Tighten Up Jam

The Tighten Up in the Dark Star was a very common Latin-style jam theme in 1970; it's often known as a proto-Eyes jam due to the chord resemblance to Eyes. Its first appearance I'm aware of was on 8/30/69, where Weir plays the chords as Garcia's changing a string during Dark Star; it gets a full band performance on 10/25/69. After that they played it steadily for a year, in many Dark Stars (usually following the Feelin' Groovy Jam), and after March '70 in most of the Dancing in the Streets; they seem to have dropped it in 1971 except for a surprise appearance on 10/31/71. It's unusual for the Dead to use a jam-theme interchangeably between two different songs like that, but Tighten Up works well in both of them. (It's surprising it took so long for them to play it in Dancing, since it's similar to the usual Dancing two-chord jam pattern - on 12/11/69 for instance, the Dancing is extremely close to a Tighten Up.) It may be worth a post of its own someday - there used to be a webpage devoted to the Dead's Tighten Ups, but I think it's disappeared. These are the performances I've found so far; I've probably missed a few, but this is the most complete listing available: 10-25-69 Star 11-2-69 Star 12-26-69 Star 1-2-70 Star 3-1-70 Dancing 3-21-70 Dancing 4-3-70 Dancing 4-15-70 Dancing 4-24-70 Star 5/2/70 Dancing 5-6-70 Dancing 5-8-70 Star 5-24-70 Star 6-6-70 Dancing 6-24-70 second Star 7-12-70 Dancing 9-17-70 Star 10-5-70 Dancing 10-24-70 Dancing 10-30-70b Dancing 11-8-70 Dancing 12-17-70 Dancing 10/31/71 Star

(Deadlists claims there's a Tighten Up in the 2/2/70 Star, but there isn't.)