Europe 72 Revisited Part Seven

 

Beat-Club, a music program broadcast from Bremen, West Germany, was born in the same year as the Grateful Dead, 1965. Eventually, the show reached cult status amongst German youth. Beat-Club evolved with the times, incorporating go-go girls to dance to the music and integrating psychedelic backdrops and colorful imagery while musicians played.The Grateful Dead played there on 4-21-72, fifty years ago today. Here's an excerpt from EUROPE 72 REVISITED:

           The last “Other One” on 4-16-72 was a twisted tease of anticipation without the volcanic eruptions associated with this tune. The Beat-Club rendition is the complete opposite. The band blasts away from the get-go and there’s an abundance of succulent “Other One” meat. Garcia’s shrieking leads blaze a trail through a path of pounding bass detonations. The jam dissolves, reorganizes, and strengthens before Weir sings, “Spanish lady comes to me she lays on me this rose.”

Between verses there’s an aural inferno before the jam dissolves into a dreamlike state, drifting in and out of consciousness—time out of mind terrain. With a subtle shifting of tempo, the jamming becomes more furious than before—Garcia’s searing leads spiral round and round in a tight blizzard of sound. “Escaping through the lily fields I came across an empty space,” howls Weir. On this day, Apollo 16 landed on the lunar highlands of the moon. All this cosmic improv captures the flavor of the day. Back in Bremen, the Grateful Dead’s allotted studio time is almost done. Instead of an abrupt ending, the band noodles away as they resist the temptation of breaking into a new tune before improvising a climactic instrumental fanfare.