186. 1989-10-16

140163 Meadowlands 17:07 (Dark Star I. 11:02; Dark Star II. 5:25)

First verse at 5:37.
Main theme at II. 2:08.
Second verse at II. 3:49.
I. goes into Playing in the Band, II. goes into Attics of My Life.


Here we finally get to a Dark Star for which I was in attendance. After the crazy setlists in Hampton, we weren’t really expecting Dark Star to make another appearance so soon. Perhaps if the more savvy among us had heard the tape from Hampton we’d have thought differently, as the band had really committed to Dark Star there in a way they hadn’t done since before the hiatus. In any case, when they opened the second set with it in New Jersey, the audience was ecstatic.


This time, they structured the whole second set around Dark Star. Weaving into the Playing in the Band>Uncle John’s Band>Playing Jam segment way this does makes the second set feel like one big jam. I will confine my remarks to the Dark Star segments, but this set should really be heard as a whole.


Garcia starts out by talking around the theme before wending his way into a beautifully tortuous lead line. It’s not long before the Midi effects creep in; this time they form an aura around Jerry’s clean sound, somehow. Lesh is fairly prominent here, although they keep it pretty close to home, staying in a groove. At around 2:30 a horn tone comes out on Garcia’s guitar. He’s pretty mobile with the effects, and the clean sound keeps poking through.


They have a really lush sound this time. Mydland continues to work his way further into the spirit of Dark Star. Tune in around the four minute mark, and all four front line players are weaving lines around each other to stunning effect. Weir drops back into chordal stuff pretty soon, though. Jerry keeps alluding to the Dark Star melody; they’re not going out, but they’re exploring a bit more before the verse this time, until it finally pops in without warning at 5:37.


One thing that stands out on this one is how beautiful Garcia’s playing is, albeit in a more digital way than a 70s head would be used to. They plough right back into the groove after the verse. They get to around the 8 and a half minute mark before it sounds like it might be breaking up a little—there’s a turning point here. Garcia and Mydland lock in together at 9:15 and Weir, who seems to have a touch of MIDI going now, provides some hijinks with a sort of hybrid horn section/car horn bit. It slowly gets weirder, and by 10:30 finally seems to be heading out.


Jerry launches some flurries and is echoed by Brent. Lesh is finally getting strange, and it all starts to go sideways. By 11:30, though, it all subsides and Garcia calls for Playing in the Band. There’s more good jamming to come, but for now this segment comes to an end right when it might have been heading out somewhere interesting.


The three songs that remain before drums get into some pretty crazy MIDI-fied jams that in a way continue the Dark Star initiative, so it may not be apt to judge this one in isolation. Nevertheless, I’ll skip to the back half after the Space segment. I Need A Miracle trickles back into Dark Star, and now Phil Lesh is louder and more assertive than heretofore. They’re bringing it all back around, though, with the outer reaches having been visited during the Playing jam and Space, and they consequently maintain the groove here, although they allow themselves some indulgences in the form of MIDI effects.


They take it into the main theme after a couple minutes, but instead of going right for the verse they luxuriate in the Dark Starness of it all for a while, finally getting to the verse at 3:49. They’re just wrapping it up at this point; anyway, if you skip all but the Dark Star tracks, you’ll have missed a lot. After the verse, they wind it right down and take it into an emotional reading of Attics of My Life (although it would be kind of hard to imagine an unemotional rendition!).


This was a great set and a great experience. Taken in isolation, however, this Dark Star is nowhere near as exciting as the one from Hampton. On the other hand, they still seem to be into it, and fortunately there are several more excellent renditions to come.


What was said:

185. 1989-10-09

147611 Hampton 19:19

Main theme at :57.
First verse at 1:05.
Main theme at 9:54.
Second verse at 10:41.
Goes into Drums.


If the 1984 Dark Star encore at the Greek was a wonderful surprise, this one was greeted with shock and almost disbelief. At this point, few expected Dark Star to appear on a set list again, much less (as it would turn out) see a revival as a semi-regular feature of Grateful Dead shows. The previous night the band, booked as “Formerly The Warlocks,” had brought back Help On the Way>Slipknot, and many of the fans in attendance on the 9th doubtless thought they’d already seen—or missed—the main action of this short run. Little did they know what lay in store—not only Dark Star, but also Death Don’t Have No Mercy (presented with a surprisingly effective updated arrangement) and Attics of My Life for an encore. Deadheads staggered away from Hampton in a blissful stupor, and the word spread.


The crowd goes crazy at the sound of the familiar intro notes. There’s a rather short introduction, and Garcia (playing the Wolf again) does something new here, playing a kind of complementary lick on the bass strings rather than asserting the theme. The verse arrives after a mere minute, and by 2:20 they’re into the meat of the song. Garcia’s line is just as beautiful as ever here, and his sound is a bit more digital at this point, although he has a light touch with whatever effects he’s using until about 3:50, when he starts to swim in a reverb-y delay thing. Here the drummers are still banging away, but Weir seems game to make it strange, and Mydland seems to have gained some aptitude for weird Grateful Dead music in the interim since 1984. Lesh is active, but once again he has more of a supporting role than he was wont to adopt in the old days.


At about 4:45 Jerry starts sliding into a more effect-heavy sound, though not all at once. Then at 5:10 the MIDI is fully unleashed, as Garcia’s guitar has become a marimba crossed with a flute. It’s batty, but pretty great. At 5:44 he becomes a bassoon—it’s hard to keep up with all of this! The band by now has shifted into a darker space, and the drummers have broken out of the relentless groove that, from our perspective, had lasted for 10 years now. Jerry fires out crazy woodwind lines, Weir’s playing follows a strange logic that seems to complement him, and Brent has cautiously moved out into terra incognita with them. Lesh seems to have sunk down into a low rumbly accompaniment that underpins the proceedings without suggesting anything entirely new.


At 7:50 Garcia’s guitar is starting to sound like a guitar again. He starts a little frenetic jam, with Weir’s line echoing him with a slight lag, which is enough to get the headphone listener’s synapses sizzling. At 8:20 they come to a peak and back off immediately. Now there’s a meandering interlude, a moment of decision—will they return to the theme, or try something else? It seems to be the latter—they spin out into a section that is reminiscent of their more coherent space jams of the era. Weir has also fired up the MIDI at this point, and Brent seems entirely comfortable staying in the outer reaches. But at 9:44 Garcia signals the theme, and that’s where they go, and then we get the second verse.


They follow the verse with a deeper venture into space. Garcia is playing some rumbly and ominous lines, while Weir weirds out on distorted guitar. Then they switch roles, at least texturally, as Jerry plays some keening distorted lead while Weir kicks on some oddball MIDI effect. Mydland is likewise rather mercurial with his sounds here, with piano-like flurries switching to a Hawkwindesque gale and back again. At 14:40 the band kicks up a windstorm, and there is an entirely new and different kind of musical peak than any we’ve heard in Dark Star to date.


The music is rather hard to describe at this point, as it often is when they go into a space jam. It’s almost cacophonous at times, and entirely exciting. The much-maligned MIDI effects contribute to a totally psychedelic tour de force tonight; maybe this is how they’d have sounded in 1973 if they had the same effects then, as the space jams from that year are the closest prior analogue to what’s happening here. It starts to disperse at around 18:00; they no longer sound like they’re building something, so much as getting some parting shots in. Pretty soon they cede the field to the drummers.


This is a bit short compared to many of the classic versions of yore. It’s a very powerful stretch of music, however. They seem much more committed to Dark Star here than they have since 1974, and the new technology adds an element that I found to be bracing but welcome. The one disappointment is that Lesh’s role still seems to be a bit diminished, but overall this is both a historical landmark and a successful rendition.


What was said:

184. 1984-07-13

152162 Berkeley 15:55

First verse at 1:28.
Main theme at 9:51, 12:10, and 13:09.
Second verse at 13:22.
Standalone version (encore).


This was a nice surprise for the crowd at the Greek, I imagine. Garcia gets right to business this time, floating above the band with grace. They hit a nice groove here, and Lesh is a bit more active out of the gate than he’s been on the last few versions, although that’s a low bar. Surprisingly, Jerry hits the verse in under a minute and a half. This might not be a bad thing, given that the second verse is back and place, and thus this clears out a nice space for improvising in the interim.


They repeat the intro lick and swing back into the groove; 18 seconds later Garcia kicks on a distortion effect. Mydland is more of a force here than he was in 1981, although he doesn’t lead or do anything to disrupt the groove. On the other hand, the interaction between Garcia and Lesh is more prominent than it has been, with the bass taking a more melodic role. The band sounds very comfortable and fluid throughout here.


At around 6:55 Garcia seems to be working toward some kind of peak, but he pulls back. What we get is a lot of dynamic motion, which is a bit more like they used to do it in 1969, where the band would swell and drop several times in a matter of minutes. There are lots of allusions and partial quotes of the main theme throughout.


Jerry works his way into a repeating figure that really gets going from around 8:54. Everyone latches on and the music swells, and Garcia tops it off with a quasi-Bright Star section from 9:20. He drops down into the theme at 9:51, at which point it seems like the second verse is coming; instead, Jerry heads off into a kind of Sputnik sequence. This is a nice passage, if a bit brief, and soon Jerry’s hinting at the theme again, but he takes them to another minor peak at around 11:30.


From there Garcia winds his way up to a high A at 12:07, which is a sufficiently clear cue to Brent that they some together to play a bit of the theme in unison. There’s a woozy two-chord stretch after this that takes us to the next verse. Weir plays a little subtle slide stuff here that is tasteful and good, believe it or not. After the second verse, they let it fizzle out for about a minute, and the concert is over.


The two drums again make the music a lot more static, and the band stays in a groove, which seems to be a marked trend (if we can talk of trends when Dark Stars are so thin on the ground). There is nothing very surprising here, aside from the fact that they played Dark Star at all, and played it as an encore. Having said that, the music is quite wonderful in a low key way.


What was said:

183. 1981-12-31

12784 Oakland 14:50

Main theme at :06, 3:01, 3:48, and 12:35.
First verse at 3:58.
Second verse at 13:03.
Goes into Bertha.


Now Brent Mydland is on the scene, and he tinkles along in a more or less pleasing way; Garcia is on the Tiger now. The intro gives way to a snappy and sort of funky assertion of the theme—it’s mostly comping until Garcia fires off a line at :34, but this doesn’t lead anywhere in particular. They seem kind of unsure how to get into it, and the band is much more rhythmically oriented now, so this almost sounds like a backing track for a while. At about 2:10 there’s a little uptick in energy, but this is almost immediately reversed.


They slip into an intriguing space that seems like it might lead somewhere. The theme reemerges, and then Garcia ventures forth a little more. He soon brings it back to the theme, and that’s it for the introductory section, as he quickly goes to the verse. The appreciation of the crowd can be heard on the SBD recording as the vocals begin. The band bobbles the chordal reverse in the second couplet this time; I don’t think all of them remembered it.


As they swing back into the jam, Jerry seems more determined to make something happened, and then Lesh starts playing more forcefully too, but Weir and Mydland go back to comping. Oddly, after a short time Jerry starts comping too. Nobody else steps out, so he brings the lead line back. He brings them to a peak as we cross the seven minute mark, with Weir pushing a bit now. The band is starting to sound particularly good now, but we haven’t heard many ideas yet.



8:00 sees a more laid back, spooky segment beginning. Mydland comes to the fore a bit more but his playing is fundamentally ornamental. As Garcia moves them into a minor key zone, Brent plays some tinkling flourishes, but if anyone moves things forward it seems like it’s not going to be him. Reaching the 10 minute mark, the vibe has started to disperse, and then they pull it together—Jerry relies on repetition here and elsewhere to get a little energy going. The ensemble has a more delicate balance by 11:00, almost like chamber music. Like everything else noteworthy here, this proves to be brief.


Garcia kicks on the distortion at 11:20, and soon the drummers kick back into a more laidback groove. Oddly, this evaporates after a few bars; there’s a promising moment where it all gets spacey, but Jerry brings the theme back and they go to the second verse. They pedal along for a little while after the verse and then Jerry strikes up Bertha.


The band sounds good here, as far as cohesion goes, although if anything there’s too much of that. Phil Lesh has ceased to be a source of ideas and a driving force; Weir is mostly playing accompaniment; Mydland adds little aside from decoration; even Garcia, surprisingly, seems almost like a spent force here. It’s not unpleasant music, but other than that it’s a whole lot of nothing.


What was said:\