144. 1972-09-24

2202 Waterbury, CT 34:32 (33:25) (DS 28:28[27:51]>Drums 1:58>DS 4:06)

Main theme at 11:03.
First verse at 11:14.
Tiger at 21:55.
Goes into China Cat Sunflower.


There’s a lot of Weir and Lesh on this recording. Things get off to a bouncy start, with Lesh deviating from the primary pattern fairly quickly while Weir keeps it pumping along. At 2:01 Bob starts to digress a bit himself, throwing in little tremolo runs in between his triad splashes. This intro provides a good example of the band maintaining a groove while each individual plays idiosyncratic and offset lines that would make little sense on their own.


At 3:31 Garcia launches into a series of triplets that culminates at 3:58 with some squalling double stops, and the band pauses a little on the tail end of this. Jerry comes back with some low runs and by 4:55 they’re working toward another of the minor peaks that often occur in the early going. The playing here is somewhat reminiscent of 1969, insofar as there is a rapid succession of dynamic shifts. Lesh brings us into the modern era, though, with one of his repeating jazz licks beginning at 5:22; as is often the case, this comes and goes without too much commentary from his peers, although it all fits together.


At about 6:35 Godchaux briefly switches to the Rhodes, I think, unless he just open the wah-wah pedal he sometimes uses with the piano. In any case, shortly afterward he seems to be back on the regular piano. At 7:27 Garcia starts a windup which brings them to another minor peak at about 7:43, and then the music slides into a more ruminative zone. They start to rise again, but something subtly poignant has entered the jam at this point. At 8:30 there’s a lull, and the phrases come back a little longer and less emphatic until at 9:05 Garcia crests and initiates a line that gestures toward Bright Star, and as he descends and then ascends again the rest of the band drops down to a whisper and the tempo slows; at 10:50 Weir decides it’s time for the theme; Jerry takes it for a couple spins and goes right to the verse, which is softly deliberate this evening.


The second half starts with some heavy and distorted bass to which the others add color. At times it seems Garcia is trying to latch on, and Lesh is changing it up, so a coherent jam is deferred. At around 14:40 Kreutzmann starts to lay down a groove, but the rest of the band comes to a virtual halt. Godchaux and Lesh are signaling their willingness to groove by 15:20, but nothing is coming together. As we get to the 17th minute Garcia has engaged his wah effect, and probably has a meltdown jam in mind. Kreutzmann gets on the toms and gently but emphatically offers the groove again. Weir is scritching, Lesh is trying to groove, and Garcia is indicating a meltdown; Godchaux sides with the weirdos, and Kreutzmann recedes back to the cymbals.


By 18:45 this is starting to coalesce, there is a groove but it’s a pre-meltdown groove. But they seem a bit uncertain with it or, to be more charitable, they are taking their time in any case. And slowly but surely, it is coming together, but Weir drops out at 20:35 and this takes some of the wind out of it, so Jerry gets more Tigerish, since the groove seems to be scotched. When comes back at 20:51 he’s switched to the meltdown team, and this seems to add the needed impetus to move things in some direction. By 21:22 they seem to be driving toward a Tiger, but then they pull back rather suddenly. At 21:55 Garcia goes all in and starts his Tiger roll, and the band follows suit. This Tiger seems a little bit restrained, but it will have to serve.


At 23:45 Godchaux is pounding a repeated note; if they all latch on, this will lead them out of the meltdown, but it doesn’t happen that way, and he finally releases it and a more drawn out expression of the meltdown ethos ebbs into an interstice at 25:00 that Garcia soon fills with a melodic line. Lesh is game, and they duet a little on a mournful melody. By 26:05 the band has arrived at a pretty little jam, and they milk it a little before Garcia starts bending it out of shape and they all start weirding out again.

They’ve left the jam, and they don’t want to go to another meltdown, so they seem to be at a bit of an impasse; they deal with this by stopping, and Kreutzmann is left to fill the gap with a short drum break. This goes on for a couple of minutes until Lesh joins back in, followed in short order by Garcia, and then Godchaux and finally Weir. What we have here is a choppy little jam that gets bouncing along pretty well, with everyone on the same page. They threaten to color outside the lines a few times, but it holds together, with Garcia playing some frenetic runs; as we approach the four minute mark, it start to shift, and somehow they smoothly drop into China Cat Sunflower and the Dark Star is over.


This is a well-known rendition, and it’s far from bad, but it seems to me to lack direction at times in the back half. As always, there is plenty to love here, however. At times they seem to be holding the door open for inspiration, but this can be stated negatively as a reluctance to commit. Either way, it’s another rich and rewarding improvisation, and relative judgments aside, it’s worth spending 35 minutes on.


What was said:

143. 1972-09-21

150281 Philly 37:18

Main theme at 11:30.
First verse at 12:05.
Tiger at 24:55.
Mind Left Body Jam at 33:49.
Goes into Morning Dew.


A bubbling start with the theme chords and some plaintive Garcia, who at first lays back and adds color, and then at :34 gets mesmerizingly active. This is a classic intro, beautiful and understated, with the vigorous but relaxed feel that they have perfected at this point. The playing is very dynamic with little swells and flurries; a beautifully languid stretch begins at 2:49; Keith seems to be playing with a volume knob somehow here, it sounds like a guitar but I can hear everyone else.


Garcia suddenly gets louder at 4:12 and the band kicks up, rather surprisingly. At 4:34 Jerry states the theme, almost, but he backs off before anyone follows him along that route. Instead they get quiet again, and again Garcia seems to be in the lead at 5:04 as some triplets lead into a more assertive jam section. This reaches a small summit at about 5:42, and then more decisively at 6:05 or so. They are playing with degrees of intensity in the way that they first perfected in 1969, so that the dynamics are shifting quite frequently.


At 7:25 there’s a kind of pause; rather than go to the theme, Jerry plays some rolls, hinting at a minor shading, and starting at 8:05 it is quite reminiscent of Sputnik. Coming out of this, Garcia draws out a feedback shriek from 8:25 all the way up until 8:43, and then comes back at 8:49 with a light tremolo. There are traces of Bright Star at 9:12, and then Garcia starts hinting at the theme, but it is still not time for that.


From 10:12, Weir and Lesh feint back and forth with touches of an out-of-sync funky jam, playfully refusing to commit. Godchaux starts a tremolo at 10:20, and Garcia joins him at 10:25; they draw it out, and Lesh again bounces around with one of his funky licks (10:40) without expecting anyone to follow. As it finally starts to come apart, Garcia enters the breach with the theme at 11:30, and this leads pretty quickly to a confidently perfect reading of the verse.


After the riff there’s a quietly bustling little jungle scene, with Keith laying on the wah; Garcia and Weir start playing somewhat frenetic lines, and a bouncy little jam develops. This comes to a head a little after the 15-minute mark, and then attains a steady simmer. There’s a kind of knotty peak beginning at 15:33 where all the threads come together, and as they come out of this there’s a kind of transition—Garcia disappears at 16:00, and now Godchaux comes to the fore as they play a more subdued version of the preceding jam.


At 16:54 Lesh strikes up one of his funky riffs. It’s always remarkable to me how, without ignoring him, they usually forgo the opportunity to settle into a groove, and the riff recedes without leaving too much of a mark. He brings it back around 17:35, and they rally around him a little before he lets it go again. After a couple minutes this jam starts to feel a little aimless, though…not unpleasant, but exhausting itself nonetheless. And just before we reach the point of exhaustion, Garcia is back, coming in at 19:04, and perhaps heralding more excitement in what follows. He’s got a little wah going, and might have a meltdown in mind.


As we cross the 20-minute mark the intensity is increasing, but gradually at first, and by 21:00 Garcia is flashing some Tiger licks. But they take their time; Godchaux’s wah-wah piano and Weir’s little squalls are flashes of weirdness in a slow burn, with no one in a hurry to bring it to a head. Rather than a Tiger, this is a freaky jam with Tiger-like bits scattered throughout. They seem to have harnessed the power of a meltdown and channeled it into a more consequent and coherent stretch of music.


Finally, however, they seem ready to take the next step at 24:55, and we seem to be headed for a true meltdown here. The Tiger is brief and a little subdued, relative to others, and we reach the other side pretty quickly, into a slow meltdown taking place from around 25:35 to 26:38. At 26:46 Garcia is losing some of the wah, and we are at an inflection point; many Dark Stars would end here, but there is still 10 minutes to go. They ease into a gently twinkling jam, ratified by Phil’s easy melodic line. By 28:20 they could almost be shifting into Morning Dew or Stella Blue, but there is no clear referent here yet. It’s just gentle, melodic Dead, a little bent out of shape for good measure.


At 30:10 Lesh and Weir are adding little syncopated stabs and bending the music further toward something else. 30:50 sees Garcia start a fingerpicked roll, echoed by Lesh. This develops with some gorgeous country licks, and Weir and Lesh pick it up and push it forward. It really snaps together at 32:00, and a new jam emerges. Jerry keeps going around and elaborating his fingerpicked roll with ridiculous facility; at around 33:05, he even strikes a figure where he’s playing an ascending run on the bass strings and an ascending run on the higher strings at the same time. Then he bears down on it and the band kicks it up some more, and at 33:49 they break into the chord pattern known as the Mind Left Body Jam, which last made its appearance in a Dark Star (for the first time) when it was played double-time in the end jam of 1972-04-08. They go around a few more times, and Garcia strikes up Morning Dew.


This is an astounding ending to a gorgeous, magisterial Dark Star. This one is rightly well-known; it’s one of the high points of the entire corpus. It moves slowly compared to some, but there is plenty of excitement to be had, even outside the stellar end jam, for anyone who cares to listen closely.


What was said:

142. 1972-09-16

77442 Boston 27:31



Main theme at 10:35.
First verse at 10:49.
Tiger at 21:25.
Goes into Brokedown Palace.


There isn’t a great recording of this. I went with the matrix because it gives us slightly more Phil Lesh, but the biggest problem with all available options is that he’s too low in the mix. As others have pointed out, Ned Lagin is here tonight, but not particularly audible. And Garcia has the Alligator back.


The Bostonians are audibly pleased about the song selection as Dark Star begins. These days Dark Stars generally commence with some kind of reference to the main theme, and we get that here with Godchaux in the lead before Garcia starts his line; this one kicks off with a more ruminative feel than the last did. There’s an intensification leading to a small peak at about 2:40, and then they recede into a beautiful marshiness. At 3:22 Garcia starts hinting, and not for the last time tonight, at the little descending lick that I pointed out last time as something I associated with another song; I wonder now if it wasn’t just other Dark Stars of which I was thinking.


At 5:00 and environs we’re immersed in a bog that is glittering with starlight. From 5:55 Godchaux’s twinkling piano echoes Garcia’s high descending runs, and Lesh can just be heard underpinning them with a repeating riff. As we get to the 7 minute mark there begins an uptick in intensity, but with the same overall feel. They keep pushing it a little at a time, and it starts to transform a little and acquire an edge. Kreutzmann bangs the snare with a lagging backbeat gives the music a kind of lurch, and the polyphonic twinkling of the early going is transmogrified into a loping jam. As the jam starts tapering off at around 10:20, Lesh picks up the theme and they smoothly glide into it; there’s a marked slowing of the tempo at 10:41, and they promptly arrive at the verse.


Garcia comes out of the post-verse lick with a high peel-off; this is a move that will become a trademark of his playing years later, but which we encounter less frequently in 1972. They enter a marshy, pondering scene that is reminiscent of the early part of this Dark Star. Lesh is in the lead here, more or less, with Garcia adding color with his volume knob. Weir weaves in some chordal stuff; these sections are very cohesive tonight, even when they’re searching around. The crowd incongruously claps along a bit. Godchaux comes in and from about 14:19 he and Garcia knit together some Sputnik-like rolls, and as it gets spacier the audience hoots and hollers.


At 15:30 now, it is sounding more and more like a space jam. The band is really taking its time, while the audience seems to be almost inexplicably fired up by this! Maybe they just really dig space. As we arrive at the 17:45 mark Garcia is starting to hint at a buid-up to a meltdown. He starts playing some rolls with the wah effect creeping in, and a Tiger seems to be in the offing. Meanwhile, Godchaux strikes an ominous groove at 18:31 with a few well-placed notes. In typical fashion, he doesn’t exactly settle into this groove, but he does start to build on it as Garcia pushes toward the Tiger. Kreutzmann and Lesh are picking it up, and the band is simultaneously moving toward a meltdown and a funky groove.


At 20:45 Garcia still has the wah pinned, but he catches the beat for a bit here before going back to a Tiger pattern. The Tiger finally comes to a head starting at about 21:25, and at 21:40 Garcia seems satisfied—he groans out some lugubrious tones as Kreutzmann and Godchaux strike up a lilting groove, and soon they all come together and drop right into an upbeat jam. 23:35: I think Weir and Godchaux both have a wah-wah on now, it’s difficult to be certain. Garcia is playing a frenetic line and it really gets cooking. He gets more repetitive with it, and then Godchaux locks in with him at 24:50 and they bring it to a peak that goes on for a good minute. This is really cooking, and if Lesh were mixed better it would be even better, because he is really going at it here too. At 25:52 the jam winds down into an intermediate space, and after some thoughtful throat-clearing Garcia takes them into a beautiful Brokedown Palace.


This is perhaps not the most ambitious Dark Star, but it is nevertheless an excellent rendition. In the midst of a golden period, this is less well-known than some of its contemporaries, but it is a wonderful piece of music; by turns beautiful and frenetic, it has a lot of force and a lot of range. It is a shame there isn’t a better recording, but what we have here is sufficient evidence of a damn good Dark Star.




What was said:

141. 1972-09-10

22793 Hollywood 35:21 (DS 32:18, Drums 1:33, DS 1:30).


Main theme at 18:42.
First verse at 19:02.
Goes into Jack Straw.


David Crosby apparently sat in for this. I can’t really hear him, or else my mind can only take in so many instruments; at times I think I’ve got him, but then it dissolves into another instrument and I’m not entirely sure if it was there. Weir is very loud in the left channel, and is playing a lot of aggressive riffing stuff that takes this Dark Star in unwonted directions; I considered whether this was perhaps Crosby, but it doesn’t seem likely. It seems more likely that they adjusted their approach a bit due to the presence of a guest, but I’m pretty sure that’s Weir playing guitar over there.


Right off the bat Weir and Lesh are very upfront with the chord pattern, suggesting the theme with a chunky vamp on the chords until Garcia comes in at :19 with some high leads. There’s a bouncy and playful cadence to everything that feels quite different already. There are several feints away from the Dark Star pattern. At around 2:46 Weir starts a bluesy ascending/descending riff that Garcia picks up for a moment, but it doesn’t stick. Then at 3:25 Garcia’s triplets instigate a little frenetic jam, but this is also short-lived.


At 4:05, they seem to be at a crossroads and they start a jam with a minor feel. This pays out until 4:55 when Garcia switches gears with a Sputnik-like sequence that brings everyone together on a minor key thing. At 5:25 Garcia starts toying with a descending sequence that he sometimes plays in a different song, but I can’t remember which one for the life of me. Weir and Godchaux echo him with some arpeggios and there is a pretty section here. By 6:30 Garcia is again playing Sputnik stuff, and the others echo him with more swirling arpeggios. This comes down to almost nothing just after the seven minute mark, and Lesh and Kreutzmann decide to establish a light and jazzy jam, which Weir picks up on quickly.


Garcia is mostly laying out here until about 7:48, when he comes back with some chords, and then he throws in that descending line again at 8:01—I could swear it’s from something else! This keeps coalescing into a moody jam in the neighborhood of E minor. This seems to be coming to an end around 9:50; it eases into something else in A, with Garcia leading the way with some rolling chord stuff. It comes to a head at around 11:25 with everyone coming together on some bouncy chording, moving to a little peak that starts at about 11:45. This keeps rolling for a while, and Garcia is very busy, hitting a funky lick at 12:14 that he rides until 12:30.


By 12:55 Jerry seems to be starting a new thing, but it’s just the last thing winding down. The riff elongates and turns elastic, and then they leave to Phil and Kreutzmann for a little while from 13:30. Finally the others start to return at 15:00, and there is another bouncy jam. Weir’s harmonics at 15:23 really get me wondering if this hasn’t been Crosby the whole time but, if so, where is Weir? The jam starts to meander a little now, but it’s still percolating along pretty well, and it starts to gather steam again until by 17:25 they’re cooking again.


Starting at 17:55 I can briefly think I’m hearing three guitars, but inevitably I lose it again. At 18:34 there is a seemingly telepathic shift among the instruments in the direction of the main theme (another reason the left-hand guitar has to be Weir!). Garcia brays out the verse (rather shakily, at first) and the lefthand guitar is right on top of the shift to E minor on the second line, and takes its usual part on the post-verse riff…it has to be Weir, but his playing has at times been unusual tonight.


We descend into space after the verse. I can hear four instruments here (plus drums) until 21:06, when I finally start to think there’s another guitar. I lose Keith for a while though, but then from 23:10 I think I have them all…that’s about the extent to which I’m willing to strain my brain, which seemingly wasn’t designed to hear five instruments. The space gets kind of intense by about 24:45, and Garcia seems to be pushing them toward a meltdown, which arrives at around 25:25. I wouldn’t label this a Tiger, but it’s in the ballpark. This turns into a kind of hybrid of a meltdown and a frenetic jam, and by 26:45 Lesh and Kreutzmann are pushing them toward the latter. Garcia and Weir are keeping it weird, though; at 27:40, they start edging a little closer to terra firma and the band is banging away on a really freaky jam. There are hints of Me and My Uncle throughout from both Lesh and Garcia.


By 29:30 this all seems to be cooling down as they return to earth, but also simultaneously start to disperse a bit. But then they pull together again and seem to be driving toward some kind of peak until at 31:30 they begin to disperse again. They do a little fade in favor of Kreutzmann who finally takes over at 32:18.


Lesh comes back in after a minute and a half, and the others trickle in for some brief noodling, and once again it is possible to make out a third guitar. This doesn’t really amount to anything before Weir starts Jack Straw.


This is a really cool rendition. The stuff before the verse is very groove-oriented; in that respect, even though I can’t hear Crosby, it reminds me a bit of some of the previous versions we’ve considered where the band accommodated other musicians. In this case, the approach proves to be very effective, as there is a lot of rather stellar interplay among the musicians. The way another groove-based jam forms out of space in the second half is something to behold, and the definite highlight here. I really like this one!




What was said:

140. 1972-08-27

16582 Veneta 32:20 (31:22 actual)

Main theme at 1:04 and 12:15.
First verse at 12:35.
Tiger at 29:17.
Goes into El Paso.


This one gets directly to business with a few runs through the main theme, after which they dig right into the two-chord Dark Star pattern and start mining for gold. At 2:57 the music takes a subtle turn into a moodier direction, and the two chords start to recede a little. Now there are waves coming in and drawing out, and the music is quietening a bit although if anything getting more intense. Keith is nicely audible as he releases little cascades that echo Garcia’s statements and propel them forward. The latter’s pinch harmonics at 5:53 begin his most extended train of thought yet, culminating at 6:12 in a descending figure beginning on A, repeated four times, which feels kind of like a stripped-down version of Bright Star.


Lesh walks Garcia up to another high flourish at 6:41, which brings this segment to its peak of mellow intensity; something else needs to happen now, as it seems they’ve now gone as far as they’re going to get with this current avatar of the group mind. They quiet down a little and at 6:54 Garcia starts worrying at permutations of the main theme in the upper register, but they’re not going there yet. At 7:39 Kreutzmann triggers Garcia’s triplets that usher in the next section, and there’s a new sense of urgency in the music. It is getting louder and more forceful; Godchaux is shoving a little, and Weir’s guitar squalls.


Kreutzmann drives this section, alternately hanging back and pushing with his snare, until at 8:24 he locks in with Garcia and they bring this section to a peak. At 9:08 Garcia starts signaling for the main theme, but no one is in a hurry—they all seem to know where they’re going, and they take their time, and there’s another little peak at about 10:08. As this is winding down, at 10:24 Garcia trades Sputnik licks with Godchaux, and then they paddle in place for a bit, still not ready to give in to the theme.


Starting at 11:31, there is some madness! Garcia briefly stabs out a fragment of a rock and roll riff, then bursts into a high rolling figure (11:49) which Weir and Godchaux underscore, and then Keith and Jerry lock into a descending line that puts an explanation point on the preceding matters and takes them into the theme at last. This leads to the verse very quickly; they don’t pull back on the tempo as much as they sometimes do, and the verse seems to clop right along.


As they return at 13:56, Keith seems to want to play something with a laid back jazz feel, and the rest pick up on what he’s putting down, building out a groove until Garcia comes in at 14:31 with some eerie volume swells. Lesh handles the melody here, with Garcia providing atmosphere and the rest grooving. At 15:28 Jerry starts to build a line, and they maintain the easy bounce as he elaborates.


At 16:27 Godchaux decides that it needs to get weirder, and as he throws in some stranger notes everyone responds as the groove starts to stretch and warp. At 16:50 Garcia starts an uneasy vamp, and Weir and Godchaux egg him on. At 17:22 Jerry hints at a transition to atonality, and perhaps a meltdown. Phil seems game at first, but then at 17:37 he changes their trajectory by hammering the A, the tonal center of Dark Star, and everyone rallies around as they come to a little peak, which then disperse into a frenetic jam in A.


This has run its course by 19:45, and we shift into a section with a Slipknot or perhaps Stronger Than Dirt flavor. This is starting to cohere nicely, but they don’t see a future in it and by 21:10 we’re down to Kreutzmann and Lesh. The latter blithely riffs away for a while until at 22:13 Godchaux joins in. They seem to be laying the basis for another vigorous jam, which is ratified by Garcia at 22:51, as he puts in some rather Weir-like high chords at first, then wriggles into a profuse lead line. As Weir returns, Garcia seems torn between keeping them in a funky jam and leading them into a meltdown, but the resulting hybrid seems to be ratcheting into weird-out territory.


Yet, it stays funky, largely thanks to Lesh, who eschews the monster movie chords and keeps walking briskly along, and Kreutzmann who maintains the backbeat. As we hit the 27 minute mark they start to break up the groove, and a meltdown seems imminent. But the groove will not die so easily; at 27:32, Garcia in one ear and Godchaux in the other whip up some fusion, which is more or less what you get when you cross a Grateful Dead meltdown with a strong groove.


At 28:49 Jerry seems to be definitely moving them toward a Tiger. He gives up on consensus at 29:17, unleashing the Tiger and letting the chips fall where they may. They don’t take it over the top or linger over it; at 29:58 Garcia’s done with it, and he starts playing some arpeggios, which Keith picks up, and then Lesh starts playing some slow melodic stuff which takes them into space. This briefly gains intensity as Phil throws in some distorted chords, but they seem to be ready to end it and finally Garcia starts playing Morning Dew, then he suddenly aborts as they go into El Paso. I had a hard time determining exactly what happened here—in contrast to the 21st, there wasn’t a strong veto, and Weir’s suggestion of El Paso at first seemed just as tentative as Jerry’s Morning Dew proposal, but in any case it is the former which carries the day.


It is rather difficult to evaluate this one, particularly because it is impossible not to be mindful, as I review it, of its reputation. It is certainly a great version, and they are in a peak time for Dark Star, so that is not said lightly. This is a version with lots of power and beauty, although it has a bit less depth and variety than the very top renditions of the year. Even though it is 31 minutes long, I sometimes am left feeling like something else should have happened in the second half, because this is rather groove-oriented in a way, and not that exploratory. I’d put this just below the top rank of 1972, in any case, but not by much.


What was said:

139. 1972-08-24

156469 BCT 27:08

Main theme at :9, 10:23.
First verse at 11:06.
Tiger at 20:10.
Goes into Morning Dew.


The second BCT Dark Star also begins with a few runs through the theme before getting down to business. At :36 Garcia asserts the high A gently but firmly, then some eerie and bendy stuff follows. The intro so far seems a bit more laidback than the one on the 24th with the band seeming at ease and in no hurry. At 3:33 they seem almost ready to stop, but it flows along at a trickle with Jerry laying out for a bit. He returns with some very quiet flurries at 4:29, and starts to ease his way back in while Weir takes advantage of the space by playing some tremolo.


At 5:17 some tacit signal seems to have them turning up the intensity again, and at 5:51 Phil starts riffing away as he often does. Weir clips along with some treble chops, Garcia throws in some pinch harmonics, and then they’re on to something else as a frenetic jam seems to be building. This gets underway in earnest at around 7:20; the band still somehow sounds relaxed as they dash through it. At 8:26 Lesh brings back a jazzy riff again and everyone else begins to draw out their lines a little more, bringing the music to a little peak before drawing back at 9:03 to bring the jam to a close.


Now there are some serious main theme vibes, and Lesh makes it explicit at 9:27, but instead of following him there they sink into a big D minor space, to which Lesh happily follows. This is short lived, and all this still seems like foreplay for the theme. Sure enough, at 10:23 Garcia brings it home. Soon after, we pull up at the verse, which is taken at a deliberate pace.


The riff issues forth into a Lesh-led segment, not quite a space nor yet quite a jam. This feels very transitional, in any case. Soon Garcia and Weir are emitting moans, and Keith I think has something electronic going again. At 14:19 Garcia starts the kind of sequences that generally seem preparatory to a meltdown or atonal jam. They keep it slow and mysterious for now, though, and this builds on what has preceded it such that it adds up to a rather remarkable segment.


At 15:59 Garcia seems to add a layer of wah, strongly hinting that he sees a meltdown in the future. This is still really spooky, but there seems to be a slow and steady ratcheting of intensity underway. At 17:09 Weir has taken the lead with some piercing notes, and Garcia starts playing some pre-Tiger stuff. Whatever Keith is doing, he is doing it sort of sparingly, but it is wild, and very effective.


At 18:12 they are driving toward some kind of peak, still atonal and wild. This seems to come to a peak at about 18:40 or so, and although I wouldn’t quite call this a Tiger it’s a similar idea. Weir is still very assertive here with the co-lead. By 19:30 they seem to have gone off the boil and the jam gets even stranger and spookier. At 20:05 it seems clear that Garcia still has a Tiger in his sights, and in fact I’ll mark the start of this one (somewhat arbitrarily, as always) at 20:10. Tiger comes to a peak by 21:02 and then we come down the other side; Garcia doesn’t stop, but rolls into a Sputnik-type segment as he clicks off the wah pedal.


The music is now rather scattered and sparse. Keith seems to have returned to a regular piano. At 22:02 Lesh starts another bouncing riff, and they seem ready to latch onto this one and ride it back to terra firma. This is the riff that is the basis of what is generally called the Elastic Ping Pong jam (thanks to Mr. Rain for noticing this for us!), about which more can be read in the Lexicon thread pinned to the top of the page. By 23:00 or so it’s bounding along very nicely, and the music is gelling. This one keeps rolling along for a while, and somehow it even seems to have some chord changes that they more or less come to an understanding about.


By 25:20 there are signs of encroaching disarray, but they hold it together a little longer until finally, at 25:40, succumbing to entropy. At 26:00 Weir is playing some kind of arpeggiated figure but this peters out, and Garcia does a little volume knob fiddle work while they all sort of wait around for a new idea. Although this doesn’t feel very stable, it’s quite beautiful nevertheless. Just after our track ends at 27:08, Phil starts Morning Dew this time, as if in recompense for the 2th (“See, Jerry? We don’t hate you!”).


What we have here is another top flight Dark Star. As with the previous one from this run, there’s a lot of weirdness and atonality after the verse. Also similarly to that one, it’s all totally engrossing. Improvised music does not get much better than this!


What was said:

138. 1972-08-21

139581 BCT 27:38

Main theme at :07 and 9:20.
First verse at 9:51.
Tiger at 16:15.
Goes into El Paso.


In August of 1972, right in the thick of the peak era for Dark Star, the Dead played two outstanding renditions at the Berkeley Community Theater. The first of these charges right out of the gate with a statement of the theme, and then at :21 Garcia starts to travel and the band goes to it. All the instrumentalists are nice and loud in the mix here, and they’re all working hard right from the beginning. They maintain a kind of equilibrium until 1:22 when Jerry goes high and distinguishes himself from the pack a bit.


The band ebbs and flows—but mostly flows—in waves of energetic sound. There is a continuous melodic dialogue going on across the various instruments: at 3:10 Garcia pauses on a B, and Weir interjects a triplet passage from Bb to B before Jerry picks it up again. At 4:34 Godchaux is in the lead, and then at 4:47 Garcia bursts out again. Most remarkably, in the space between about 5:00 and 5:25 the lead line rolls around among all four instrumentalists.


By 6:15 they are starting to converge and the band drives to a little peak, cresting at around 6:35. At 7:00 a little roll keeps going back and forth from Godchaux to Garcia, while Weir and Lesh punctuate. Jerry starts double timing at around 7:42, and then the music scatters…listen from 8:02, has Keith switched to an electronic instrument, or there an effect on the piano? There’s a little roar at 8:08 like he’s scratched the piano strings and it’s been run through an effects processor of some kind. At 8:43 the music quickly starts to swell, peaking at 9:01; Garcia plays a little figure (AAA GDE) that is somewhat reminiscent of Bright Star…they coast down the other side into the theme at 9:20 and cruise into the verse, bringing to a close an incredible intro section.


Coming out of the verse the music gets intense more or less immediately. They play some blocky swells, and then split off at oblique angles to one another, and it sounds like they are going straight to some kind of meltdown. At 13:23 Garcia starts playing a Tiger-like line, only with a cleaner tone. At 13:42 Godchaux takes off on a crazy trip around the keyboard; he again sounds like he’s playing with some kind of effects.


As Garcia and Keith zip around, Weir somehow accompanies them in a cogent way that keeps it all together. Lesh is likewise rambling around, but he starts putting out a groove at 14:32, from which he sometimes departs and returns. But at 15:30 a new thing seems to be on the horizon; Lesh’s groove is gone, and centrifugal forces seem to be dissolving the center. Then at 16:01 Lesh starts stabbing at the groove again, and Garcia’s frantic line seems to respond to it, until it suddenly veers into Tiger territory at 16:15. This time Keith goes along with Jerry, to thunderous effect.


Now we’re in a scary atonal jam; at 17:07 Garcia starts hammering a note and everyone joins him, taking the jam to a new peak of intensity. This crests and then starts to unspool, winding down at 18:18 into a little space where mostly Weir, Garcia and Kreutzmann are left to hold things together. At 19:39 Garcia starts playing a little melody; and for a moment it seems like they’re going to move into saner territory, but the weirdness still has the upper hand. Garcia at first succumbs, then gets melodic again at 20:25. Finally at 20:45, he starts playing Morning Dew. Weir tries to go along with him but no one else is having it. He goes through the intro riff twice and then again succumbs to the spacey undertow.


At 21:50 Godchaux is playing a little up and down figure…this doesn’t catch on at first, but then it becomes a new center of gravity, and they drive to a peak, which crests at 22:16 and then rather quickly disperses. Coming out the other end, Keith is still in charge, and he lightens it up a little as Lesh jumps in with a bouncy riff at 22:33. Keith and Phil lay down a base for a little while, and Weir trickles in. At 24:57 Jerry finally comes back, and they ride a bright and bouncy groove for a while. At 27:25 they seem to have had enough of this, and they trickle down more or less to a halt; Garcia starts comping a little in a way that suggests El Paso, so Weir kicks into it and the Dark Star is over.


All I can think to say in summation is, what an amazing band! Here we have an absolutely magnificent Dark Star. Before the verse they execute some of the most incredible improvising in the classic Dark Star mode that we have yet heard, and then after they bring their more recent harsh and atonal approach to perhaps its most satisfying development to date. This is the real stuff!


What was said:

137. 1972-07-26

87034 Portland, OR 30:47

Main theme at :51 and 9:19.
First verse at 9:45.
Tiger at 24:35.
Main theme at 27:57.
Second verse at 29:14.
Goes into Comes a Time.


This one starts with a chugging statement of the main chords. Garcia starts to tentatively cast about at around :24; at :51 he springboards off a single time through the theme, still taking his time, lightly soloing over the springy two chord cushion. The intensity slowly builds here, with the band sounding rather mournful. Garcia’s choppy triplets beginning at 3:22 are subtly mirrored by Weir. Jerry pierces the heavens at 3:43, and then immediately reappears at the lower end of his range. At 3:53 he plays a triangular little chordal figure that will reappear, most prominently toward the end of this rendition.


At 3:43 Garcia’s downwardly cascading line pools and then swells and ascends, and they hit a little peak at about 5:06 that’s drawn out until 5:20, at which point they regroup. Garcia takes advantage of the lull to muse about on the low strings again, and Weir pushes a little but draws back, as they maintain the ruminative feel, luxuriating in the beauty of this intro segment. A minor peak swells and recedes just before the 7 minute mark, and then it fragments again.


At 7:08 Lesh decides it’s time for E minor, and there is the barest suggestion of one of his jazzy patterns as Garcia kicks into a roll. Then at 8:02 the latter begins playing a chordal figure again, developing the idea first broached at 3:53; this hints at the chordal vamp Jerry plays as the introduction to Bird Song in this era, then builds into its own little jam which culminates with Jerry playing with the theme melody beginning at 8:50, and getting more explicit until at 9:19 he lets it fly in the high register. At 9:41 he brings it down to the midrange but, instead of playing the theme again, he starts singing the verse.


The music breaks up almost immediately out of the turnaround, with Kreutzmann’s toms taking the lead. Everything else drops out as Garcia accompanies him with some volume swells. As these fade out we seem to be headed into a drum break, but Phil and Jerry keep puttering along; the bass settles into a bouncy groove and Garcia eases out, with Godchaux now accompanying Lesh and Kreutzmann. Lesh builds a head of steam, playing some stabbing chords, and Weir joins them at 14:34, with Garcia jumping in at 14:52 as a rock jam begins to take shape.


It keeps growing, and soon they are grooving along with abandon, creating a scene that is very different from the introductory segment. The jam keeps getting more and more exciting, and there’s a bit of a peak around the 18 minute mark, and then they start to tail off a little. At 18:35 Garcia brings back the triangular chordal figure again, and then there is a kind of centrifugal scattering as Kreutzmann again comes to the fore, bashing the toms as Garcia spits some bluesy leads.


At 19:55 Garcia kicks on the wah, pointing them toward a meltdown, and Weir duly starts scritching. Lesh adds some doomy pronouncements, but the direction is uncertain as Garcia pulls back into more circumspectly melodic territory, adhering to the meltdown but resisting a full press toward the Tiger. They opt for spaciness here, until at 24:05, with no center to the thing at all, Garcia starts plunging toward the Tiger at last. This winds up a somewhat subdued beast, as they don’t attempt to bring it to a raging peak. Then at 25:13 Lesh’s ominous tones start to edge toward something resembling a groove, if a jagged one. This scatters again at 26:10; a few second later Garcia strikes up a kind of funhouse Sputnik. The tempo soon retards and the band again descends into chaos. They again pick it up and then retard (27:44) in an even more exaggerated fashion, until at 27:57 Garcia lurches into the theme leads us back to terra firma. To top it all off, we are treated to a rare second verse, which Garcia has almost forgotten at this point (“Daarrirror shatters”). They seem unsure what to do after this, so Jerry just starts singing Comes a Time, which takes a little while to coalesce but turns into a lovely version.


This is one hell of a great Dark Star. The first section is almost painfully beautiful, there is a rollicking jam after the verse, and a chaotic meltdown section leads to a triumphant return to the theme; this is followed by the first appearance of the second verse since May 4th, and the last until New Year’s Eve 1981! It’s difficult to say what more we could ask for.


What was said:

136. 1972-07-18

32678 NJ 27:13

Main theme at 15:25.
First verse at 15:52.
Tiger at 22:28.
Goes into Comes a Time.


Back in the States again. The Dead played in Hollywood on June 17th, a date which marks the last concert they played with Pigpen (before Bird Song tonight, Weir announces that Pigpen is sick and that he hopes to return soon, but of course he never did). After a month off, the summer 1972 tour began two days prior in Connecticut, so Dark Star had a bit of a layoff after seeing heavy action in Europe.


The first Dark Star since the Europe tour begins at a languid pace. Garcia is very active from the beginning, but he doesn’t sound like he’s in a hurry. The band stays close to the two-chord Dark Star progression, although they aren’t always entirely explicit with it. Jerry hints at the verse melody a bit, beginning around 1:45 and particularly at about 2:04, and then he starts a fairly long chordal lead. The band is rising and falling behind the lead guitar, and the effect is peaceful but at the same time very active. It may be a bit trite to say they seem like a living organism here, but in any case the relations between the instruments seem very sympathetic. Listen to the little bit that Jerry plays at 2:31, and then hear how Keith echoes him. By 2:50 or so Jerry starts to bend a little, hinting at a breakdown of the structure, but it snaps back together, and as it does it starts to gather a head of steam, coming to a little peak at about 4:02.


Coming down the other side, Lesh takes the lead and spins out some melodies for a little while. Garcia eases back in with some Sputnik-like rolls. They come apart and then get back together at 5:54, with Garcia again playing chordal stuff that hints at a move toward the theme. Instead, they move toward E minor, then back to the A, and to a space of indeterminacy in between. After some shifting, E seems to be winning out, with Phil in the lead again until 8:07 when Garcia reënters with some fast runs. The jam that follows is not exactly disorganized, but it is very loose.


Weir has been rather unobtrusive, and he seems to be low in the mix, but Keith is very audible throughout. At about 11:08 Weir starts to become a little more audible; the jam starts to gain momentum here, with Garcia getting more aggressive, laying in some repetitive licks, and the others kicking up behind him. At 12:57 Jerry starts playing a repeating lick based around an E, to which he insistently returns; then he spins off and starts to build around the A at 14:08, and the effect is galvanizing, with the sequence finally coming to a close at 14:34.


After briefly recharging, Jerry starts pushing again; it all comes to a head with the A at 15:13, at which point they simultaneously back off and we slide down to the theme, which quickly comes to the verse. By 17:30 they start heading into a space jam, led by Garcia and Lesh. Weir and Garcia make plangent noises while Lesh gets heavy on the bottom end, and then decides to join them as they sound like a pod of sick whales (in a good way!). Then at 20:14 Garcia kicks on the wah, which seems to indicate they are going into a meltdown; sure enough, at 21:10 he begins the preliminaries of a Tiger jam.


The Tiger arrives, albeit somewhat gently at first, at 22:28 as Jerry starts his double-time triplets. After about a minute these get really vicious, and Weir can be heard scrubbing away alongside him. At 23:53 Jerry begins some volume knob manipulation and the band quiets down a little. By 24:30 they seem like they might be heading into more structured jam, or even a song, but the meltdown picks up again, ebbing and flowing some more without much indication of where it’s going until 25:45 when Jerry finally hints at Comes a Time, which here follows Dark star for the first time. His line seems to phase in and out between this and Sputnik for a little while until Jerry finally strums the opening A chord and the Dark Star is over.


This is kind of an odd one—on the one hand, I want to say it’s sort of uneventful, but there are some really stunning moments, and Garcia is masterful throughout. In a way, the band seems almost too tuned into each other here, if such a thing is possible—there are shifts and micromovements, but no grand statements. They are certainly playing on another level compared to the last time America saw a Dark Star, but there are even better things to come.


What was said:

135. 1972-05-25

87682 London 34:30.

Main theme at :00 and 15:04.
First verse at 16:40.
Feelin’ Groovy at 21:06.
Tiger at 32:35.
Goes into Sugar Magnolia.


The main theme emerges out of a little jam at the end of Wharf Rat, which is such a natural transition (in either direction) it’s somewhat surprising they didn’t do it more. The opening jam has a brooding vibe. Weir plays surging strums, somewhat like the jam in Bird Song in the late 80s, and Garcia alludes to Sputnik at times (see 2:38). At about 4:02 a bluesier feel starts to come through, and there is a little momentum building. Lesh throws in some jazzy riffs (for instance from 5:10); it is difficult to keep track of all the times he does that, as he often throws them in in passing.


At 6:00 Garcia’s playing seems to take on more urgency, and the band hits an early peak culminating at 6:29—6:36. From here they pull back into some weirdness. This comes to a head at about 8:20, where we find ourselves in a space jam which deepens as it goes along. At 11:28 Weir is playing some shimmering tremolo guitar, and Garcia has kicked on the wah and seems to be hinting at a meltdown. They keep the energy tamped down, though, and the music gets even more sparse. By 14:30 it starts to sound a bit like an old school Feedback. Finally at 15:04 Garcia starts playing the theme and they pull it together and head toward the verse.


The front four come out of the verse seemingly ready to space out, but Kreutzmann

has other ideas, laying down a bouncy beat that Lesh and Godchaux bop along to for a while. Weir is still getting into the tremolo effect, and he lays on texture here and lets the other two carry the rhythm. Lesh shifts them into Feelin’ Groovy at 21:06, with Weir still using the tremolo, and at 21:14 Garcia, quietly at first, finally joins them. They pick up steam, but overall they keep it light this time. By around 24:40 they seem to be making a transition to something else.


This winds up being a remarkable little jam that takes its impetus from the preceding Feelin’ Groovy jam and heads into less charted territory. By 26:30 this starts to come apart and they seem to be gesturing toward a meltdown, which seems inevitable in the second half at this point. As they did in the first half, they bring it way down at this point. The build-up from here is gradual and subtle; they come to a little peak at 30:14 and then bring it down again, dispersing into maximum weirdness. Finally Garcia goes for the Tiger, and as they come down from this Weir starts signaling their next destination, Sugar Magnolia.


The last Dark Star of the European tour is neither the best nor the worst one they played there. After and in contrast to Rotterdam, the next two had a lot of very focused jamming. This one is sort of all over the place again. However, it is not an unworthy finale to the tour, as there are numerous excellent passages.


What was said:

134. 1972-05-23

16089 London 29:59 (29:32)

Main theme at 1:31 and 17:20.
Feelin’ Groovy (feint) at 15:48.
First verse at 17:54.
Tiger at 24:11.
Goes into Morning Dew.


We start off with a little fanfare before the main theme, hence the two times listed above. Some nice playing with everyone involved leads to an early but brief landing in the theme. At 2:10 Garcia seems set to kick off a frenetic jam; Godchaux takes up his line as something rather marvelous starts happening, but it cools off quickly and gets back to a gentler vibe. They build on this, picking up steam.


Garcia keeps returning to the repeating note gambit which seems to progressively inject more energy each time it comes around. Lesh tosses in a few of his jazzy runs, and everything is bubbling along. Jerry gets into a repeated note with pinch harmonics, stretching it from 4:36 to 5:05 when it turns melodic with a hint of Bright Star. At 5:53 Garcia goes into a Sputnik roll and things quiet down. By 7:00 they have almost ground to a halt, and as is typical recently, although this seems like an obvious place for the theme, they hold off. Jerry sustains some floaty notes, and then he kicks on some sort of effect at 8:36, with Lesh playing distorted double stops. At this point we enter a full-blown space section.


Space gives way to a drum break at 10:45, but Phil keeps futzing around throughout. At 13:25 the others start to trickle back in. The makings of a poignant jam quickly start coming together, with all four lead players spinning contrapuntal lines. This gains momentum, and by 15:00 or so they’re going along really nicely. Garcia wails and howls his way into a Bright Star quote at 15:38, and suddenly it seems like a Feelin’ Groovy jam is in the works. They hit it at 15:48, but quickly pull back, exploiting the ambiguity as they come to a peak. At 17:15 as they’re coming to a halt Lesh signals the main theme, Garcia takes him up on it, and at long last they arrive at the verse.


The next segment is gentle and mysterious, as they eschew the heavy weirdness in favor of a contemplative sojourn in quasi-space. There is a fascinating interlude from 21:42 where Garcia, Lesh and Weir seem to lock in on a sequence of notes. Jerry quotes Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring at 21:52, and then slips on the wah, seemingly signaling a meltdown, which seems to be looming ever larger as a second half strategy. Things get gradually stranger from here, but they’re not in a hurry until they suddenly plunge into a Tiger at around 24:11. From here they edge into an energetic and dissonant jam that peaks and subsides a couple times until it starts to pull together into something bouncier at about 28:25. At 28:59 Jerry tosses in some Sputnik-like rolls, and then they all pull together at 29:30, sounding like they’re heading into the main theme, until Jerry starts strumming Morning Dew, and the rest is history.


This is a really good Dark Star. At times they seem to be losing the plot, particularly around the drum break, but they always pull it back together into something memorable. Some of these jams are downright magical.


What was said:

133. 1972-05-18

79057 Munich 26:29

Main theme at 1:21, 10:51, and 12:39 .
First verse at 12:48.
Tiger at 22:26.
Goes into Morning Dew.


This, somehow, is the first time that Dark Star went into Morning Dew. Before that, though, they play the introductory lick and then the usual sort of thing follows. There is some lovely interplay between Garcia and Godchaux in the first couple minutes, with the latter gliding around the keyboard with great agility, and Garcia really tears into the main theme at 1:21 before taking off again. The jam here is built around the theme much more than we’ve heard it recently. The band really leans into the two-chord pattern; they’re all playing hard, and it’s particularly noteworthy how aggressive Keith is here.


At 4:55 it sounds like they’re ready to quiet down a bit. The music gets more contemplative, but it’s still delivered forcefully; they sound really on top of it so far. At 6:50 Garcia initiates a somewhat Sputnik-like roll. He pops in a harmonically interesting double stop blues lick at 7:26, and then a fast and light jam emerges with Weir playing some funky rhythm. Keith is all over this again as get bouncing and percolating along. This picks up steam, and at 9:07 Garcia even quotes Bright Star as the band rumbles along.


At 9:46 Garcia unleashes some ferocious licks, with another nod to Bright Star, and then finally at around 10:00 it starts to wind down with Jerry putting in some volume swoops and then fluttering down through the theme melody. At 10:36 the theme all but arrives, but instead Jerry unleashes a series of triplets as Godchaux stabs along before they finally land on the theme at 10:51. After a few times around Jerry takes off again and they come to a little peak before returning to the theme and then heading to the verse, bringing this outstanding introductory segment to a close at last.


As the post-verse licks die down, Phil and Jerry hammer on the E a little in a way that brings to mind the bell tolling Garcia used to do here. Lesh keeps it going as Garcia plays a somewhat distorted lead with some feedback and pinch harmonics, and a heavy space jam takes shape. The bass emits monstrously distorted groans that turn to feedback as Garcia begins to guide them toward a meltdown. (At times it sounds like someone is vocalizing in the background, but I can’t really make it out.)


By 19:00 it has gotten really quiet, but Garcia is still playing lines that seem to be preliminary to a Tiger. From 20:19 the guitar sounds like it’s got a new effect on it; I’m not sure what it is…it seems to combine the wah with a temolo effect. Weir and Godchaux seem to have some kind of tremolo going too, and the music starts to sound really weird here! Finally, at 22:23 Jerry goes into Tiger mode, accompanied by offbeat stabs from Weir and glissando runs on the keyboard, as Lesh plays some fast muffled runs. (The Tiger kind of waxes and wanes from here, so the timing above is approximate). This very intense meltdown continues for a few minutes until some rolling lines bring us to D, and it almost sounds like Playing in the Band here for a few seconds until Garcia starts strumming Morning Dew.


This is a very different rendition from the previous one. The first half is a masterful jam, and the band sounds cohesive and pointed in a way they did not in Rotterdam. The second half anticipates late 1972 and particularly 1973 in being entirely occupied by what is, I think, the most intense freakout we’ve yet heard in a Dark Star. The pairing with Morning Dew is epoch-making, and will be repeated often from now on. A monumental, classic Dark Star.


What was said:

132. 1972-05-11

9357 Rotterdam 47:11

Main theme at 22:38.
First verse at 23:01.
Tiger at 31:00.
Goes into Sugar Magnolia.


The longest Dark Star to date begins at a leisurely pace. This feels like the slowest beginning tempo yet for a Dark Star, although I haven’t checked to see if that is true. In any case, the introductory section has a majestic feel to it. Godchaux is nice and loud on this board, playing a strong counterpoint to Garcia at times (for instance, see 1:41—2:00; you can hear that on the box set version, but he’s not turned up as much).


At 2:06 Garcia starts an extended run of triplets that subsides and leads the band into a peaceful little grotto about 40 seconds later. Lesh, Garcia and Godchaux spin little runs around each other for a while as the mood turns spacey. Listen to Weir’s descending runs from about 4:17…Lesh then starts up a rocky little riff that gets everyone moving into a bouncey jam. This in turn has subsided by 5:30 and it gets kind of spacey again, and then at 5:40 Lesh starts up one of the jazzy licks he likes to throw in, but this is brief and by around 6:00 the band seems to be sinking back into space.


At 6:28 Garcia starts playing with a chugging two-chord (D to A) pattern that sounds a bit like a song. At 7:30 he plays a beautiful little chordal lead. The music seems about to coalesce into a minor jam here, but still they keep it loose and non-committal. Garcia returns to a strumming A from time to time to help things along. At 8:53 he’s off into a searching lead, and we get some hints of Let it Grow from Weir (note the suspended chord at 9:01). As the band kicks up a little toward the 10 minute mark, Godchaux keeps throwing a little dissonance into the mix, but he falls into line at 10:17 with a jazzy pattern as Garcia repeats a descending lick. It’s not clear when it happened, but this has turned into a fairly cohesive jam.


By around 12:00 it’s even starting to get a little bit exciting. I can’t think of another band that could or would play music like this; it’s intensely chaotic, but there is a kind of logic to it, and every musician has to listen intently to keep from crashing. Garcia’s tremolo at 12:21 brings it to a close, and one suspects that the main theme is nearing. They take a while getting out of it, but after a pause, at 13:37 Lesh indeed signals the theme…it’s a fake-out, though, as instead we get a drum solo.


Phil starts to sneak back in at around 17:01 (I think, he’s hard to hear at first), and when he more audibly surfaces at 17:48 there’s a round of applause. He meanders about with the drum for a while, playing a rocking riff for a little while that begs for accompaniment, which is of course not forthcoming. Then Jerry pipes in at 19:26, and Weir is close behind, but he has a hard time gaining purchase so there’s a Garcia/Lesh duet for a while. Bobby tries again at 20:57, and then again he ducks out. At 21:24 Godchaux emerges, but tentatively, and Weir is still AWOL. At 22:04 Garcia lands on a high E and hangs there, and the band comes tumbling in behind him as he takes us to the theme at last. The verse is close behind.


The middle section section gets underway after the 25 minute mark with a strong e minor flavor. This is more a jam than a space segment, but once again it’s on the edge of chaos. At 26:47 Lesh briefly plays what sounds like the bass line from Coltrane’s Greensleeves again (see 1972-04-08) but this winds up being brief. Garcia is very persistent throughout this, playing a continual line with a strong rhythmic basis, and his playing starts to take on the urgent character it has when he’s leading them to a meltdown.


At 28:44, however, things more or less come to a halt, and we are seemingly at a crossroads; then at 29:32 there is a snap as Jerry clicks on the wah, and they lurch into a Tiger jam. The meltdown gets ferocious for a bit, and then just really spacey and weird. At 34:10 Lesh breaks into a riff that kicks Kreutzmann into gear, and the playing gets really intense, but it stays very chaotic. By 36:00 it finally seems to be heading into a more normal sounding jam, with Garcia still weirding out a little over the top.


The three string players seem really tuned into each other hear, and know what they have in mind. As is often the case, Godchaux is sprinkling some more dissonant stuff in as they edge toward a jam. Some time around 36:30 it becomes evident that Pigpen is creeping in with some organ swells, and it seems like they mean business about pulling a jam together here, but it’s not together yet. At 37:41 Jerry starts playing his chunky Caution rhythm. Godchaux is uncharacteristically blunt with a two-chord pattern that seems to further foster an atmosphere of almost semi-normal rock music…it simmers down quite a bit as we approach the 39 minute mark, and then a bit after 40:00 Garcia lays in some Caution-type leads.


As we get to 42:00 the intensity is building in a broody way, and then Jerry goes back to Caution, and this time he takes everyone with him for a few moments. As they drift away, he hits Caution again. Weir chunks away at 42: 50 as Lesh, Godchaux and Garcia turn up the heat, and the music drives toward a peak. By 43:27 it’s coming apart again, and they weird out for a few moments. They gesture toward another rock jam a few times, but by 45:00 it seems like they’re going in another direction, with melodic asides and volume swells punctuating a quiet interlude. Pigpen gets in some pretty bits here, which wouldn’t be audible were it not for the quiescence of the rest of them at this point. At 43:42 Garcia mirrors Pigpens rolls, which is an intriguing development, but a few seconds later we wind up in Sugar Magnolia.


This is a big, long, and somewhat messy Dark Star. The playing here is almost baffling at times, but not in a bad way—perhaps more than anything else we’ve heard, this rendition really foregrounds the uniqueness of this band. They are almost stubborn in their refusal to lapse into conventional ensemble moves, and their empathic intercommunication is in evidence to a high degree. It takes skill and confidence to be as oblique as this gets at times. An indispensable rendition.


What was said:

131. 1972-05-07

9193 Wigan 19:32

Sputnik at 4:15.
Main theme at 14:20.
First verse at 15:04.
Goes into The Other One.


This is from a festival set. Every show on this tour has either Dark Star or The Other One as the main late set feature, and this one has both. This one is a little shorter than the current average, probably for that reason. It begins in a pretty standard way, with the theme chords and some beautiful lines from Garcia. At 1:18 he ascends to the high A, invoking Bright Star, which is mostly gone at this point apart from allusions like this one.


Keith Godchaux’s contributions are typically subtle here, and Weir seems to be Garcia’s main foil at first. At 2:38 Jerry lands on a C, and the band coalesces around him for a few moments with the kind of rapid reaction that is becoming a matter of course for them. A similar section emerges around F# at about 3:20. Nothing sounds forced, but the improvisations have a kind of articulation and variety that comes from musicians listening closely to one another.


At 4:15, Garcia initiates a Sputnik section, which is not exactly Sputnik as it was in 1969, but clearly seems to be a descendant of that. At 5:51 he starts some percussive riffing that seems to anticipate The Other One; the latter seems to infiltrate the jamming a little bit from this point, being taken up by Weir in particular, which gives the music some forward momentum, and they get into some improvising which isn’t clearly beholden to one parent song in particular.


Weir wants to chug along, and at 7:43 he starts a three-chord descending pattern which is quickly adopted by the rest. Garcia’s line from about 8:23 is blistering, and there are several little peaks and valleys until a little after the nine minute mark when they seem to be settling down and heading toward a transition. At 9:29 Jerry flashes Sputnik again as the momentum fades, and they wind up sliding into a minor-sounding trough. By 11:30 they’ve settled right in, and one expects the main theme at this point. The moment seems to arrive at 12:13, with Garcia making trumpety statements on the bass strings, but there is as yet no hint of the theme. Instead, they keep noodling around, which seems to be their preference tonight.


At 13:10 Garcia decides it’s going to get spacier, going for the volume knob effect. Weir tremolos away as they stretch this transitional moment that has been going on for almost four minutes even further. Finally, at 13:53, Lesh (who hasn’t been particularly assertive so far) lets it be known that he’s ready for the theme. They heard him, I guess, because at 14:20 they fall into line. The verse arrives soon after.


Here we would expect more brooding and noodling, based on what’s gone before, and that is precisely what we get, sliding right down into space. At 17:05 Jerry seems to be briefly tuning (at least, I hope he is). Phil unleashes some rumbly sounds from the bass amp, and Weir’s guitar belches a little. At 17:56 it seems like Keith is going to step out a little, but it’s a false alarm. Kreutzmann is active on the toms a lot tonight, in a way that doesn’t seem to either drive or interfere with the rest of the band. At some point they decide to give him his head, and there is a drum break (there is a guitar noise or two during the part tracked as “Drums,” but the tracking seems fair enough). When they come back, they will play The Other One.


This is not one of the better Dark Stars of the tour but, as I’m sure you knew I was going to say, it’s not entirely lacking in interest. From about 9:30 on this seems quite determined not to go anywhere. It’s always nice to hear them improvising together, though, and it is a 1972 Dark Star, so how bad can it be?


What was said:

130. 1972-05-04

77294 Paris 39:25 (DS 19:22, Drums 2:31, DS 17:32)

Main theme at :05 and 11:38.
First verse at 12:10.
Bright Star at 8:03.
Feelin’ Groovy at 9:52.
Main theme at 15:24.
Second verse at 15:53.
Goes into Sugar Magnolia.


After a single statement of the theme line by Garcia, we have a rather euphonious introductory section here, with Jerry melodically musing and Lesh rising up to gently weave in his lines. At 1:15, with Garcia repeating a note for the nonce and Lesh providing melodic counterpoint, the bass hits a strange off-note that somehow works perfectly and serves to draw the ear away from Jerry for a moment, where we find melodies sprouting everywhere.


At 1:48 there is a little eddy of sound where it sounds like they’re about to get strange with it, and then it gently snaps back into the main pattern again at 2:05. The band is rather elastic here, eddying again at 2:15; this sort of playing I particularly associate with the Europe tour. This time they don’t snap back into shape quite so tightly, and there seems to be a more longitudinal tendency toward the weird. At around 3:30 it starts to head out a little farther, with swirling piano melodies mirroring the guitar. Lesh hints at the jazzy riffs he is fond of in this era, but they’re going in a different direction, toward something spacey. By around 4:45 this tendency has become pronounced.


At about 5:20 Garcia starts gesturing toward a frenetic jam. The band obliges, but kind of gently. At 5:58 Lesh starts pushing a little with a bluesy pattern. Weir and Godchaux seem willing to get funky here, and with everyone getting into it they start rocking a bit (still kind of gently, but gathering momentum). By 8:25 Weir is playing some sort of dissonant chords, and Godchaux picks it up—depending on the mix, I sometimes get the two of them muddled in this era, as they are often on a similar wavelength both tonally and rhythmically. The music is sliding toward D major; Lesh emphasizes the D at 9:19 and Weir and Garcia feed into it.


At 10:05 Garcia starts a section where he hammers the C and G (the dominant 7th of D and A, respectively). This still has a D feel, and Jerry winds up on a D at 10:27 and bashes on it for a while. Godchaux and Weir provide a rhythmic and somewhat dissonant chordal accompaniment, and Keith pushes Garcia up to an E at 10:50, where the repetition continues. Now things start to fall apart, and at 11:06 Jerry lets it be known that he’s ready for the main theme; this arrives at 11:38. This leads very quickly to the verse, with our man coming in with a rather off-key wail. The accompaniment here is rather loose, in keeping with the mood throughout thus far.


After the theme has been restated, after some ponderous throat clearing, the music comes down to almost nothing for a moment as we descend into a space section à la 1970. As it gains intensity, Lesh scritches and Weir wails with some feedback and volume swells, and I think Keith is playing through a Leslie speaker or otherwise employing some manner of effects, although I think he’s still playing the piano (I’m sure someone will correct me if I have it twisted). This leads to a two and half minute drum segment.


As the Archive recording opens the third track of this Dark Star, Phil starts to flutter a little, and Garcia very quietly comes in as well. At 1:47, Lesh starts up with some chordal stuff, with Garcia quietly mirroring his line, and then Weir returns, also quietly. This is still more or less a space jam and, in fact, as far as Kreutzmann’s concerned it’s still a drum solo. I wouldn’t say it’s entirely disjointed, but it’s not very distinctive either. At 3:40 Lesh seems to want to bring the band into the action more, as he starts riffing. Weir starts to join him a few times and then thinks better of it, and Garcia gets a little louder and kicks on the wah, signaling a meltdown.


I hadn’t discerned much from Keith yet when at 5:08 he adds some chords to the mix. Again, my ear keeps getting drawn from Keith to Weir and vice versa here. By about 6:10 we seem to be veering away from a meltdown and toward a jam, and the band hovers for a bit. Jerry pokes around melodically and Keith follows (as a side note, I notice Keith shadowing Garcia’s lines way more on recordings from this era than I ever do in ones that date from after the 1975 hiatus, when Jerry cited it as an increasing factor, and indeed one of the reasons he had for concluding that Keith’s tenure in the band had run its course).


At 7:00 it sounds like Garcia and Lesh are pushing toward a jam. This starts coming together at 7:20, and at times it sounds like an off-kilter extrapolation of the main Dark Star melody. This time they come together more intensely and cohesively than they have to this point. At 8:03 Garcia uncorks Bright Star, albeit briefly, and he sort of hits it again in slow motion at 8:54 before a vicious repeated pull-off from 8:57 to 9:11 really kicks them into high gear. By 9:20 the intensity eases a little the way it does when they’re gearing up for another peak; another repeated pull-off brings them there and they back off again. There are hints of a thematic jam in the works, and at 9:52 Lesh drops Feelin’ Groovy into the breach.


They don’t swing into it right away, as it seems like they’re having a hard time getting together on it; a more concerted run-through begins at 10:41, this time with a certain bouncey delicacy, although I don’t know if I’d say this one ever fully coheres. At 11:52 they are pedaling and I have no idea if they’re still doing Feelin’ Groovy or not; it turns out that they aren’t, and Garcia again adverts to variations on Bright Star to get things moving in a different direction. At the 13 minute mark something funky is going on; Weir is playing his quasi-JBs stuff, and then at 13:15 Garcia starts a rolling Sputnik line that oozes over the top, with Keith adding a dissonant variation on Weir’s funky guitar.


Meanwhile, Phil seems to be concocting a funky bass riff of the type of which he is so fond in this era (I’ll date this from about 14:10 or so). The players return to their corners for one of the looser passages that are salted throughout this one, and Phil wanders away from his riff as the music trickles off until at 15:24 Jerry brings in the main theme. This is again brief, as we wind up with the now-rare second verse at 15:53, complete with Phil’s vocal counterpoint on the transitive nightfall. They almost seem not to know what to do after the vocals end, but Weir quickly cranks up Sugar Magnolia and the rest is history.


It's hard to know what sort of synoptic and evaluative statements to make about this one. It has a reputation as the weakest Dark Star of the tour, and that may be true, but that doesn’t make it a weak Dark Star. It is ragged at times, and it sags a bit in the middle. On the other hand, the band seems to be having fun, and they deftly, if raggedly, explore a variety of grooves, and even treat us to a space section that is reminiscent of 1970. There’s a lot of great music here, in any case, even if it’s not a very clear or coherent statement as a whole.


What was said:

129. 1972-04-29

125888 Hamburg 29:54

Main theme at :06 and 13:50.
Feelin’ Groovy at 6:21.
First verse at 14:33.
Tiger at 28:10.
Goes into Sugar Magnolia.


Something sounds a bit out of tune at the outset. After a brief statement of the theme, Garcia spins some pretty lines over the two-chord opening pattern. At 1:23, at which point the pattern has already been left behind, Garcia uncorks a high G (dominant 7) and hangs there until 1:41, creating tension as the band kicks up a bit. By the time he’s come off it, Weir and Lesh have concocted a vaguely Latin groove, and they bounce around with that for a while. From about 2:15 this starts to come apart a little, and then it coalesces again with a somewhat different feel.


At 3:32, the edges fray again, and a transition seems to be in the offing. They sink down into a darker, more chaotic groove. At 4:21, Garcia starts one of his repeating single note passages, and the music gets stranger. The band gets into a rather free improvisation where they seem content to listen to one another and let things unfold in a less groove-oriented manner. Lesh hints at Feelin’ Groovy at 6:14, and Garcia immediately picks up on, and then at 6:21 Lesh makes it official. It’s a rather ragged run through it, though, with chaos seemingly lurking around the edges. By 7:30 they seem to be transitioning out of it, and everything gets kind of wild again.

By 8:30 there has been a total breakdown of order. Here one wonders if Garcia is going to kick off the main theme, or let things play out a bit longer…he decides to let them play out a bit longer, and a jam that’s somewhere between a space and a meltdown starts to take shape. Lesh inserts a jaunty melody from about 10:48, but chaos will not be denied. At 11:48 there is another juncture where the main theme might intrude, but Garcia grabs the volume knob instead. Then at 12:38 they finally shift into the meltdown they’ve been suggesting for several minutes, but it’s brief and the Tiger does not appear. At 13:35 Weir starts up the two chord theme, and at 13:50 Garcia falls into line, leading us to the verse.


The return from the verse is rather placid at first. What comes next is not a straightforward jam, nor is it what I’d call space, but something in between. At 17:57 Garcia has kicked on the wah, which might indicate another meltdown. Some rather wild playing follows, and the intensity increases for a few minutes, coming right up to the border of a Tiger jam a couple times without ever quite crossing over.


At 21:41 Lesh starts one of his jazzy riffs and this pulls them out of meltdown mode and into a more structured jam. This is still pretty chaotic, though! At 23:03 Garcis throws in some Caution-style comping, which is later taken up by Weir. Then at 23:44 Garcia embarks on an absolutely bonkers passage, darting around the fretboard. This remarkable jam seems to have run its course by around 25:20, and they enter a kind of holding pattern. Lesh proposes another funky riff at 26:12, but it doesn’t really go anywhere. By 26:40 there are hints of yet another meltdown, and this time the Tiger arrives, beginning at around 28:10. The other end of this is a spacey kind of madness which Weir finally brings to a halt with the Sugar Magnolia riff.


It could be argued that this is not the most coherent Dark Star, but I love it. The playing here is adventurous, and there is a kind of joyful energy throughout. This is a unique and valuable rendition.


What was said:

128. 1972-04-24

youtube; youtube Dusseldorf 40:39 (25:46, 14:53)

Main theme at 8:03 and 10:08 and 10:55.

First verse at 11:10.
Tiger at 19:55.
Main theme at 14:38.

Goes into Me and My Uncle and Wharf Rat.


The Dusseldorf Dark Star begins with Garcia playing the lick over the main theme pattern that we heard on 4-14, which I mentioned was familiar, although I wasn’t sure whether he had done it prior to that rendition. The band sounds very relaxed and in the pocket here. The music comes in waves, with little returns to something like the theme alternating with hovering broody bits. From 2:03 to about 2:30, Garcia emphasizes the F#, which is the 6th of the A mixolydian scale, or the 3rd of D major, which seems to create an anticipatory mood, as it isn’t a note that would usually be resolved to…then at 3:25, the band slips into a spacey E minor section, setting up a heavy, brooding mood.


At 4:25 Lesh begins repeating a high, descending riff while the others play low tones, with Garcia repeating an emphatic A, and then Phil starts to play some slow, low and distorted chordal stuff. Godchaux starts a haunting octave pattern at 4:52, and his piano sounds echoey here. At 5:10 the band subsides as Garcia plays a repeating note, and the music gets atonal and spacey, with Phil playing up the neck. At 5:38 Garcia starts a little melody that resolves into a kind of gallop at 5:54.


At 6:21 Garcia starts another simple, almost child-like melody and then spins it out, as the band gains momentum and centrifugal force until by 7:20 or so they take it into a meltdown. As this dissipates at 8:03, Garcia starts the theme melody, filtered through a cracked glass, and they spin out again into a crescendo; the tempo seems to be picking up here, and it turns into a frenetic jam. This starts to come to a peak at 9:20, and they keep it there until it starts winding down at about 9:45, and they coast down and hit the theme at 10:08. They play around with it a little, and then slide back in at 10:55, slow and majestic so that, when the verse hits, the tempo seems to have worked its way down again.


At 12:34, coming right off the verse, Garcia is spinning a Sputnik-like web of notes, and the band swells and ebbs and swells. Godchaux’s piano again sounds kind of echoey here. At 13:04 Jerry has a little wah, I think, kicked on, and he starts in with the Sputnik-y stuff again. Now it sounds like they’re heading into space, with feedback and lots of drawn out, distorted notes. As we get to the 15 minute mark, this is almost ambient music, played with a lot of volume and distortion.


Garcia starts a line at 15:16 that may lead them back to earth. The band kicks up, and soon they are in another (somewhat) frenetic jam. Bright Star peeks out briefly at 16:38, and the band heads for another peak, with Garcia getting in some country and western licks. By 17:20 or so they seem to be coming down the other side. Garcia plays a long descending run and touches bottom at 17:32, and he stays there, repeating a low note as Godchaux trills, Weir weirds out, and Lesh rumbles around.


They want to get strange tonight, and at 17:57 they seem to be heading back to space, or into a meltdown. The lines aren’t entirely clear, though, as the more cohesive jams often have plenty of oddness lately…but by the 19 minute mark it seems clear we’re going into a meltdown. Weir is sort of the low key hero of this segment, as he’s not that loud in the mix but he is doing a lot of work to push the music along. At 19:55, Garcia starts the fast wah wah scrubbing characteristic of the so-called Tiger jam, taking it right over the top.


At 21:26, Weir plays two repeated notes that sound like the intro to St Stephen, and at 21:32 Godchaux quotes the introduction. Weir feeds it back to him a little, but they’re not going to play St. Stephen; instead, they wander into another spacey grotto, with Lesh making playing a sawing pattern and Garcia circling around. From 22:57, Weir contributes some bluesy leads; then Garcia starts to play a faster line and a frenetic jam seems to be in the works. They start to get it going, but they’re not ready to come out of space yet. At 25:19 Weir starts up a two-chord pattern, but it’s not clear where it’s going until about 30 seconds later, when they pause as Garcia spins a circular figure, and then Weir starts the chords that take them into a blistering Me and My Uncle.


When Dark Star returns, it comes as an ethereal minor key jam without drums. From :41 to about 1:00, either Weir is exactly mirroring Garcia’s lines a second or two later, or else there is some kind of delay effect turned way up. The latter seems more likely because of how exact the match is, but I don’t really hear Weir in here otherwise. At 2:22, Garcia starts a fast Sputnik-like pattern. By 3:25 the music has swelled to a kind of peak, although the mood stays spooky, and when Kreutzmann comes in at 3:52 he’s lightly tapping the high hat or maybe some sleigh bells.


At 4:48 Garcia resorts to the morse code maneuver which marks a lot of transitions in this era. Kreutzmann assays a few more taps, but the mood doesn’t really shift yet. There’s a kind of ebb, and at 5:48 Lesh starts to a sliding pattern and the music gains intensity until something midway between space and a meltdown takes shape. By 6:33 Kreutzmann, who has been creeping back in, is ready to assert himself more, and soon he’s venturing around the kit.


We are now at about the 7 minute mark, and a jam that sometimes recalls the Main Ten is getting underway. This has come together smoothly and subtly, but we’ve traveled quite a way from the first minutes of this segment, as the band is starting to rock pretty hard. Garcia has been working his way into a winding melody; just after 9 minutes now and it’s come together, and as the band works it he spins it higher, as together they come to a peak beginning at about 10:22.


As we reach the 11 minute milestone Garcia is galloping along with some double stops, the band cooking until at 11:26 they seem ready to lay off again. At 11:28 Garcia lays in a high rolling pattern while Weir supports it with a simple melodic pattern. At 11:50 Garcia introduces an ascending ADE figure, anthemic and triumphant. He turns it into a riff at 12:20, and then returns to the ascending bit with some double stops. His guitar here has the kind of tone he uses on Sugar Magnolia, which has been the usual destination so far this tour, although tonight they will go to Wharf Rat.


At 13:38 Weir starts a riff, and Garcia locks in with him for a little while. There are so many ideas in this jam it’s almost too much to take in! But at 14:38, Jerry decides to bring it all back home to the main theme. It’s a little surprising they didn’t go to the second verse here (which will still happen occasionally), since they came all the way back to the theme, but after a brief visit it shifts into Wharf Rat, which is such a natural and easy transition it’s a bit odd that they did it so rarely.


At this point the Grateful Dead have attained a proficiency with collective improvisation that is genuinely remarkable. More than that, though, they are consistently inspired here, pulling together segments on the fly that would be worthy of turning into songs in their own right. The music is heavenly and powerful; there are no rote licks, no down patches, no longeurs or meaningless transitions. Music like this is why there are Deadheads in the world, and why a Deadhead is someone who has figured out something the rest of the world hasn’t yet, but should. There is no other music like this, and for those of us who care about it, it is a priceless treasure.


What was said: