IN CONCERT

The Doors live ! Even if I was born in 1959, I was too young to have been able to attend one of their concert (a European tour was organized in 68). Their fame has been built up around their live appearences and the impetuous and inpredictable attitude from Jim. Jim has learned the book from the French psychologue Gustave Le Bon "Psychology Of The Crowds".and has proved to be a great manipulator : he can turn a normal concert into a riot (like in Chicago, 1968), or turn an explosive atmosphere into quiteness (LA, December 1968).

The most scandalous one, is of course the Miami concert from March 1st, 1969. Jim arrived an hour late at the concert hall, completely drunk. On top of this, the were overselling of concert tickets : too many people to fit in the hall ! Great debut.

He is so drunk that he can hardly sing a song in its entirety, insulting the audience, I quote "Bunch of idiots", "Bunch of slaves" (he was inspired in this attitude by Van Morisson, the leader from "Them"). He enters then in a monologue, I quote again (no editing here) : "How long are you gonna let it go on ? Lettin' people push you around ? How long d'ya think it's gonna last ? Maybe you like it, maybe you like being pushed around... Maybe you love it, maybe you love gettin' you face stuck in the s h i t...". A bit later in the concert, he will harangue the crowd asking if they want more than music, something special; and then says that he is going to get nude on stage !

Nobody can feasibly guarantee whether he did it or not (even Jim, who will say later on that he was way too drunk to remember) ! Four days later, he will be charged and in August he will be convicted of "indecent behaviour" amongst other things and sentenced to eight months'imprisonment (I guess suspended...).

This double CD set is a collection of songs already available on previous recordings : "Absolutely Live" in July 1970, "Alive She Cried" (collection of concerts between 1968 and 1970) and "Live At The Hollywood Bowl"(July 4th, 1968).

There are some pure blues classic never released on a studio album like "Close To You", "Who Do You Love" (a cover song from Bo Didley), "Build Me a Woman" (which will remain unrelased).

Why they decided to have the intro of "The Soft Parade", namely the "Poem" : "Petition the Lord with Prayers" is unknown to me. It is quite dispensable.

Some of the songs were recorded in 1969-1970, a period in which Jim was already bored of the rock music and environment. He had already decided to stop singing. So, he doesn't seem to be very concerned with live performances any longer.

Most of their hits or anthems are included here. Noticeable exception : "Hello, I Love You". The version of "Break It Through" is great (almost double its lenght). Then "The Celebration Of The Lizard" : this "song" consists of some Jim's "poetry" and only exists in its entirety (?) in live performances (I'll tell you why in my review for "Waiting For the Sun". This track (?) lasts for about sixteen minutes and is made of seven parts. it is basically a long recitation with some background music. The only true musical moment (IMO) is "Not to Touch the Earth". I could never entered the world of the lizard.

There is a good interpretation of "When The Music's Over" (over fifteen minutes). During one of the quiet moments of the song, Jim was P.O. by the talks in the audience and starts to shout : "Shut Up"! (around 8'45) ...Ssssssh. Is this a way to behave in a rock'n'roll concert ? You don't want to hear to this for the next half an hour, right? Ssssssssssssh. Allright : "We Want the World and we want it free". Some gun shot sounds can be distinguively heard later on (the protest for the Vietnam war is at his peak in the US).

On disc two, the best moments (IMO) are "Gloria" and a great rendition of "Light My Fire" (about ten minutes). Both are quite sexually oriented. "Gloria" is a song from "Them". The Doors will regularly be their supporting act of in a L.A. bar called ... The Whiskey A Go-Go (Floyd, Cream, The Who, The Kinks, Led Zep, Hendrix, etc. will play there). One phrase out of "Gloria" : "wrap your legs around my neck; wrap your arms around my feet"... rather obvious, no ?

Jim's intro to "Close To You" : ladies and gentleman, I don't if you realize that you're in tonight for a special treat; the audience thinking he would redo his Miami "performance" and starting to yell. Jim says immediately :"Oh, no. Not that ! That treat is only for full moon ...", then : "I know there are young people out there and I wouldn't want anybody to faint... The last time it happened policemen returned their badges (applause) ... I liked it... I know that everybody was intimidated by the security precautions tonight. Just remember : their moto is protect and serve..." Actually, the special treat was that Ray was going to take the lead vocal in the song (which is quite boring by the way).

The last song is "The End" (just over fifteen minutes). The genesis of this song took place during a concert at the Whisky A Go-Go in July 1966. Before the concert Jim got some LSD and starts to improvise on the Oedipian complex and says the two sentences we all know about his father & mother (you canread my review of "The Doors" for more details). The owner was so shocked that he kicked them out before the end of the song. Actually, this live version is quite inferior to the studio one.

Globally this live album is for die-hard fans. But it is a great document for them. I think it was better to see The Doors live rather to hear them. So, I would recommend you some of their DVD's (or VHS converted into DVD) instead, like their "30th Anniversary"or Live In Europe" (from the Roundhouse in London, 1968). Maybe these will soon be available for reviews and I could tell you more about them Three stars.

In Concert is the definitive live album of The Doors. 140 minutes of superb live perfomances kept from previous live records such as Absolutely Live, Alive She Cried and Live at the Hollywood Bowl.

Hard, strong, amazing, passionate, intriguing. The great classics apart (the acid The End, the mindblowing When the Music's Over, the immortal Roadhouse Blues) this double live record is very important for many covers played by the band as for alternate versions of famous tunes and for the musical transposition of the poem "The Celebration of the Lizard King" which only saw the light in part, in their third album Waiting for the Sun as "Not to Touch the Earth". The whole mystic and visionary poem is now put in music even if it features recitative parts for the most.

"Who Do You Love", "Build Me A Woman", "Universal Mind", "Gloria" (a Van Morrison's one, if I well remember), "Little Red Rooster" and "Close to You" are wonderful. The last one in particular is the most favourite of mine and is one of the most powerful tracks from them, describing very well their great impact on the audiences!

An alternate version of "Break on Through" (# 2) with the intro of "Dead Cats, Dead Rats" is available here.

What could I say more? This live double cd is essential: the definitive live collection!

4.5 stars.

This double Cd compilation of different live recordings that were previously available brings absolutely nothing new to the debate. If you are a long time fan of the group, you are likely to have these records in one way or another.

Absolutely Live is the only album I regard as official (due to its release date) and shows a real difference between the band live and its studio version. Obviously this is a manifest that the Doors concerts were never an acquired thing, since the band was always depending on the erratic behaviour of Morrison. And on that night, obviously Jimbo was well on the way to his artificial paradise, but obviously had not got to his final destination. This recording is rather interesting for its rare performance of the Celebration Of The King Lizard in its entirety. And then we can see that the Waiting For The Sun album's best track (Not To Touch The Earth) was also the highpoint of the never finalized side-long track that they were planning on. For the rest we have a rough sound throughout the first disc, making the album (with a different cover artwork than on our PA) a must for Doorshandles.

The first part of the second disc is a rather yawning Alive She Cried collection of live cuts that were released a decade later. Outside the cover of Them's Gloria and a bluesy Red Rooster, there is not that much interesting (maybe the elongated Light My Fire), but this disc had the merit (aside from generally excellent live recording sound) to keep the Doors' lights on for the next generation.

The last three tracks as I understand it were Hollywood Bowl tracks, but since I never owned those recordings, I suspect that there are only parts of it included here, but cannot confirm it.

But however, if you are a new to the Doors, this live anthology is rather interesting collection. And somehow, I bet that many will be surprised by the band's raw live sound. And there are many hints that the group had excellent improvising talents (mostly due to the erratic nature of their frontman, but they also often did medleys of their own tracks. And one of the most bizarre moment in the Absolutely Live album is that when Jimbo starts with the spoken intro of the track The Soft Parade, the crowd goes nuts (this is obviously a fan favourite), but unfortunately the rest of the track is absent. And newer recordings did not manage to rebuild the track as it should have. Still a must, but this is not always easy.

Review Nº 826

The Doors began with a meeting between Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek on Venice Beach, in Los Angeles. At the time, Manzarek was in a band called Rick And The Ravens with his brothers Rick and Jim, while Robby Krieger and John Densmore were playing with The Psychedelic Rangers. During the year of 1965, Densmore joined together with members of the Ravens and bass player Patty Sullivan and recorded a six-song demo, in September 1965. The demo was very pirated and since then circulated widely as a bootleg recording and finally appeared in full later, in 1997, in a collection of The Doors. That month the group recruited Robby Krieger and the final line up of The Doors was formed.

The Doors had a relatively short life due to the dead of Jim Morrison. During those years the band released six studio albums, their eponymous debut and "Strange Days", both in 1967, "Waiting For the Sun" in 1968, "The Soft Parade" in 1969, "Morrison Hotel" in 1970 and "L.A. Woman" in 1971, and only a live album "Absolutely Live" in 1970. However, the band did many live sets all over those years. Later, many of those live acts would be released in several formats. So, from those days we have an amount of live releases of those live sets. This is the case of this live album, "In Concert".

"In Concert" is a live album that was released in 1991. But, "In Concert" isn't a live album released from a single live set from the band. In reality, "In Concert" is comprised of live recordings that can previously be found on three other live albums from the band, "Absolutely Live", "Alive, She Cried" and "Live At The Bowl '68", with the exception of the last track of "In Concert", "The End", that wasn't unavailable until now on CD in The Doors live releases and that was taken from the live concert that was made at the Hollywood Bowl. So, "In Concert" is a live album that was recorded between 1968 and 1970 in Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Detroit and Copenhagen. Thus, the picture of the band's live work is still a bit disjointed because the uneven levels of inspiration achieved at various moments.

"In Concert" is a very extensive live album with 2 CD's with about 2 hours and 20 minutes long. It covers a significant part of their career. It has many of their most known tracks, such as, "Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)", "Backdoor Man", "When The Music's Over", "Break On Through (To The Other Side)", "Soul Kitchen", "Roadhouse Blues", "Light My Fire", "The WASP (Texas Radio And The Big Beat)", "Love Me Two Times", "Moonlight Drive" and "The End". Besides that, it has many other live parts with some very improvising parts, mainly a rare track, "The Celebration Of The Lizard". The CD 1 is exclusively filled with "Absolutely Live". It's the most consistent part on the set, and it almost specifically bypasses the band's most popular songs. It opens with a non-music track "House Announcer" that is nothing more than the presentation of the band. Than we have "Who Do You Love" that can keeps the flavor of the original song with some psychedelic declinations and highly electric turns. The medley of four songs with "Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar)", "Back Door Man", "Love Hides" and "Five To One" is excellent. "Build Me A Woman" is a fairly standard blues. "When The Music's Over" follows the album's version pretty faithfully, but this an extended version. "Universal Mind" sounds much like most of "Morrison Hotel" material. "Petition The Lord With Prayer" and "Dead Cats, Dead Rats", are two short tracks with some vocal improvisations by Morrison. "Break On Through (To The Other Side)" is a great live version of the song. "The Celebration Of The Lizard" is a great piece originally planned for "Waiting For The Sun" that was never finished. "Soul Kitchen" is brilliantly chosen to end "Absolutely Live" and this CD. The CD 2 is less consistent. It opens with "Roadhouse Blues" one of their classic songs followed by "Gloria", a version of a Van Morrison's song. After that we have "Light My Fire", "You Make Me Real", "The WASP (Texas Radio And The Big Beat)" and "Love Me Two Times". "Light My Fire" is a landmark of the band, one of their most beloved. "You Make Me Real" is a nice song. "The WASP (Texas Radio And The Big Beat)" is a great song with recited lyrics. "Love Me Two Times" is a nice rock song with a blues' touch. All these tracks are good versions. "Little Red Rooster" is a version of a Willie Dixon's song. "Moonlight Drive", "Close To You" and "Unknown Soldier" represent also three nice live moments. The album and CD close with "The End". It's probably the most iconic piece of The Doors and the most progressive track ever made by the band too.

Conclusion: "In Concert" contains almost all of the material from the band's live releases, and can paints an accurate picture of the magic that these trailblazing iconoclasts were capable of making onstage. Free from the strictures of the recording studio, The Doors were able to stretch out both musically and conceptually, with some extended jams and Morrison's spontaneous poetics making once familiar songs into exciting new explorations. Once "In Concert" is a kind of a best off of three of their previous live albums, "Absolutely Live", "Alive, She Cried" and "Live At The Bowl '68", we can say this is a nice and cheap way to have that live stuff. It also can be a good introduction to the world of the band.

Prog is my Ferrari. Jem Godfrey (Frost*)