Grateful Dead listening notes and thoughts while working towards a book on "Dark Star" (III)

Tuesday 7/28/26

Great art challenges. What happens in a world where few people can rise to those challenges, or are willing to? The veneration of pablum. Great art isn't homogeneous product dumped in the lap, pushed in the face, algorithm-able. It asks us to work with it. Be a team. I think of the Grateful Dead at the Fillmore West on 3/2/69 starting the show with "Dark Star." Challenging the audience. Great art gives us back so much more than we give it, but it does need us to accept a small challenge.

Hail the Mystery Reels of 1968. Comprising seven fragments over five reels, we mostly don't know where this material comes from, but that adds to the allure. There's a highly enjoyable 1984 British TV series called The Box of Delights (adapted from the 1935 John Masefield novel) that I watch at Christmas. These reels are a Dead box of delights. They feature a uniquely sung, especially intimate "Death Don't Have No Mercy," and the final "Dark Star" is one for the time capsule.

"Turn on Your Love Light" from the Hollywood Palladium on 8/6/71 is comparable to a gift, with an additional in the form of the final seven minutes inside of it. I'm talking about the part starting before the final ramping up and then what's tantamount to a sustained explosion, which is the "Love Light" analogue, one could say, of what has become labeled the "tiger" near the end of some Dark Stars beginning in 1972. But first there's a peace that descends and into which we settle. A scanning of vistas. There's a gentleness to the band that is empathetic as when one is trying their best to understand another. The looking out quality suggests the 1818 painting, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, by Caspar David Friedrich. The figure in the painting is soon to be moving on, advancing, just like the band--and just like us--after the gentle gathering passage has concluded. It's like making sure everyone is accounted for and rested up and ready with light starting to break through the clouds. As with Keith Moon's drumming on Tommy or Charles Dickens with A Christmas Carol, this is akin to someone having done something nice for you.

A study in contrasts: the "Death Don't Have No Mercy" on 3/21/70 at the Capitol Theatre and 11/2/69 at the Family Dog. In the former, Garcia plays legato lines, almost as if he were executing a slowed down version of his playing on the 1967 instrumental studio version. The lines in the 11/2/69 version are staccato in the extreme, the musical variant of Gordon Matta-Clark having chainsawed some houses in half and heaved them down a hill.

A surefire sign that the Grateful Dead know they're cookin' and plan to cook all the more: Bob Weir letting out a huge "Whooo!!!" after the harmony part with Jerry Garcia at the end of "Promised Land," like he can't help it because of the music. This is a 1972 thing. But it'll tip you off the same way that the inclusion of "And We Bid You Goodnight" tipped you off in 1969 and 1970. See the version from 10/18/72 in St. Louis.

Contenders for the best Grateful Dead shows (in full) yet to have gained official release: Winterland 12/11/72 and Cleveland 12/6/73. Both feature versions of "Dark Star" worthy of inclusion on a musical program with Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 or Dvorak's Symphony No. 9. "Come out and hear humans near their finest," the poster could read. Official release doesn't much matter in these cases, given the availability. But it's ironic that of all the shows officially out there, these aren't.

Opening a show with "Morning Dew" was one of the Grateful Dead's ways of saying, "This is about to get real, and fast." Prime example: at Jersey City's Stanley Theater on 9/27/72. Accordingly, the "Dark Star," when its time comes, is sure to be special. These things are related. Likewise: there is no show with an outstanding "Dark Star" that is a mediocre show overall or is generally weak or flat, "Dark Star" excepted.

Listening to the Milwaukee show of 10/23/72, I find myself once again amused by what some fans of the band are apt to call a horrible-sounding recording. Audience tapes like this one would qualify as high-grade for fans of other bands accustomed to listening through veritable noise-storms to get at the good stuff behind it all. This Dead tape has clarity, warmth, and atmosphere, the hallmarks of a good AUD. And a major "Dark Star," a hallmark of a life better lived.

The acoustic set at San Rafael's Euphoria Ballroom on 7/14/70 is more plaintive than most. The songs are handled frankly, which isn't to say they're stentorian or curt. I think of it like someone singing or playing sans vibrato, or a pianist dispensing with pedaling. A Mississippi John Hurt quality. The name of the venue doubles as nominative determinism, for this is euphoric, with one of only four 1970 performances of a beautifully sung "How Long Blues."

The Main Ten portion "Dark Star" at the Capitol Theatre on 11/8/70 gets very White Zombie-y. You know, the 1932 Bela Lugosi horror film about voodoo set in Haiti. It's entrancing and then there you are, all imprecated.

The 4/5/69 "Dark Star" at Avalon: the fairly rare "Dark Star" that doesn't begin with a rest.

The version of "Death Don't Have No Mercy" was so intense at Avalon on 4/6/69 that there's actually a guy in the crowd screaming about how he doesn't want to die, and that's before Garcia cranks up the intensity with a guitar solo starting at the five minute mark that's almost too intense to bear. I don't know how you can hear that and not have something happen to you and respond with something human if you're alive. Scream, cry. Dance, I suppose, after a fashion.

Scenario: You have it on the very best authority that the world is ending in an hour and you decide to fill the time listening to music. A top choice would be the Grateful Dead's "Dark Star"-"St. Stephen"-"The Eleven"-"Death Don't Have No Mercy" from the Family Dog on 11/2/69 to see your way out of this place and into the next. Works well in a "humans were somehow able to do this" valediction sense, too. Contender for the greatest music I've ever heard. I listen to it most days.