DSO over Europe

[Walther]

Before it is much too late, here is my revised paper about DSO over Europe. Have fun!

Dark Star Orchestra over Europe in March 2007

By Walther Glaubitt

The great compositions of the Grateful Dead were created by using pieces of music which were embedded into a continuous free jamming process performed on scores of shows. The psychic connection and sense of community shared by the band and the audience was the key to the creation of this kind of music. During the years of their existence all the compositions woven together in this way were recorded and they are therefore well documented.

The Dark Star Orchestra found the compositions of the Grateful Dead like a skier his course on a slalom race and they felt obliged to reveal the aesthetic qualities and ideas along the very winding course marked by poles placed once by the musicians of Grateful Dead. Dark Star Orchestra never played note by note recreations, which would had meant to knock over each pole, but rather took an interpolative approach to find the gaps between them. They always jammed and improvised their way through the setlists they performed. In this way the musicians opened up the countless details created once in a more or less spontaneous flood of music.

The alpine expedition in music terms took years and demanded hundreds of ski runs to catch all the details along the courses and to find the new fall lines between the discovered poles set by their ancestors as well as the mutually beneficial degree of deviation from these fall lines to experience playing with each other. The musicians thereby preferred an active role to listening to recordings of Grateful Dead shows to give their renditions a personal touch and to express the vitality of their individual skiing style in terms of music. Dark Star Orchestra had been able to re-establish the sound of the Grateful Dead, since they raised their awareness of tradition combined with the right sense for inserting new elements. They finally radiated a confidence that its own aesthetic qualities can be kept inside the historically distinct sound corridor of the Grateful Dead.

Another period of years went by before the Dark Star Orchestra has decided to come over Europe performing its first show at Hamburg, Germany. Being for the first time outside of familiar surroundings, a lot of impressions must have been new and unfamiliar to them. 300 people came by from all over Germany, Denmark and even Switzerland and Austria, among them dozens of Americans. The band started its 1371th show, tentative exploring new territories. With transparency and clarity they had contacted to the strangers attending the show and they really had started to jam in such an empathetic way and beauty, that the hearts of many were opened.

The enthusiastic reactions of the audience led the band to rhythm intensity within the second set expressed in many dancing movements of listeners typical for this kind of music. The interactions between dancers and musicians are a vital feature of jam band concerts and it is the eldest, originated in Africa, where jam band music has descended from. The dancer mirroring the progression of tones and influences them. Mirroring also exists among musicians and dancers, respectively. It was interesting for me to experience how such mirroring corresponded spontaneously with a totally unknown female dancer, who had turned towards me. Highlighted by the renditions of Scarlett Begonias and Terrapin Station the Hamburg concert became the most impressive of all European concerts.

At the second venue in Bonn the band got going. The concert hall was smaller and the stage was pleasant low also, so that the musicians could stand close to the audience. Filled with maybe 200 people a star ship took off having its next stop at Jupiter. Rejoicings and embracings pervaded the star ship and smiling faces could be seen all over. It was party time and the band was rocking with an excellent sound. The female dancer got a name and with her the lead guitar player, the female vocalist, one of both drummers and, of course, the sound engineer. After the show a girl friend gave me interesting articles to read for the next trip to Amsterdam, subtitled with

[jackjones]

Hey Now, thanks...

always love someone else's perspective.... enjoyed it

[anddave]

Very well said!!

Thanks Walther.