The Doors In Concert

I know…it’s been a LONG time since I have posted here. My wife and I had a baby boy in October of last year. So I’ve been a little busy, to say the least. But anyway, I am still obsessed with music, more than ever. It’s what keeps me sane. So for my new post and possibly a weekly series, I will discuss my favorite LIVE albums and why? I plan to share the stories about what got me into them and memories I have associated with these discoveries. This could be fun, I think. So let’s kick things off now with “The Doors In Concert.”

My first selection comes from 1991 when I was a sophomore in High School. There are many offerings from The Doors but I wanted to focus on my first experience hearing them play live for the first time. This recording is an expanded version of “Absolutely Live”, that came out in 1970. “Alive, She Cried“, from 1983 was basically merged with that record to create the double live album “The Doors In Concert.”

But before I get into this, I wanted to say that the first compact disc I ever bought was the soundtrack to the film The Doors directed by Oliver Stone and starring Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison. It was a great movie. The soundtrack was a really nice selection of Doors music that ultimately sparked my interest in the band.

My first experience with this live compilation was on the Chicago radio station 105.9 WCKG. This was a classic rock station. Air personalities included Mitch Michaels, Patti Haze, Allan Stagg, Joe Thomas and Debbie Alexander. On Sunday Nights, there was a program that was entitled, “The Seventh Day.” In the beginning the host (Joe Thomas I believe) would play album sides (A or B). Later he expanded it to entire albums. This was a vinyl record experience on the radio. He would play about 3 albums in a row. The program ran for about 3 hours every Sunday night.

One night they played The Doors In Concert. So in my fifteen year old mind I didn’t know of any other recordings other than the soundtrack I previously mentioned. Certainly nothing else live by them. This was definitely my first exposure to live Doors music. I would get fascinated when the DJ would tell us what was coming up soon. I would get my cassette tapes ready. I’d buy the tapes in advance or permanently borrow a couple from my dad. It was exciting loading them into the tape deck and prepare for something amazing. When he put on that double LP, I was really excited. So once things got kicked off, I hit record on the tape deck and just let the music play away.

This was well before the internet and iPhones or even the ability to borrow cds from the library. Back then, it was my way of listening to albums and recording them onto cassette tapes in order to keep hearing them over and over. Yes I come from a generation where we taped music off of the radio. Some really cool choice albums our radio disc jockey would play were: Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here. Mr Thomas would also play The Beatles’ White Album, The Eagles’ Hotel California and Iron Butterfly’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida to name a few.

So I remembered I ended up filling up two cassette tapes back to back with the music. So it was two hours practically of The Doors. I still have the tapes from 27 years ago, which is pretty amazing. Some might say negative things about this double album. Things they might say would be that these performances were pieced together and was edited in such a way that these weren’t complete shows. But again, the mind of a fifteen year old doesn’t necessarily know that. He just hears cool live music with the audience cheering and commenting.  To me it just seemed pretty awesome. It was radical. It was rebellious. And in your face.  Kind of raw and yet polished.

But I realized that there were various shows from Pittsburgh, Boston, Vancouver and New York. Places like San Fransisco’s The Matrix and the Hollywood Bowl were all sources that they drew the music from. At the time I first heard this arrangement of music, none of that mattered. In fact, looking back on it now with this knowledge, I am amazed how great this was all pieced together to give it a nice flow. I enjoyed it very much. Not only did I hear it while it was playing on the radio but I also listened to it in my dad’s pick up truck while we were heading out to Wisconsin on a camping trip. We enjoyed listening to it together on the trip.

My exposure to them live was hearing the 1991  compilation. That’s just how I heard it the first time and got the most comfortable with in that form. But the music was great! I didn’t care that it was edited like crazy. Especially the version I heard which was longer than “Absolutely Live” or “Alive, She Cried.” It was a stroke of genius that it sounded so well and nearly flawless. It’s very accessible and really packed a punch. It doesn’t exactly sound butchered by any means. It’s amazing actually.

So if you like The Doors. The poetry of Jim Morrison and his unpredictable behavior and screaming and then yelling at the audience and then collapsing on stage combined with the guitars, drums and wild keyboards then you can’t go wrong with this very thorough live experience. Plus its one of the rare moments where we are treated to the complete rendition of the masterpiece poetic story of The Celebration of the Lizard. See the cassette tapes below? Those are mine from the 1991 recordings.

Anyways, this is just part one of many blog posts where I will discuss some of my most favorite LIVE albums. I hope you enjoyed the story. Please feel free to post comments. Peace out!

C-Note

 

Nothing’s Wrong With Me

Caution: FOR MUSIC FANS ONLY!!!!!

I prefer to escape into the world of music. I am a geek about it.

When people ask me “so what kind of music do you listen to?” Or “who’s your favorite band?”or “what’s your favorite album?” That one is not easy to answer. What do I say?

I get that question asked often and I figured I’d develop this blog entry into that subject to give you an idea and get people inside my head. For one I could say that I have eclectic interests so I appreciate rock & roll and jazz mostly. Those are the foundations. But I would say that those two are only the major things because there’s punk rock, indie rock, metal, acoustic ballads, folk, blues, there are just so many facets to listen to. Like I listen to AC-DC & Alice in Chains but I’ll listen to John Coltrane or Miles Davis or the Grateful Dead (yea I know some of you don’t like them), Pink Floyd, the talking heads, the cure, smashing pumpkins, the beastie boys, tool, led zeppelin, the Beatles, the Who, and I could think of all the concerts I’ve been to. Like I’ve recently been to a show featuring this band called Savages and I’ve blogged about them a few times. So go check it out!!!

But I listen to artists like Neko case, which she’s a country, noir kind of alternative, indie punk-ish sound and then I listen to Colin Hay who was once with MEN AT WORK and he’s got that 80’s poppy background (WHO CAN IT BE NOW?) but now he tends to do more of the acoustic melodies. Perfect story teller. So yea I love going to concerts. Not just the big arenas, the lollapaloozas, where there’s a gigantic festival and a bunch of stages and you’re like an ant among the sea of people. Not just that. Those are fine. But I like the intimate small gatherings to get in touch with the performer on stage.

So it’s about a live experience too and growing up I collected cassette tapes, particularly the blank ones I would record stuff off the radio or even burn……well not burn because at the time you would just have the CD player which in 1990 was definitely the year that I caught onto this concept. That was 23 years ago. So WAAAAAY BACK IN THE DAY, 23 years ago I started to play CDs but I didn’t have my own cd player and I didn’t have my own CDs either so I would play my dad’s CDs and I would make cassette tapes off of them. My favorite tracks. And I distinctly remember listening to a radio station called 105.9 WCKG and it always like played the classic rock music, mostly the stuff from the 1970’s in general. I mean yes the 60’s too I guess mid to late 60’s thru the late 70’s. Like a decades worth of all kinds of anthem, acid rock! You got Alabama, Boston, Yes, and like I said Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Beatles, The Doors all that stuff.

And I listened to it all but I distinctly remember on Sunday nights there was a program called the SEVENTH DAY and they would play entire albums. They would play vinyl LPS. SIDE A and SIDE B.

So I would get out my cassette tapes and every Sunday night depending on what bands they announced, I would record those particular albums. So usually it would work out that side A of a cassette tape would correspond to side 1 of an LP or well that’s not entirely true. That depends on the length of tape and everything so it was a dependent thing, so anyway I would record those things. I would listen to them. Several Pink Floyd records like The Wall, Wish You Were Here, Dark Side of the Moon and then for the Beatles I remember recording the White Album and building a model rocket with my dad this one time, hanging out in my room. Even the antenna fell off and I had to scramble to fix it, giving this one song a static interruption. LOL. And then also for the Doors, I recorded this whole “absolutely live” kind of thing. Which was like a double LP.

I remember I had like 2 tapes devoted to that Doors show. I played it in my dad’s truck one time driving up to Monroe, Wisconsin. So anyway that’s what I grew up with. I mean if you go back to the 80’s, I just remember listening to pop radio, the American top 40 from the 1980’s. It was all about the “radio.”

My parents also played the oldies stations. MAGIC 104 was their calling tag! The 50’s and 60’s bubble gum popping stuff from the hay day, the dawn of Rock and Roll. What my parents grew up with. And I actually still don’t object to that stuff. But you get burnt out and you always explore. Anyway I ventured on as I got into high school. Got into other bands. As I mentioned earlier; Smashing Pumpkins, Stone Temple Pilots and Depeche Mode. I simply got into bands like those. The early 1990’s was a special time for me in high school. I really just branched off.

So to take this all back home. This blog entry is gonna be devoted to the “types” of music that I listen to. I’ll invite you into my rock soul. I am going to share with you a playlist that makes people understand Chris Noe. Volume One is where I will naturally begin. I was making these ” tape mixes” over the summer but now I need to focus some more on my second book of poetry and prose, for one, but also musically I wish to share different aspects from various eras to help the audience get properly introduced into my head space and where it’s at.

Get into my mind. What is it about this playlist that when someone listens to it that they get to understand ME better? Will it simply be the musicians like the ones that I saw live in concert? The Rolling Stones perhaps? Eric Clapton? Joe Cocker? Is it those artists or is it really just the lyrics or a certain area in my life or do we just take the 37 year old Chris Noe right now and for somebody who just met me. Getting to know me through music. What are those songs? What are those titles? What are those albums to get YOU through the doorway and be able to scratch the surface of Chris…..that kind of mix.

I have chosen 10 MTV MUSIC VIDEOS that I grew up with to represent volume ONE: