While doing a little research for this, the second volume in the Dick’s Picks series, I came across a Reddit thread asking why this volume wasn’t the first one. It is so good, they said. One of the answers was that Dick Latvala was so obsessed with “Here Comes Sunshine” from Vol. 1 that he just had to have it at the start of his series. If that’s true, then it might answer some of my questions concerning that volume, namely why did he choose the songs that wound up on those discs, and leave off the others. If Phil Lesh was as picky as they say he was during this period, then maybe Dick let him have his way with things as long as he got “Here Comes Sunshine.” That’s just speculation, of course, but maybe that’s also why Vol. 2 begins with “Dark Star.”
Actually, Vol. 2 includes the entirety of the second set, sans the encore. I read that they had initially planned on including the first set, but then somewhere along the line they decided it just wasn’t quite good enough. That’s a bunch of hogwash, as Set I is plenty good, especially considering the sets that have been officially released since then. I don’t know what this does to my claim that the Dick’s Picks series took a warts-and-all approach. Maybe they had to warm up to that concept.
This is the only volume in the entire series that’s just one disc. It is fantastic. Don’t skip this one, folks.
In my review of Vol. 1, I noted that while I love the Dead’s improvisational style, I don’t love it when they start exploring deep space. There are moments when a jam loses any semblance of what any normal person would call a song that I tune out. So, it seems funny then that I actually love me some “Dark Star” which is probably their biggest launching pad for exploration.
I don’t really know why that is, except that maybe the “Dark Stars” I’ve heard usually don’t get that wonky. Or maybe I just turn those ones off. Admittedly, I’m not an aficionado, and I absolutely have to be in the right head space.
The “Dark Star” on this is exceptional. It begins with that familiar bass line, then the band picks it up and immediately starts playing with it. An idea occurs to me as I’m listening. When the band started improvising, maybe they were always searching for a song – or like that line says in “Unbroken Chain” (which lends its name to Phil’s book), they were searching for the sound. Where do songs come from anyway, but musicians playing around until they find something.
There is a wonderful video out there of Paul McCartney just strumming his guitar and humming, which eventually turns into “Get Back.” There is another one where U2 are playing around with “Mysterious Ways” and suddenly they invent the riff to “One.” I feel like that’s what the Grateful Dead were often doing in their improvisational jams. Except, they weren’t in a studio trying to write and record an album; they were on the stage in front of thousands of people.
Often the jams went nowhere. Sometimes they led into songs that already existed. Sometimes they invented something new. Jerry Garcia would often play some chords or line up a rhythm and just kind of test it out for a little bit. If it worked, he’d play with it some more, and the band might join in. Sometimes it wouldn’t work, and he’d move on to something else.
He does that quite a bit in this “Dark Star.” He’ll lay down some lines, then move to some different ones. After a few minutes he returns to the song’s themes, then he ventures out a little bit more. It is seven minutes before he actually sings the first verse. Then they take off for a long ride. There are moments that I get annoyed. The notes hurt my ears, but then they always return to something more interesting. At some point the jam turns into something that sounds an awful lot like Archie Bell and the Drells’ “Tighten Up” which goes on for several glorious minutes. That jam alone makes this disc worth your money.
Then it turns into something else, and they try out varying motifs for a while. There is a moment right at the end when you can hear Bob Weir play the first few notes of “Sugar Magnolia” but Jerry doesn’t hear it, and he keeps firing away at something else. But the rest of the band caught it and after a few seconds, they dig in. Then Jerry catches it, and they launch right into the song.
It is a fine, well played version. Then they launch into an incredible “Saint Stephen>Not Fade Away>Going Down the Road Feeling Bad>Not Fade Away” medley that rocks my world.
“St. Stephen” has this great jam just before the final verse. The first second of “Not Fade Away” is just brilliant as well. The transition into “Going Down the Road Feeling Bad” is about as perfect as it gets. They’d been doing that medley for a while, so it wasn’t like the transition was something new, but it still slays. “GDTRFB” has a fun little jam at the end, before turning back into “Not Fade Away.”
All in all, an incredible set of music, and it makes Vol. 2 an essential album.
You can listen to the entire thing here on Youtube.
And you can listen to the entire show over at the Archive.
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