Could've been written by me

In Search of the Dark Star

I'm a music collector, of sorts. Obsessive and arrogant. With pendantry bordering on unbearableness, some might say - and some do say. I collect the likes of Coil, Sun Ra, Lee 'Scratch' Perry, Nurse With Wound, Can. Erratic, esoteric, obscure. Lately I've been into Dark Star. Not the band or the record label, but the track by the Grateful Dead. Come to think of it, I've always liked the Dead. Especially their 1969 album Live/Dead which I bought in the mid 1970s. It's got Dark Star on it. A whole vinyl album side long. It was like nothing I'd heard before. It has these weird guitar lines going on for eternity, making worm holes in the brain. I couldn't match any of them on my acoustic guitar, although I had mastered the intro of Smoke on the Water by then. But Jerry Garcia wasn't in the same league as Ritchie Blackmore - Jerry wasn't even on the same planet, judging by his freeform experimenations on the seventy or so live versions of Dark Star that I've collected so far.
From 1968 till 1974 Dark Star was the ultimate Grateful Dead song, the centre piece of their legendary marathon concerts. Although originally recorded as a 3 minute single (with lyrics by Robert Hunter) Dark Star became the vehicle for improvisations that could take up 30 minutes or more and saw Garcia soaring and ascending to unknown regions. For Garcia as a solist Dark Star became what Chasin' the Trane was for John Coltrane, or Voodoo Child for Jimi Hendrix, and Starship for both Sun Ra and the MC5. Exploration of inner and outer space. Dark Star was prototypical of the early Grateful Dead. The track contained everything Jerry and the Dead stood for. Americana, psychedelic rock, free jazz. All in one long guitar solo aided by a fearless band - and inspired, I might add, by Owsley's finest.

'Dark star crashes/pouring its light into ashes', wrote Robert Hunter, the Grateful Dead's lyricist. Cosmic hippie stuff? You bet! But although the Dead was an unashamed hippie band the musical structure of the song itself was far removed from the typical West Coast sound. Sure, in concert Dark Star was an extended jam, but compared to the jams that their peers, like Jefferson Airplane or Quicksilver Messenger Service played on stage it must be noted that Dark Star was not derived from the traditional 12 bar blues format. Where guitarists like Jorma Kaukonen and John Cipollina based their improvisations mainly on blues licks, Jerry Garcia seemed to draw from an all together different source. A source rich with all kinds of American (folk) music but transfigured and expanded by the influence of LSD. Let us not forget that Garcia and the Dead were heavilly influenced by the time when they worked as the house band for the (in)famous Acid Tests conducted by Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters. Maybe more than other musicians of his day and age Jerry Garcia's views on music in general and guitar playing in particular were dramatically altered by the use of chemicals. The blues element in the Dead sound was personified by Ron 'Pigpen' McKernan (organ, harmonica, vocals) who usually kept a low profile whenever Dark Star was played. During the 80s, when Dark Star was very rarely to be found in a Dead set, keyboardist Brent Mydland used to ruin it for me with his pseudo-jazz noodling on what sometimes sounded like a plastic honky tonk piano. The best versions of Dark Star were performed in the early 70s, like for instance the magical and rather subtle Dark Star from 1971 in Columbus, Ohio (released on Dicks' Picks Volume 2) or the mesmerizing 37 minute version performed one year later in Philadelphia (Dick's Picks Volume 36). Of course, Jerry Garcia's cryptically fluent and warmly organic playing made Dark Star into the most celebrated Grateful Dead piece. But praise should also go to Phil Lesh, whose 'lead bass' never failed to mark new routes in space for Garcia to explore.

Great versions of Dark Star are easily to be found in the extensive discography of the band. Besides Live/Dead and the two Dick's Picks, I also recommend the version from the 4 CD set Steppin' Out With The Grateful Dead, Engeland '72. Those of us who can't get enough should check out www.archive.org where a few hundred (!) concerts by the Dead can be found. It's a real treasure trove for Dead Heads with downloadable gigs (mostly lofi-ish audience recordings) and streams (excellent soundboard recordings). A very special Dark Star that I've found on archive.org is from a Hollywood Paladium gig dated september 10th, 1972, where half way through Dark Star the band is joined by David Crosby on 12-string electric guitar.

Advanced Dark Star fans should try the double CD set Grayfolded by sample-artist John Oswald. Phil Lesh invited Oswald, who is wellknown and rather infamous in the music industry for his 'Plunderphonics', to have a go at the Dead catalogue. Oswald choose Dark Star for obvious reasons. He took some 50 versions recorded between 1968 and 1992 and transformed them by way of layering and 'folding' bits and pieces, speeding up and slowing down, and turning 'm inside out. The results, as released on Grayfolded, are impressive yet very beautiful - even for Dead-purists.


(Written by Q-Base @ Crummy-tapes.blogspot)
Defunkt!