Artifact #1. Where to start? Well, this little guy was just born today, so as it's the birthday of the first LP called "Dark Star" by the Grateful Dead, we have our first artifact. I headed down to Amoeba in SF as early as possible as I figured the line was going to be long. It was already in the high 70's when I got in line, and just a gorgeous day in San Francisco..and whoa..Record Store Day 2012 is absolutely out of hand! I got there at 10:10AM and the line was already 1/2 way around the block...several hundred folks in line in front of me. In 10 more minutes, it was closing the loop on the entire block. I figured I had little chance at all to get one of the 4200 copies of this one-day only gem as each mom and pop record store was only getting a certain handful. But, I was feeling my mojo, as I was able to get the 2nd to last copy by the time I got in. Not to mention some amazing gems from Tinariwen, Pete Townsend, Bill Evans, Little Richard, Skip James, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Peter Tosh, Miles Davis...I mean, wow. Good stuff. Lots of colored vinyl. Hope it was all analog sourced....
The Dark Star LP is 180 grams of nice inky-black vinyl. The cover is in the '72 box set theme art vein with a Parisian Notre Dame gargoyle with a wreath of roses giving a distant Dark-Star-Crashing the tongue. Not Bad. The back is an simple circle/white Dark Star motif. The inner label is classic Warner's 1970's green label. It looked good. Felt good. Played good. Why has it taken this band almost 50 years to come out with a LP like this? 1 song, 2 sides, a lot of weirdness. Good mix overall (better than this weird Live Dead remix on Moble Fidelity..more on that later.) Hope you all can track down one of the 4200 copies. How come these weren't numbered? Don't pull a "limited" Beatles Mono box on us. Anyway, happy 4/20 +1.
Until next time at Dark Star Palace....
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