Old Man reacts to the Grateful Dead's "Dark Star." A tribute to the late, great bassist Phil Lesh.

We lost one of the giants of Rock music last week with the passing of founding member of the grateful Dead, Phil Lesh at age 84. In this video I react to one of their favorite concert jam songs.

I first heard Dark Star when I was 18 years old and spending the summer of 1969 in San Francisco with my first girlfriend. We used to go on week nights to the tiny club known as Family Dog on the Great Highway located near the Pacific Ocean beach.

There were usually less than 200 people in attendance at those performances and they were usually only advertised with a small classified ad. We went many times over that summer and I probably heard Dark Star at least a half dozen times, and then I broke up with my girlfriend, returned to the East Coast and never sa the Dead again...but oh the memories.

Dark Star was actually released as a single in March of 1968 in a 3 minute version that sold very few copies. Later the longer jamming versions which tended to last 20 -30 minutes or longer became a staple of the Dead's concerts. Over the years until lead guitarist Jerry Garcia's death in 1995, the band performed the song over 270 times.

Here is a link to a remastered version of the original single:

https://youtu.be/k182h4qYJok?si=DB4g8MD8IKEqI6FZ