The Doors Alive reincarnate the great band, the ritual celebration of the Lizard King and we all get to ride the snake, to the lake.
The End is also the beginning, or the endless Bardo cycle of death and rebirth.
Mike Jim Morrison Griffioen is the part in leather gear, a slight paunch, curly black locks and occasionally swigging from a half-bottle of Jack. We have been seduced by his pitch-perfect Sinatra on acid Jimbo baritone all evening.
People get ready, there’s a train a ‘coming/ Don’t need no ticket/ You just get on board.
The band has played the raga cadences bending Eastern notes of the intro, but the singer is channelling Curtis Mayfield and People Get Ready.
The voice is hypnotic as he pulls in some Roadhouse Blues and the crossroads of Robert Johnson.
Is everybody in? Let the ceremony begin.
The invitation becomes the invocation, and we go through the Doors of Perception as the apocalypse descends.
Helicopters thud across the jungle landscape, the napalm exploding into flames. Captain Willard is approaching Colonel Kurtz with the sword of salvation. A bull is beheaded in a single medium range shot.
The Killer awoke before dawn/ He walked on down the hall.
The maelstrom descends. We get the fuck fuck fuck fuck version. Censored on original release. Ride across the sea with me. Endlessly. The end of laughter.
In time out of mind fashion we can cycle back to the beginning and the slow tempo blues of Soul Kitchen.
The rest of the band. Norbert Manzarek Varga keyboards, Barrington Krieger Meyer guitar, Buzz Densmore Allan drums.
Meyer wears a Stevie Ray Vaughn hat. They all play vintage instruments of the period. The bass sound must come from the keyboard. On recordings, Krieger used to play the bass parts. They also used Larry Knechtel (from the Wrecking Crew) and even Lonnie Mack at times.
Speak in secret alphabets/ Light another cigarette.
This original version brings the trademark Doors lurking dread. Manzarek produced a fast Rockabilly one for the great Los Angeles Punk band X.
This tribute band then proceeds to demonstrate that the Doors were a gifted Jazz Pop American Garage band. Heavily Blues and R’n’B influenced and looking to merge into Eastern psychedelia.
They took the Paul Butterfield Band’s East West (really Michael Bloomfields tour-de-force) and forged a ground-breaking Rock band.
They run through their myriad styles of Power Pop. Touch Me, Strange Days, People Are Strange, Queen of the Highway.
The first set is curiously enervated despite the great music.
The lead singer acts the role. With his close to empty bourbon bottle, he gives the impression of the belligerent drunk who is spoiling for a fight. The guy who hassles the woman at parties.
It recreates the onstage tension of the original band. They do NOT go so far as to re-enact the infamous Miami cock-flashing incident.
Light My Fire is the first song for the band to stretch out and improvise. A Grateful Dead style of tangential melodic flights, with carnivale trash keyboard tones, jazzy guitar solos.
The second set is an absolute triumph, and I feel this was due to the audience acclimatising as well.
All the songs are expanded. Six songs take seventy minutes.
The singer extemporises with excerpts from Morrison’s Beat Poet attempts on stage, some of which you hear on the two official live albums.
He was neither a genius poet, nor a deluded fraud. Pretty much in the middle. Let’s regard him as Morrissey of the Sixties, with a magnificent voice.
Break On Through demonstrates their great rhythm section on stage. Drums and the keyboard players left hand. A bit of Tequila is grafted in.
Celestial vibraphone rain signals the entry of Riders on the Storm. Keyboard drones are reminiscent of Martin Rev and Suicide.
It’s all dreamy, lights breaking in colours that no one knows the name of. Moonlight Mile surfaces. There’s a killer on the loose/ His brain is squirming like a toad. This brings the dread back.
L.A. Woman is perfect as dread Rock’n’roll you can dance to. Mister Mojo Rising calls out on the bridge.
Roadhouse Blues is rowdy, raging Chicago Blues with the guitarist doing his best Otis Rush licks.
The Doors Alive permanently dwell in the Bardo of reincarnation. Like all the best tribute bands. Don’t you love them madly!
Rev. Orange Peel
Photography by Den
