TS: "Dark Star" vs. "Mountain Jam"

It is a quite an interesting listen.

greyfolded is a wonderful listen! i don't care for any of oswald's other stuff (even i could do better cuts/edits than he does).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NtvoM6Sh_Q

Shall we go?

listened to this dark star this morning: http://archive.org/details/gd69-10-25.sbd.jagla.81.sbefail.shnf so great.

i've never heard Grayfolded. Is it cool?

It's pretty cool, I rarely listen to it. You can find it in almost any used cd shop.

vvvvv huge Grayfolded fan here

listening to Grayfolded now (via Mog). pretty fun stuff, the spacier Dead things are really floating my boat these days. occasionally sounds Can-ish! that might be because i was also listening to that new Lost Tapes thing today as well. hard to date the performances, except when a rooty-tooty synth floats into the mix.

There are charts that map the recordings Oswald used and where they are in the two constructions. Lemme see if I can find links...

Here's one of them. I could have sworn I found really high-res scans of them both once upon a time, but I can't find them now.

Bah.

http://www.plunderphonics.com/ximg/gfmap.gif

I'm gonna go with Mountain Jam here, even though ive only heard the Eat a Peach version. Never gets boring throughout its 33 mins.

I like the first disc of Grayfolded better than the second one. Now that I have heard quite a bit more live Dead over the past years, I really need to go back and give Grayfolded a listen while looking at the insert.

Dark Star did change quite a bit especially with how the percussion was used on the track as it went on. The earlier ones are not that long and later on after Mickey Hart left the band for a few years and the Dead were down to the one drummer it got really jazzy.

Say for easy to find comparion look at these versions for comparison with even the one above.

Dick's Picks #22 2/23/68
Live Dead 2/27/69
Dick's Picks #11 6/27/72

Oddly enough the Allman Brothers "Mountain Song" supposedly has it's roots in hearing the Dead jam on the same riff/groove from Donovan.

allmans > dead for me but dark star > mtn jam

I think there are recordings out there of the Dead actually doing Mountain Jam. I'd love to hear it, but I think Allman/Betts >>>>>> Garcia/Weir, by a longshot. Two great bassists though.

I think there are recordings out there of the Dead actually doing Mountain Jam.

!

The Grateful Dead performed a 22:57 minute version of Mountain Jam on July 28, 1973 at Grand Prix Racecourse in Watkins Glen, NY.[1] They also played a 55 second version of Mountain Jam to transition between "Going Down The Road Feeling Bad" and "Not Fade Away" on November 6, 1970 at Capitol Theater in Port Chester, NY.[2]

!!!

Doesn't Anthem Of The Sun's "Alligator" have that same "There Is A Mountain" hick?

http://archive.org/details/gd73-07-28.sbd.weiner.14196.sbeok.shnf
the watkins glen show - "mountain jam" is actually played with the allmans sitting in iirc.

yeah I grabbed that as soon as I read that post!

thanx for the tips jam band bros

the dead are sounding so good to me these days, pretty much all i want to listen to. right now jamming dick's picks vol. 8 (5/2/70), which has maybe my fave acoustic set from them. "black peter"!

So hit-or-miss, though -- I was browsing through some shows on Spotify last night and found one where they closed with "Baba O'Riley" and "Tomorrow Never Knows." A dubious enough idea and it was the worst, most ragged bullshit I'd heard in a while.

ha, yeah, i don't know if any of their beatles covers are any good. when i saw them in 93 they played "lucy in the sky" and it was awful.

They always do that. Like how the feedback no-wave epic set of Dicks Picks vol. 16 ends with a terrible cover of "Hey Jude."

I've come to a little self-realization that there's a core of about 20-25 Dead songs I like, and the rest of their songbook can go jump in a lake. And I can't think of any of their covers I like. I haven't made an exhaustive study, but they don't seem to put any thought into arrangements, they just midtempo jam it out and holler lyrics tunelessly.

But those 20-25 songs, I love like nobody's bizniz.

Their version of "Werewolves of London" from Englishtown '77 is pretty hilarious too

i've come around on the pigpen-era r&b covers, there are some "dancing in the streets" that really lift off into the stratosphere.

I am a total sucker for Garcia singing Dylan's "Baby Blue," esp in the mid-80s when his voice was at his croakiest.

yeah, i like jerry singing dylan. "baby blue" covers would be a good poll, there are some amazing versions.

13th floor elevators^^^^^^

Them^^^^

yeah i guess those are the main contenders. i just heard a link wray version that was pretty wild.

Tyler - it's a summer thing. Every summer the Dead go form being one of my five favorite bands to being the only thing I wanna hear. I'm actually going to need a new hard drive to accommodate all my Dead stuff!

A note on Allmans / Dead - I've been convinced for some time that the (rightfully) negative connotations people have with the so-called 'jam band' scene begin NOT with the Dead, but with the Allmans. Now, don't get me wrong - I like the Allmans just fine. But the Dead were loose and fucked up and adventurous, while the Allmans - specifically on their handful of epics - exemplify flash, perfection, and tightness. And their jams are boring. When people talk about hating jam bands, they're talking about a scene with roots more in "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" and "Whipping Post" than "Dark Star" or "The Other One." Culturally, it may be a different story - I get that the Dead are responsible for the 'festival freeloader' aspect of the current jam scene, but musically? Not so much. Interested to hear other perspectives on this, though.

I'm pretty much with you. I never really thought that Phish and (the bad and hated) DMB etc had much to do with the Dead musically. The guys in Phish were always talking in interviews about how much they practiced, for crying out loud!

Man, some really great Weir playing in the "Here Comes Sunshine" from that Watkins Glen show posted above.

(xpost) Many jam bands I've seen, like Karl Denson, Greyboy Allstars, or Deep Banana Blackout (some I like more than others) are coming from a jazz/funk background, and that too is more in tune with ABB than Dead.

Oh, that's interesting. I thought the problem with too many jam bands is that they're not tight and polished enough or else not ambitious enough, content to lazily noodle around a groove. As such, the Allmans don't seem like an antecedent. I guess I'm thinking of lower-level bands though.

Always heard more Zappa than Dead or Allmans in Phish.

2xpost

Dark Star was one of my favorite songs to practice on bass so that one.

Totes need a copy of Greyfolded

i was digging it! sort of made me wish there was something similar for live versions of "Sister Ray" but the quality of those recordings is so variable.

Grayfolded is awesome. It is also on Spotify so get thee thy headphones.

Grayfol Ded

Is there a way to save the audio from teh Watkins Glen show above?

nevermind

there's a core of about 20-25 Dead songs I like, and the rest of their songbook can go jump in a lake

feeling this, as a casual fan. i like their albums through Wake of The Flood and then...until I listened to the live set at Pembroke Pines 1977 on poster aerosmith's rec and wholly shit they were on a roll that year huh? made it through the WHOLE concert and except for a horrid donna number it ruled.

Honestly, I soured on the Dead during my formative years cause I hated sitting through the shit I don't like (which is lots of it) to get to the righteous moments. I was listening to almost exlusively tapes of shows, so fast-forwarding was a huge bummer. Of course, you have to listen to a whole set to see where the good stuff is in a way, but now with the online archives and so much stuff available I just skip all the songs I don't like. It's a real revelation. Not the purest way to listen to the Dead, but man I just don't wanna hear 85% of Bob's songs and really any Donna showcase etc. etc.

Hitting the Jerry ballads really hard, his voice can really sell that shit and often his slow, emotional playing kills me in ways his virtuosic faster shit does not (though on a good night Jerry is just a pleasure all around).

This may sound strange (it's not really, though, since I'm a minor Dead fan at best) but I'm pretty sure I have never heard the studio "Row Jimmy" before this very minute; it's beautiful.

Hey Dan, not strange at all. When I was young and trying to suss out the mountain of Dead stuff to check out, almost all of the serious Deadheads I knew almost universally panned the albums (excluding the live ones of course). At best folks would say that some of them were OK, but almost everyone I know into them didn't even own a record/CD. Not sure I had heard a single non-live studio album other than "Anthem of the Sun" until college, some 4 or 5 years into listening to them.

I will rep for Wake Of The Flood, top to bottom, until my dying day. I actually really like all three of the Grateful Dead Records releases, but I luuuuurrrrrv WOTF.

This is a pretty cool take on the current Allman Brothers band going through Mountain Jam paired up with JImi Hendrix's 1983 (MermanI Should Turn to Be). There is excellent sound quality on the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SVk0ljkgDjY

I guess this one is going to go here. Allman Brothers have put out lots of live stuff from the archive of the later groups, which really were totally legit live.

The two of the recordings of the reunion band put out as they were playing both kind of stuffer for not really having a flow like a live show, even though they have great Tom Dowd sound on them. That said, they put out a live Beacon Theatre 1992 collection also recorded for possible release - that is a good multitrack live recording of the Warren/Woody band.

They also have put out a big 4 CD with no track repeats 'Cream of the Crop' which were a series of shows recorded for those get the live CD on the way out the door gigs. Truly a signifier of the late CD age.

This truly epic "mountain jam" comes from those recordings. Derek Trucks literally sounds possessed at times, it's a heck of sound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_MirX8g7_o