Post by darkstar3 on Feb 8, 2011 18:59:57 GMT
Toronto Star
April 22 1968
Doors’ A Musical Freak Out
The Doors concert – Someone sitting beside me at the CNE Coliseum on Saturday night summed it up in a half hour after it began when, with the City Muffin Boys on stage, he yelled: “Pull the plug.” It was the greatest pop rock non event of the year. A musical freak out. A nightmare of noise. Amateur psychedelia and juvenile theatrics.
Pop rock concerts follow a pattern The name group on Saturday night it was The Doors’ performs last and then only for about 45 minutes. So the first two hours of a three hour concert are usually given over to lesser groups, usually local groups. You have to eat a lot of meat and potatoes before they give you any dessert.
DIFFERENT
At most concerts the name group is worth waiting for but Saturday night was different. Sitting through two hours of the City Muffin Boys (Toronto) the Influence (Montreal) and the Earth Opera (Boston) would have been too high a price to pay (by at least half any hour for a 45 minute performance by the Beatles. But to pay the price for The Doors (although none of us could have known it beforehand) was a joke!
The Muffin Boys make noise under the pretext of creating (I use the word loosely), ‘new music.’ Theirs is a sort of non performance (theirs is a sort of non music!), rather like a rehearsal during which they appear to be completely oblivious to the presence of an audience. On Saturday night it worked both ways. It wasn’t that the audience didn’t understand what they were playing; the audience didn’t like what they were playing. (A point for the audience.)
The other two groups were scarcely an improvement. The Influence’s performance amounted to a long and decidedly second rate impersonation of the Mothers Of Invention of course, any impersonation of the Mothers Of Invention is second rate by definition.
The Earth Opera (the best group on stage Saturday night, which is not to say they were particularly good) did succeed in whipping up the audience a little New England soul (white Boston blues.) Nothing very special, mind you, but at that point in the evening anything conventional sounded good.
And then The Doors.
The Doors were one of the big new groups of 1967 – in some critics judgment the big new group. They’ve had two best selling albums, a number of big singles, and at the moment they’re probably the hottest personal appearance in North America although Jimi Hendrix has been gaining on them recently.
Musically The Doors have always struck me as being rather common place. I was gratified to find Peter Winkler making essentially the same observation in the April issue of Cheetah Magazine.
I can’t get excited about Jim Morrison as a vocal style. The Doors only disposition as far as I can see is their talent for writing music. Not great music, but often good music.
However, Morrison is the object of a great mystique which as far as I can gather, has to do mostly with the fact that he performs in skin tight leather pants that leave very little to the educated imagination. Magazine articles on The Doors invariably make a point of reporting that Morrison doesn’t wear underwear. There is supposed to be something very symbolic about his performances which are noted for their emotional and suggestive overtones.
Well, Morrison’s tight notwithstanding, the Doors performance on Saturday night was to say the least anti-climatic. Their arrival unnoticed – certainly unheralded. They ran through six or seven numbers – including “Light My Fire”, “The War Is Over,” “Love Me Two Times,” and “Whisky Bar” as though it couldn’t matter less (it didn’t) and then left.
His Routine
Morrison did his little routine – at times standing motionless, one foot on the microphone stand, one hand clasping the microphone itself, his eyes surveying the audience. At other times his body half crouched, his shoulders heaving both hands around the microphone; at other times, leaping into the air and looking very silly doing it – but it didn’t seem to do much for the audience.
Oh, there were a few girls going crazy at the foot of the stage – even when the group on the stage is the City Muffin Boys.
But the worst aspect of the concert was the state of the Coliseum itself. The sound system was so bad that you couldn’t hear anything sitting in the stands. So if you were foolish enough to want to listen to the groups on stage, you had to stand in the dirt, (the turf wasn’t covered). And half the time the lights were out so that no matter where you were standing or sitting you couldn’t see anything.
END.
April 22 1968
Doors’ A Musical Freak Out
The Doors concert – Someone sitting beside me at the CNE Coliseum on Saturday night summed it up in a half hour after it began when, with the City Muffin Boys on stage, he yelled: “Pull the plug.” It was the greatest pop rock non event of the year. A musical freak out. A nightmare of noise. Amateur psychedelia and juvenile theatrics.
Pop rock concerts follow a pattern The name group on Saturday night it was The Doors’ performs last and then only for about 45 minutes. So the first two hours of a three hour concert are usually given over to lesser groups, usually local groups. You have to eat a lot of meat and potatoes before they give you any dessert.
DIFFERENT
At most concerts the name group is worth waiting for but Saturday night was different. Sitting through two hours of the City Muffin Boys (Toronto) the Influence (Montreal) and the Earth Opera (Boston) would have been too high a price to pay (by at least half any hour for a 45 minute performance by the Beatles. But to pay the price for The Doors (although none of us could have known it beforehand) was a joke!
The Muffin Boys make noise under the pretext of creating (I use the word loosely), ‘new music.’ Theirs is a sort of non performance (theirs is a sort of non music!), rather like a rehearsal during which they appear to be completely oblivious to the presence of an audience. On Saturday night it worked both ways. It wasn’t that the audience didn’t understand what they were playing; the audience didn’t like what they were playing. (A point for the audience.)
The other two groups were scarcely an improvement. The Influence’s performance amounted to a long and decidedly second rate impersonation of the Mothers Of Invention of course, any impersonation of the Mothers Of Invention is second rate by definition.
The Earth Opera (the best group on stage Saturday night, which is not to say they were particularly good) did succeed in whipping up the audience a little New England soul (white Boston blues.) Nothing very special, mind you, but at that point in the evening anything conventional sounded good.
And then The Doors.
The Doors were one of the big new groups of 1967 – in some critics judgment the big new group. They’ve had two best selling albums, a number of big singles, and at the moment they’re probably the hottest personal appearance in North America although Jimi Hendrix has been gaining on them recently.
Musically The Doors have always struck me as being rather common place. I was gratified to find Peter Winkler making essentially the same observation in the April issue of Cheetah Magazine.
I can’t get excited about Jim Morrison as a vocal style. The Doors only disposition as far as I can see is their talent for writing music. Not great music, but often good music.
However, Morrison is the object of a great mystique which as far as I can gather, has to do mostly with the fact that he performs in skin tight leather pants that leave very little to the educated imagination. Magazine articles on The Doors invariably make a point of reporting that Morrison doesn’t wear underwear. There is supposed to be something very symbolic about his performances which are noted for their emotional and suggestive overtones.
Well, Morrison’s tight notwithstanding, the Doors performance on Saturday night was to say the least anti-climatic. Their arrival unnoticed – certainly unheralded. They ran through six or seven numbers – including “Light My Fire”, “The War Is Over,” “Love Me Two Times,” and “Whisky Bar” as though it couldn’t matter less (it didn’t) and then left.
His Routine
Morrison did his little routine – at times standing motionless, one foot on the microphone stand, one hand clasping the microphone itself, his eyes surveying the audience. At other times his body half crouched, his shoulders heaving both hands around the microphone; at other times, leaping into the air and looking very silly doing it – but it didn’t seem to do much for the audience.
Oh, there were a few girls going crazy at the foot of the stage – even when the group on the stage is the City Muffin Boys.
But the worst aspect of the concert was the state of the Coliseum itself. The sound system was so bad that you couldn’t hear anything sitting in the stands. So if you were foolish enough to want to listen to the groups on stage, you had to stand in the dirt, (the turf wasn’t covered). And half the time the lights were out so that no matter where you were standing or sitting you couldn’t see anything.
END.