196. 1990-12-31

141868 Oakland 20:36


Main theme at :06 and 1:20.
First verse at 1:26.
Main theme at 8:40.
Second verse at 9:06.
Goes into Drums.


A New Year’s Eve Dark Star with Branford Marsalis, this kicks right off with the main theme. This is the second Dark Star with Marsalis (1990-03-29). They go to the verse almost immediately, which can be good in this era, as the jamming preliminary to the verse is often rather staid. Branford, on soprano, stays in the background at first, stepping up a little after the verse. There is some serious polyphony with the two keyboardists, Garcia, Lesh, and Marsalis; Weir mostly adds color.


At about 4:15 they start to work toward a peak, which arrives at about 4:40. Garcia then starts a driving rhythm (a bit like Other One) that gets everyone moving, and the peaks keep coming. They come over the top around the 6 minute mark, and drop into a section with a little bit of swing to it, and Marsalis comes to the fore. At 7:30 Marsalis is playing lines in spurts, and the others join him for a minute in a herky-jerky passage that then wends its way into spacier territory.


At 8:28 Jerry brings back the swing, then kicks off the theme. Somewhat surprisingly, then, he sings the second verse at only 9:06 into the piece, which seems to portend a spacey back half. Indeed, after the reiteration of the intro lick they drop right into a drumless space, without bringing back the Dark Star chord pattern. Jerry’s ready for some MIDI now, going for his bassoon sound at first (but these things rarely stay the same for long—pretty soon he’s a flute). The MIDI effects proliferate, with Hornsby and Lesh playing more traditional sounds. As so often is the case, it gets difficult to always track who is doing what.


It gets downright spooky at around 14 minutes in; there are still no drums, and the music is eerie and meandering, in a good way. This starts to almost sound like something by Sun Ra at times. Garcia and Marsalis lock in on some passages, and at other times everything seems to swirl around madly. In the 19th minute everything accelerates as Marsalis starts blowing up a storm, and the drums return; they rush to a crescendo. At 19:20 Garcia initiates a Sputnik pattern, but it fizzles out without anyone getting on board, and they let it dissipate into Drums, but not before all but starting up The Other One, which gives a strong indication of what’s coming after Space.


This is a strange and powerful Dark Star. They seem eager to get the song portion over with, which makes me think they may be tiring of Dark Star again. On the other hand, although it’s relatively brief, the music between the verses is excellent. The back half is unique, insofar as it must be the longest drumless stretch of music in a Dark Star. This is great stuff.


What was said:

194-5. 1990-12-12 and 1990-12-14

194. 1990-12-12 149736 Denver 13:45

Main theme at 1:08 and 5:26.
First verse at 5:49.
Verse melody at 8:55.
Goes into Terrapin Station.


The jump-off is rather jaunty. Vince is tinkling out the main theme quite a bit at first, but he switches to a more legato thing after a little while. Lesh puts on some kind of xylophone MIDI effect as we approach the end of the first minute, and then Garcia starts playing the theme. He then quotes the verse melody as Phil switches back to bass tones. I cannot hear Hornsby at all here, although the archive has him listed as a musician. Weir is present but sort of quiet and tame.


At 4:28 Garcia starts fiddling with a Sputnik line, and this gets Vince swirling around as the band kicks up a bit. The latter brings them back to earth at 5:21 by returning to the theme, and the band falls into line. Garcia plays the theme again, something he hasn’t been doing much of lately. They go to the verse, closing the first chapter of Dark Star.


Garcia starts back in with intro-style melodic playing, and Welnick tinkles the theme some more. After a minute or so Jerry puts on some distortion, but they’re still keeping it close to home. Lesh plays with the effects some more, starting at about 8:25, and Weir starts playing something that sounds like a bedspring. Garcia runs through the verse melody while all this is happening. It now seems like Hornsby might be here after all, playing an electric piano or something…if so, he’s been keeping to a supporting role, but here he adds some futuristic blorpy textures (unless that’s Vince’s left hand).


There’s a lull at 11:25, and Garcia starts playing flute. He changes the effects a few times, winding up a piccolo, and they fiddle around a bit. The jam seems like it’s about to get interesting now, as they leave the Dark Star pattern behind. As the music shifts and swells, Jerry starts strumming Terrapin Station, and it’s over.


This is rather minimal, but altogether pleasant. They never explore outside the confines of a basic Dark Star jam, except in the last couple minutes when it’s just about over. If one were to regard it as something akin to Bird Song, then perhaps one would be less likely to be disappointed at how short and conservative it is for Dark Star.



195. 1990-12-14 149757 Denver 8:40


Main theme at 1:10, 2:58, and 4:00.
Verse melody at 1:23.
Second verse at 4:21.
Goes into I Need a Miracle.


This is, I suppose, the second half of the rendition from the 12th. The end jam of He’s Gone hints at the I Need a Miracle toward which they’re ultimately headed, but Space is floaty and meditative, and as it wraps up Garcia starts to allude to Dark Star. Garcia toys around with the theme, then almost fakes the band into the intro lick, but they keep going. Once again, I can’t really tell what Hornsby is doing, if he’s doing anything, and Weir is less of a factor than usual.


Lesh kicks off the theme after about a minute, and again Jerry plays the theme and then the verse melody, just as he did in the back half of the front half. He then transforms into a French horn, but as is par for the course, this doesn’t last particularly long. They wander around a little, but it keeps coming back to the theme, and this leads us to the verse at 4:21.


They finally get a little momentum going not long after the verse, although they’re still playing it pretty straight. It starts to get really good when Garcia kicks on the distortion and the band fires up toward the end, but they’re just gearing up for I Need a Miracle.


This doesn’t add very much to the version that was begun on the 12th, or really to the set in which it appears. Of course it is pleasant music, but without much of a core or a backbone. They almost seem to be just going through the motions here. I thought maybe attaching this to the first half would flesh it out into a full-fledged rendition, but I’d be inclined to just skip this part if I listened again.



What was said:

193. 1990-11-01

145663 London 21:10 (Dark Star I: 10:10; Dark Star II: 11:00)

First verse at 3:33.
Main theme at II. :00.
Second verse at II. :20.
Goes into Drums, then into Playing in the Band

This kicks off at a rather deliberate pace. Once again Phil Lesh is loud and active, which is a good sign. Welnick and Hornsby seem to be lumped together in the soundstage, and Vince keeps playing the theme. Garcia starts in on it at 1:26, but then seems to think better of it, which prompts Phil to swing into it, but they veer off and keep jamming. At about 2:35 they start to break free of the pattern a little, but they keep things melodic and straightforward, and soon they’re heading right back into the theme. The verse comes along at 3:33.


Vince unveils some sort of vibraphone sound during the verse, which seems perhaps promising. Hornsby is a bit more active at the head of the middle jam, though. There’s a veritable tsunami of keyboard sounds in the seventh minute, and due to placement it’s not easy to disentangle them. Garcia, meanwhile, has been doing his thing throughout. At 7:02 Weir gets a little thing going that Jerry picks up on, and there’s some nice interplay that seems like it might be a springboard, but rather than heading for a peak they take it down a few notches. The jam picks up again but in a somewhat disorganized way. By 9:05 it seems like it might be driving toward a peak, but this dissipates, and the music disperses into Drums.


Space heavily features Bruce Hornsby, and it peters out into a little bit of noodling before they swing into the Dark Star theme, moving almost immediately to the second verse. After only a little straightforward jamming they head into a space jam, with the MIDI effects finally unleashed. There isn’t much of a transition; they just plunge right in, seeming to be quite comfortable in this mode and ready to enter it at a moment’s notice. This is more Space than Space was tonight (the drummers even take a blow for a while), in fact, so I suppose they’ve had a lot of practice. In any case, it’s difficult to describe this stuff, so I’ll let it speak for itself for anyone who cares to listen. Eventually they make their way to a reprise of the Playing in the Band that preceded Dark Star.


This isn’t the most memorable version overall, but it’s pretty solid—some nice but straightforward jamming on the song pattern, and a pretty hefty freakout to see it off. It’s really pretty good, but I can’t help feeling that the energy around Dark Star is starting to dissipate again.


What was said:

192. 1990-10-20

150273 Berlin 17:42 (Dark Star I: 13:06; Dark Star II: 4:36)


First verse at 3:28.
Verse melody at II. :54.
Second verse at II. 1:50.
Goes into Drums, then into Throwing Stones.


The European crowd sounds happy to be hearing a Dark Star for the first time since 1974 (or 1972 for the continent). This comes out of the gate with a joyful and bouncy mien. Phil Lesh is quite audible and active here, giving this a classic feel. Welnick is also quite audible, which gives it a more modern feel at the same time, as his synths wash all over everything. I can’t pick Hornsby out at first, on the other hand; he is holding back, at least for now.


They take it to the verse very quickly, and Garcia seems to come into it wrong-footed. Jerry lays out for a bit off the back end, until at 5:13 he swoops in as a flute. As is so often the case, this effect doesn’t stick around long, and he goes back to a guitar sound rather quickly. At about 6:00 Hornsby starts to add some input, but he’s a bit low in the mix.


For all the other sounds that are happening, this comes off as a Garcia-Lesh dialogue much of the time—Weir stabs and bleats on one side, and on the other Vince is a freshet of keyboard sounds, with Hornsby not being much of a factor. At 8:10 they start to shift gears, and they leave the two chord song pattern behind in pursuit of freakiness. Phil has some kind of effect on that makes him sound a bit like an organ, and he lays down an ominous base as Jerry repeats a descending melodic pattern.


At around 10 minutes in Jerry switches to his bassoon sound, and they get even spacier. This is all rather intriguing, but it’s dispersing rather than going somewhere, with Drums on the horizon. It sounds good, but it would be nice if they built it into something. They climb to a nervous peak at about 12:45, and then they let it spill and leave for the drum segment.


In instances like this one, Space could potentially be considered part of Dark Star. It’s kind of surprising they didn’t do Dark Star>Drums>Space>Dark Star more often, in fact, since Dark Star was one of the main places where their space jamming developed. As Space comes out of Drums, however, it doesn’t have any obvious continuity with the jamming that preceded the drum segment; it’s a really excellent ambient electronic piece in its own right, however, with a nice build-up in the back half.


Garcia seems to hint at Other One a little bit in the closing seconds of the track, and Lesh picks up on that a little way into the next track. There is not a clear transition where the track breaks, but at II. :54 Jerry breaks out the Dark Star verse melody, which is the first indication that they’re returning. Lesh kicks off the theme, and Jerry rather tentatively sings the second verse. Not much happens after that, although it takes them a minute or so to opt for Throwing Stones.


This is a really hard one to evaluate—not enough happens in Dark Star proper to add up to much, but if we’re including Space (which was, after all, played in the midst of all this) then this segment starts to seem pretty darn good after all. In any case, if you’re going to listen to this, don’t skip Space.


What was said:

191. 1990-09-20

156442 MSG 27:49 (I: 12:03; II: 15:46).

Main theme at 5:51.
First verse at 6:20.
Main theme at II. :40.
Verse melody at II. 1:10
Second verse at II. 3:08.
Goes into PitB reprise, then Throwing Stones.


Brent is dead, and now Vince Welnick and Bruce Hornsby are playing keyboards (with the latter primarily on piano). This segment begins with Space, and this must be listened to because the jamming that is developed during Dark Star really begins here. I was in the crowd this night, and by the end of space we were all looking at each other wondering “What the hell are they doing?” because after 10 minutes there were no hints of a song coming out of Space. It was one of those moments where expectations are upended and possibilities abound. When they kicked off Dark Star, no one was disappointed.


During Space, the instruments circle around each other, and a jam begins to crystallize. It’s a rather melodically oriented segment, without much in the way of frightening sounds or atonal noise terrorism; the center of gravity is Garcia’s extended guitar rumination. By the ninth minute of Space it’s starting to congeal into a regular instrumental jam, and there are no indicators of where it could end up. There’s a peak at about 9:20, and they regroup; Lesh flashes the Dark Star intro lick and the crowd reacts, and then they kick it off.


Phil is a bit louder here than he’s been on most of the recent versions. He holds down the chord pattern at first. Welnick is very active in the right channel, and then Hornsby starts to work his way in. The two keyboards leave a lot of room in the middle of the field for Lesh and Garcia though, so the extra hands don’t make a huge difference so far. Phil keeps returning to the main theme pattern, keeping the jam grounded, but they start to take flight at 2:40, generating a little early excitement before slipping back into the familiar chord pattern again.


Welnick picks up the theme melody at 3:20, and he stays with it, for the most part, for a good while. and Lesh locks right on. Hornsby, on the other hand, is thus far only providing ornamental flourishes. Garcia hits one of his Sputnik-type runs at 5:20, but it’s brief; he’s ranging around quite a bit, but the others keep returning to the theme, and he finally joins them at 5:51. This brings us to the verse.


Coming off the verse, they go back to the basic chord pattern at first. Welnick seems to have gotten off the theme melody, but he’ll keep bringing it back. There’s a peak starting at 9:18 that seems to set them off in another direction at last. Garcia starts playing MIDI tones, maybe a bassoon or something. Hornsby gets a little more active, although he has been very much a background player throughout this rendition. They finally let it spin off into a space jam, with Weir playing a very loud MIDI foghorn line. It is starting to get interesting, but they suddenly shift into a Playing reprise, even though they haven’t played the song—maybe this completes the one from the previous night? I suppose it doesn’t much matter…


This is an exciting moment, although it defers improvisation for a while. Indeed, they could have ended the evening’s Dark Star excursion here, as it came after Space and they’ve already played for a good amount tonight. Fortunately, they do no such thing, heading right back into Dark Star after this brief detour. Garcia brings them in with the main the main theme, and they snap back into it, as he shifts to playing the verse melody (Weir doesn’t suggest the plunge to E minor this time).


Almost immediately after this, the jam loses its center—not in a bad way, but Garcia wants to sing the verse, so he brings them back to the theme again. Coming off the back of the verse, there’s no move now to return to the two-chord structure, and things get weird right away. Strange sounds predominate as they cut loose with a really hairy jam. Jerry’s giant bassoon transitions back to a guitar, and then into God knows what. The keyboard players seem to feel liberated, generating a righteous racket.


I can’t tell what Phil is doing during a lot of this—he may be hidden behind one of these effects, I suppose. At around 9:30 there’s a more obvious bottom end, and I think he’s down there somewhere…A pounding cadence starts up at 10:30, and now there’s an audible bass line. They drive it hard, and take it to a peak at around 11:30. The music is all the more exciting as we know that, whatever happens, this isn’t going to disperse into Drums.


Listen to the band at 12:30—I don’t know what to say about it, but it’s incredible! They are making music that is very difficult to describe, and if my commentary is getting disjointed, the music still makes a kind of sense. It careens on until it finally starts breaking up and they coast for the last minute and a half before going into Throwing Stones.


Perhaps partly because of the new keyboard players, this stays rather close to home for a good while. Nevertheless, it gets out there at the end, and when it does they really let fly. There’s nothing else that sounds like this; only the Grateful Dead can do it, and it’s strange and wonderful.


What was said:

190. 1990-07-12

149523 Washington, DC 24:46

First verse at 7:17.
Main theme at 17:00.
Second verse at 18:00.
Goes into Drums.


Here’s another one I attended; it wasn’t loud enough beyond the first several rows on the field, unfortunately, but it was a good performance. After a cursory Victim or the Crime, Foolish Heart gets jammy at the end and, although they play the introductory riff, there’s a seamless transition into Dark Star. Garcia’s playing had sounded a little bit stiff earlier in the set, but by now he’s limber, and his lines are flowing and beautiful.


At :45 he has become some kind of horn, but he quickly slips back in to a guitar sound, now with a MIDI halo; a little after the two minute mark, Jerry becomes a flute for a little while. This has been typical in Dark Star—MIDI effects often come and go rather quickly. The band is sticking with the basic Dark Star pattern, more or less, but they sound really good here; the playing is confident and fluid. It’s hard to analyze the parts and see how they add up to a coherent whole, at times; this has been the case at this point for decades, of course. Lesh is walking around slantwise; Weir unleashes little staccato bursts and partial chords that slide about obliquely; Mydland is busy, mellifluous; the drummers clop away, maintaining a typical groove. At seven minutes and seventeen seconds, this straightforward but quite beautiful segment is the longest introductory jam since January 10, 1979.


Garcia hits a low A at 6:50 that announces the arrival of the main theme (which I haven’t been marking up top, as it no longer includes the guitar melody I’ve used throughout to identify its position). This brings us quickly to the verse. No one attempts the chord reversal on the “Searchlight casting…” line anymore; this is for the best, as it sounds chaotic when only some of them do it.


We emerge from the verse in a similar place to where we came in from, save that the tempo may have slowed down a little bit. The jamming begins straightforwardly, but Brent seems to have loosened his tie just a little, and Weir is pushing a bit with some distorted squalls. Garcia gets some kind of wind instrument going; for some reason, I’m having a hard time naming the analogue this time. he shifts back to guitar at around 11:40, and things start getting a bit stranger.


Lesh has been helping the drummers maintain normalcy, more or less, but once he defects the jam starts getting weird. Mydland, surprisingly, is at the forefront of this shift, with some rather oddball piano runs pushing it all out of gear. Jerry throws on some distortion and his scales seem to shift into obscure modes. By 14:30 we’ve left terra firma behind, and the band just basically goes nuts until, at 16:50 Garcia emits an unmistakable A and the band falls into line; in case anyone missed it, he even plays the now-rare main theme a few times, and here comes the second verse.


The band isn’t done; rather than fall apart in the general direction of drums, they again pull the two-chord pattern together for a little while before everyone gets in some parting shots. Garcia plays some nice chordal melodies for a while, and then Lesh teases a return to the theme before, at around 22:00, they let it start to disperse; then Weir whips them to one last little peak, and then Garcia and Lesh do some Other One-adjacent wandering for the last minute until they finally let it drop and the drummers take over.


This is a really solid version; it’s not as weird as Miami or even Hampton, but it gets where its going. 22 years into its run, and Dark Star has yet to run out of gas. Not bad at all!


What was said:

189. 1990-03-29

149396 Nassau 29:17 (Dark Star I: 18:19; Dark Star II: 2:58

First verse at 5:53.
Verse melody at II:52.
Second verse at II: 1:45.
Goes into The Wheel.


This is another one I attended. At this point, one could expect a significant amount of people in attendance had not yet seen Dark Star, and the reaction to the opening lick is duly rapturous. We have Branford Marsalis (on soprano sax) sitting in for the first time at this show; the Eyes of the World that led off the set was released on Without a Net. Marsalis dives right in, but he could be a louder here; it may be advisable, for this reason, to check other sources. The opening jam is a little chaotic, perhaps because of the extra musician, as everyone seems excited to have their say.


The intro jam is sonically chaotic, but it hews pretty closely to the two-chord template. At 5:33 Lesh kicks into what passes for the main theme these days, and the verse follows closely behind, with Garcia sounding particularly hoarse. The second line reversal of the chords has at this point mutated into a somewhat disordered uncertainty, and this seems to be the case pretty consistently now. Lesh performs the reversal, but I don’t think anyone else does.


They pop right back into the two-chord format after the repetition of the intro lick. Garcia is relatively circumspect with a guest taking up some of the space. As they approach the 8-minute mark he finally makes good on this circumspection, as the band starts to deviate from the song pattern. It quickly gets into a vigorous variant on Space, and Jerry starts in with some flute sounds. Marsalis seems at ease with all this, gamely chirruping along.


The intensity increases at around 9:50, and this sounds like nothing so much as the lead-up to a Tiger! Jerry puts on some distortion, but he’s also a lot quieter here, so the chaos is a group effort. Crossing the 11 minute mark, Jerry has a lower, brassier sound and he marches around on the bass strings, with a loping beat emanating from the drum section. At 12:20 he switches back to flute, then back to a more guitar-like timbre. Branford starts overblowing at around 13:10, which is fitting enough in the circumstances.


This section, which starts to fray around 13:50, is the most cohesive non-song jamming here, although it remains chaotic and overstuffed. By 14:30 we’re clearly in the “pre-Drums” phase, where last thoughts and desultory parting shots linger for a few minutes as the instrumentalists prepare to leave the stage. Here we can hear Marsalis better, and there’s a bit of call-and-response with bassoon Jerry before they cede the field to the drummers. There’s an amusing part where they lock together and come apart repeatedly, right before it all ends.


After Space Dark Star coalesces again for a coda, and a run through the second verse. As the timing indicates, this doesn’t add up to much; all the action is behind us at this point. At one point Garcia plays the verse melody, and as he reaches the end at 1:05 Weir suddenly remembers that this used to go to E minor! No one else pays it any mind, though. They go right into The Wheel when the verse ends.


I’m not sure this one entirely works. The band sounds overstuffed in a way I generally associate with the post-Brent era. Perhaps because of the guest musician, Garcia’s playing is rather indirect and ornamental. It’s not bad, but it’s not a latter-day classic, either.


What was said: