Have you ever just wanted to live in a 1972 Dark Star? Well, now you can, essentially -- or at least for nearly twelve hour increments.
Thanks to archive.org user SonicWallpaper, a super seamless mix of nearly every one of the brilliantly improvisational Dark Stars from that magnificent year are presented in this seamless, 11 hour and 42 minute, streamable file. You can even download it, too, if you want to devote a whopping 1.3 GB of hard drive space to it.
Check it out:
The mix's creator states, "my goal was to merge all Dark Star performances from 1972 as if it was one very long performance with a marathon jam in the middle."
Some insights into how he went about this task:
- Drop all Dark Star recordings into software
- Locate all vocal sections and remove them - except the first 1st verse vocal section and the last 2nd verse vocal section
- Taking all jam parts and mixing them together - in some cases minutes were cut to get to a location that would cross fade well
- Keep it as pure as possible - no remixing/re-arrangements
- The band rarely sang the 2nd verse in 1972, and the last performance of the year did not include a 2nd verse. In order to close out the recording as I planned, I used the last 2nd verse at the end, which is from 7/26/1972.
- I left one Dark Star out, which is from 10/23/1972. The quality was very poor. It was a boomy audience recording. If anyone can find a good recording of this Dark Star, please let me know, and I'll update the mix
He has even updated it, since an original (1 hour 42 minutes shorter) version, with better sound quality, mixing and more versions. Check out the versions, in order, included...
Playlist:
- 3/23/1972 New York [includes Verse 1]
- 4/8/1972 London
- 4/14/1972 Copenhagen
- 4/17/1972 Copenhagen
- 4/24/1972 Dusseldorf
- 4/29/1972 Hamburg
- 5/4/1972 Paris
- 5/7/1972 Wigan
- 5/11/1972 Rotterdam
- 5/18/1972 Munich
- 5/23/1972 - London
- 5/25/1972 - London
- 7/18/1972 Jersey City
- 7/26/1972 Portland
- 8/21/1972 Berkeley
- 8/24/1972 Berkeley
- 8/27/1972 Veneta
- 9/10/1972 Hollywood
- 9/16/1972 - Boston
- 9/21/1972 Philadelphia
- 9/24/1972 - Waterbury
- 9/27/1972 Jersey City
- 10/18/1972 St. Louis
- 10/26/1972 Cincinnati
- 10/28/1972 Cleveland
- 11/13/1972 Kansas City
- 11/19/1972 Houston
- 11/26/1972 San Antonio
- 12/11/1972 San Francisco
- 12/15/1972 Long Beach
- 7/26/1972 Portland [includes Verse 2]
