216. 1994-03-30

14832 Atlanta 10:29

Verse melody at 2:52.
Main theme at 4:18.
First verse at 4:48.
Goes into Drums.


The final Dark Star follows a Playing in the Band that gets rather freaky at the end. Garcia kicks it off, and right away it is a bit more laid-back than the last one—the funky and frenetic approach seems to have been a one-off. Nevertheless, it bounces along nicely, moving at a good clip.


What the hell is Garcia doing starting at 2:02? He’s got some really freaky stuff happening, like he’s tuning a radio; then there’s a rather Hawaiian rendering of the verse melody at 2:52. The playing here is completely unlike anything we’ve heard in a previous Dark Star! When they hit the main theme, Weir almost takes the lead for a moment. There’s a sense of possibility here, and the crowd seems to recognize this with a cheer when they hit the verse.


Jerry follows the verse with some more conventional Dark Star leads, which are welcome here…now we’ve got four minutes for this to go somewhere. As usual, it will have to go out without falling apart entirely, as the latter is a constant danger when Drums are in the offing. By around 7 minutes in, the music has quietened considerably. There’s a little segment where Jerry and Vince are the focus, and Weir drops out for a little while.


We get hints of Sputnik, and at 7:41 Garcia sounds like he wants to start playing Comes a Time! He works a little melodic bit that sounds like the intro to the former, and Vince follows him. The drummers are very restrained throughout this segment; their time is coming, but they allow this delicate jam to unfold. Garcia keeps his Comes a Time lick going, with various permutations, but the band doesn’t quite coalesce around it—rather, they seem content to let it spill away and to cede the stage.


It's very difficult to evaluate this one—even though the band almost certainly didn’t know this would be the last time, it has sentimental force nevertheless. There’s not a whole lot to it, really; on the other hand, and fittingly enough, it has elements that are absolutely unique. What an amazing thing Dark Star is, that it could last so long and go so many places. We are fortunate to have these recordings, and in the end the finale could have been a lot worse. Even though their commitment to Dark Star waned in the last few years, they were still trying new things to the last.


What was said:

adamos:


The preceding Playing In the Band drifts along in the ether and then ratches up the intensity and weirdness at the end. As it quiets down Jerry plays the opening Dark Star notes to crowd cheers. Weir's textures come through prominently as Phil works the theme and Jerry comes in and out and then starts on a line. Vince heads to the riff and adds some swirl. Jerry, Phil and Bob intertwine and they groove along for a spell. It's mellower than last time but still moving at a decent pace.

The sounds that Jerry makes starting at 2:02 are indeed freaky! It jumps right out and then gets stretchy and bendy and sounds kind of like a theremin. The band hovers along to let him play around with it for a bit. As it goes on it sounds more like the slide-ish thing he does in the 10/14/94 Fire On The Mountain. They keep it going for a good spell and the other members dig in more and the energy builds. By 4:18 they're back in the theme with Vince rather active and Bob comes forward briefly and then Jerry starts into the verse. His vocal sounds kind of out of it in spots.

After the verse they reset and head out again. Jerry starts up a more typical line and starts winding out. It's fairly energetic at first but around 6:25 he eases up and the band brings things down and they kind of gently carry forth. Vince adds some piano sounds and they're kind of floating along. The feel gets prettier and more delicate. It does sound like Comes A Time could be coming at 7:41. Cheers can be heard; perhaps in response to that or maybe everyone just thought that Dark Star was wrapping up.

In any event it doesn't materialize; instead they gently dance around the melody for a bit and then open up a little and add some spacey ooziness as well. It's all still very delicate but the drummers start coming in more and now it's only a matter of time. And within another minute they give way to Drums.

It's perhaps fitting that the final Dark Star is both enfeebled and kind of interesting. There's not a lot to it but there were some new things injected and there is some pretty delicateness in spots.


JSegel:


The last Grateful Dead version of Dark Star. Coming from PitB, it moves into 5 minutes of Drums and then 22 minutes of Space! PitB is pretty mellow, relative to other versions. Jerry isn’t really playing much for a bunch of the jam, he comes in slowly, it’s nice playing but it's sparse and low. It’s pretty latin-jazzy and with some odd phrygian chord progressions going on. It breaks down entirely by the end of the track and the band noodles around for a minute as if it will go to Space, but then amidst the chaos they start the riff and move into a relaxed Dark Star groove.

Vince starts the riff on organ after a bit and then Jerry starts playing more mellow guitar lead, it’s nice, almost the old 70s tropical beach feel. Jerry isn’t really soaring, just low noodles so Bob starts playing with his whammy bar and making weird noises. Jerry backs off and eventually has some sliding pedal-steely bends with some synth sound. A harmonizer or whammy pedal maybe? Some of the harmonized notes bend out of the mode.

It drops back into the groove with an organ solo for a sec before more guitar stabs and verse 1 at about 4:50, Jerry sounds relatively strong, though dying off at the ends of the lines, they move to the em on line three and a lick to the refrain, pitch bending between lines. To the outro, then they drop back to the Dark Star groove. Bob is still playing with the phrygian chords, and this only goes on for a minute or so and they drop the level down, drums go for side stick, it gets very delicate in the 7th minute.

It seems to almost end at 7:30, everybody is slow and low, warbling around. Little chromatic phrases come in and out, the drums pick up a hand drum, they move into a holding pattern, with little guitar bits and hand drums, keyboard chords occasionally. The drums start to roll underneath and are preparing to take over.

Then it’s the Drums track and we’re out of Dark Star. Drums use echoes right off the bat. Rolling drums last for less than a minute and then it’s all e-percussion and garage door springs. It goes into a groove with e-perc bass and triggered synth sounds. Toward the end of this track it’s back to percussion with echoes before other instruments come in for a long Space, which starts on a long drone chord pad. Then they add a recording of monks chanting and various voice samples at different triggered pitches. Midi guitars come in to play along and feedbacky bends. Very droney and sparse and echoed. By 5 minutes, Jerry is in with a guitar+pitch follower. Then big organ sounds from it and e-percussion, stepping through presets again like opening doors to little scenes and then moving to the next, back to organ tone, it gets more intensity, scary church. Some big Bob distortion cutting through and it dies off to droney synth for a sec, still mostly atonal. Waves of this with various timbres, some super weird synth sounds popping around in the 14th minute. Drums come back in playing free jazz, they build to a big crest at 17 min with wild bass and pseudo trumpet, then back to low volume, drums drop out and midi melodies slow and a distorted bassoon is the lead. Short swells and bits from everybody, back to guitar sounds but in free atonal weirdness, e-percussion. This goes on until they go to distortion guitar sounds and get a bit bluesier and I Need a Miracle starts.


I quite liked the Dark Star part of it all, even though Jerry was really not playing much besides casual noodles. The feel was good, that old relaxed feel. Sort of a tropical breeze.


Mr. Rain:


You must admit, Scarlet>Fire, Playing>Dark Star is a pretty heavy pre-Drums set. (No Way to Go Home in sight!)

I think these late-era Playing in the Bands kept up the spirit of the classic era much more than the Dark Stars did. Though not as strong as the '93 versions we've heard recently, this Playing has a kind of haunted, spooky feel. The last few minutes seem to start breaking up into fragments like they're heading for a meltdown, or for Drums. But at 8:30, aha, Jerry teases Dark Star! Rather than go straight there, they rustle up a final noisy flurry to conclude the Playing jam; and out of that, Jerry conjures up the Dark Star opening riff (in a higher register).

Jerry isn't quite coordinated at the start, so Phil carries the opening alone for a bit as Jerry adjusts himself. Once they're all in, it has some of the bouncy feel of 3-16, but Jerry seems more withdrawn tonight. Then after 2m, Jerry goes nuts with some weird whistles (fiddling with his effects, which the crowd loves), then after 2:50 a long passage of the pitch-bend effect that he used a lot in '94. (Most famously in the 10-14-94 Fire.) This is its only appearance in a Dark Star, though it works very well in this context.* At 4:20 he works his way back to the theme; verse at 4:49. He sounds tired and mixes up the words, singing lines from both verses. The playing's a little "off" as well (mostly Bob, I think), but they tumble back into the jam okay.

In the main jam, Jerry soon withdraws even more into some very quiet playing, so the rest of the band retreats into quietness along with him. A hush descends; by 7:40, there's almost nothing but quiet Vince electric-piano tinkles & tiny guitar notes. They haven't made a move like this in Dark Star since....what, 1973? (The audience tape reveals a big cheer here.) Phil comes back with very high guitar-like notes, almost sounding like Jerry! The rest of the band slinks back in, but even with the drums, they keep the hushed ambient feel; Jerry doesn't play above a whisper anymore. This is quite a unique passage, real sunset waves-on-the-beach music; it's like they're hovering waiting for something. But the focus is breaking up, the drums are getting louder and Jerry's sneaking away, so here Dark Star ends, in a moment of quiet suspense.

Space is over 20 minutes long, a leisurely trip through MIDI madness; but no references back to Dark Star. You could say that Space now fulfills what Dark Star used to be, more than the current Dark Stars do. But the thing is, Space is all trippiness & no structure, it usually doesn't give you anything to cling on to. But Dark Star, in the old days, offered movements, contrasts, an underlying framework. When stripped of its parts, song separated from space, modular jams flung to the winds, I feel the parts don't work so well separately.

(*Footnote from Blair Jackson: "New to Garcia's setup was a DigiTech Whammy pitch-bend pedal that allowed him to play a note, bend it up a 3rd with his hand and another 3rd with the pedal, making for some rather extreme and eerie slide effects. Occasionally, the effect had an ethereal, almost pedal-steel sound -- but in my view he never learned to control it very well, and most of his solos using the pitch-bend just sounded out of tune and unsettling.")

3-16 was the better Dark Star for sure; the trouble here is that Jerry's playing sounds kind of tired and worn-out. So this may have been a Dark Star too far for him. There's not all that much of a jam here, but what's here is very nice. On the other hand, even at this late stage there are hints that there could have been a Dark Star renaissance to come. The sprightlier feel; the new, bouncy approach to the opening jam; the banishing of MIDI from Dark Star; Jerry's new guitar effect; and in this case, a revived quiet section which suggests different dynamics and directions they could still take. The fall '94 Dark Stars could have been something else! But it was not to be; Jerry was done with it. (And yeah, I think it was his decision alone.) And so Dark Star comes to its finish in hushed expectancy, flashing possibilities, waiting for a next step that never comes.