204. 1991-10-31

139276 Oakland 16:46 (I. 10:50; II. 5:54)


Main theme at 1:13 and 1:54.
First verse at 3:43.
Main theme at II. 2:40.
Second verse at 3:58.
Goes into Drums, then into The Last Time.


Gary Duncan of Quicksilver fame sits in, and he jumps right in at the very beginning. He is game, although it’s a little jarring to hear another guitarist try to put his stamp on the song. Garcia takes off at :39, and Duncan backs off for a while, although he’ll get another whack at the spotlight before the verse. The latter comes pretty early, and then they’re off again.


Garcia isn’t holding back, guest or no, but there are a lot of elements in the mix here. It verges on cacophony at times, in fact. At about 6:30 they start to bring it way down, although Lesh keeps plugging away. Then at 7:03, Ken Kesey comes in with a rap, and the band builds behind him. Kesey is a dynamic presence, and he gets louder, finally hollering out the ee cummings poem about Buffalo Bill and ceding the field to the band. They seem to conclude that Kesey provided the necessary climax, though, and let it go to the drum segment.


Space seems like an integral part of the Dark Star segment tonight. Duncan is involved here too, and he seems happy to add to the weirdness, but again he stands out as a foreign element. His involvement tonight underscores how the Dead function as a unit even during the seemingly chaotic parts of Space, in any case. Toward the end of this section he gets a funky little riff going that is amusingly incongruous at first, but it winds up being the thread that leads them into the next jam.


This segment almost sounds like it could go into Other One at first, although it has a lazier, lurching beat and a bluesy orientation. Surprisingly, Duncan is the center of the action now, as the band coalesces around his riffing and takes off. After two and half minutes, they spin it out and swing into the Dark Star theme. Then they blend it with the cadence of the preceding blues jam before heading to the verse. Deftly done.


There’s not much left after this; they do swing back into the Dark Star zone for a little while, but less than a minute later they go into The Last Time.


This is all pretty cool. There’s not a lot of extended jamming, but it’s an action packed segment of the show, and Kesey’s rap is pretty dynamic. It’s especially fascinating to see how the band adjusts to Duncan—at first, he’s almost a contaminant, but they reorganize around him and absorb him into the Dead gestalt. Good stuff.


What was said:

adamos:


Halloween night with Gary Duncan sitting in and a rap from Ken Kesey. As Spoonful winds down they start heading in a Dark Star-ish direction. It's similar to other recent preambles except for Duncan's guitar. As the tracks change over Jerry plays the opening notes and Phil follows and they kick it off.

Vince works away at the riff with Bruce adding piano accompaniment. Duncan is prominent in the mix and pretty active right away. Then he eases up after 30 seconds creating space for Jerry to head out on a line. They move with some pace with Jerry winding high and Phil working it underneath; Bob's textures come through more too. They touch back on the main theme at 1:08 and then Jerry goes lower. Duncan comes in more again, blending in relatively well at times and standing out as something different (and more bluesy) at others. After 3:20 they start to bring it down and then set up for the first verse. Jerry's vocal is a little weary but pretty good for this era.

After the verse they reset and continue on with Vince working away at the riff again. Jerry winds high with a bit of a triumphant feel and Duncan brings in some fuzz. The energy crests around 6:10 after which they bring it down to a hover point while still moving forward with Phil prominent. This creates an opening for Ken Kesey to come in with his rap.

"I was in D.C. and when I got the message I thought of two things..." Around 7:30 Phil adds some more oomph to his bass line and the band starts to build up while Kesey continues to rap. "S**t, this is the Grateful Dead telling me about my son!" It's an engaging mix of words and sound. The band eases back a little again and Kesey recites parts of an E.E. Cummings poem with his own twists. "And what I want to know, is how do you like your blue-eye boy NOW, Mister Death?"

As the rap ends the band picks up again and keeps the groove going for a little while longer before letting it go and giving way to Drums. Drums shifts into tribal electronica relatively quickly then gets into some heavier percussion before the Beam segment. The vibe carries over into Space which in turn gets its own feel through Duncan's participation. It's spacey and freaky and MIDI-fied as usual with a bit of a Saharan rock feel at times too.

Towards the end it sounds like The Other One is on the horizon but as the second Dark Star track begins they pivot into a fuzzy, bluesy jam led by Duncan. Jerry plays off him and lets him do his thing for a spell, blending in more as it goes along. Starting around 1:30 it sounds a little like New Speedway Boogie for just a bit. By 2:25 or so it seems to be running its course and they shift back into the Dark theme. They take it for a brief spin, connecting it the preceding jam as pointed out by bzfgt, before going into the second verse.

After the verse they gently wind down around theme for less than a minute before moving on to The Last Time.

It's an interesting performance. They keep it pretty close to the vest necessarily but get some good grooves going and allow Duncan to influence the overall feel (particularly in the second half) vs. just adding color (which works better sometimes than others). The Kesey rap is what makes this late-era version famous and that, as well as how the band plays behind him, is cool.


Mr. Rain:



. Gary Duncan jumps in during Spoonful and solos at length after 4:30 in that tune -- front & center in the mix, so you can't miss him. The Dead basically turn into a backing blues band; Jerry recedes to the background and lets Duncan do his stuff. Then in the last half-minute of Spoonful, everybody falls into a transitional swirl, with some nice dual-guitar teasing. Then Phil & Jerry begin Dark Star out of the swirl.

Duncan doesn't step back, he goes with the flow and keeps on playing for half a minute in Dark Star (which sounds strange), before Jerry steps up and delivers a more characteristic lead. Now Duncan backs off; they bring up the theme at 1:10, Jerry takes a little detour and returns to it at 1:50 -- then, oddly, Vince plays part of an instrumental verse at 2:05! Duncan's jumping back in now, and the jam gets very sprightly for a minute. But then they quiet down and Phil loops back to the theme at 3:25. Jerry gets the verse out of the way at 3:43 -- he actually sings it very well for '91, and there's a rather calm & hypnotic feel in this verse.

The jam continues nicely over the theme, Duncan quiet at first then sidling his way back in. Possibilities beckon, but at 6:30 they get quieter, clearly putting the jam on hold for a minute as Ken Kesey walks out. After 7m Kesey gives his emotional speech about death; and behind him the Dead keep pumping up the volume until he has to shout, finishing 'Buffalo Bill' at 9:15. The jamming carries on for a minute, turbulent & rambunctious. It promises to expand into new places; but instead, the Dead decide to wrap it up, unceremoniously calling it off after 10:15, and Dark Star gets cut short for Drums.

Drums gets spacey quickly; most of it's a digital percussion fantasia with a rather menacing tropical feel, like a trip down the river to the heart of darkness. (It's Halloween after all.) The transition to Space is chaotic with lots of swirling noises and Bob's whining guitar. The mood remains somber with a low drone & tolling bell & clanging, swooshing spirits. Duncan contributes some guitar, in somewhat more straightforward style, as the rest of the band turns into a spooky MIDI haunted house. I wouldn't say he clashes with the group -- the nature of Space is that it can incorporate anything, the more discordant the better, and here the bluesy guitar is the "discordance." But gradually things become more harmonious, and by 8m the group is resolving to more conventional musical territory, building up to something with grand sweeping chords. At the end of Space it sounds like the Other One is coming up; but Duncan has a quirky, bluesy lick going on, reminiscent of Spoonful, and they gather around that idea.

It's kind of like Spoonful pt. 2 for a couple minutes, with some line-trading between Jerry & Duncan; they play off each other well. At 2:30 (in Miller's Dark Star track) it breaks up and Jerry introduces the Dark Star theme. Some nice theme jamming, still carrying the jaunty rhythmic feel of the preceding jam, until Jerry sings the second verse at 3:53. This verse is also well-done; afterwards it sounds like they're going to continue with some quieter Dark Star jamming (lots of piano tinkling from Bruce). But it's short-lived and soon sputters to a halt, and Jerry starts The Last Time. (This barely counts as a > .)

This Dark Star was too short, and promised more than it delivered! Gary Duncan adds an unusual touch, and the jam with him is goin' places. But the Dead are in a hurry to get on with their regular set format, and whenever Duncan gets something going with the band, they quickly call it off and move on. Only about 10 minutes of Dark Star here, and most of the jamming isn't especially Dark Star-like anyway...well, maybe Duncan isn't the most cosmic or spacey of players. So Ken Kesey steals the show with his little speech, a rare occasion (I can't recall if there was ever a spoken-word section in Dark Star before). They might not have fully lived up to the moment, but it's still one of the most unusual Dark Stars ever.
The best audience source is Buick -- Duncan blends in more, and there's a big crowd response to Kesey.

JSegel:


This is the full halloween adventure, Spoonful into Dark Star with Kesey, etc, into the Drums and Space and then back out to Dark Star.

It comes from the last fading notes of Spoonful, rolls out and the intro melody emerges and they drop into a groove. Bob’s/Gary Duncan? been soloing blues in Spoonful so he’s still working it out a bit, then Jerry comes bopping along. They move off to the melody riff, and off for more. It gets a little boppier and swirlier, into eddies of intensity and Gary takes it off with more bluesy soloing while Jerry winds it down and heads to the verse.

Decent entry, guitar and piano doubling the melody, em on line 3 and off to the refrain, with a pulling keyboard between lines. A nice lull for the end of the refrain and a together outro riff (for once) and into the mellow groove again with sparser soloing. It gets a bit chaotic as it goes along, then fades back to small skittery movements, sounds like Phil is trying to start a new groove. Bobby does with whammy bar things, and Ken Kesey starts up telling a story about his son dying and the greater ramifications of this sort of thing. Phil keeps plugging away and they build it to a rocking little jazzy underscore. Kesey reaches a peak and the band takes it to a jazzy high, and then back down ceding to Drums, which is 13 minutes, and Space which is another 14!

Drums start rocking and rolling away. It gets sparser pretty soon, and e-drums start interjecting, but it moves off to wind chimes as well by 3 minutes in. Spacey synthy chimes. It moves into waves of moving echoes synthy marimba things. For several minutes. Eventually a swirl of reverby echoes and low toms come back in. Low rolling toms go on, building to a head and bringing the crowd to cheer a bunch, to a pounding accelerando, to a lull, leading to garage door springs at 11 1/2 minutes in. Spacey springs for a while, eventually people come join them for the Space track.

It starts with a warbling spring and then scary long synth tones come in. It’s quiet and weird for a while, some crashes start happening breaking it up. Some really distorted guitar or something is in the soup, and a guitar starts making stabby notes, then moves back into the texture. More guitars come in low, atonal noodling. Bells add to the crashes, still soupy, then more electronic percussion things. Some guitar noodles from various parties, monster movie-ish, with a clomping low pitch-followed synth sound and tinkling keys. The soup disperses at 6:40 or so, leaving small guitars with short phrases and odd echoes. Eventually someone moves to jazzy chords, but the bassoon comes in and spices it up with some atonal chamber music. He leaves that behind for guitar tone with echoes, and more Gary Duncan bluesy soloing.

They bring it down again in the 9th minute and it seems like it might do a slow descending blues thing for a sec, but goes sideways a bit into chromaticism and drone synths. Again someone is trying to riff in there and they finally force it into a bluesy riff by 12 minutes, and they sort of move it along for a bit, though Phil starts steady, he goes staccato sometimes to screw it up. Bluesy guitars swinging over it all. Toward the last minute Jerry does little noodley solos, and they seem to be able to steer this back to Dark Star with a little hint of the melody. This almost immediately brings everybody back to the Dark Star groove.

A short mellow bit of sparse soloing and grooving along, back to the theme with falling cascades of piano lead to verse 2, delivered softly and in the continuing groove. E minor on line 3, they slow rise on the line, to the refrain, it goes scatteringly, again the pitch-gliding organ between lines, a Bobby harmonic on the end, and the outro riff delivers them right back to the groove, dying out now, small solos and tinkling pianos, comes to a last chord at 3:20 and Jerry starts “The Last Time.”


Interesting version, not as musically upbeat as the Boston shows, but had a nice long interlude of drums and space.