196. 1990-12-31

141868 Oakland 20:36


Main theme at :06 and 1:20.
First verse at 1:26.
Main theme at 8:40.
Second verse at 9:06.
Goes into Drums.


A New Year’s Eve Dark Star with Branford Marsalis, this kicks right off with the main theme. This is the second Dark Star with Marsalis (1990-03-29). They go to the verse almost immediately, which can be good in this era, as the jamming preliminary to the verse is often rather staid. Branford, on soprano, stays in the background at first, stepping up a little after the verse. There is some serious polyphony with the two keyboardists, Garcia, Lesh, and Marsalis; Weir mostly adds color.


At about 4:15 they start to work toward a peak, which arrives at about 4:40. Garcia then starts a driving rhythm (a bit like Other One) that gets everyone moving, and the peaks keep coming. They come over the top around the 6 minute mark, and drop into a section with a little bit of swing to it, and Marsalis comes to the fore. At 7:30 Marsalis is playing lines in spurts, and the others join him for a minute in a herky-jerky passage that then wends its way into spacier territory.


At 8:28 Jerry brings back the swing, then kicks off the theme. Somewhat surprisingly, then, he sings the second verse at only 9:06 into the piece, which seems to portend a spacey back half. Indeed, after the reiteration of the intro lick they drop right into a drumless space, without bringing back the Dark Star chord pattern. Jerry’s ready for some MIDI now, going for his bassoon sound at first (but these things rarely stay the same for long—pretty soon he’s a flute). The MIDI effects proliferate, with Hornsby and Lesh playing more traditional sounds. As so often is the case, it gets difficult to always track who is doing what.


It gets downright spooky at around 14 minutes in; there are still no drums, and the music is eerie and meandering, in a good way. This starts to almost sound like something by Sun Ra at times. Garcia and Marsalis lock in on some passages, and at other times everything seems to swirl around madly. In the 19th minute everything accelerates as Marsalis starts blowing up a storm, and the drums return; they rush to a crescendo. At 19:20 Garcia initiates a Sputnik pattern, but it fizzles out without anyone getting on board, and they let it dissipate into Drums, but not before all but starting up The Other One, which gives a strong indication of what’s coming after Space.


This is a strange and powerful Dark Star. They seem eager to get the song portion over with, which makes me think they may be tiring of Dark Star again. On the other hand, although it’s relatively brief, the music between the verses is excellent. The back half is unique, insofar as it must be the longest drumless stretch of music in a Dark Star. This is great stuff.


What was said:

JSegel:


Interesting show. I probably shoulda gone, dunno wtf else I was doing that evening! Oh well. Lotsa guests, there’s a Ken Nordine track right before the NY countdown, after which they go off in a series of jams, NFA, Eyes, then Dark Star, followed by Drums, Space, The Other One and Wharf Rat back into NFA. Eyes is fully jazzy with Marsalis playing, and goes on for 16 minutes. As Eyes of the World fades its last jam into repeated phrases, Jerry winds up a lick and heads to the Dark Star intro riff, people join in and they drop into a mellow version of the groove. Sparse lead bits from guitar or sax or keys, it sort of rolls along gaining momentum, building righto to verse 1.

Jerry comes in with such an incredible rasp that his voice sounds distorted, but he holds the note, and it gets nicer over the first line. They groove along for line 2, and start the em riff climb on line 3, to the refrain and a little sax filigree on the in betweens. To the outro, which is pretty ragged, they drop back into a groove and Jerry holds down some guitar sounds for a while on his runs. Keyboard cataracts.

After a little downturn, the begin a slogging groove with nice ups and downs from guitar and saxophone, over a mostly steady quarter-note bass, building to an eddy with the keys arpeggiating as the rhythm moves from swung into a stronger 12/8 with a climbing TOO style riff.

When this dissipates it does in chromatic waterfalls, then moves into a lighter version of this groove. Sax takes some leads. They move into different rhythmic bits and it all falls apart into more chaotic phrases and bits, landing in a weird area that then starts the Dark Star theme again and attempts to hold itself together, with verse 2 coming in.

It’s about halfway through the recorded track, Jerry still comes in very ragged and sounds better and better as he goes on, Bobby is trying his compressed harmonic bend things in the verse. The sax lingers over the changes, the refrain is mild chaos, but the sax makes it on the melody for the outro.

When they move into the next section, Jerry starts off with a whole tone scale and then some sax licks follow, it’s going to get weird. The drums mostly drop out, the midi pedals get stepped on, fake bassoons go to town. Sax jams out (he’s got a decent tone, thank the gods) so the midi stuff sounds like orchestral backing for the sax. Keys have some cool fade ins and then some kittens-on-the-keys movement. Bobby is making some weird little sounds, Jerry moves back to guitarishness, though it’s all very swirly and ill-defined. This is akin to the Space track, very similar to several versions of it.

Jerry goes for the midi-slap-bass sound again, sax continues, Bob plays with odd chords and volume pedal. They all build to a more frenetic peak, but Branford finds a swing in it, and it dissipates. Jerry back to guitar sound. Keys like a marimba sound. Sax plays octaves in a slow sequence, moving up as the band climb a bit and then relinquish the intensity, but it starts a cascade of trills, and that starts a new wave. Now I think Bob has his midi-pitch-follower on with chunky chords, drums come in and start pounding out a rhythm, they build to a good freak out, Tiger-like. Ceding to an eddy of notes, then a downward riff which has elements of TOO also, but eventually leaves the drums alone, for a 16 minute Drum track with electronic drums right off the bat.

Drums plays on a cadence with e-drums and toms, but it only lasts a few minutes before moving into a long sequence of weirdness. Tuned percussion and big toms with echoes and flanged echoes for minutes. Then it gets quieter for the rest of the track. The some mellow tribal hand drums (with chant singing after a while). Not sure who this is, actually, different language. Mellow hippie drum circle stuff. Toward the end of this, there are some instruments playing along. Is this Hamza El-Din? Anyway, it cedes to “Space” after a while, which starts small, with melodic playing from the guitars and sax. It turns full space after several minutes and the midi instruments are back and they go all polytonal and chaotic. It has its ups and downs and ends up with the 12/8 in chromatic atonality, but makes it to The Other One and strikes it well.


adamos:


Eyes Of The World slowly winds down and then Jerry dabbles with a few notes before launching into Dark Star, to the crowd's delight. It starts off nice and mellow with a touch of Branford blending in. By 1:20 they are back at the theme and heading right into the first verse. Jerry's voice sounds awful initially but manages to break through.

After the verse they reset and glide along smoothly. Everyone comes through clearly on the recording and the collective interweaving, gentle at first, is appealing. There's a pretty, uplifting feel to the proceedings. After 4:00 or so the momentum starts to slowly build and they rise to a small, bubbling peak at 4:40. This spills forth into a driving Other One-like groove, as noted. It's a good passage and you can feel something being conjured up. It crests at 6:00 and cascades down in a spacey, stretchy way after which they flow back into the groove.

Things mellow somewhat but there is still some driving action. Branford asserts himself more and they spin up some nice interplay. Jerry brings in some lower sounding Sputnik-ish sounds as well. By 7:30 things have calmed again with Branford staggering his playing a bit and they find themselves floating through spacer, more open territory. They don't linger there long however and at 8:40 they return to the theme and move into the second verse. Jerry voice is still weak and hoarse but again he manages to break through it.

After the verse things quickly dissolve into a jazzy, spacey ooze. Branford and the keyboards add a certain feel while Jerry and Phil take it deeper accented by Bob. After a little while Jerry shifts into MIDI mode working low notes for a spell and then as things start to stir up shifting to flute. Branford seems comfortable in this zone and contributes well. Bruce runs and down the keys intermittently and the collective sound is spacey but somewhat light too.

After 14:00 the vibe begins to change; spooky and eerie are good descriptors. The drummers being out creates more space and they drift along in a "Space"-like zone. After 15:10 it starts to pick up with Jerry working some deep MIDI notes that Branford plays off of. Bob injects some notes and Bruce is in the mix as well. Around 16:00 the intensity picks up and they swing through some freaky, spacey interplay. There's a brief ebb and then they turn right back into it.

Branford remains at the fore with the keyboards playing off of him. Jerry starts to inject himself more again and after 18:00 there's a building, swirling feel that ramps up in intensity. They rise to a final chaotic peak accented by the drums. As they come down Jerry gets into some repeating Sputnik-esque notes before playing descending notes that take them back into TOO territory again. They dabble nicely in this zone virtually starting up song before suddenly giving way to Drums.

It's a good performance. Branford accords himself well and the band gives him space to work while providing the way forward and interweaving well. They also avoid overdoing the MIDI in a way that would have crowded out the saxophone. I like the pretty, uplifting feel early on as well as the driving swing. And the spacey, semi-freaky back half is compelling. Jerry's voice is in rough shape but that is what it is.