141785 Canada 14:08
Main theme at :06.
First verse at 1:22.
Main theme at 8:40.
Verse melody at 8:52.
Goes into Drums.
This sounds a little tentative at first, but not in a bad way. Welnick is employing a more or less classic organ sound—I guess not a B3, since that was apparently proscribed? It works more or less the same way for me, though. Everyone is clear in the mix, and it’s well-balanced; the recording has an intimate sound. Hornsby is still hanging in with the band. They go right to the theme, and there is about 80 seconds of what amounts to throat clearing before Garcia sings the verse. Jerry’s vocals are no doubt aged, and it’s become difficult for him to sing Dark Star, but he sounds pretty good here.
Vince goes right back to the theme, but at this point he can be trusted to leave it behind when he needs to. Garcia is playing kind of softly, though when he leans in he’s loud enough. As they approach the four-minute mark he gains a MIDI halo around his notes, but he’s using it more sparingly and tastefully these days. The music is full-bodied and rather pretty. Hornsby is active, but he’s not doing much that’s interesting yet. Vince, on the other hand, is rather psychedelic, although he’s adding color rather than developing many ideas.
Weir caught my ear at 5:55 or so; he weaves a line into the mix here, which is a nice contrast to his usual stabbing interjections in this era. Then he starts to sound a little like an accordion, of all things; his contributions in general seem a little more interesting than I can recall them being lately. Hornsby and Welnick get an offset rhythm started from around 7:00; Lesh is playing a mobile line with short, non-sustained notes. On top of this Garcia plays some off-kilter descending runs. At 8:09, Jerry switches to a more legato line which seems to rein them in; he plays the theme, and then runs through the verse melody. Lesh and the drummers undergird it with a lilting beat, and they play right through the chorus.
They come out of it with a cool, syncopated groove in A; for a moment it seems like a throwback to the days when they’d compose new jams on the fly with unique grooves, although it sort of slides back into a more recognizable Dark Star groove at times. This is actually kind of interesting, as if some of the Dark Star’adjacent universes are closer than one would think. At 11:45, Jerry cooks up a strumming lick that they fall in line with, and after a little bit he cedes the stage, and they ride the groove out a little longer until the drums take over.
This is another Dark Star that is really solid and engaging without being quite long or interesting enough to entirely satisfy our yearnings. It has a really cool sound to it; maybe partly because of the recording, or perhaps due to their sound at this stage, the band really seems connected and in communication with one another. What is frustrating is that this rendition seems to point to powers that remained largely untapped; they seem capable of much here, yet they chose to do much less than they could have. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this quite a bit.
What was said:
JSegel:
Here Dark Star comes after Women Are Smarter and goes on a whole trip through Drums and Space to The Other One.
The intro is funny cuz Bobby does his high harmony with a distortion sound, then they move into the groove, organ still covering the theme riff, it takes a bit before Jerry starts playing melodically. They move in and out of the riff and he starts verse one almost immediately. Forcing out the lines, it’s sort of a dark and desperate reading. Long tones from the organ in the verse, into the refrain, they heighten the volume as the refrain lines are sung, and Vince does the pitchbend organ between them. Outro is ok, and dropping into a sparser version of the groove, piano spacing out the chords. Jerry doing short runs, it’s sort of static, hovering, swirling. Phil is grooving on octaves for a long time. Waves of long tones come in and out, and there are echoes on the lead guitar’s phrases, it undulates in shorter phrases, some eddies of little melodic repeated fragments. Some chromatics enter, traded around as the primary instrument shifts around between guitar and organ and piano. Bob has weird little distorted squawks in there.
They bring it down in the middle, it’s more of a mellow guitar area now, though nothing spectacular, then it starts to warp out chromatically into odd riffs, into a slightly more ambiguous area rhythmically. Big planing chords from piano lead Jerry back to the riff, and they go through a song form section. Lines one and two deliberately articulated by the lead guitar, then line three a little held, and they play the refrain instrumentally, with all the parts, and the outro is stuttery, as they slip into a new pumping rhythm from Phil and Bill. Still mostly descending lines in the melody instruments. They hold onto this rhythm for a couple minutes and then it starts to roll away a bit. Jerry sounds like he’s still playing the sixths of the refrain a bit, playing with it. The drums start pounding toms, while the guitar and piano play with the refrain melody line.
Eventually the piano sets into a rhythm with one of the drummers (the one that plays in time.) Bobby squawks with them. They pound this for a couple minutes and then it cedes to Drums.
Drums is 12:45, follows the usual few minutes of pounding up top, to a lower area, into electronics, pan flute sounds with echoes, shakers, e-drums. Moving to more synth sounds with the echoes, then back to shakers and big drums, with the e-percussion stuff, into echo/flange world which leads to about 7 minutes of the Space track with several crashes into a long droney synth sound. Punctuated by crashing drum sounds with modulating echoes. Space is really more drums for a while, it gets pretty frenetic and whooshy with pounding percussion and flailing synth tones warbling around, panning at almost audio rate. It’s a Space track with drums and keys for most of it, some guitars make their way in toward the latter fourth of the track. It gets crashy and noisy again at the end and somehow amidst the midi trumpets and crap, Jerry starts a little melody line on guitar in 6/8 and this develops into The Other One. It takes time, sounds more like Space for a while there, but he keeps at the rhythm and they all come in eventually smoothly over the first few minutes.
Dark Star itself is pretty nice and tropical sounding, short waves of little melodic bits up front. Nice verse and then instrumental verse 2 in its entirety with refrain and all! It’s a nice sequence through the noisy space to TOO as well.
adamos:
It almost sounds like a false start when it kicks off. Jerry sort of lightly plays the notes and Bob asserts himself and the keyboards kick in and then they start rolling. Vince works the riff and Phil comes in underneath and Jerry heads out on an easy going line. Bruce steps forward more and adds some flourishes and by 1:22 they're already into the first verse. Jerry's vocal sounds rougher and strained and Vince blends in some prominent organ sounds.
After the verse they reset and Vince heads back to the riff while Bruce hits the keys with some oomph. Jerry starts up slowly and gently and it sort of feels like they're hovering or perhaps suspended in mid-air. Vince continues to be rather active with organ sounds. Phil's line comes through more and Jerry picks things up a bit although he's still relatively low in the mix. The MIDI halo that bzfgt pointed out adds a touch of otherworldliness to the proceedings and they float along still at a fairly mellow pace. They continue to collectively interweave in gentle fashion.
There's some ebb and flow and then around 6:15 Jerry makes a small ascent with Bob injecting some complimentary textures. It doesn't fully launch however and they ease back into a dreamy, drifty flow. At 7:00 Phil gets a new bass line going that seems to serve as a catalyst. The vibe changes and the pace quickens a little and it feels both jazzy and spacey. They work in this zone for spell then ease up and start working back towards the theme which gets fully stated after 8:40. They follow this with an extended run through the verse melody that sounds nice.
After essentially an instrumental second verse they reset again and start working up a new groove. Phil and Bruce create a sort of stagger step feel and the drummers get in on it too and they sort of glide through this with Jerry gently playing a complimentary line. Bob starts working one of his own that's quiet and a little fuzzy. After 11:00 it starts moving back to Dark Star territory and there's a pretty, light feel to the groove.
They gently carry forth and then start to mix it up again with Jerry working a figure and Bruce adding oomph again and Vince bringing in a bit of a tropical feel as noted by JSegel. They straddle between Dark Star and this other groove for a bit. By 12:50 or so it morphs into a kind of repeating beat and they work it for another minute or so before giving way to Drums.
It's a pretty good version overall. For the second time in a row the band seems to adapt and respond to what Jerry is bringing (or perhaps willing or able to bring) to the table. He starts out fairly gentle and tentative and this seems to set the overall mood although it also creates some space for others to assert themselves. But the easy going feel also sounds nice and things start to get more interesting in the second half. There's some dreamy prettiness blended in and the morphing vibe, extended verse melody and overlapping grooves are nice.
Mr. Rain:
. This one has a cold start after Man Smart stops -- a very odd pairing. (Notice how Phil quietly sneaks in.) Bruce is once again sharing the lead with Jerry, and Vince is (happily) using his organ sound again. This time Jerry barely bothers with an opening jam, getting right to the verse at 1:20. (Check out Vince's bit after "while we can.")
They come into the main jam very open & spacey, not emphasizing the theme as usual. But they may sound uncertain how to proceed. Jerry's rather turned-down in the mix, recessed behind the keyboards; he uses some brief MIDI-halo tinges after 4m, but otherwise stays away from any MIDI tones. Bruce isn't doing a whole lot here despite being loud in the mix, but Vince is very active with lots of organ business. (I think Vince has improved quite a bit over the last year; he's at least colorful with better tone choices.) Jerry seems subdued again, playing in little spurts and almost fading out around 6m; but he hangs in there and at least sounds more purposeful than on 3/9. After 7m the jam gets more freaky tinges, hopping along like it's about to get weird; but rather than spiraling into space or an atonal freakout, they snap back to safe Dark Star ground at 8:30, returning to the theme. Jerry plays the instrumental verse melody at 8:55 -- here the whole verse is played, unusually (this serves as the second verse tonight).
After the post-verse lick, they find themselves in an odd not-quite-Dark Star jam, kind of an open-ended trip on Phil's lurching groove. Almost Krautrock territory. Phil plays a neat syncopated Dark Star lick after 11:15. Around 12m Jerry starts up an interesting chord riff, kind of based on the verse, that the others build on (it ends at 12:45). It's like a new song being born as everyone creates their parts; like bzfgt said this is almost like the old days for a minute. But as usual for these days, Jerry decides that's enough and heads offstage, leaving the others to hold onto the appealing groove for another minute before succumbing to Drums.
Later on, Space is very clattering & percussive with a heavy digital sheen, like a malfunctioning computer's idea of what music sounds like. A very creepy post-apocalyptic feel, especially toward the end with distorted rumblings. From this springs a winding Other One, weakly at first but gathering strength til it becomes quite fierce.
I didn't feel very strongly about this Dark Star. It kind of plods along without any highlights. Bruce is not as strong as on 3/9; Jerry's a little better but still sounds only half-interested. Phil's nice and perky throughout, and Vince shows some promise. MIDI barely appears. Perhaps the best part was the last few minutes, when they accidentally find themselves in a newborn star cloud in which anything might appear. But Jerry's not in a state to make anything happen.
Hmm, it seems I didn't have as nice a reaction to this one! Could be some Dark Star fatigue tonight; I might like it more another day. I'm also hearing a checked-out Jerry barely making an effort, though the rest of the band's able to cover for him. But this could also be heard as just mellow easygoing lite Dead.
lucan g writes: "3.20 was my first show and so I’m completely biased. That said… it’s funny noting Jerry seemed checked out, because Shakedown that started the set is extremely strong with confident leads from Jerry throughout."
ReplyDeleteMr. Rain replies: "Could be Jerry just wasn't in the mood or the right state for Dark Star. (An increasing problem by this point.) Or it could be, the closer they got to Drums, the more Jerry was itching to return to his backstage comforts."