maybe the level of Phil's enthusiasm was the issue, not the mix levels...."