More Than 11 Hours Of 1972 Dark Star In One Seamless Mix

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:

  1. 3/23/1972 New York [includes Verse 1]
  2. 4/8/1972 London
  3. 4/14/1972 Copenhagen
  4. 4/17/1972 Copenhagen
  5. 4/24/1972 Dusseldorf
  6. 4/29/1972 Hamburg
  7. 5/4/1972 Paris
  8. 5/7/1972 Wigan
  9. 5/11/1972 Rotterdam
  10. 5/18/1972 Munich
  11. 5/23/1972 - London
  12. 5/25/1972 - London
  13. 7/18/1972 Jersey City
  14. 7/26/1972 Portland
  15. 8/21/1972 Berkeley
  16. 8/24/1972 Berkeley
  17. 8/27/1972 Veneta
  18. 9/10/1972 Hollywood
  19. 9/16/1972 - Boston
  20. 9/21/1972 Philadelphia
  21. 9/24/1972 - Waterbury
  22. 9/27/1972 Jersey City
  23. 10/18/1972 St. Louis
  24. 10/26/1972 Cincinnati
  25. 10/28/1972 Cleveland
  26. 11/13/1972 Kansas City
  27. 11/19/1972 Houston
  28. 11/26/1972 San Antonio
  29. 12/11/1972 San Francisco
  30. 12/15/1972 Long Beach
  31. 7/26/1972 Portland [includes Verse 2]

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