I just returned from a 2-week trip to California, including a few days in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Of course I made time to visit a bunch of record shops (around 30, actually), and I'm going to share my impressions in a series of relevant city posts. More than that, I sought places with relevance to my musical heroes, including of course The Doors: Venice Beach, where Jim and Ray formed the band; Whiskey A Go Go on Sunset Strip, where they held a three-month residency in 1966 during which the band became a tighter unit, developing their material and stage show - until, that is, Morrison was banned from the place, after he uttered his infamous Oedipal lyric from "The End" on stage. And their regular spot in San Francisco, the Matrix club - now a cocktail bar going under the name of White Rabbit. In '66, The Matrix was co-owned and managed by Jefferson Airplane co-singer Marty Balin, which is why almost every artist passing through the city in the late 60's has appeared there, despite its low capacity of around 100 attendants. At the time it was a dark and windowless place, with a big mural depicting the 4 riders of the apocalypse. Today it seems to be the exact opposite: The whole of the street side consists of glass panels. When I passed by, the well-lit interior was sparsely strewn with comfy-looking couches where half a dozen customers were sipping cocktails while looking at their mobiles. To be fair, that was on a weekday evening; it's supposed to get livelier on weekends, with local DJ's spinning records and people dancing; there's certainly space enough for that. Apart from its name, the only other allusion to the bar's past is a psychedelic wall painting of a hippie girl posing with mushrooms and a white rabbit - as you may remember, Jefferson Airplane's 1967 hit "White Rabbit" famously drew analogies between Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and the experience of taking LSD. The song was written by Airplane's other singer Grace Slick, and the original version (by Slick's previous band The Great Society) was first recorded live in this club.
Random selection came out with this CD about 4 years ago, but for some reason I never did get round to it. Now, at last, its time has come; for two reasons: The first is, of course, my recent Californian trip mentioned earlier. Another reason is that a new version has just been released on CD and ridiculously expensive vinyl box sets. The title is Doors - Live at the Matrix 1967: The Original Masters. It contains the complete recordings of The Doors' performances at this small San Francisco club, while the previous version reviewed here anthologizes said recordings to present them as a single long concert, when in fact the band played two or three short sets per night. As such, the new edition contains a lot of duplications, plus a previously unreleased instrumental jam only available on the vinyl version. Crucially, though, first generation tapes were used, while the previous ones came from a copy of a copy. I'm told that this doesn't significantly improve on the sound but hey, now you have two versions from which to choose. What's interesting about this live album is that it presents us the band at an early stage of their existence, only two months after the release of their debut. This is reflected by the audience attitude in what sounds like a half-full, at best, club. By September The Doors would become a nationwide sensation, their record eventually climbing to Billboard No.2, but these gigs took place on March 7 and 10. Remember, at the time the radio only played singles, and The Doors hadn't released a single yet, so for the locals they were just an unknown band from L.A. playing at the home turf of The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, and of course The Airplane themselves. Judging from their reaction, they weren't all that impressed. The audio part of the concert sounds fine, but it seems that Morrison was still relatively timid as a performer. He croons sensually on the slower numbers, and sometimes shouts on the faster ones, but he doesn't exactly own the "lizard king" persona he was busy developing. He adlibs lyrics, seemingly on the spot, which is fine to hear - those alternative versions are one of the greatest draws of this album. The audience must have wondered whether they were witnessing a rock concert, an improvised drama performance, or a poetry reading with musical backing; nobody in rock was doing stuff like "The End" at the time. But, even if Morrison wasn't quite the star he would later become, the band is on top form. Especially Manzarek, whose keyboards are even more prominent than in the record, sounding like a cross between ? And The Mysterians' loud garage rock and Jimmy Smith's groovy jazz. I miss his neo-classical intro on "Light My Fire", and in general this isn't among the best live versions of that song I've heard by The Doors, but he repays us with excellent improvisations on other tracks that transform the songs e.g. the long intro on "Unhappy Girl", a then still-unreleased track from the Strange Days LP. Actually more than half of Strange Days is performed here, with the band trying out new material they were preparing for their next album. As Krieger states in the liner notes, it was like a paid rehearsal, a chance to work out the arrangements and hone their craft further. Other still unreleased songs, including "My Eyes Have Seen You," "People Are Strange," and "I Can't See Your Face in My Mind", sport rather simpler rock arrangements compared to their studio counterparts. "Summer's Almost Gone" (which would appear in the band's 3rd LP), on the other hand, has a nice jazz organ solo missing from the studio version. Songs from their debut do not deviate much from the studio versions; "Break On Through" followed by "Soul Kitchen" provide an explosive opening for this album, while "Moonlight Drive" is longer than the studio version, with extra, ad-libbed, lyrics, as well as prominent backing vocals by Ray. "The End" is, as expected, a tour de force, but their performance of their other epic "When The Music's Over" is arguably better, featuring great slide guitar by Robbie Krieger, and with slightly altered lyrics compared to the studio version. As with all relatively new groups, the setlist is fleshed out with covers, and that is another big draw for Doors fans, as some of them have never been recorded by them in the studio. These include garage rock standards "Money" and "Gloria", as well as blues tunes like Slim Harpo's "I'm A King Bee" and B.B.King's "Rock Me" (as a medley with their own -also previously unreleased- "Woman Is A Devil"). Two more blues included here did find their way into The Doors' studio LPs: Howlin' Wolf's "Back Door Man" on the first, and John Lee Hooker's "Crawling King Snake" on the last. Both are included here in fine performances, Jim deploying his leering bluesman persona and Robbie letting his inner Clapton loose. Two other covers have appeared in different live versions on the band's first live LP Absolutely Live: Muddy Waters' "Close To You" which is sung by Ray, and Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love". The latter is here shorter and more in-your-face, arguably better than the one on Absolutely Live. Of more interest are some covers unique to this selection, including Allen Toussaint's New Orleans R&B "Get Out Of My Life Woman", and an instrumental version of Gershwin's "Summertime" proving that the band were quite adept in jazz as well as rock - Manzarek's improvisations in particular prove he was among the best organists of his generation. His keyboard is especially dominant in these live recordings as well as in early Doors albums; but while the advent of progressive rock freed his peers like Keith Emerson and Jon Lord to play longer solos and incorporate jazz and classical influences, Manzarek went the other way, gradually retreating to the role of a supporting player. Nevertheless, one can easily imagine the band taking a more progressive neo-classical/jazz route with the organ more to the fore. An intriguing proposition, but one can only speculate on how the band's sound might have evolved in the 70's. Alas, all they left behind was a handful of studio and live recordings. Most of the live ones were recorded during the 1969/1970 tour when Morrison was behaving erratically and struggling with the effects of fame and excessive alcohol consumption, so I can't emphasize enough how good it is to hear the Doors as ambitious young men getting ready to take on the world.
***** for Break On Through (To The Other Side), Soul Kitchen, Alabama Song (Whisky Bar), The End, People Are Strange, When The Music's Over
**** for Summer's Almost Gone, Light My Fire, Back Door Man, Who Do You Love, Unhappy Girl, Moonlight Drive, My Eyes Have Seen You , Crawling King Snake, I Can't See Your Face In My Mind, Summertime, Gloria
*** for Money, The Crystal Ship, Twentieth Century Fox, I'm A King Bee, Get Out Of My Life Woman, Woman Is A Devil / Rock Me, Close To You
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