Solid opening version.

Beautiful version with perfect use of the MIDI flute.

Tight version from a great Knick show.

Smooth like Billy Dee Williams in those Colt 45 commercials.

Creepy crawly Phil led version.

This version is just a blast. Triumphant is a perfect description, the band is very locked in.

This one should be higher; it's really between this and Veneta for me. Veneta is more in your face in its spookiness and pure mind-fuckery, but this version is so hauntingly beautiful, and Phil is just dropping bomb like a Kamikaze on this version. Just a beast.

This "Dark Star" is like the musical equivalent of torture porn...inherently scary because of the basic content, but the actual execution leaves a lot to be desired. Is it a bad performance? Of course not. The band plays the main theme quite strongly, and Jerry's 'on death's door' sounding vocals add a nice edge to the song. Given the show's reputation for being quite eerie in general, this "Dark Star" does work in context, but it has very little musicality to it. The sounds are pretty frightening - especially Brent's keyboard spikes - but not fleshed out. In my opinion, 8/27/72 and 9/21/72 are much eerier and effective, because the jams and excursions it takes are far more musical and locked in and the images it conjures are more vivid and fleshed out; they're true brain movies. I repeat: it's not a bad performance, in fact it functions triumphantly as a mood piece, but it doesn't measure up to any "Dark Star" from 1968-74 or the 1978 Winterland version in terms of creativity and musicality. Then again, I've yet to listen to this one high, so maybe my opinion will change when I'm more inside the song as I was with 8/27/72 and 9/21/72.

Listening to this one right now, Jerry is just fucking CRAZY here.

I went out to my car and smoked an entire bong by myself at about 11:00 at night. Put this on and it was just incredible. By 13 minutes the intensity of both the high and the music had me pinned to my seat. Really scary, abstract, awesome stuff.