10. Grateful Dead, Live/Dead (1969) – “Dark Star”

[2012 review here]

At one time the second side of the first LP of Live/Dead was my favorite on the classic double live set, cobbled together from different shows early in 1969. Side 2 has longish versions of “St. Stephen” and “The Eleven” (named for its time signature, hence proggy). I can’t say I ever warmed much to Pigpen, who owns the third side with 15 minutes of “Turn On Your Love Light,” and then the fourth side has stark and sometimes interesting fare with feedback, somber moods and such, but somehow I have never listened to it much. “Dark Star” did not hit me for 20 years, at a peculiar passage in my life, living alone again. I flipped for the 23-minute workup, with all its many twists and turns. I played it at night in bed. It felt light, or like light shining, inviting and playful, but also dark and mysterious, suddenly swelling up like The Rite of Spring with great power. I know now those moments are at approximately 8:05 and 12:20. The singing parts are like some Maynard Krebs troubadour stepping off a spaceship, something from a dream. Sometimes I fell asleep to the album side, sometimes I pondered the agonies and victories of the day, with the snarls of Jerry Garcia’s wandering electric guitar and that throbbing bass or gentle organ catching at me. Many years after that, in downloading times, I made a hobby of collecting other versions of “Dark Star,” almost always live of course, with many variations across the years for how they approached playing it. Perhaps not surprisingly, my favorite turned out to be the one I fell in love with originally from this album. But I was amused to discover it was also released as a single, running time of 2:42—basically all the singing parts, and a little more up-tempo. Where a fair amount of the psychedelia I went and still go for is fairly described as space-rock, “Dark Star,” even with all its astronomical features (and even with heady modern physics finally catching up with it in a way)—“Dark Star” does not hit as space-rock for me but as something more interior. With, perhaps, the figurative dimensions of a galaxy—but all inside, more absorbed now over the years of listening to it. The bass fading up and in after a few seconds of silence and then the tones of the electric guitar following it. I am triggered within 20 seconds for all the swoops and shifts, the embarking journey, the rising squalls and peaceful passages, that beatnik (Bob Weir) who keeps showing up to warble verses—almost immediately I’m sent to this place of great comfort, serenity, bliss. Other albums sides+ that can send me this way include Pharoah Sanders’s Karma and the Rascals’ “Peaceful World.” What can I say, I must be an easy mark. But nothing does it like “Dark Star,” all full of Steve Ditko visions.