49666 Greensboro 26:09 (I: 23:34, II: 2:35)
Main theme at :48 and 1:45.
First verse at 8:42.
Second verse at II. 1:41.
Goes into Drums, then PitB reprise
1991, a new year for Dark Star. Bruce Hornsby is still hanging around, and this time he is very active in the early innings. The intro jam is brisk, and is organized around the main theme, which the various players return to periodically throughout. Garcia also plays around with the verse melody at 2:05, after which he plays some magnificent runs that culminate in a Bright Star flourish at 3:05. After some more exploration, he revisits the verse tune at 4:54, then turns into a flute at 5:45.
This is what, as the cliché has it, could be called a “bravura performance” by Jerry, who seems to be bursting with energy and ideas tonight. The band leaves the two-chord pocket behind fairly early, although by 8:22, when Garcia signals the return to the theme, they haven’t gone too far out, either. This brings us almost immediately to the verse, wrapping up a promising first segment.
They seem to slow down just a little coming off the verse. Here begins a jam that, at first, is similar to the first one, if a bit more deliberate. It starts to get kind of soupy and weird at 10:40, with Weir and the keyboardists coloring outside the lines now, and more of an emphasis on the E minor. Pretty soon we’re in Strangeville, and the MIDI effects become more prominent, with Garcia settling on the bassoon. The keys get more twisted and carnivalesque—there’s some wild stuff going on from about 13:40 in particular. It just gets stranger and wilder from here.
I am not entirely sure which keyboardist is responsible for which sounds here; it’s usually only possible to hear one at a time with any clarity. I think it’s Vince at about 15:45 who’s letting it all hang out; if so, he seems to be finally contributing something interesting to Dark Star. At 17:48 you can briefly hear them both, and it seems like Hornsby is trilling while Vince ranges around a bit.
The section beginning at 18:30 is truly far out space rock. Now Garcia also sounds like a keyboard, which is really cool but doesn’t make things any clearer via a vis this write-up. The music soon starts to disperse a bit, becoming a space jam. The drummers start to take control, with Weir, Welnick, and maybe Lesh providing accompaniment—everyone else seems to be gone after about 21:00. Either Phil or one of the keyboardists’ left hands is laying down a swampy riff, which finally subsides as we reach the drum segment.
Space—which is considerably less freaky than the back half of the first Dark Star segment—has a kind of pastoral vibe tonight, invoking a sort of funhouse Jethro Tull. There’s not a very clear transition back into Dark Star where this recording has the track break, but the jam gets more cohesive and, at II:45, the drummers ease back into the mix. The main theme starts to emerge and pretty soon Jerry’s singing and its over.
This isn’t entirely new, but by this point the band has an odd, digital overall sound that can be a little off-putting. Aside from that, though, this is a thoroughly excellent Dark Star, and the keyboards made a positive contribution to that excellence, for a change.
What was said:
JSegel:
Aprils Fools Day concert, three months after the last Dark Star, this is the full space-out, 23 minutes up top, into 17 minutes of Drums and Space and then another few of Dark Star closing it out—moving into a reprise of PitB that never had a before-part, similar to doing the second verse of Dark Star as if the song were started days prior, as they did in Denver Dec 1990.
A spritely intro again and they’re off into a pretty quick groove, (for a Dark Star!), people repeating the falling riff in various ways, then the piano starts with cascades upwards and Jerry goes a bit, keeping an actual electric guitar tone, piano moves back to the riff to let the lead guitar go, and they move back to upwards waterfalls. Phil is mostly keeping the downbeats on the root, so it’s pretty structured, takes a while till Bobby gets his little trills going, Jerry is just noodling around for the most part. He plays with a Bright Star area about 3 minutes in, and after that they seem to start to move into a new area, everybody plugging away at their various continuities. Jerry is very bouncy today, hopping around on his lead riffs. Some nice eddies in the 5th minute before the MIDI flute starts up. It’s jazz flute time. They do some little workouts with this combo, changing the mode a bit when Jerry introduces new notes to it. He’s back to guitar sound by minute 8, and it sounds like they want to make a new section, bringing it down and back to the riff.
Verse 1 at 8:50, vocals start out scrappy, but line 2 is nice. They do the chord change on line 3, with Phil on a rising riff. Into the refrain, they all sort of peter out on the lines and land on the vocal lines, to the outro, which leads to more of the riff but it slows down quite a bit. Sounds like Phil has a pitch follower and is doing and off-beat outside melodic thing, with chromatic notes bringing it to a different mode. Jerry hits some distortion and plays against the new minor-ish mode, though he starts to stretch the tonality after a bit also, and everybody starts moving chromatically. This is an odd jam, nice notes but rhythmically chaotic. Oddly I only seem to hear Bill, and not much of Mickey but the occasional tom tom.
At 13, the bassoon appears, and more percussive sounds from Phil’s pitch follower. Bob is sticking with guitar distortion but they are all atonal and chaotic. The drums roll around and the keys head from piano to synth sounds and echoes. It’s getting crazy in here! Now the midi is a voice sound for a sec, then to more trumpety stuff. Bob is stretching notes, Phil is tremoloing. It’s almost monster movie.
They’re all back to guitar sounds, though with distortion, keys are still on the echo synth. They’re all riding some choppy waves here. At 16:20 a big midi marimba sound takes over. They bring it down a bit. Ah, bassoon came back. They’re still in atonal noise land, but each sort of in his own world. Now the guitar is a midi sax, then it cedes to weird bass riffs and keys, and something floating through a modulating echo. The echo has some feedback bits, everybody is making shorter statements, little stabs of notes.
At 19:30 there are drum hits and electronic drum hits, not sure who’s playing what, but the keys and guitars are still in making slower sounds against it, and a low synth tone drones off and on. It moves into a more rhythmic bit with the drum sounds, hand drum and synthetic drum, and the players keep at it, especially Phil who finds a riff to move with. Eventually they cede to the drums alone as people clap and seem to understand that the song is changing.
Drums starts with rolling toms from Bill after the instruments leave, and a high percussive thing riffing from Mickey. Bill backs off for the percussion thing to come out, and comes back on toms again, and plays more drum solo-type stuff for a bit. Then the electronic bits start to come in, syndrums and echoes/reverb. It fades to bits of loops of the percussive thing (springs?) and gets into the spacey part of this track, eventually it’s just low drones of echoey feedback, moving around the stereo spectrum.
Some isolated hits and scrapes on the big springs with feedbacking echoes, nice and weird. This section goes on for several minutes, though some high tones come in underneath in minute 9, not sure exactly what it is, sounds like synthetic voices. These lead to the Space track. I guess it’s guitar?
Bobby is playing with a slow envelope filter of some sort as well, and there are low bubbles, which become a bass after a bit and then heads back to synthy drone. It’s a slow lugubrious sea of big creatures barely stirring.
Guitar notes from Jerry, mostly atonal but clean, at a little after 2 minutes in, he seems to be heading to some sort of romantic melodic world. Now Bobby is making hits on his guitar that become very synthy and move back to distortion sounds. I believe the drummers are both offstage at this point.
At 4:40 into this track, Jerry moves into a descending arpeggiated thing, Phil is sort of jazz-bassing it. With a long echo picking up the guitar bits. Keys come in to play with it, it’s starting to move into pretty music land. Somebody is midi-fluting, but it can’t be Jerry because he’s on guitar sound still…? By 8 minutes they’re back in the key/mode of Dark Star and playing around. And it comes back, with some variation on the Dark Star melody area at first, and no drums yet…
At 50 sec into this track, Jerry has a definite Dark Star melodic bit and slowly the drums start coming back and they mold the theme groove from all of this, though Phil is very funky on it, and they hit verse 2!
It sort of slides into it directly, voice sounds ok, they don’t exactly change the chord for line 3 but *sort of*. Phil is still sort of strumming through the refrain, lotta pick noise, and he leads the outro and they all move directly into the PitB riff!
This is actually just a few more minutes of jamming, though in the different key—after a minute and a half, it does the riffing chord changes and back into the PitB chorus! “What the heck. Did we miss the entire song earlier in the set? Was I here?” Ask confused audience members. (Similar to the Madison Square Garden show the previous July, and probably others.) So they play out the end of the song as if they’d been playing this song the whole time. And then Jerry starts Black Peter, which gets rocking.
_______
Well, pretty ok version, (I liked it less than bzfgt seems to have) —less midi stuff except where it’s like 20th century atonal music. The lead guitar isn’t spectacular where it’s guitar, but it’s pretty good (in my opinion). Bobby has some interesting bits in there, and I liked the keys with echo parts.
adamos:
There's a brisk and lively feel as things get underway. Jerry heads out on a snappy line; as they settle in Vince continues to gently work the riff while Bruce's piano cascades over the proceedings. Phil has a bouncy line going underneath. They saunter along weaving in and around the theme. Bob's textures become more apparent as they go along. Jerry starts working upwards and he finds his way into low-key Bright Star-esque territory around 3:05. Then they settle in and Jerry works through lower territory accented by Bob; Bruce remains quite active.
There's some ebb and flow as they move along but they remain engaged. Jerry switches to MIDI flute around 5:40 that blends in pretty well. For a moment it sounds like they might head toward freakier territory but they settle back into the groove and keep moving along. They remain in this zone for a good spell and then at 7:55 Jerry switches back to guitar sound and they slowly ease back into the theme and then into the first verse. Jerry's vocal is quiet and weary but not as hoarse as in the preceding versions.
After the verse they briefly reset and then continue on in somewhat mellower fashion. By 10:20 it starts to feel a little stretchy and freakier like something is coming on. Jerry works a raspy line and the ensemble gets weirder. It's a thick brew with various instruments poking through and making themselves known in different ways.
By 13:00 Jerry has shifted to bassoon and things get weirder and more chaotic. The drums have been getting more present and that continues as well. Things are spinning and swirling almost like they're on their way to Oz. They slow up a bit and electronic keyboard sounds wash over everything giving it a more interdimensional feel. Phil asserts some low, repeating bass notes at 14:27 that bring some spookiness back and then it's like a freakout and a spacey teleportation all rolled into one.
Jerry changes back to a raspy guitar sound around 15:15 and they continue to spin and swirl. MIDI marimba comes to the fore and things start to ease up. They continue to drift along with the keyboard sounds washing over. Jerry goes back to MIDI and things start getting weirder again. They are deep in spacey, semi-mellow electronica now that wouldn't be out of place in a sci-fi soundtrack.
At 19:30 the percussion steps forward adding some interplanetary tribalism to the mix. They work this somewhat gently for a few minutes before eventually giving way to Drums. The back half of Drums gets spacier as is often the case and then Space itself has a gentle, subtle and at times even pretty feel. In the latter portion things start to slowly reform and by 7:50 or so they are heading back Dark Star-ish territory.
This continues smoothly into the second Dark Star track making the official demarcation somewhat arbitrary. They move along patiently, slowly bringing things into tighter focus. After briefly working theme they move into the second verse at 1:41. And then as soon as the verse ends they shift right into PITB reprise.
It's a good late era performance. They seem engaged and creative which adds a certain grandness to the proceedings, relatively speaking. The opening segment is lively and I like the swirling blend of semi-chaotic freakout and interdimensional spaciness in the second half of the main track. The cascading keyboard sounds add to that nicely.
Jerry telegraphs Dark Star after Looks Like Rain, but the band does a bit of adjusting before they start it, while the crowd gets increasingly excited....it's like the band is teasing them with false starts.
Very jaunty opening. The band's upbeat, spirits are high. Bruce is loud and in a feisty mood, overshadowing Vince who mostly sticks to the main riff for a while. Bob's also very clear in his channel, so it's easy to follow his odd half-accompaniment, dropping in twangy notes here & there. Phil's solid though unspectacular in the low end; Jerry sounds pretty keyed-up in his loopy, discursive style. Bruce is very prominent, not exactly dueling in the lead with Jerry, but kind of reminiscent of Keith. Vince is pretty quiet & restrained, all the better. Hey, at 5:40 Jerry turns into a flute! It's kind of appropriate for this pastoral-jazz feel, especially paired with the piano. After a couple minutes of this, Jerry goes back to his normal guitar tone at 7:55. There's a bit of a pause as the first movement finishes, and the main theme returns at 8:25. Verse soon after at 8:42: it's solid, Jerry's voice doesn't sound quite as worn-out tonight as it did in 1990.
Phil switches to MIDI tones right after the verse, inspiring Jerry to get more weird. It's a nice response, Jerry & Phil pushing each other to the edge. The music gets more twisted, noisy, kind of atonal & threatening. Jerry adds distortion, drums tumble, keyboards jangle, the playing's getting frantic. A little bassoon bit from Jerry, then it gets very chaotic after 13:30 -- the keyboards take over while the guitarists make descending-UFO sounds. Jerry switches from one MIDI tone to the next, to complement the others. And the frenzy increases, getting Tigerish after 15:30. A heavy drone & midi-marimba change the mood after 16:20, from frenzied to unsettled. Jerry's still switching around to various odd tones, getting ever weirder and more unrecognizable: sea waves crash, seagulls cry, robots beep, a child's piano tinkles. At 19:30 digi-Mickey starts to bang for Drums (or maybe Jerry has a MIDI Mickey effect?), and the music disintegrates under all the clattering. Jerry's left, but Bob, Phil, and a keyboard or two keep up an odd jerky groove with the bashing percussion -- 8-limbed alien dance music, I suppose, like you might hear in a Tatooine cantina. Finally after 23m the instruments trickle out and the impatient drummers take over.
Drums is actually rather tuneful. It starts out as very rhythmic "world music"-type electronica, giving way in the second half to a large doomy drone. The last few minutes are totally horror-movie soundtrack material; you can almost see the monsters approaching. For Space, Bob & others come back in with suitably spacey whines, and eerie noises swoosh across the stage. Jerry steps in after 2:10 with a normal tone, contrasting nicely with the droning creepiness. Then it becomes an almost gentle slow jam -- Bob keeps up the wild shrieks for a while, but by 4:30 it's quieted down to a mellow, solemn trio of just Jerry/Phil/Bob, Jerry hinting at a descending melody. Then at 5:10 Bruce joins them on piano, and after 5:30 Jerry starts teasing the Other One. Vince adds some synth frills, and within a minute they're definitely in Other One territory.
They stay in the Other One mode for a couple more minutes, the playing getting prettier until Jerry vetoes that direction and makes a u-turn back into Dark Star. Gradually the theme builds up, coming together nicely at :50 and getting almost funky. The second verse follows at 1:41. The ending is sloppy as Jerry rejects the usual outro and abruptly nudges the band into a Playing in the Band reprise (finishing the one from 3/31). The jamming on this is short but quite nice, and makes me wish they'd gone longer than a minute before Jerry returns to the main riff.
Excellent version. For whatever reason, they only did one Dark Star in the first few months of 1991 -- but the one they did, they were really in the mood. Totally assured and committed, with no sign of rust; everyone's very responsive. The jamming's jubilant, the freakout gets WAY out there, and they glide through a creepy space to a satisfying finish. It helps that Bruce is playing a big part; Vince is more background decoration until it's time to get weird. As you'd expect for '91, there's a heavy digital sheen, which gives the band a kind of cyborg effect: half-man, half-machine, or like an AI Dark Star. The MIDI use is also interesting: maybe because Jerry's had a couple years of practice by now, he's pretty good in this at finding the right sounds to fit what the others are doing; the tones mesh well as he plays off Phil or the keyboards.
JSegel notes that Jerry's "straight" guitar playing isn't too spectacular here, and it's true he's not dominating like he used to (especially vying with two keyboards), but what I'm hearing is a subtle change in style lately. Rather than "leading" so much, he's responding more, reacting to the others, so this is not a Jerry-centric performance, more of a whole-group effort: he's part of the texture. Though more minimal, his playing is still quite trippy in any case, and he's picking his MIDI moments more carefully.
Bzfgt picked the Ultramatrix version to listen to, which mixes more crowd in, but all the other SBD sources (like this Miller) come from the straight SBD with less crowd noise, which I might prefer. There are a few audience tapes: Brennecke & Brotman are both great (and identical: they shared mics), and Hessberg also has a bright ethereal vibe with a very different instrument balance, sounding almost like an FM broadcast. Either way, the audience tapes bring out the wild chaotic feel of this performance: you're being launched into the void, and good luck getting back.
No comments:
Post a Comment