My four favorite Dark Stars from 1970 are
Fillmore West 2/8/70: 26:43 excellent AUD Fillmore East 2/13/70: 29:46 SBD Dick's Picks Denver 4/24/70: 24:39 A minus AUD Fillmore East 9/17/70: 27:10 near excellent AUD It is typical of 1970 that three of the four only exist on AUD tape (the last 3 minutes of 2/8/70 occur on the 45 minutes of SBD from this set, but the whole Dark Star appears only on the AUD). Recently Jeff Cotsman passed me a CD version of Denver 4/24/70 24:39, with lineage is MAC > C > D > SHN > CD. It's a real pleasure to hear this tape in near optimal form. The entire Dark Star > St. Stephen > Eleven > drums > jam ... sequence is choice 1970 Dead. This is also the last performance of the original Eleven, and a worthy one. This sets me to wondering whether similarly optimal versions of 2/8/70 and 9/17/70 have been created and put into circulation yet. The AUD of 2/8/70 is a good one; my cassette composite of the AUD and the SBD of the Dark Star > St. Stephen > NFA > St. Stephen > Lovelight makes excellent listening. If it hasn't already been done, we need assemble & propagate an optimal version of this composite. Fillmore East 9/17/70 is maybe the most interesting, and least known, of these tapes. The concluding 50 minutes of the show runs: Sugar Magnolia [5:02] ; [0:15] ; Dark Star [27:10] > Saint Stephen [6:19] > Drums [0:53] > Good Lovin' [1:52] > Drums [3:54] > Good Lovin' [8:13] My cassette copies of these tapes will serve if we can't find better. I am e-mailing my sources in hopes of obtaining digital copies from which to assemble composites. If you have a high quality digital copy of any of these tapes I would like to hear from you: Fillmore West 2/8/70 AUD Fillmore West 2/8/70 SBD (45 minutes) Fillmore East 9/17/70 AUD (about 2 hours total circulate) Remember, with these AUD tapes, it's up to us.
