Regarding the tape long in circulation labled "Alembic Studio, Dec. 68, rehearsal with T.C." (containing Lovelight, Dark Star 11:49, Stephen X 2, Eleven X4):
If I remember right in the early 80s when the cassette came into circulation this labeling of the tape was speculative in the first place. It didn't come so labeled. We didn't know what it was but it was clearly a '68 studio rehearsal & we assumed the keyboards was Constanten and understood that he joined the band in December '68 and labeled the tape accordingly. When I went back & listened to this tape again several years ago, I found that -- to my ear -- it challenges this whole line of reasoning. The keyboards sound nothing like Constanten, who has classical training & a classically trained "touch" which is readily apparent in all his recorded performances with the Dead & elsewhere. There are several shows where he plays snatches of Bach etc., before songs. The hands playing those notes, or his parts with the Dead, sound nothing like the fingers on this 1968 tape. A possible complicating factor is that the keyboard on the tape is an electric piano, which has -- especially early version of that period -- an action nothing like a mechanical piano, so that it is possible that the fingers sound nothing like Constanten's because he was playing a different instrument. I don't think this is the case, but it might be. If the keyboards on this tape aren't T.C. and I listen to it without assumptions, it sounds to me more like the state of the Dark Star > Stephen > Eleven material in May of '68 rather than in December. Stephen & the Eleven were paired from their breakout, in mid-June '68. If this is a rehearsal, May makes good sense. I would like to hear if Constanten himself has anything to say about this, and if David Lemieux has any input.
