More Grateful Dead listening notes and thoughts while working towards a book on "Dark Star"
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Thursday 4/3/26
As with Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, most versions of the Grateful Dead's "Dark Star" begin with a rest. A difference being the musical imperative--let's call it that--of what follows. There's one kind of incumbency with the Beethoven work.
Whereas, we might say that there isn't a demand at all with "Dark Star." If it's bass, if it's guitar, if it's bass and guitars in following from that opening rest. If all begin at once, two at a time, etc. "Dark Star" is no less controlled than the Beethoven piece; it's a matter of predetermination and determination in reactive response. I am versus I'm becoming now. Also: offstage versus onstage. Even when the Beethoven is performed onstage, because of that which had already been determined off.
One of the things I love about the Grateful Dead is how they defied the notion of labels. Our society is obsessed with "what's your genre?", stock ID terms, and "comparables," as if nothing was allowed to be new and unique. But isn't that the art we end up caring most about?
I don't think of Jerry Garcia as a guitarist, because with a guitar, he was more than a guitarist. For the same reason, I don't think of him as a singer. I wouldn't call "Dark Star" a song because it's something else.
On 4/27/69 1969, the Grateful Dead played the Labor Temple in Minneapolis where they performed a canonically important "Dark Star." Jerry Garcia reminds me of Michael Jordan in this rendition. Sometimes Jordan would have a spot on the floor he'd want to get to early in the game, scoring from said spot repeatedly, and then branching out spatially and, one supposes, conceptually. Which is rather like Garcia's playing here. He's very spatially direct early; later, he's reticular.
This, after the prior night in Chicago, when the most eclectic of bands played one of their most eclectic shows. That Grateful Dead gig at the Electric Theater was, shall we say, rangy. Blues, ravers, gospel, experimental music, dance tunes, soul affairs, bluegrass--it all went into the heady brew. These spring and summer 1969 shows were important in getting the Dead to where they eventually got in 1972 as masters of integrated amalgamation. Here, it's number to number; later, within numbers.
Before the Grateful Dead's "Dark Star" became intensely dialogic, it was perhaps surprisingly antiphonic, especially at the outset of performances. Think of Miles Davis's "So What," but faster. "Dark Star" has roots in the hill music of Kentucky, the compositions of Charles Ives, Hungarian folk music, Irish reels, and the field holler. Note the call-and-response spirituals-like quality of the 1/27/68 version at Seattle's Eagles Auditorium. I'll throw this to you, you throw it back to me.
Contrafacts--the overlaying of a new melody atop preexisting song chords--are the norm in jazz, spearheaded by Charlie Parker's work in this field within the field, but rarer in rock. The Grateful Dead's "Dark Star" is the contrafact concept having become planet-sized, a single and singular celestial body of its own galaxy. Its modules are formidable, its melody trove seemingly bottomless, in large part because the band featured arguably our finest melodicist in Jerry Garcia.
That fully-ripened, citrous, well-lit sound of the Grateful Dead's "St. Stephen" from 4/28/71 1971 at the Fillmore East. The confidence and command in ample evidence reminds me of that likewise evinced with the 5/15/70 "Dark Star." Exploratory precision and precise exploration.
In the pantheon of outstanding Grateful Dead versions of "Hard to Handle"--a number which got off to a bumpy start thanks to some incongruous slide guitar--we must also include the 4/28/71 Fillmore East version. Garcia solos impressively take-a-journey-with-me style, but it's the throw down, tighter-than-tight groove (anticipating the Frankfurt '72 "Good Lovin'") that earns this one the palm. Give the bassist some. James Brown's Famous Flames would have been like, "Hey now..."
A neat thing about some of the highest energy Grateful Dead shows: Bob Weir acting as master of ceremonies for ripping solos. He does it 4/8/72 during "One More Saturday Night," cuing Jerry Garcia's scorcher of a solo with a "Mr. Garcia!" and 10/18/72 during "Promised Land" with a "Keith!" before Keith Godchaux goes off.
The absurdly intense basso continuo of "Truckin'" at the Grateful Dead's 9/21/72 Philadelphia Spectrum show (with flashes of barrelhouse piano). Meanwhile, Jerry Garcia somehow transforms Jeff Beck's percussive approach to string mauling from the end of the Yardbirds' "I'm a Man" into passage after passage of soaring, storming, beautiful melody. You listen to Handel's Messiah, and it's one stunner of a melody after another. This Dead gig, Garcia-wise, is similar in that regard.
Fall 1972 in beautiful Massachusetts. October 2, to be exact. The Grateful Dead perform a show at the Springfield Civic Center that's rarely cited, but is a wonder, something that could only come from that autumn. And speaking as before of some sort of epic grandeur: behold this "He's Gone."
The Grateful Dead's 2/13/70 version of "And We Bid You Goodnight"--a number with the power to move me like little else--is rare in that Garcia sings the "Walking in Jerusalem just like John" part twice. Sometimes he doesn't sing it at all. This would be John the Apostle, not a tourist. As John walked, he had a vision of a better world. That's the reference. Garcia's singing of the line is like the sound of a better world. Or a wish for one.
The one-man Wall of Sound that is Jerry Garcia's guitar on the 10/31/71 "Not Fade Away." Another of those many Grateful Dead moments that make me think, "You have to be kidding me..." And then the hyper-focused, banjo-like picking of "Goin' Down the Road Feeling Bad." Clean as forest rain.
The 3/22/73 Utica version of "Dark Star": a throwback to 1971; length-wise, anyway. Plummy and on point. Viscosity in the garage--like the Blob has gotten lose in there.
Early 1973 is a fecund period for "Dark Star." The Dead's catalogue--and this includes their catalogue on stage, of course--is a complex array of connecting lines. A vast spray of them, as with a motley range of flowers assembled in the same arrangement.
The late 1973 Dark Stars were really beginning to happen in early 1973. The December 6, 1973 "Dark Star" is such and such minutes long, but in a sense we can add on time--pre-time, if you like--incorporating the timings of given early 1973 performances.
Other notable early 1973 Dark Stars: 2/26 in Lincoln, Nebraska, 3/16 in Uniondale, and 3/28 in Springfield, Massachusetts. The Dead had just given an outstanding performance in Springfield in October 1972. What you would have experienced on that night would scarcely have prepared you for the very different experience if you also had a ticket to the winter show.The Lincoln "Big Railroad Blues" is a corker, too.
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