149. 1972-10-28

20405 Cleveland 27:46

Main theme at :06, 9:31 and 10:51.
First verse at 11:27.
Philo Stomp at 16:50.
Tiger at 25:23.
Goes into Sugar Magnolia.


A little bit of the main theme leads into some volume swells by Garcia, and the Dark Star starts clopping along. Godchaux and Weir open up a bubbly jam space while Lesh and Garcia wander a bit. Kreutzmann is pushing them along (check out his runs at 1:51, 2:16 and 2:33, and 2:47, etc.); he keeps goosing the band, creating forward momentum. In this case, he seems to be leading the jam as much as anyone, and perhaps he inspires the tumbling riff that Garcia unleashes at 4:05, which Keith picks up on, one of many such bursts that drive the jam forward tonight.


From about 4:20 Kreutzmann starts to play a more lurching beat, and again there is a reponse as at 4:43 Lesh puts forth a funky riff, and again Godchaux is right there, embellishing it and pushing it further. At 5:05 Garcia’s chords start to swell up and they all come together with a thrusting beat that raises the pressure again. At 5:55 the band is steaming along and Garcia starts spinning some frenetic lines that turn into another hammering motif at 6:08; Godchaux locks on, and they take it to a sort of peak, and it seems the general trajectory is ever upwards.

The music gets denser and busier. Now Lesh starts a double time pulse at 7:55. They all seem to pull back a little at the same time, and at 8:11Garcia starts a driving chord pattern. This seems to bring everything up another notch, as they alternate between a driving sway and dot-dash pounding until Garcia begins an ascent at 9:21 that leads to high A at 9:23; he tumbles off it into a kind of main theme/Bright Star hybrid. They start to settle into the theme, but there’s a detour at 10:05, a misty little grotto that has hints of a rolling Sputnik jam. This leads us back to the theme, which brings us to a dark and lurching verse. (In a throwback to the ‘60s, Jerry gives a little vibrato shake to “Shall we go…”).


Out the other side, Garcia immediately puts out some spooky vibes with a watery wah effect. While Kreutzmann starts up a deliberate beat, and Lesh adds a deliberate riff, Garcia considers some weird directions. The band swirls down the drain until, at 14:35, Lesh barks out his intentions. Garcia echoes him for a little while, and then Lesh drops out for a bit, leaving Bill and Jerry. As Phil returns, there’s a little bit of space, and everything seems uncertain.


At 16:50, Lesh takes charge and launches Philo Stomp. This proceeds with bass and drums for awhile, but the others trickle back in. When Garcia lays in a distorted lead at around 18:30, Lesh pulls back the riff and reduces it to a thudding fundament, and the jam develops. The Philo Stomp bass riff might be too dominant to leave much room for a band jam, and Lesh’s solution to this seems to work this time—they’re flying along, they don’t seem to want to keep it going for too long. and it already starts to unravel at 20:10.


The jam is sprouting frayed ends all over the place now. At 21:30, Garcia gets ahold of something, and a kind of abstract and choppy funk seems about to emerge, and almost does. Instead, there is more unravelling, until Garcia’s wah at 22:22 unmistakably ratifies what seems to be the only possible direction this can go in, toward a meltdown. Lo and behold, the madness does indeed seem a bit more methodical now that we can identify it with a recognized move, and we arrive at a brief Tiger before everything unravels a little further into an abstract space from which there will be no returning. At the utmost extremity, Weir finally kicks off Sugar Magnolia.


This is one of those Dark Stars where the first and second halves seem to have little to do with one another. Unless, that is, the second half is a kind of riposte to the first—whereas the intro jam kept exploring new ways to push forward, the back 40 is filled with weeds; with the exception of Philo Stomp and the short jam that it catalyzed, there is not much in the way of momentum in the second half of this Dark Star. We find instead a wonderful sprawl, a space where it seems almost gauche to develop one’s ideas overmuch. This is not intended as a knock, though, as this is a powerful rendition.


What was said:

148. 1972-10-26

32717 Cincinnati 21:32

Main theme at :06, 14:49 and 15:16.
First verse at 15:37.
Goes into Sugar Magnolia.


This comes out of the embers of Truckin’, with Kreutzmann rolling the toms through the intro lick, and starts with the main theme before quickly diverging with some rather low key jamming. Lesh is practically inaudible at first, which perhaps adds to the lethargic vibe, until he steps up with some rolling licks at 1:18. There’s a strange passage at about 2:48 where Lesh is playing above Jerry, I had to rewind it to figure out who was who, but Garcia’s tone on the bass strings is unmistakable.


Garcia starts a line at 3:21 that slides through the Sputnik tonal pattern at 3:31, then at 3:47 starts to run through the main theme notes, and then skitters off again until at 4:32 he hits the descending pattern we’ve heard a few times lately, so he covers a lot of bases here. At 5:14 there’s another brief quote of the theme; Lesh starts a minor-tinged riff at 5:40 that threatens to break the jam out of its current form, which is rather sleepy but not unpleasing. They fritter away without really leaning into it, until at 7:40 they lock into a rolling pattern which sort of comes in and out for a bit. Suddenly at 8:15 there is conviction, and they start to build a peak, going on to 8:42 when they break back into more straightforward opening-type jam.


This starts to spiral down into more spacey territory by 9:20, with Garcia getting a sound a bit like the “insect weirdness” we used to hear in 1969. They get to a fast weird thing around 10:15, and soon they’re buzzing around like a hive of bees. This doesn’t last long either, though; there’s a brief Sputnik-type thing around 10:51, and the band again seems to be casting about for an anchor. Garcia suggests a frenetic jam, then starts playing a two chord vamp, and Weir picks it up with some chiming country licks at 10:50.


By 12:20 Garcia is playing some licks that are reminiscent of Other One, then goes to another two-chord vamp, and then at 13:18 the music almost collapses as Garcia tunes up. There is no momentum at all now; there’s a little volume knob twiddling, and by 14:10 the whole thing has almost come to a halt. A little Sputnik rolling comes out of this, but it’s quiet and no one really wants to help out. At 14:37 they swing into the main chord pattern, and as the theme sounds we can hope the verse is coming to save us.


They lurch through the verse rather slowly, and as the closing licks die out the band swells and conures an atmosphere that allows us to hope for some good jamming to come. This hope is misplaced, however; they fiddle around for a little while before giving up on this Dark Star entirely. They almost lapse into a drum solo, but never quite relinquish the half-hearted accompaniment they’re giving Kreutzmann, so he does the reasonable thing and stops playing. We’re left with Garcia noodling alone until, mercifully, Weir strikes up Sugar Magnolia. (I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “noodling” before, but for once it feels apt).


This is certainly the worst Dark Star of 1972. I don’t need to tell you that there are engaging moments even here, but overall this one is a failure.


What was said:

147. 1972-10-23

98958 Milwaukee 28:53

Main theme at :06, 10:07, 11:46 and 12:31.
First verse at 12:42.
Goes into Mississippi Half Step.


A horrible recording is all we have of this. I’ll do my best to plow through it. We begin with the main theme, and then Garcia spirals off into some high wandering that sounds like it may have been pretty exciting. The band seems pretty fired up from the outset, although this may partly be an effect of the AUD recording.


There’s a burst from Garcia at 4:03, then a little pause where it seems like they’re gearing up for the main theme, but it is probably too early for that. The instruments are less tightly bound together from this point, and the jam seems like it gets a bit stranger. There’s an intriguing bit from about 5:57 where the band quiets down and sends out rippling waves of sound that get louder and softer, building up to a more aggressive passage shortly thereafter. After this, there are several peaks where the band seems to be generating some power, and Garcia really cuts through the murk at times, even if not much else does. It's difficult to give a cohesive account of all this, due to the sound quality which makes it hard to get a handle on everything that’s going on.


At 10:07 Garcia swings into the main theme for a moment, but it isn’t happening yet. The jam keeps going, ebbing and flowing, tantalizing the listener who’s trying to make sense out of this recording. Jerrry brings back the theme on the high strings at 11:46, and it turns into another kind of descending riff before coming back again at 12:31 and leading right into the verse.


There’s applause after the verse. After the usual riffing, Garcia launches a high line with some pinch harmonics while the band weaves a two-chord pattern. Particularly from just after the 15-minute mark, Godchaux is very active here; it would be nice to be able to better hear his interactions with Garcia, as they are in dialogue much of the time throughout this section.


At about 17:04 Godchaux, who has gotten louder and seems to be using a wah effect, moves into the lead for a while. By 18:30 the music is dense and swirling; Garcia still seems to be absent, or else in the background. We start to hear him again at about 19:10, but he takes a while to get out front again. This jam sounds really crazy! It drops into a groove at about 20:00, but it’s a frenetic one, and there still seems to be lots of atonal weirdness. By 20:30 or so it sounds like Garcia is putting on the wah, and he may see this leading to a meltdown.


It's hard to pinpoint what happens when in all this murk, but the jam increasingly seems like a meltdown now. In any case it’s a crazy jam, and now I find that I would really love to hear a good recording! Lesh is doing some wild descending licks; at 23:40 it seems to have come to a head, as there’s a lull, but then it seems like they were just gathering themselves because shortly thereafter the music rises like a tornado. I don’t hear Garcia doing the usual Tiger thing, but that’s the general idea, and the crowd bursts into applause at 24:50.


The storm is succeeded by a quiet, spacey segment, with feedback and scritching, and Garcia working the volume knob. This turns out to be the last bit of it, as after a couple of minutes Garcia strikes up Half Step and the Dark Star is over.


From what I can glean from the recording, this is a major effort. I need to remind myself of all the recordings with which we have been blessed, but it’s tough when you can tell that something is really good but you can’t properly hear it. This is clearly a great one, but it's difficult to enjoy.


What was said:

146: 1972-10-18

132378 St. Louis 28:22

Main theme at 9:58.
First verse at 11:31.
Philo Stomp at 22:41.
Feelin’ Groovy at 25:22.
Goes into Morning Dew.


Nestled in the middle of an incredible Playing in the Band>Dark Star>Morning Dew>Playing in the Band sequence that anticipates the setlist shenanigans of the next couple of years, this also works quite well as a standalone. The tempo of these Dark Stars seems to be getting more deliberate as we get toward the end of 1972. In the initial phase, the band seems to set up an environment as much as anything; one can feel oneself entering a forested landscape or some such thing, if that’s not too fanciful. Garcia cries from the trees with some volume swells, while Godchaux releases rivulets that cascade down the jagged cliff face of Weir’s distorted chording, while Lesh prowls in the underbrush. OK, that is too fanciful! Sue me.


If the music is slow and encompassing, as the intensity increases the effect is massive. By the time we’re four minutes in, it feels like a lot has happened, even though they have not yet forsaken the basic Dark Star pattern. At 4:55 they start to slide down into a little gap, with Garcia playing Dark Star melodies to remind us of the overall concept. Godchaux is using an effect (or an electronic keyboard?) now, and they land on a minor chord at about 5:19, with Lesh seemingly leading the way. A groove bubbles forth, but it subsides by 5:45, where there’s a more pronounced hiatus.


This issues forth in some warblings that seem to portend space. These are drawn out so that, rather than a hiatus, this seems to be the next section of the jam—a meditative series of statements without an underlying groove, but with a cohesive feel nevertheless. All four string players are crafting beautiful melodies here, and this draws up into a kind of peak at about 8:45, then stretches and yawns, and then at 9:12 Lesh suggests the main theme.


There are no takers yet; instead, Garcia and Godchaux start rolling and trilling, almost like the end of a Sputnik; Weir joins with a tremolo, and Lesh succumbs as this reaches a crescendo at 9:21, subsides, crescendos again at 9:32, subsides again, and crescendos again at 9:47. As this last peak tails off, Phil again calls them back at 9:52, and they all slide into the main theme. This is rendered triumphantly, with the band kicking up behind Garcia’s elaborations. They bring it to a peak and let it come down again, keeping this powerful section fairly compact. Garcia is a bit off-pitch on the verse at times, but that doesn’t matter too much, does it? I hope not…


Coming off the verse, they hit the little turnaround and start to build on it, with Kreutzmann providing a forward-leaning beat. Garcia immediately kicks on the wah and start futzing around like he wants to go to a meltdown, but the rest of the band settles into a relaxed groove. Garcia complies by playing some melodic stuff, and they start to build a focused jam with more drawn out statements. Once this gets going, at about 15:25, Garcia starts to lean toward a meltdown again, and Weir seems eager to go along this time. But they aren’t falling back on any formulas, they’re taking their time and maintaining a groove.


Lesh starts double timing at 16:30, but rather than picking up things seem to be coming apart a little, which could portend a meltdown after all. They content themselves for now with a less harmonious jam that again builds in intensity, until at 18:15 Garcia starts a Tiger motif, but this does not last for very long, and he soon shifts to the kind of the kind of thing we’d get in the aftermath of a Tiger. It seems, then, that we’re heading somewhere else.


Even though there was never really a meltdown, the Dead are more or less in “We just played a meltdown” territory as we reach the 20 minute mark. One might expect them to come together for a more mundane jam at this point, then. This doesn’t seem to be happening, however, as Lesh starts booming out chords of doom at 20:50. He’s on his own by 21:10, aside from Weir who stays in for a little while longer, and Kreutzmann who is doing some rather minimal work.


Lesh rather dramatically takes a long breath, and then breaks into the first Philo Stomp at 22:41. Kreutzmann immediately picks it up, and they rock it out. I’ve sometimes wondered why the band doesn’t come together on this more, and this time they do provide some accompaniment, starting at around 23:53. Garcia gets some soulful licks in; by the time Godchaux pitches in at about 24:35, Weir seems to have given up.


Phil finally lets the riff go at 24:55, and they hover around for a bit. Not wanting to let it all just peter out, Lesh kicks up Feelin’ Groovy at 25:22, and the band all comes together again at last. They give it a rather subdued but pretty reading tonight, without trying to drive it over the top. The mood is light; their work on Dark Star is done, and everything feels very relaxed. This plays out by 28:05, and I think it’s Lesh who suggests Morning Dew.


This is part of a classic sequence, and it’s a classic Dark Star. The first section is a real tour de force, with the band weaving a polyphonic spell that nicely showcases the unique power of their playing in this era. The second half is restrained, with neither the meltdown nor the Feelin’ Groovy segment reaching for the kind of intensity that they sometimes achieve. Nevertheless, it’s a very satisfying and engaging piece of music, all in all.


What was said:

145. 1972-09-27

18106 NJ 30:11

Main theme at :07 and 23:51.
First verse at 24:12.
Goes into Cumberland Blues.


This one starts right off with the main theme; it begins at a deliberate pace, but moves with a confident and subtly swinging gait. It seems to gain momentum as it goes, and maybe even speeds up just a tad in the early minutes (I’m not sure of this). At 2:45 Garcia starts a rolling triplet figure which the band picks up on, and for a while they launch into moments of intensity and then pull back again, ebbing and flowing, but always moving ahead with a sense of determination.


At 4:20 Garcia plays a figure which Godchaux and Weir keep bouncing back to him, while Lesh does his own thing. The framework that has been established allows a lot of interplay and fosters a variety of ideas, while the overall feel remains much the same. Weir is particularly playful tonight, with little slashes and bursts of harmonics abounding. They hit something of a peak approaching and right after the 7 minute mark, culminating at around 7:20; there are hints of an approach to the theme, but they remain unconsummated. But this is very much a Dark Star jam in the sense that the underlying structure is never far from the surface.


At 8:00 Garcia plays a little roll, almost like Sputnik, that may signal a turn away from the main structure. They start to subside into spacier territory, and then at 9:28 Godchaux suggests something with a bouncy and jazzy feel; this is assented to, and a bubbling jam emerges. This dazzling jam is intense but light and mobile, with the instruments firing off toward all points of the compass. (After a couple of peaks, at 15:13 Garcia starts playing the descending melody I pointed out a couple of times recently; I thought maybe it came from another song, but now I think that this is where I remembered it from).


At 16:10 Jerry plays a high, soft melody that signals the end of the jam, and brings them into a minor key and a more meditative space. As they near the 18-minute mark it seems like either a space jam or a drum interlude is in the works. Kreutzmann drops out at 18:49, and they take it down to almost nothing, with Weir playing some pretty chordal stuff while Lesh plays a plodding melody, which Garcia augments with some volume swells. Weir drops out for a bit at 20:18, and the field is left to Garcia and Lesh; the latter hints at a Spanish Jam-type progression for a moment, and at 21:26 you can hear a switch, which I think is Garcia putting on the wah. This suggests that perhaps this will build to a meltdown, but there are no other indications of this as of yet.


This transitional jam extends for quite some time. It’s almost a space jam, but perhaps a little more melodic and structured than the usual space passage. In any case, it’s quite a beautiful segment. Finally, at 23:36 Garcia starts strumming the Dark Star chords to bring us to the theme, which takes us into the verse with little delay. The latter is sung slowly, seeming to derive its character from the quiet jam that immediately preceded it.


As they exit the verse section, Kreutzmann starts a popping backbeat that indicates a return to the lightly swinging mood established in the first jam tonight. This time it’s a little more heavy-footed and emphatic on the beat, but overall once again the feel is relatively light. They work on bringing the energy up without altering the feel, reaching a peak at around 28:30 or so. By 28:50 they’re coming down the other side, and the jam starts to fragment just a little, but they keep more or less the same thing going, until they reach a point where they are pretty clearly pedaling and Lesh finally starts Cumberland Blues.


This is a really fantastic piece of music. It maintains a kind of momentum throughout, and the band never seems like they’re foundering or trying to figure out what to reach for. This one feels a little whimsical at times; it’s not laying out any huge cosmic statements, but it is entirely engaging and satisfying nonetheless, and must be included in the pantheon of worthy Dark Stars.


What was said:

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: