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The "supergroup" idea has been long disproven in rock -- does anyone upvote "Dylan and the Dead"? This is not great Branford and not great Dead. And if Jerry had sat in on one of Branford's better, hard-hitting trios, it likely would not have been an improvement either. When you have a band that improvises near telepathically the best you can hope from an interloper is shaking things up, the worst is not fitting in. Marsalis harmonizes here somewhere in the middle pole, but everyone is indulging in 'noodling' that isn't terribly exciting. The awful midi guitar effects are worsened only by dreadful Hornsby digital keyboards. The band probably had many opportunities to dredge Tom Constanten out of retirement but made uninspired recruits. There are folks who also want to tell you how the 1991 Rolling Stones were also somehow top of their game relative to 1968.

Not top shelf. Dark Star is broken apart to include several other songs, including a Sugar Magnolia, but I don't find the transitions very smooth or well integrated... More like a CD player set on random. Even within Dark Star, the first section jarringly goes to space without much of a transitional flow. Plus there is no soundboard of this and one has to endure the audience trying to clap out a groove in Dark Star (you can imagine a clap along for Fire on the Mountain, but the opening of Dark Star?! People, cut back on the weed!). The band just might not have been in a mood for this song, as the St. Stephen and China Cat which follow are real barn burners, and the uptick in volume also helps those performances shine through the audience recording flaws.

Intense, focused, and with a seriousness of purpose, this Live/Dead version was the first Dark Star heard by many. Live Dark Star was not so much a song, but a vehicle for the band to display their performing ethos of the time. This is probably the benchmark version of their early psychedelic phase and it is truly a dark voyage full of mystical brooding and otherworldly menace that has lost none of its edge decades later. By the time this was recorded they had played it live many times already and the selection of this outstanding performance was no accident. They were also under pressure to re-coup money lost on Aoxomoxoa studio sessions, so there was also a gravitas and focus on this first night at the Fillmore with a costly 16 track recorder documenting the 4 concerts. There are other great later Dark Stars that capture different elements of their early evolution: Americana at the Spectrum, jazz fusion at Veneta, rock jamming (many shows), or the liquid jazz improvising of 73-74.

If the Dark Star of Live/Dead is threatening, eerie and dangerous, this one is tranquil and celestial. The initial pace is measured and quiet with tasteful soloing from Jerry with consistently ‘right’ notes without always going for the obvious ones. After this initial blissed out section, the piece gradually decomposes into a gentle amorphous abstraction, again slower and quieter percussion and scraping than is often in a Star. Again, tasteful interaction between the players without the indulgent noodling of lesser Dark Stars. Weir strong-arms things perhaps too abruptly into an optimistic and sunny groove. One of the most satisfying and unique Dark Stars that really ought be on the short list of ones to hear, this one transitioning from their more fully psychedelic phase, but not yet in the more prog rock or jazzy improvisations that later Dark Stars became emissaries of.

Well played (and clearly recorded), but that this is not a performance that one would chose to represent possibly the key vehicle of their discography. Here the band is very much integrating the jazz fusion of Miles Davis and Weather Report into a very prog rock jam at the expense of the psychedelia, beauty or otherworldly voyages of other Dark Stars. The bass & drum duo is excessive wanking, and a few other improvs wear out their welcome. Except for the distorted crescendo here, I don't find this one very scary, mystical or beautiful. 11-11-73 (Winterland '73) is also jazzy, but more fluid, ethereal and emotive, truer to the Dead's strengths, and not them trying to sound like electric Miles Davis. That one melds easily into Eyes of the World, whereas this one at Veneta goes into El Paso (?!). 9-19-70 seamlessly flows through a spectrum of eerie abstraction and gorgeous improvisations. The famous and inscrutable 2-27-69 of Live/Dead is leaner, darker and more focused -- the more tightly focused improvisations flow naturally within the whole structure. 2-11-70 (days before the famous 2-13) is a fun, weird one, with a funky trippy vibe that perfectly melds into Spanish Jam. So many shades of dark.