Grateful Dead listening notes and thoughts while working towards a book on "Dark Star" (VI)
Tuesday 10/13/26
The Grateful Dead's 11/2/69 Family Dog "Dark Star" is the most symphonic of all the Dark Stars. It progresses through the full complement of movements/modules in a single piece, organically: Space, Sputnik, Feelin' Groovy, Soulful Strut. The Bright Star passage is like a baptism into a better world, while offering something to make this one more tolerable. There's something sacramental, almost Eucharistic, about it; a musical heavenly host. Note the banjo-like figurations out of Sputnik.
Orchestral-style drumming: Reni on the Stone Roses' "This Is the One," Tony Williams on "Nefertiti" (drum concerto) with Miles Davis's Second Great Quintet, Ringo Starr on the Beatles' "A Day in the Life," Keith Moon on the Who's "Underture," and Bill Kreutzmann on various versions of the Grateful Dead's "Dark Star" (particularly in 1972).
I've always liked the idea of a "battle of the bands," but what about a battle of the sets? Specifically, Grateful Dead sets. Not a show but a set. I'd feel pretty confident if I was the Dead's opening set from 10/12/68 at Avalon. People usually think major Dark Stars aren't a thing until 1969, but the version here towers in the canon. And that rendition of "Death Don't Have No Mercy" has a place beside Robert Johnson's King of the Delta Blues Singers and Muddy Waters' plantation recordings.
Once I sent a note to someone with a link to the Grateful Dead's "Death Don't Have No Mercy" from 11/2/69, saying words to the effect of, "Check this out." Few days later, they said to me that they listened to the beginning, thought it was pretty good. I was dumbstruck. The idea of hearing the start and walking away...people want to say, "Subjectivity!" etc., but I think those would only be people who haven't heard it. If you haven't, do. Just listen. Be present. No phone. You and the music.
Want to hear a bonhomous version of "Truckin'"? Go with 8/12/72 from the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium. It's agreeable and welcoming--in the Weir/Garcia harmonies and Garcia's friendly fills--like it might offer you a nice cup of tea. Lovely warm mix as well with the keys both prominent and well-balanced. The guitar solo is less chordal than in many other versions and rather singsong.
The grungy Grateful Dead: the band's 8/28-30/69 run at the Family Dog. They sound as if they're workshopping, like Charlie Christian after hours at Minton's or the Beatles when the Cavern was closed, only in front of a paying audience. There's a spraddled version of "New Orleans," as if its riff roots it to the place. A string is busted in "Dark Star," and the Tighten Up jam is birthed as a kind of joshing given musical voice. That same jam will play a key role back in this spot on 11/2.
On 9/1/69, the Grateful Dead played a festival at the Baton Rouge International Speedway. They were starting to blend seemingly disparate strands into a unique and well-balanced farrago. You have early versions of Workingman's Dead material, folk, country, leading up to one of those versions of "Dark Star" that reads the room--and adjusts for the moment--particularly well. It's like an on-ramp for the road to 1972.
Ken and Judy Lee's most famous Grateful Dead tapes, of course, are those from the Capitol Theatre in 1970, but don't sleep on their effort from Queens College on 10/10/70. The "Hard to Handle" is particularly peppery. There's this baked-in wood nymph magic to some of these autumn 1970 AUD tapes.
"Goin' Down the Road Feeling Bad" was such a rustic, oaky thing for the Dead in fall 1970. The four soundboards from 11/70 that became available in September/October 2026 provide additional glimpses of a tree on its way up, whereas later it will be a tree that looks out and over the surrounding forest. One has the sense that sans transformation the song wouldn't have stuck around as long as it did.
Somehow, "Brokedown Palace" resonates as even wiser and more elegiac in autumn 1972. The version from the Stanley Theater on 9/27 could make a stone cry, as Orson Welles once said of Leo McCarey's 1937 film, Make Way for Tomorrow. Makes you want to live, though, doesn't it? Personally, I'm less trusting of people who don't cry. If ever having one's soul rocked had a sound...
October 2, 1972 and the Grateful Dead are in Springfield, MA for what I call one of their barnstorming gigs. That is, they're in their prime, there's no "Dark Star" in the set (the semi-official "high art"), and say goodbye to your doors, because the Dead are about to blow them off. They rock, rock harder, set your very soul to dancing, and then they're gone. Put this show next to any, and it can hang. Storm the barn!
As lovers of horror and noir savor ragged-edged, but essential, B pictures, the enlightened Grateful Dead listener delights in encountering a masterful "Dark Star" on a well-begrimed audience tape. Case in point: the incomplete performance from the Fillmore East on 9/26/69. The sonic mise-en-scène is that of a squall, but Garcia's guitar burns through the storm, the light we follow. They play ferociously as he lets rip throughout. Sound quality ceases to be a constraint, if it ever really was.
Between the twin peaks of the 9/21/72 and 9/27/72 shows in Philly and Jersey City respectively, there ran the dark horse that was 9/24 in Waterbury. It's an essential show in making the argument that no band or musical artist has had a better month than the Dead did that September. The "Dark Star" doesn't have the finish of the one in Philly, nor the thrust of Jersey City, but it pools and broods, reflects and gets on with being its best self on that given day, as we all should.
That show in Philly that may represent the greatest night of music on planet earth. I’m not saying it was definitely that, but it has to be in the running. Hear it and grow.
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