Dark Star
April 8, 1972
Wembley Empire Pool
Need to return to this and add to my previously inadequate review. Had my ears/brain/soul transmogrified during a recent re-listening of this piece and I can't understand how presumably terrestrial bound life forms could have created this masterpiece merely from their physical beings.
The first jam of intensity that rises like Godzilla from the ocean depths, preceded by some of the most gorgeous intimate jazzy swirls of sound ever produced, cascades across the senses until numbness of awe comes close to overwhelming proportions. The space that follows is, I realize now, necessary for neural recovery and contemplation. But the beast reemerges later in a familiar yet different form and again charges headlong into unchartered territory, delighting and amazing in equal measure.
And surely this must be enough, but no, there is also a passage of something, of some 5 or 6 minutes or more, before leading into the Sugar Magnolia, that is....what? Can we only call it music? How limiting. How undeserving of whatever that theme of golden sound is that trips into being. How could one group of individuals create such sound from seemingly out of nowhere, in and of that moment, directionless and yet so instinctually feeling like "home."
Then the rhythm of SugarMag slides into its place and it too is a thing to marvel.
How they had the stamina to go into "caution" after all that is beyond me. I couldn't even make it that far. I had to just stop and try to figure out what had just happened.
All I know is, this is now THE Dark Star by which all others must come to pay their respects before bearing their own gifts to my ears.
Is this too much? Have I overstated the power of what is just a song? Maybe. But I'm guessing I'm not the only one who's wondered if what they really gave us was something greater than what meets the eye, ear, and spirit.
