209. 1992-12-12

140829 Oakland 12:57

First verse at 3:00.
Goes into Drums.


Garcia initiates Dark Star after The Women are Smarter ends, flashing the intro and then noodling around for 20 seconds or so before it gets underway in earnest. Once again the opening jam feels a little thin, without much participation from Weir at first. After a couple minutes Welnick picks up a cue from Jerry and starts running the theme, and the band falls in line as we head to the verse.


The intro riff returns and deposits us back in a basic Dark Star jam. Vince shifts to electric piano; for a moment I thought Hornsby was back sitting in, but apparently not. At around 5:20 it starts to sound to me like Garcia’s trying to break out of the pattern a little, as he gets almost a slowed-down Sputnik thing briefly going and then hits on a repeated note. Lesh seems likewise eager to get something happening; he is very active here. The music weirdens accordingly. Vince goes along with this, and Weir is doing whatever the hell he does in this era, which is kind of abstract to begin with.


At 7:49 Lesh gets a little riff going and plays it out, and Vince adds some horror movie sounds for texture. Garcia has dropped out, and the focal point is the bass. It becomes a full-blown space jam, minus Jerry. Weir wakes up, perhaps as a result of Garcia’s absence, and he starts to get some slashing licks in across Lesh’s bouncing line.


Vince returns to the piano sound, and he is playing some interesting stuff at times, but he seems a bit restrained, playing like an accompanist most of the time. This is best at the moments when he breaks out a little, such as at around 11:50 when they hit a peak. Garcia never comes back, and they head into Drums.


There’s a vicious jam at the end of Space which sometimes gets tracked as part two of Dark Star. Indeed, this is what the end of Dark Star might have been like had Garcia remained involved. Lesh gets a riff going to set them on their way, the drummers sneak back in at some point, and Jerry plays some wailing distorted lines. It seems about to meander, but by around 12:15 it’s really going. Weir gets a MIDI piano thing going, and Welnick plays off of it, while Lesh and Garcia uncork some action. At 14:20 of Space, Jerry brings out I Need a Miracle, and that’s where we wind up.


Although Garcia bails on it, the end jam of Dark Star is pretty good, all things considered. If we count the end of Space as part of Dark Star, as some people do, then it’s even better. However, there aren’t any features of this jam that definitively make it Dark Star, if such a thing matters. The highlight of Dark Star proper is probably the part without Garcia. So, this is an interesting and at times rather good version, but one can’t help being a little disappointed that Jerry didn’t see it through.


What was said:

Adamos:


After Women Are Smarter ends there's a couple quick Dark Star notes and then they dance around a bit getting set before launching in. I agree that the opening jam feels a little thin and Jerry's guitar tone itself has a brittle quality. Phil comes through clearly in the mix which adds some mellow fullness underneath but the overall feel is more sparse than symphonic.

Jerry heads out a casual line with Vince slowly bringing in some color in the background. Bob's accents come through occasionally but he's not particularly present. The drummers work a slow complimentary beat. They glide along with Phil and Jerry interweaving relatively well. It's all very low key. Around 1:40 Jerry goes high but very gently without fully articulating each note. He then shifts lower and they keep rolling, building up a little more momentum as they go. They focus back in on the theme and then move to the first verse at 3:00. Jerry's voice is strained and raspy. Vince lays into the riff before spreading out; Phil punctuates it well.

After the verse they reset and continue along. Jerry's line seems a little more lively and Bob comes through a bit more although still not a lot. Vince blends in some piano but then heads back to the organ riff. Phil sounds deep and full and active. He brings something forward starting around 5:15 and Jerry briefly ventures toward Sputnik-ish territory as noted by bzfgt. They wind and weave and things are sounding more engaged and interesting.

Around 5:55 Jerry and Phil get into a repeating pattern that brings some further liveliness and then things start to open up and get a little weirder. They swirl around in this semi-freaky zone without fully unleashing it. Then at 7:46 Phil starts working some deep notes and Vince adds freaky sounds and the drummers get more active. Jerry appears to have dropped out so it's Phil and Vince and the drummers getting weird for a stretch. Bob starts coming in more too with some stretchy sounds and then other textures.

The beat gets more tribal and the pace quickens and they keep it rolling with Bob playing more prominently. They bounce along and it feels like it could really take off but then they pull back a bit. They don't let it go however and things start building again, reaching another small peak before transitioning into Drums in the final minute.

Drums is very peppy at the onset before shifting into its usual weirdness. Space then gently drifts through the void for a good while before building up into an intense jam in the last few minutes. Jerry brings it with some fuzzy distortion and Phil asserts his bassline strongly and Bob goes MIDI and they find their way into almost melt-ish territory while still working a groove. I agree that it doesn't appear to connect to the preceding Dark Star in any specific way but it's a good segment. Near the end Jerry starts moving into Miracle and that wraps it up.

It's a decent version for the era. The opening segment is fairly non-descript but things get more active and interesting after the verse. And I agree that the jam at the end of Space is an indication of how things could have taken off further prior to Drums if Jerry had stayed on board.


Mr. Rain:


Once again, Dark Star follows Man Smart -- this time, rather than a hard start Jerry gently noodles his way into it, the riff coming at :23. The opening jam keeps a gentle, minimal feel; Bob & Vince are very unobtrusive in the first couple minutes, quietly laying down the theme, and the band seems uncertain whether they're really playing this. I still like the feel, though, more intimate than the usual bombastic late-Dead sound; it's almost like a rehearsal or a small-club performance. After a couple minutes they warm up to it, and the verse soon comes at 3:00.

The main jam takes off engagingly. Vince leans on the theme for a bit; throughout this performance he alternates between a piano sound & synth sweeps (two keyboards, I'd guess?). Jerry's playing sounds feisty and on-point, ably pushed ahead by a punchy Phil. Bob's making strange sounds in some other dimension. The jam gets odder after 6m, turning into a more abstract jazz-like atonality. After 7:40 Jerry abruptly drops out, and Phil apparently takes the lead with some active bass playing. It sounds like Jerry's just left them in the lurch, unable to put off his break any longer. To their credit Phil, Bob & Vince decide not to just cede to Drums, but step up with an upbeat little jam. Bob in particular comes alive once he realizes Jerry's gone. The jazz tinge is still there with Vince's piano & some bongo-playing, and for a little while we're back in some club listening to an obscure combo. After a few minutes the music dissolves under the thundering drums.

Jerry returns in Space, the first part of which is a rather dull digital icescape. But once Jerry switches to his regular guitar tone, he starts hinting at Dark Star a little bit after 6m, especially around 6:45. It seems they're about to enter Dark Star territory again, it's just around the corner; and indeed, after 8:20 Jerry loosely plays the verse melody! But then it drifts away like a cloud into more spacey wanderings. You could easily consider this a kind of Dark Star remix. After 10:20 a Phil riff sets them off in a new direction, a neat lounge-rock jam which has no relation to Dark Star or Space, but shows that even in '92 unexpected inspiration could strike the Dead at times. This segues naturally into I Need A Miracle.

This wasn't a very good Dark Star. The right ingredients are there: Jerry's awake, Phil's good, Vince is ever-improving (even sounding Bruce-like at times). But then it just sputters out in the middle of the jam when Jerry abandons them. There's a little reprise in Space which has some new possibilities, but the most interesting part comes after Space when they launch into a spontaneous jam as if to say, "We can still do this! Just not in Dark Star."


Listening to audience tapes of 1992-12-12 -- all fine, but I like Boardman the best -- they really bring out the desolate feel in this Dark Star (despite the drums being too loud). Jerry's poignant style at this stage is well-captured, the mood is quietly somber, and the performance sounded more coherent to me. The audience applauds when he walks offstage.

I almost forgot to mention, there seems to be no MIDI used at all in Dark Star itself; it's reserved for Space.




Adamos:


The part about Jerry hinting at Dark Star and then loosely playing the verse melody is an important note that does tie things together even though the final intense jam becomes it own thing. I skipped over that!


bzfgt:


I completely missed it, I think I looked at the running time of recordings that track it as Dark Star and started where I thought that was...




Mr. Rain:


No skipping parts of Dark Star in this thread, guys!

I'd track that as Space>Dark Star tease>Jam. It's more than just a hint, anyway, more of a Dark Star Interlude. Dark Star wasn't really blended as part of Space very often, usually they're kept distinct. (This struck me as kind of an Infrared Roses-style remix of Dark Star, disintegrating it into the void of Space.)


JSegel:


Encompassing Drums and Space this evening, after Women are Smarter. A little solo noodling up top, Phil joins and it leads to the intro riff, to the theme riff a couple times, Jerry sounds clear but a bit stumbly. The guitar has a nice clean tone, he’s playing some interesting melodic runs, keeping with a descending play on the them in between little space eddies, a nice quiet high one before the 2 minute mark. It has a quiet and sort of melancholic feeling to it. Bob is following the lead patterns nicely, it lilts and keeps coming back to the theme riff.

Verse (1) at 3 minutes, decent delivery, Jerry is actually holding the notes out. Vince is playing the theme riff through the lines. Line three almost doesn’t change to the e minor, they run to the refrain and pause, more than usual. Drums pound out the spaces between lines, Vince does the pitch bend thing, though after the second line of the refrain instead of between (due to drums, probably), they go to the outro and into the theme groove again.

Jerry is delicately running up and down, nice stuff, but a few flubbed notes in the quick bits. Odd, you don’t usually hear him flub notes. Nice playing from Phil as well, especially when the guitars back off a bit. It sort of lopes along in the theme world. They start to pick it up a bit in the 6th minute, some outside notes creeping in, piano making itself known, Phil going somewhere else, Jerry starts the jazzy chromatics. They move into a weirder section for a couple minutes, Bob plays with his weird swells. Jerry drops and the keys back off for some Phil and drums action, with Bob’s swells. It’s getting scarier.

Piano riffing comes in, atonal weirdness. This goes on for a while with Phil leading the jam, Mickey switches to hand drums and goes to a groove, piano goes jazzy. Bob tries some jazz riffing. Jerry has dropped out apparently. Weirdly in the 10th minute it’s more of a rhythm jam that sounds like early/mid-70s Miles, pretty cool! They bring it down and there’s an interesting keyboard melody happening that brings the drummers into an aggressive roll. The instruments drop out bit by bit as the drums take over and the track switches to the “Drums” track after a bit.

This track moves on with aggressive big drums for a bit before leaving Bill on his own for a real drum solo. Of course Mickey has to go and pull up the synthy things after a minute, and they go into more electronic stuff for real with small hand drum punctuations, then it’s many minutes of the e-drum synth stuff, eventually giving way to actual keyboard sounds for the Space part. Some spring swishes in there and guitars come in quietly underneath. Very spacey and weird, small sounds in the swirl. Eventually some distorted guitars come up with atonal bits then some Dark Star suggestions, switching to cleaner tone, it seems to come back to Dark Star space. The other sounds let go and it’s mostly slow guitar leads and drones from keys and bass. A slow bass line with the lead guitar and a swirly echo, Bob providing odd low wails and things. Jerry actually plays the Dark Star theme quietly once and riffs around moving to the vocal melody, with swirly space accompaniment. Very cool, a sort of collage of drums/space and Dark Star. It gets very quiet with little lead eddies and the swirl coming in waves. They move into another 4 or 5 minutes of a jam that is perhaps considered Dark Star before starting I Need a Miracle. It starts slow and sparse, then Phil starts into a rhythm, with Jerry going to a more distorted tone. It’s a fairly mellow jam, da-dum, da-dum, with Mickey on hand drums. They stretch it outside a bit, with big ringing clangs from the piano. Dunno if this is still really Dark Star, but it’s a jam, and it lasts a few minutes and then they move on and Bob’s insistence. Jerry has some fast high playing in there till it becomes bluesy as needed for INaM.


Nice playing from Jerry up top, and cool that the Dark Star theme came back at the end of the Space section. If you consider the drums and space part of Dark Star, it’s a big one.