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Poster: light into ashes Date: Sep 18, 2007 2:51am
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: 8/30/69

I was listening to this show again and just had to post about it - it has an outstanding Dark Star, one of my favorites of '69 - very sweet and majestic and creative - Jerry starts it with delicious feedback and it just climbs from there.
They do get rather loose as they near the end - but when they get into St Stephen, they come completely unhinged as Jerry stops playing - I think this must be the only Stephen where he doesn't play the solo, but instead just gives peals of feedback where the solo should be!
In spite of this, the rest of the band barrels on into The Eleven, and plays most of it without him! Certainly a unique bare-bones Eleven. Finally he gets his guitar working again, but only plays a little bit before they decide to give up, and it's time for a drum solo!
Finally they confuse the patient audience by finishing with an early, tentative High Time.
This show also features one of the early Easy Winds with a different feel, where they were still learning how to handle the time changes....

http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-08-30.sbd.barbella.8594.sbeok.shnf

Some of the other comments on the Star:
"A quiet noodly start gets to verse 1 pretty quickly, then gets really wonderful with a long section of jingly bells, wind-like cymbals, tweets, screetchs, and other jungle-like sounds. Some very melodic sustained feedback where Jerry sounds like a cello gives way to a series of very structured chord sequences and jamming that is like a collection of mini-songs."
"very psychedelic, very patient, very proper. They really caress and nurture this one. The opening jam slowly unfolds up to one of those "whirls" that opens a spiral-vortex hole in space-time, and out pours the first verse. The crowd is totally dialed into it; it is rare to hear such a clear and respectful silence. The post-verse jam is deliciously interstellar. The transitional jam is burning until Jerry breaks a string; then we get to hear some unusually great leads from TC (he's really on point for this show). Jerry's return is one of those classicly chaotic and focused Dead moments."

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Poster: Street Pig ! Date: Sep 18, 2007 3:45am
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: 8/30/69

This also ranks up there as a favorite Dark Star, Jer had jammed with Howard Wales the night before with a lengthy Star that was spacier than usual.

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Poster: William Tell Date: Sep 18, 2007 12:27pm
Forum: GratefulDead Subject: Re: 8/30/69

Cool--been a long time since I grabbed this one; thanks for the tip.