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:

127. 1972-04-17

34224 Tivoli 30:54

Main theme at :06, 7:35 and 9:24.
First verse at 9:46.
Goes into Sugar Magnolia.


The second Copenhagen Dark Star begins with the main theme, and then a bending liftoff and some harmonics from Garcia as a delicately beautiful introductory jam takes shape. The band floats along on a cloud, each instrument contributing to the multi-headed melody. Garcia quotes the theme at 3:13 and 3:59, and at 4:30 there’s a lovely moment where Bright Star woven into his lead. Shortly after this they move into a minor tonality, where they hover for a while, and the music becomes more loosely wound.


At 6:30 Godchaux wants to take things out a little, and at 6:47 Garcia picks up on his line and elaborates with a repeating figure becomes a new center of gravity briefly until Jerry lets it carry him to the main theme at 7:35. This shifts into a variation on the theme that I don’t think we’ve heard before, and this becomes its own jam, which derives a kind of swing from its relationship to the theme. After a nod to Bright Star at 9:12, the theme proper returns at 9:24, at which point the verse becomes inevitable.


At 11:16, in the wake of the verse, Garcia plays a Sputnik-like roll which continues for a while as Lesh comes to the foreground with some ponderous statements. There’s a moment of uncertainty beginning at about 12:30 where it’s not certain whether this is heading to space or straight into a more straightforward jam. They take until 13:35 before they opt for space, as Garcia starts playing the sort of runs that are often prelude to a meltdown and the rest of the band unwinds a bit. And there is a kind of meltdown, but a pretty gentle one, in keeping with the delicate vibe that’s been in evidence throughout.


By about 16:30 there is a more vigorous and kind of fluttery jam happening. This ebbs and flows a bit, and then at 17:20 Garcia seems to pick up on something Weir suggests and establishes a two chord pattern. At 17:34 Lesh suggests Feelin’ Groovy, but then seems to think better of it. At 18:00 the pace seems to be increasing, and at 18:14 Garcia kicks on the wah and again and sets the course for meltdown territory. By 20:00 we are coming very close to a full-blown Tiger jam and things keep getting stranger for several minutes.


The meltdown seems to have played itself out by about 23:30. There is a period of retrenchment, and then Garcia starts a chiming chordal thing at 24:17. When the band responds, he starts playing lines again as a lovely little syncopated jam comes together, with Pigpen jumping in with some Hammond at 24:57. Typically for the Grateful Dead, this works so well that they tear it apart after about a minute. Lesh starts in with one of his jazzy riffs at 25:15. Then at about 25:25, Weir restores momentum by riffing on a chord pattern that is more or less what will become Let it Grow. This seems to embolden Pigpen, who should be louder in the mix but is swirling away like mad here.


You can almost hear them thinking furiously about how to sabotage this again. At 28:17 Garcia starts plating some chordal lead that starts to sound a bit like the Main Ten lick, and it’s hard to describe what happens next as it all simultaneously falls apart and comes together leading up to a mini-meltdown and a quick reconstruction into Sugar Magnolia.


The third Dark Star of the European tour is yet another outstanding version, both beautiful and adventurous, and with the most developed meltdown we’ve yet heard. This is like the mirror image of the previous Tivoli version, insofar as the introduction has a more cohesive focus, and the post-verse stuff is more exploratory. This is absolutely a top Dark Star of the era, in the best era for Dark Star.


What was said:

126. 1972-04-14

34931 Tivoli 29:45

Main theme at 13:08 and 16:36.
First verse at 17:07.
Feelin’ Groovy at 21:54.
Goes into Sugar Magnolia.


This is an action-packed intro segment, although not for the first few minutes. They play it pretty straight at first, before everything begins to constantly shift and change. This rendition begins with the band playing the intro pattern and Garcia playing a lick over it in a way that sounds very familiar, but I’m not sure if I’ve caught where this began, it just seems familiar and inevitable. This turns into a lovely jam that, however, doesn’t at first distinguish itself as unique. Garcia uncorks some plaintive leads; he alludes to Bright Star at 1:31 and then brings it down again, and when he hits the top again at 2:06 he suggests Falling Star. Neither of these are rendered exactly enough to warrant tagging them as such, but the themes are recognizable enough to identify continuity along the road we’ve traveled since 1969.


The band reaches a crossroads at around 3:05, and something is afoot. Garcia keeps outlining the chord pattern on his bass strings, and at 3:33 Lesh seems ready to break out one of his jazzy riffs, but he doesn’t do so as of yet; at 4:03 we hear him casting about in this vein again. This gives the others a peg some licks on, and a frenetic jam emerges, but it soon calms down again.


At the five minute mark we find the band in a volatile mood, and soon Garcia unleashes some uptempo rolling high licks and Kreutzmann starts galloping along. This comes back to earth pretty quickly in its turn. Then at 5:46, Garcia employs the strategy of repeating a note to get everything gathered around; he then wanders off and this is taken up by Godchaux. Here we might expect another frenetic jam to coalesce, but something moodier and weirder comes together instead.


At 7:30, Garcia starts some strumming that is reminiscent of Wharf Rat, and lopes along with a similar gait. Everyone seems willing to go along, and at 7:57 Jerry breaks into a high lead with some volume knob manipulation and pinch harmonics. The quasi-Wharf Rat jam is played out by around 8:50, and there is some hovering during which Jerry gets a little morse code going on a high note which ties this to the next section, beginning at 9:25 or so. This is a lightly tripping polyphony, into which Garcia inserts some Bright Star licks at 10:08 and 10:21. At 10:30 it starts to gather steam; Lesh feints Feelin’ Groovy at 10:45, and then things calm down again.


With the music swirling in an odd little eddies from 11:25 to 11:47, when it all goes quiet and we get a little space jam. Weir sounds like he’s thinking of something like Spanish Jam at one point, but they decide to hold the moment for a while, doing just enough to adumbrate a ghostly sort of momentum in the stuff that no one is playing. Then at 13:08, Jerry starts to play the main theme but he doesn’t commit to it, and no one seems to want to go in that direction. Instead, it stays really spacey.


The band sounds like a breathing organism at 14:50. Garcia’s swelling line stabs at the theme a few times, and the band coalesces, but not on the theme; however, it seems evident that this is where things are headed. Garcia again hits a Bright Star-like bit at 16:06 that brings a little peak with it, and when he comes down the other side into the theme at 16:36 everyone is ready to go along, and that’s how we get to the verse.


A suitably spacey section follows the verse, but by 19:15 it seems like something’s cooking. Phil feints with a jazzy line, and Keith and Jerry seem to suddenly burst out with something in the same vein. Pretty soon the music is cooking along. In contrast to the first half, they grab ahold of something and work it out together at some length here. Beginning at probably around 21:40 or so, Weir and Godchaux seem to be bringing in what sounds a lot like the Mind Left Body chord pattern, but played with the rhythm of Feelin’ Groovy. It’s subtle at first, but I think Lesh starts Feelin; Groovy at 21:54, and you can hear it snap together at 22:03.


This is a cracking version of the familiar jam, and if it seems at the edge of chaos at times, that makes it even better. Some of Garcia’s licks here are reminiscent of his playing in the late 60s in a way that is difficult to define; for instance, see the passage from 24:12 to 24:27. At 24:36 the band hits on a two-chord pattern that brings Feelin’ Groovy to a close. Then at 25:08, Garcia starts a Sputnik-like pattern and the band starts to fragment as they head toward a spacey meltdown.


Once again, this is the sort of passage that will soon lead to a Tiger jam, and once again it stops a bit short of what I’d call the Tiger proper. It’s a very fine atonal freak-out in its own right, however. Right as our track here ends at 29:45, Weir starts up Sugar Magnolia, and Garcia adapts his whacked-out wah lead in a way that blends the two songs for a particularly satisfying transition.


Some Dark Stars have recognizable movements, some seem to go along in the same vein for their duration, and some are continually changing as they go. The introduction here is of the third variety. We saw quite a bit of this in late 1971, where the band seemed reluctant to commit to a direction. At times this made for a less satisfying experience, but the way the band responds to one another and changes tack is rather enthralling here, earning them no demerits. The (shorter) post-verse material, on the other hand, seems much of a piece, so we kind of get it all with this version.


The previous Dark Star (1972-04-08) opened up a new improvisational universe, and now we’re living in it. Perhaps improbably, the Grateful Dead have become an even mightier improvisational unit than they were in 1969, 1970, or 1971. It was possible to track their progression, but of course it would be misleading to see it as a linear path of improvement. Nevertheless, Dark Star and the Grateful Dead seem somehow more Dark Star and the Grateful Dead then they ever were before. This is a magnificent version, and we are fortunate in that there are many more to come with the European tour just getting started.

What was said:

125. 1972-04-08

youtube Wembley 31:27

Main theme at 9:57.
First verse at 10:53.
Goes into Sugar Magnolia.


When the Grateful Dead went to Europe for what would be the first of five tours, it wasn’t entirely clear what kind of band they were going to be in 1972. In 1971 they seemed to be moving away from long improvisations in favor of a more conventionally structured show that focused on rock songs that were relatively concise, although these were of course played unconventionally. Dark Star had become infrequent, with only 12 airings in 1971 (which means it was played at a bit less than 15% of their shows). They did play The Other One frequently, and there are several excellent Dark Stars, but it would not have been outlandish to conclude that they were gradually trending away from the long jams they had been known for in the 1960s.


Of course this is not what happened. He wasn’t always very loud and he didn’t often take the lead, but Keith Godchaux’s playing was brilliantly inventive; it seemingly inspired the others, opening new horizons for collective improvisation. At some point (presumably prior to the beginning of the tour) the band decided to heavily emphasize improvisation in Europe, with every show featuring either Dark Star or The Other One (and long jams would sometimes emerge elsewhere in the set, a phenomenon which became more common in 1973-4). Dark Star, which the band would play 35 times in 1972, was about to enter a new Golden Age.


Although the Academy of Music version (1972-03-23) is a very fine piece of music, the renaissance really begins with this version which, like the Live/Dead version, represents a great leap forward even if it does not come out of nowhere. The hesitancies and lack of commitment, still in evidence in the March rendition, seem to have vanished. This is a masterful piece of music and a landmark in improvisational music.


They begin it rather briskly, but it somehow still has a brooding feel in the early going, as the jam alternates between a kind of moody hovering and frequent returns, less explicit each time, to the theme. This begins with a pause of momentum at :32, which resolves itself with a return to the main pattern at :46. At 1:06, Garcia hangs on a B and brings them into another little holding pattern. This gradually works its way back toward another resolution at 1:46 which they start to unspool almost immediately. Then at 2:30, Garcia begins playing a sprightly line and one of their frenetic jam coalesces around him, but there is still a sort of brooding and hovering aspect to it. Garcia seems to want to drive them toward a peak, and this comes around 3:05, but again, while they sound confident and do not hesitate, there is an undertow of moodiness.


At 3:24 there is a hint again of the main pattern, but they hold back as Garcia gives us a languid and sorrowful take on Bright Star with Godchaux providing a counterpoint. They get swept away into a mournful jam, and then at 4:33 the return to the theme comes as a mere hint. Here Garcia begins a walking line that almost inaugurates a jam, but they instead subside again. At 5:24, Garcia starts to blast out one of his morse code messages, and this time everyone is ready to commit to it, as the band gathers force and we are swept into a frenetic jam. Riding the maelstrom, Jerry unleashes some howling repeated lines, as the band crests peak after peak.


It would be a major task to keep track of all the jazzy repeating licks Lesh tries on in 1972. At 8:07, he starts hammering what sounds like a take on Reggie Workman’s bass line to John Coltrane’s version of “Greensleeves.” He varies it a bit as the band sounds like it’s finally coming down the other side of the mountain. They take their time cooling off, though, and the music gets stranger, with melodic ideas flying everywhere, and somehow it all fits together. At 9:57, Garcia swings into the main theme, and we are headed for a beautiful reading of the verse. By now, we are at a decidedly slower tempo than we began with—Kreutzmann should have played to a click track, clearly (note: some of the responses to this indicate that I need to point out that this was said ironically).


The post-verse landscape is austere, as the band emerges into a kind of space. At 13:12 or so it almost sounds like a 1970-style cessation is coming, but they fill the space with eerie ponderings, orbiting around Phil’s bass. At 13:39, as Lesh slides into a feedback passage, Garcia stops scratching and assays a plaintive melody line, but no one seems inclined to come back to earth yet, and a kind of moody and atonal space jam is building. At 16:25 Phil seems inclined to start a jam; Jerry stabs out some morse code lines, and a pretty jam starts to take shape.


The playing here is urgent, but there is still a stormy sense of brooding that pervades the music. Approaching the 19 minute mark it sounds like a meltdown is coming, as things get more chaotic. Godchaux is pushing up against Garcia’s line, and at 19:03 Weir inserts himself in between with a squalling burst. The tide starts going out again, and then it starts to build again—the dynamics here are rather volatile in a way that is reminiscent of 1969. At around 20:20, Pigpen is inspired to join in on organ in the most unexpected place, although it’s hard to hear very much of what he’s doing on this recording. At 21:30 everyone is playing a melodic line but Phil is again hinting at a Greensleeves-like riff as the music builds again, and then again they start to subside. 22:20 sees us in a calm where quiet melodies swirl around, and something new seems to be on the horizon. This gentle passage continues, however, with Garcia hitting some delicate volume swells beginning at 23:09.


As beautiful as it is, by 24:25 they almost seem to be out of gas. Don’t worry, though, they’re just getting started—Garcia clicks on the wah pedal and, in what will become a familiar gambit, initiates a build-up to a meltdown. The storm reaches its full power at about 26:50, and then at 27:22, when everyone seems ready to take a breath, Garcia starts to sketch out a riff that they will ride out to the end. After a little pause, this kicks in at 27:32, and the band instantly snaps into shape. It seems like something rehearsed, but the only evidence I can cite for or against this idea is that this is the only time it is played.


The chord pattern that emerges here, however, is more or less the same one that will become known as the Mind Left Body jam, although the duration of the chords will be different when that finally appears in the Fall. It may be that Weir first pulls it together here, or maybe they had been toying with it. In any case, this is a unique jam, but they are all pulling in the same direction such that it sounds like a composed section. Whatever the case is, they have had a lot of practice playing structured jams in the middle of Dark Star over the past year or two. This finally gives way to Sugar Magnolia, and the Dark Star is over (you are to imagine Gary Cohen saying this here).


Some Dark Stars are exploratory, others are confident and cohesive pieces of music; the best ones, like this, are both. With this magnificent rendition, Dark Star has moved back to the very center of the Grateful Dead experience, and it will remain there for the remainder of 1972. Here they have put together a version that will never be surpassed, although one could argue that they went on to equal it on occasion.


This may be the best thing the Grateful Dead ever played. This may be the best thing anyone has ever played. And with that, there’s nothing more that needs to be said.


What was said:

124. 1972-03-23

136683 NYC 22:46

Main theme at :07, 1:28, 3:09, 3:50, and 4:18.
Sputnik at 2:10.
First verse at 4:45.
Feelin’ Groovy at 17:05.
Main theme at 20:52.
Second verse at 21:16.


Now it is 1972, probably the best year for Dark Star. Perhaps looking ahead to the European tour where it would be played 11 times, the band played Dark Star once during the Academy of Music run. They start right off with the theme, and at :22 Garcia announces that he’s not messing around when he plays a wrong note that he quickly bends into a right one, and his playing in the early going features numerous little bends and swoops like this. Jerry returns to the theme at 1:28, although it is blended into his line and the band doesn’t follow suit.


At 2:10 Garcia starts what is more or less a Sputnik line, although it doesn’t have all the features we heard in 1969. This comes back to the theme at 3:09. He gets into some tremolo and things go somewhere else until he brings back a disjointed iteration of the theme at 3:50. The band seems about to go into space, but at 4:18 Jerry again strikes up the theme, and this time everyone follows. This brings us to the verse (“reason shatters”), played with a laid-back swing.


Lesh seems a little out of joint tonight, although I’d have a hard time elaborating on this. The verse leads to a sort of half-hearted jam that flutters off into a kind of space segment. At 7:20 Garcia is playing one of the one-note morse code runs we have encountered so often lately, and Godchaux is noodling away. They come together for the kind of spacey run that will often build into a meltdown. The band seems reluctant to build this up, though.


At 9:30 Garcia is playing the kind of stuff that will soon lead to a Tiger jam. Keith is with him again, and Lesh and Weir are in and out. Starting at 10:30 it starts to sound like it’s finally going to build to something, and a rather remarkable little counterpoint starts with Garcia and Lesh being the main protagonists. By 11:15 this is dissipating again, and then it starts to again sound like the beginnings of a meltdown. Some pleasingly atonal wailing is underway by 12:05 or so, but again instead of building it up they pull back.


As we head to the 13 minute mark it’s building again, though, and again there is some nice noisemaking going on. By 13:35 this is just about in meltdown territory, and then at 13:47 Garcia is a hairsbreadth from a full-on Tiger. He recedes though, and Lesh gets some nice sounds in to compensate. Lots of intriguing stuff is happening, but as we have seen often lately there seems to be a reluctance to commit to anything.


Some kind of jam is afoot at 15:08, and this starts to come together into something funky, with Weir doing something that vaguely suggests Soulful Strut. Lesh gets a nice riff going to this, but then he backs off and it all seems like it’s coming apart again. Then at 16:08 Lesh starts playing what seems like a variant of Feelin’ Groovy, and the band suddenly snaps together. At 17:05 Lesh makes Feelin’ Groovy official, but they were already hitting it.


At 18:13 Lesh mutates the lick into a funky ascending thing that seems to serve them just fine here, as they keep pushing along. At 18:53 it goes back to Feelin’ Groovy, and then they start pedaling and it seems like we’re coming out of it. What happens next is remarkable….Lesh goes back to the Feelin’ Groovy lick while Garcia keeps pedaling, and then the latter bursts into some impossibly wonderful Bakersfield licks at 19:43 while the bass does what only Phil Lesh can do with it. Finally at 20:25 Weir comes to the fore with something like his China Cat licks, which Garcia quickly picks up on for a few seconds before he brings it back to the main theme at 20:52. We won’t get the second verse very often in 1972, but we get it tonight to put this to bed.


This is a really difficult version to evaluate. There are moments of startling brilliance, and once things snap together in the second half there is outright glory here. Although some of the atonal jamming is compelling, on the other hand, here again (as with several of the late 1971 versions) it is possible to feel like there is a certain amount of meandering where the band seems too hesitant to commit to any particular direction. But when it’s good, it’s really good.


What was said:

123. 1971-12-15

149966 Ann Arbor 20:16
Main theme at :04 and 9:34.
First verse at 10:02.
Goes into Deal.

The last Dark Star of 1971 kicks right off with the main theme. Garcia has a lovely tone with some bends and a beautiful little A-D-C lick at :28 that I muchly dig. He develops it as a kind of motive, weaving similar figures into his opening spiel. At around 2 minutes in, things settle down and it seems like some kind of weirdness is being considered. A softly melodic but not too together interlude ensues, with Godchaux making his present felt a bit more. At this point, he seems to have become an important presence, but he’s not as boldly assertive as he was when he first joined. Nevertheless, he often seems to push things in interesting directions.

After about a minute of casting about the band starts to congeal, with a kind of rolling section that remains on the far side of normalcy. This again settles down into what seems like it might be the beginning of a space jam at around 4:00. As happens often lately, the band keeps their distance from one another, perhaps waiting for something to happen. At 4:59 Garcia starts a little morse code line, and Keith winds around it, and then Lesh follows suit, but it’s not until Weir gets more involved that this shapes up into something that is more meltdown than jam. Once again, this is something that would develop into a Tiger were it 6 months later.

At around 7:00 Garcia’s lines turn into something that suggests rock and roll, and by 7:30 we seem to be getting more cohesion…if this doesn’t come together, it would be an obvious place for the main theme. But instead they persist and things draw together until by about 8:45 a little peak is reached and sustained until almost, 9:34 at which point Garcia finally states the theme and they fall into line. This brings us to the verse, sung off-key at what feels like a languid tempo.

I’m not sure that there is a standard way to follow the verse at this point. Here they go to a basic Dark Star jam that seems to be happening at a significantly slower pace than the intro jam. By 12:15 this seems to be turning into space, which would have been the usual routine in 1970. At 12:45 Garcia starts making noises with a slide, and then things get rather quiet, which is also reminiscent of 1970, although they don’t get quite as quiet as they often did the previous year. Instead a lugubrious brooding starts to build; at 14:24, however, Garcia pronounces in a pure tone that he is again thinking of Dark Star. Weir rolls around a bit, but then he subsides, and the future remains in doubt; at 14:45 he advances a chord pattern that suggests Let it Grow, but this goes in a slower, vaguely Latin direction as the others latch on.

A really cohesive and satisfying jam is what we get out of this. Godchaux’s understated contributions are sublime; as is typical, he subtly undermines the harmonic balance, until at 17:05 he gets a little more forceful and pushes them in an entirely new direction. Garcia briefly takes it toward something like Me & My Uncle, and then it settles down a bit, and then it sort of recedes into uncertainty. At 18:48 Garcia starts one of the morse code bits that sometimes serve to gather the troops (and sometimes don’t). A dark and bubbling coherence builds, and this threatens to become something remarkable, but as it drives toward a peak they suddenly back off again and Jerry starts Deal.

I wouldn’t call this one of the best Dark Stars of the year, but it is a fun 20 minutes that has some good moments. It doesn’t seem unusual at this point that the band seems hesitant to commit to any of their ideas; this seems to be a feature of a lot of these Dark Stars from the back half of 1971. The second half jam is really wonderful when they commit to it, although its span is relatively brief.


What was said:

122. 1971-12-05

131532 20:17 (DS 8:01>MAMU>DS 12:16).
Goes into Me & My Uncle and Sittin’ on Top of the World.

The sound starts out a little boomy on this Charlie Miller transfer, but it seems to get a bit better almost immediately. Either they’re taking it slightly faster than they have been, or I’ve gotten used to the slower tempo—mine is not a scientific approach, I recognize. Garcia and Lesh are very prominent, with Jerry playing beautiful runs with pinch harmonics and little flurries. We can hear Keith, but he’s a little reticent.

The intro starts to get a little weirder at around 2:35, and soon Lesh is playing a morse code pattern of the type they’ve been fooling with lately. This leads to a burst of vigorous jamming, but it doesn’t last long, as they seem to be a little restless here. Eventually, at 3:55, a kind of bouncy thing emerges and gathers force. There’s a nice peak beginning at about 4:20 leading the jam into a sort of behind the beat swing.

At 5:10 this is all coming together, and the band is going like gangbusters. 5:35 sees Feelin’ Groovy hints come and then go, and everything falls apart a little and by 6:37 is heading into weirdness. A small meltdown follows and builds in intensity, then recedes, until at 8:00 the band sort of magically drops into a nice version of Me & My Uncle.

The last chord of MAMU drops almost immediately into a jam that is recognizably some form of Dark Star. After about 25 seconds the band backs way off into a drumless contemplative space. Garcia plays some rolls, and Godchaux asserts himself a little more here. Jerry’s line starting at 2. 1:49 is particularly beautiful. This leads him into some volume knob stuff, and Phil echoes him with some plaintive notes while Weir and Godchaux provide more active counterpoint. At 3:20 the music becomes more insistent and we seem to be heading for a meltdown.

It proves to be an intense one, and has many of the characteristics of what is usually called a Tiger jam, although Garcia does not hammer the wah pedal. It recedes and then comes roaring back, and by 5:10 Weir is furiously scritching, then Garcia starts some tremolo stuff, but the band has backed way off. They proceed to weird out for a while.

By around 7:00 this seems to be heading into a more structured jam, although they seem reluctant to regularize it too much at first. Keith starts playing a riff that holds it together, while Garcia and Lesh pipe along with one-note patterns as it migrates into a rock thing. But then by 8:30 it is all coming to an end again, and the band descends into a kind of oasis of weirdness again. At 8:54 Garcia starts another morse code line, but he quickly abandons it in favor of some noodling. At 9:22 Garcia starts a Sputnik line while Lesh begins the main theme. Garcia wins out this time, and a sort of Sputnik-like part comes here.

By 10:45 there is a beautiful little jam underway, and this picks up cohesion briefly, and then falls apart again, with Lesh again trying to assert the theme to bring them back together. Jerry briefly considers joining him, but instead he starts Sitting on Top of the World, and we’re out.

Although there is no main theme and no verses, this clearly seems to be a Dark Star. As I said earlier, however, I am unscientific; it may help to have clear criteria to distinguish a Dark Star from a Dark Star jam. There is a lot to enjoy here, but one thing that sets the Dead apart as improvisors is how they pull it all together for cohesive and tonal jams, and these are in short supply here, at least if we’re talking about jams of any length. There is a lot of great music in these 20 minutes, though.


What was said:

121. 1971-11-15

youtube Austin, TX 20:40 (Dark Star 12:55>El Paso>Dark Star 7:49)

Main theme at 6:44.
First verse at 7:05.
Goes into El Paso and then Casey Jones.

The music begins with a confident languor that is quite affecting. Keith is a bit louder this time out, which is good. There is a glorious peak beginning at 1:33; nothing too strenuous, everything flows nice and easy. Coming off the other side, they almost go into Sputnik at 2:17, but it winds up being a little eddy in the current and the music sweeps along. Perhaps in part due to the mix, this rendition presents the Dead at their polyphonic best, with four instrumentalists intently spinning out lines, and it all winds up fitting together perfectly.

At 3:56 Garcia starts a morse code pattern, and the music heads into a minor-sounding passage for a few moments until a frenetic jam begins to develop. It sounds like they are gathering steam for a modular jam here, but instead they keep going until they decide to start the theme at 6:44. This seems to be a unanimous decision, although Garcia kicks it off. They head to the verse rather quickly from here.

They seem inclined to weird out a little after the verse, and we get something like a space jam this time, although it is one that features a lot of frenetic activity and quickly solidifies into another active jam. At 9:40 Weir starts playing El Paso, but we don’t get there yet, and the jam keeps taking off. At about 11:00 we get into a holding pattern, and then the jam gets even more frenetic, ebbing and flowing until everyone but Kreutzmann, Garcia and Lesh drop out for a bit. At 12:51 Weir again asserts El Paso, and this time the band follows suit.

El Paso briefly comes to a full stop, and then we are back in Dark Star or something like it, as a kind of atonal space jam begins. At first this is largely a duet between Garcia and Godchaux with Kreutzmann tapping the cymbals, and then everyone gets in on the act and things get even freakier. This becomes a full-blown meltdown until at 21:15 Garcia starts some Caution-like strumming and brings it back to earth, although Keith provides some dissonance here. The jamming here is ferocious and exhilarating. It starts slowing down and getting weird again at 24:00, and things begin to sound transitional, but they stretch it out a bit before Garcia suddenly starts Casey Jones.

This rendition is utterly magnificent, and in fact this is certainly one of the best Dark Stars to date. If anyone wanted to know what Grateful Dead music is about, this would be as good an example as any. It is at times unruly, but to my ears always in a pleasing manner.




What was said:

120. 1971-11-07

9570 San Francisco 15:27 (14:00)
Main theme at 5:26, 7:26, and 9:08.
First verse at 9:35.
Goes into The Other One.

The late-1971 Dark Star boom continues with this short (14 minutes) version from the Harding Theater. The tempo is again relatively languid, and the band eases in without much sense of purpose it seems to me, although there are some nice lines going on. Keith is a bit quiet in the intro here, although he is audible if you listen for him.

At 3:37, Garcia initiates a rolling passage that does not achieve the intensity we would usually expect here; the band still sounds like it’s biding its time. It builds a little after about a minute, but no one seems eager to kick it into another gear, and the music eases back again. Garcia finally starts the theme, although this seems a bit out of joint. Lesh sounds like he’s trying to push it to a different key to avoid the theme, until at 6:15 he starts hammering on the A repeatedly. Garcia tries to get the theme going again, then wanders off, and by 6:30 they start easing into a B minor thing, although without much conviction.

This all seems like it could get terribly interesting at any moment, if they decide to get it together, but after some musing in this direction Garcia comes back to the theme at 7:26, and this time the band seems willing, if not eager, to go along with him. At about 8:10 Garcia starts repeating an A, in a reiteration of Lesh’s gambit of a couple minutes before. Phil hints around at a jazzy bass line of the type that will soon become common. Keith creeps in a little more; Garcia plays a ritardando build-up to the theme at 9:08, and this time everyone comes along, taking us to the verse.

The post-verse jam starts with some tremolo from Garcia which Weir and Godchaux take up, and then Jerry starts pumping a repeated note that seems intended to start one of the frenetic little jams that are becoming common. By 12:00 or so this seems to be coming together nicely, although in keeping with the overall mood tonight it’s rather gentle. As this goes on, everyone seems to be getting it together in a way we haven’t really heard yet tonight, as it sounds like they’re all playing on the same team, for the most part. But by 13:20 it seems to be fraying a bit at the edges, and another transitional section emerges—if that’s the right word, since the transitions seem to just lead to other transitions tonight. At 14:28 Lesh starts indicating Feelin’ Groovy, but then at 14:36 Garcia starts playing The Other One, and that’s all for Dark Star. This threatens to congeal, but then it disperses into a drum break before they’ll get back to it.

The Grateful Dead sound lovely in general, which is the saving grace of this thing. This would make one heck of a tuning break, in any case. They never sounded all that interested in Dark Star here, though.


What was said:

119. 1971-10-31

youtube Columbia, OH 23:14

Main theme at 4:17 and 6:47.
First verse at 7:17.
Soulful Strut at 13:19.

Slow and stately this begins. We could look at BPM stats, but my sense is that Dark Star has been slowing down, and will continue to do so until 1973. Garcia sounds majestic and lovely on the Strat. One almost wishes he’d just alternate between the Fenders and Gibsons, but the latter emitted their last sounds on a Dark Star some months back.

The intro section tonight doesn’t have much truck with the main theme; for a while there, it seemed they were keeping the theme in play throughout the intro, but now they’re letting it go where it will. I’m not sure exactly what he’s doing (maybe @JSegel will elucidate it), but Garcia seems to be moving things about a bit harmonically; for instance, in the passage from 3:59 to 4:17, which ends with what sounds like a modulation when he takes it to the theme. At 5:08 Jerry hits on a repeated lick that has a sort of controlled scream to it, and he follows with some of his tuba-like expressions on the bottom strings. Then at 5:57 he embarks on a tremolo passage which then hints at the verse melody, although it’s been a while since they’ve played this with a crash to the E minor as they used to do in 1969.

This all culminates in some triplets that ascend to a high note at 6:40, which sounds like the signal for a return to the theme. This comes and ushers in the verse. This was an excellent intro section; although my comments have focused on Garcia, the band sounds really great here. Godchaux has been mostly blending in up to this point, which is a marked contrast to his presence on the first two Dark Stars of his career. His playing fits very well where he can be heard, and he may have been louder on stage, but his contributions seem less central this time out.

The band keeps trucking along after the post-verse reiteration of the intro theme. After about a minute of treading water, at 8:51 Garcia starts in with some triplets which Lesh and Weir latch onto, which brings them into a place not unlike Sputnik. I can’t hear Godchaux at all here. At 9:30 they almost go into Sputnik, but Phil starts playing a rocking line that gets them whipped up again, and by 10:00 they are into a vigorous jam. People start suggesting chords, but it’s not clear which ones, or if there is any consistency to it. Godchaux comes up a bit here, and there is a bubbly jam after about 11:00 which sounds pretty unique, and eventually begins to take on a minor key feel.

At around 12:10 they seem to be trying to get into some kind of modular jam, but I can’t identify which one it is, yet. But in fact it doesn’t turn out to be anything identifiable, but is rather another unique section. And this changes again at 13:04, when Garcia starts up a little riff as a precursor to Soulful Strut, which finally emerges at 13:19. Once again I cannot hear Keith as this gets underway, but they play the heck out of it.

At 15:30 Godchaux comes back into the mix, and he seems to be playing something a little slanty, or else he’s out of tune….either way, the effect is not unpleasant. Jerry caps it off at 16:54 with a one-note solo that takes things up a notch, and this culminates with him playing the melody an octave up from the usual spot. At around 17:48 he starts rolling the chords and it seems they are ready to make a transition. They stay with it for a while though, as Garcia does a Sputnik-like bit from around 18:30 and the energy begins to subside. They slow it down and drag it out; at 19:18 Lesh suggests the theme, and Jerry then echoes him, but they don’t go there yet—it almost seems like they’re going to space instead. At 19:55 Garcia starts in with the stuff that will become the Tiger meltdown in future times; they almost get there this time, with Garcia starting a fast tremolo at 21:17, but it never quite gets to a boil. At 22:25 Godchaux starts pounding away, and one could think we’re headed into another jam, but they grind to a halt, and at 22:29 Weir strikes up Sugar Magnolia.

This is certainly a superb version. It would be nice to hear Keith a little more, but otherwise the band sounds great. On the one hand it feels like Dark Star has entered a new era; on the other, in retrospect this still feels a bit transitional, in light of what is coming in 1972. Either way, they’ve grown and found new possibilities for improvisation, and late 1971 is a wonderful time for Dark Star.


What was said:

118. 1971-10-24

125887 Detroit 20:49
Main theme at 5:45 and 6:48.
First verse at 7:17.
Feelin’ Groovy at 13:10.
Main theme at 17:59.
Second verse at 19:05.
Goes into Me and Bobby McGee.

The second Dark Star with Keith Godchaux begins with a similar feel as the last, slow and spacey. Keith isn’t really very noticeable at first this time, but after about a minute he begins to make himself heard. The main theme is not in evidence this time; maybe they started that way last time for the benefit of the new guy. In any case, this is a lovely intro, with dark eddies and swirls everywhere.

A little after the three minute point Keith starts to originate a more rhythmic jam. This doesn’t catch on at first, or anyway they let it go by. At 3:20 Garcia plays a high A, hinting at the theme, and then Keith latches onto him and the intensity rises. By 4:05 this has played itself out, and they seem to be faced with a choice between the main theme and dissolution. They choose the latter, getting into a little space jam. Garcia and Lesh consider some strategies for getting out of this, and at 4:58 the latter briefly starts a funky riff, which is a move he will soon be making with regularity as the “elastic ping pong jam” develops.

Nothing catches on, however; at 5:45, Garcia states the theme, but they’re not ready for that yet. Instead, they start to coalesce with a loping jam into which Garcia inserts hints of the theme from time to time. The rest of the band sets up the two-chord foundation, and at 6:48 the theme arrives. This leads to a relaxed reading of the verse, although Garcia’s vocals sound a bit strained.

Lesh seems to speed it up a little coming out of the verse, and the jam that starts here has a bit more pep than we’ve seen so far; then, at 9:25, it suddenly calms down. From here it again gathers momentum, and by 10:00 they are in a frenetic jam again. Keith really pounds on the keys here, getting a rocking thing going that the band is happy to jump into.

At 11:45 they mellow out a bit, but not for long as they soon are driving toward a peak. This seems to culminate around 12:15, but then it keeps going, and at 12:47 Lesh starts pushing toward Feelin’ Groovy, but instead the whole thing flames out in the strangest way—this might not hold together, in fact, so at 13:10 Lesh now insists on Feelin’ Groovy, and they follow him in. This is a very fast reading of this jam, and the band seems to be on the edge of chaos, which Keith seems happy to promote with some rather unorthodox accompaniment.

By 14:00 they are seemingly losing the thread again, although in a very interesting way. They come out of the pedal point here and dive back into Feelin’ Groovy, or almost in any case. It’s really hard to describe exactly what is happening here. Garcia has an idea he’s been trying to promote, and at 15:00 it becomes a rolling figure that will in the future generally herald the MLB jam or one of its permutations. It’s not yet time for that, though, so they gleefully go on skating at the edge of chaos and dissolution.

They get it together in a big way by about 16:45, when they seem to be driving for a peak, and Garcia is soon doing something in the neighborhood of Bright Star. This decisively ends at 17:08, and the band downshifts and seems ready for the main theme. Perhaps for the sake of prolonging things, at 17:27 Garcia throws Sputnik into the mix, although this doesn’t quite materialize, and at 17:59 it’s the main theme after all. This time we will get the second verse—enjoy it while you can.

I could understand if someone were to say that this one doesn’t quite work—at times they barely have it together, and they probably cross the line a couple times into simply not having it together. I think this is a wonderful version, though—it’s full of the spirit of discovery, and the band is willing to take chances exploring their new piano-infused powers. I think they really enjoyed themselves here, and they pushed it a bit. Some times Dark Star is a tour de force, and sometimes it’s an excursion…an expedition, even. This one bursts with life and joy, and it ought to make you happy, too.


What was said:

117. 1971-10-21

112086 Chicago 17:09 (1. 14:57, 2:12)
Main theme at :06, 1:31, and 5:20.
First verse at 6:37.
Bright Star at 12:47.
Feelin’ Groovy at 12:50.
Main theme at 2. :15.
Second verse at 2. :29.
Goes into Sitting on Top of the World and Me and Bobby McGee.

After another good break, Dark Star returns in October 1971. Garcia is now playing the Stratocaster he got from Graham Nash, which will be his main guitar for about two years. The Gibsons are now a thing of the past. It’s hard not to have mixed feelings about this, as he got such a great sound out of a Gibson, but the Strat sounds really beautiful here, and much great music will be played on it. This is also the first version with Keith Godchaux on piano, who debuted two days before on October 19th.

This one starts right off with the main theme, and then they start casting about the heavens. Garcia throws in some pinch harmonics at about :55, and he revisits the main theme at 1:31. Godchaux seems very much at home, and he starts to work himself to the foreground more; there is an intense moment at 1:51 when it seems like he’ll push them outside, and then beginning at 2:56 he starts spiraling upward and then locks together with Garcia, throwing everything into a pleasing sort of chaos.

The jamming loosens up considerably here, and it’s enthralling to hear how the band finds places to go with Godchaux on piano that herald new possibilities for their long form jamming in general, and Dark Star in particular. There is a jaw-dropping sequence that begins at about 4:55, with Garcia and Godchaux ratcheting up the intensity, and Weir providing single note counterpoint while Lesh provides an ominous undercurrent. Garcia then decides this is a good time to assert the theme, before they lose themselves altogether. They draw it out for a couple minutes before getting to the verse, which is delivered rather forcefully.

In lieu of the typical space jam there is a gentle passage, with lyrical musings from Garcia. Godchaux seems to take his cue from the latter, shadowing his line with running commentary, and this turns into more or less a duet, with Lesh laying out and Weir providing color. By 10:40 it is becoming a space jam at last, but at 11:11 Garcia starts a one-note vamp that seems ready to lead them out. Sure enough, a frenetic jam coalesces around him. This section is quite rhythmic, and it seems like it could burst into Feelin’ Groovy at any moment; instead, they drive it to a peak, which Garcia caps with Bright Star—and then, a few seconds later, Lesh and Weir drop them into Feelin’ Groovy after all.

By about 14:12 this seems to be dissolving into chaos, and Garcia starts playing a bit that will often lead into the Tiger jam in the future, although it doesn’t quite get there this time, instead veering into Sitting on Top of the World. This in turn comes back to Dark Star at the end, which proves to be a quick wrap-up with the second verse.

The meat of this is the first segment, and it is magnificent. We’ve heard other musicians sit in on Dark Star, and none have fared particularly well at getting the spirit of the kind of group improvising the Dead purvey. Keith Godchaux, however, at his second show with the band, not only fits in, but he is a central factor here. New and glorious possibilities are suddenly on the horizon.


What was said:

116. 1971-07-31

youtube Yale 22:48
Main theme at 1:15, 3:25, 7:27 and 9:37..
First verse at 10:20.
Main theme at 18:59.
Second verse at
Followed by Bird Song after a brief pause.

Dark Star returns after a gap of three months, and Garcia is again playing a Les Paul. The band sounds invigorated as they flex their polyphonic tentacles, with Jerry’s piercing brassy Gibson striking sparks off Lesh’s fat round bass runs. As Garcia strikes the main theme at 1:15, a small cut jolts us forward beyond the theme, although I don’t get the sense there is that much missing.

Starting at around 2:20 the band wanders into a kind of spacey pit where the time signature vaporizes and the tonality seems to have a relationship to the old standby E minor. In mid-1969 this might have led to some pre-verse exploration, but since then these interludes seem to lead into the main theme rather expeditiously when they occur during the introductory section, and tonight seems to be no exception, as after about a minute Garcia strikes up the theme. Instead of bringing it all together, though, this time the band darkly broods as Garcia, after some light tolling, strikes out with a spacey lead. By 4:40 this has become a full-blown space jam! Jerry flutters around with some hammer-on/pull-offs as Lesh intones some whole notes that suggest a couple of tonal alternatives in the neighborhood of 7:00, giving us E, A and finally lighting on a hanging G which frames the return to the theme, which Phil proposes at 7:05.

The band broods a bit longer, though, winding up on A with the G natural still hanging in their midst. At 7:37 Garcia states the theme, but we don’t quite get there yet; rather, a majestic and swelling jam rises and rises on the theme chords. As we come down the other side of this, Garcia swirls through the theme again at 9:27 against Weir’s delicate harmonics, again laying in the G natural, until at 10:20 he finally begins singing the first verse after the longest introductory jam since 1969.

After the verse there is a very heavy statement of the main chords, and it seems to be settling into space by around 12:10. This time they do not begin with silence, but rather Lesh plays some woozy effects as Garcia twirls the volume knob. At 13:53, after Kreutzmann beats his toms, the return of the Gibson brings back to us the concomitant insect weirdness. This instigates a dark and heavy jam that begins as a flurry of disparate elements held together by the beating toms, until Jerry’s riffing begins at 15:25 to suggest a way forward—at 16:00 Lesh decides this will be Feelin’ Groovy, and Weir soon picks up on it with some dirty chording. Garcia at times sounds unhinged and vicious in a way that he only does when he is playing a Gibson.

At 17:16 Garcia takes them out with some almost Sputnik-like squalling, then moving to some celestial lead that again heavily suggests the dominant 7th, G. At 18:00 he starts riffing in a pattern we’ve heard before, and which bears a family resemblance to several Dead vehicles like Sugar Magnolia and even Run for the Roses. It’s uncertain where this is going, and by 18:24 Garcia is suggesting a return to Dark Star, but they pause to tear it all down before Jerry strikes up the theme at 18:59. They stretch it out a bit, and there will not be a second verse tonight, an omission that will soon become standard operating procedure. At 22:20 a band member calls for Wharf Rat, and for a moment it sounds like they’re going to go there, until someone counts them in and they start Bird Song—I’m not sure how they figured that one out.

The band plays dark and heavy here, and Kreutzmann lays into the toms frequently which, along with the emphasis on the G, gives this one a rather humidly brooding vibe. The band is absolutely torrid, and there are certainly glimmers of 1972 at this point, which some of my confederates here have begun pointing out already in some of the recent renditions. Although Dark Star has been placed on the back burner relative to its previous central place in the set, in hindsight we can see gestation rather than stagnation, as it will soon return to its place of honor as the jam vehicle par excellence. While they play it less, Dark Star has nevertheless been uniformly strong over the past year and a half. Still, it is rather surprising to find them playing such a long and beautifully realized intro jam at this point. The post-verse section, centered on Feelin’ Groovy, is not as exploratory as the intro section, but overall this version is superb.


What was said:

115. 1971-04-28

youtube Fillmore East 14:00.
Main theme at 3:23.
First verse at 3:37.
Sputnik at 7:50.
Main theme at 12:13.
Second verse at 12:33.
Goes into St. Stephen.

TC returns for a guest spot on this famous version from the Fillmore East. He’s an audible presence right off the bat, although he stays in the background. The introduction circles around the main theme, but it is not stated at first; Garcia soars into a near-Bright Star at 1:50. A turning point is reached at 2:50, and some minor-inflected musings ensue. This leads rather quickly, however, to the main theme and the verse.

Garcia’s voice sounds a bit strained on the verse, and he goes off key here and there. A broody section in e minor follows. The point where space arrives comes at 5:41, and the band seems about to bring it down to silence here like a 1970 version, although TC keeps swirling away. Volume knobs are twirled as they ease into a foreboding section with heavy Lesh and some feedback. At 7:30, Weir plays some Spunik-like licks, and then Garcia takes it up at 7:50.

By about 9:15 this is turning into a vigorous little jam that takes its cue from the rolling feel of the Sputnik they’ve just left. The band really starts kicking it up here, and it is popping off in all directions. This grinds to a halt at about 10:50, and they enter calmer waters. A bouncy jam emerges, until another hiatus at 11:55 leads to the main theme. Garcia sings the second verse, and we’re out.

This is a very nice version. It certainly could have been longer, as I wouldn’t mind hearing them run down some of the ideas here at length. TC’s return is welcome, if not overly momentous. It’s nice to have a keyboard in the mix, though. Overall this is a solid run-through.


What was said:

114. 1971-04-26

145130 Fillmore East 12:52
Main theme at :06, 1:20, 2:54, and 5:12.
First verse at 5:47.
Sputnik at 8:15.
Main theme at
Goes into Wharf Rat.

They start right off with the main theme, and the jamming when it starts stays close to home, circling back to the theme several times. There is a dark and languid sound to the playing tonight. From about 4:45 the band pedals a bit, and almost it sounds like they’re going to break into a modular jam here, but instead they return to the theme and sing the verse. There is a sudden and unexpected uptick in tempo just before they get there.

The post-verse space makes a bit of a comeback tonight. After the verse, they roll around on the Dark Star chords for a while, and then at 7:50 they crash into space ever so briefly before Garcia starts to spin out Sputnik at 8:15. This is played out by 9:14, where Garcia seems like he’s going to wind up the theme for a moment, but instead more spacey expressions are forthcoming.

At 11:22 Jerry fires up a lead line that seems like it wants to lead into the middle jam, and indeed not long ago it would have, but we’re almost out of road here. The jam seems to flounder a little before Jerry strikes up the Wharf Rat chords, and Dark Star is over.

This is a nice little piece of music, although it doesn’t particularly stand out among the Dark Stars we’ve considered thus far.


What was said:

113. 1971-04-08

141099 Boston 14:35
Main theme at 4:01.
First verse at 4:27.
Sputnik at 7:25.
Main theme at 12:44.
Second verse at 13:19.
Goes into St. Stephen.

Ned Lagin sits in, although I didn't really notice him until others pointed it out. This is the first Dark Star with one drummer, as Mickey Hart left the band after 1971-02-18.


Phil Lesh is quite loud here, and sounds somewhat different. They start out with a statement of the main theme pattern, and this provides the foundation of introduction. The band comes to a peak rather early, with some classically transcendent Garcia notes resounding, and then they regroup and reach it again. Things finally begin to shift as they approach the four minute mark, but this proves to be a brief respite before the main theme. The theme then takes them on to the verse without much ado.

I thought I detected a very short cut after the verse, of maybe a second or less. The post-verse space seems to have been abandoned; instead, they enter a kind of spacey jam. At 7:25 they grind almost to a halt, and Garcia assays some Sputnik-like runs. These are eventually absorbed back into the jam, which has a minor feel. At about 8:55 Garcia seems to want to shift it back to a major thing, but Weir is not eager to oblige. By 10:00 the three string players are locked in and playing some polyphonic madness that seems to be heading for a peak, which Garcia helps along with some near-Bright Star gleanings from about 10:38.

This all comes down again at around 11:10, where the band seems ready to make some kind of transition. A descending four-chord pattern emerges, but it does not stay for long. They instead bring it to a two-chord bit that stays for a little while until Garcia brings back the main theme, and they then go to the second verse, which contains a very short cut.

A short version this is, certainly, but it is nevertheless packed with wonderful playing. Dark Star seems to be receding in importance, judging by the amount of plays it gets, and perhaps they felt like they’d given it all they had in under 15 minutes this time. Nevertheless, though it doesn’t range far, the band sounds fantastic here.


What was said: