Alive, She Cried

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Track Listings
1. Gloria
2. Light My Fire
3. You Make Me Real
4. Texas Radio and the Big Beat
5. Love Me Two Times
6. Little Red Rooster
7. Moonlight Drive


Alive, She Cried
Released: October, 1983
US: Gold
Billboard peak: # 23


Alive, She Cried Song Links

Light My Fire

You Make Me Real

The WASP (Texas Radio And The Big Beat)

Little Red Rooster

Gloria

Moonlight Drive

Love Me Two Times


Alive, She Cried
For the first 17 years of their history, the only official live Doors album was Absolutely Live, which had its virtues -- especially as it captured elements of their harder, more ambitious repertoire -- but also left more casual fans rather cold, owing to the absence of any of their biggest hits. Alive, She Cried helped solve that problem, including as it did a concert version of "Light My Fire" and also adding a legendary concert piece -- their rendition of Van Morrison's mid-'60s Them-era classic "Gloria" -- to the Doors' official Elektra Records discography. The release was extremely popular but it also revealed the reason why "Light My Fire" had not made it onto the prior live album, which was principally a matter of Jim Morrison's boredom with a song not his own that he'd performed too many times by 1970, and also owing to the fact that the band had done about 90 percent of everything they were going to do with the song in its original album version; Morrison is at his most inspired and involved on the "Graveyard Poem" that he interjects during the break, and everything else is an elaboration of the extended jam originally heard on the studio recording. [Alive, She Cried was later combined with Live at the Hollywood Bowl and Absolutely Live in the In Concert two-CD set.] ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

It was the greatest night of my life.
Although I still had not found a wife
I had my friends
Right there beside me.
We were close together.
We tripped the wall and we scaled the graveyard
Ancient shapes were all around us.
The wet dew felt fresh beside the fog.
Two made love in an ancient spot
One chased a rabbit into the dark
A girl got drunk and balled the dead
And I gave empty sermons to my head.
Cemetary, cool and quiet
Hate to leave your sacred lay
Dread the milky coming of the day.


The Doors: Alive She Cried
Love 'em or loathe 'em, the Doors did manage to make the world wobble on its axis in their heyday. Jim Morrison may have been rock's first performance artist; he'd turn a concert into a theater of confrontation, urging audiences to the extremities as he pushed himself beyond all conventional standards of acceptable behavior. Alive, She Cried brings it all back home: the Doors' impossibly strange and wonderful music, Morrison's drunken loutishness and his stabbingly sober poetics, and the brilliant, vivid sparking of a machine too mercurial to last.

Alive, She Cried – recorded around the world in 1968, '69 and '70 – might even be a worthier in-concert document than the double LP Absolutely Live. The band is sharper, Morrison is funnier, and both musicians and singer go for the gut on every song. They get down and bluesy on the Howlin' Wolf standard "Little Red Rooster" (John Sebastian adding harmonica) and downright dirty–albeit tongue-in-cheek – on the garage classic "Gloria" (written by that other, Irish Morrison). Leaning heavily on the riff to Otis Redding's "I Can't Turn You Loose," guitarist Robbie Krieger makes "You Make Me Real" rock harder than the studio original.

Elsewhere, Morrison plays the stoned poet, woozily reciting "Texas Radio & the Big Beat" as a lead-in to "Love Me Two Times," interpolating "Horse Latitudes" into "Moonlight Drive" and expanding on the heady, hedonistic liberation of "Light My Fire" with some pungent, erotic recollections set in a cemetery. "Light My Fire" may be the Sixties' finest song; here, it flares upward into an intensifying bolt of passion that crescendos with Morrison's archetypal scream – a scream signifying the communal orgasm of a generation and a decade and a band that would flame out and fall silent all too quickly. (RS 410)
PARKE PUTERBAUGH from Rolling Stone 1983

[stuart]

That is THE imo Best Version Of Gloria("Backstage and Dangerous" full version im on about) i have heard the doors do, full of ENERGY and jim is in great voice.

Pity it was edited for ASC.

[othercircles]

stuart said:

That is THE imo Best Version Of Gloria("Backstage and Dangerous" full version im on about) i have heard the doors do, full of ENERGY and jim is in great voice.

Pity it was edited for ASC.

Heavily... Made it more commercially viable tho. The origional cut wouldn't have made as good a single in 83.

"wrap your lips around my cock" "i'm gonna eat ya honey" etc etc.


The Doors: Alive She Cried
"NOT LIVE" She Cried!

This was my first Doors record several years ago.
To me some of these versions I always think of when I listen to the album cuts. I hardly thought of it as a live album though. Really it's right up there with "Kiss Alive" as far as actually being live. As far as what I've heard combined with what my ears tell me here is a quick run down on this 1981 "Live" album.

Track 1: "Gloria"
Anyone who's heard this.. and also heard the "LIVE IN NYC" version who has any kind of ear has to notice. "Hey.... this is the exact same vocal". Sound-check my ass!!! They took the live NYC version.. redid the drums and most if not all of the keyboard and guitar part.. and moved around Jims vocal phrases toward the end so they weren't so completely off cue. Also they totally removed Rays shitty backing vocal and redid it in a layered fashion. So now it has two backing vocals. For that to be live would mean Robbie sang too and I can't say I've ever seen or heard him sing a note during the Morrison years (except the little bit during "Runnin' Blue") Even less likely he sang anything live. They have some balls officially releasing both versions and still expecting us to believe this version was just a sound-check that happened to get recorded. I don't think so guys. Unless.... I have considered the possibility that the instrumental track was indeed from a sound-check.. and maybe Jims vocal from that sucked so bad that they supplemented it with the one from the concert... or..... because Jim wasn't even at the sound-check at all. Who knows? We'll never be told the truth I'm sure. And it's not like knowing this makes me like listening to it any less. As I'm sure barely anyone else would give a crap when it was done. So why the lies? The Doors and their management confuse me sometimes. I for one think its pretty cool that they made a new song utilizing an old Jim vocal. That's much more interesting then claiming it was just some lost sound-check recording!

Track 2 "Light My Fire"
Most of us are aware that this was edited from several performances. Why? I have no idea. But at least with this one there's no big conspiracy behind it. It's an excellent mix, however I wonder why they edited the solo section so much. In order to comprise the best moments you would think? But there's a lot of clunkers and bad chords left in. Why edit to make it the best it can be and leave such obvious blunders? Again.. no clue. Maybe that was something Jim instilled in the rest of the them. The desire to just fuck with people and see how they react.

Track 3 "You Make Me Real"
A great "Morrison Hotel" number. The ASC version of this song is the first I'd ever heard and I always liked it. I never doubted it was live until I heard "Live In Hollywood" The Aquarius 1969. Here again we have a situation similar to "Gloria" The vocal on these two versions is identical. Jims vocals could not have been that identical on two performances. Most noticeable is that the guitar is considerably BETTER on the ASC version. It's more pronounced and the solo is more confident, while the original Aquarius cut is riddled with missed cues and subdued almost 'palm muted' sounding notes. Again with the mystery. No idea. I can't say I'd do any differently to be honest. They make the track a lot better by doing this. But why not just be honest about it? Or why not pick another song. There's plenty to choose from. Especially back before BMR came along.

Track 4 "The Wasp (Texas Radio & The Big Beat)"
This doesn't seem really suspicious at all except that there's no audience apparent. It was apparently done on some Danish television show. This really defeats the purpose of having a live album. However it did fit in well.. and I imagine it must be interesting to hear after hearing the classic "LA Woman" version first. I, myself heard this first... When one goes in expecting a live album, it's a bit confusing when there's suddenly no applause. The same goes for the next track.…

Track 5 "Love Me Two Times"
This is just a watered down version of album cut. No good reason to release it except as part of a "Television Appearances" package... and/or accompanied by video of the performance. Now THAT would be interesting.

Track 6 "Little Red Rooster"
Possibly the most relevant and genuinely live track on the entire disc, this one shows the prominent blues vibe that dominated a fair portion of the Doors later work.
Jim would often suggest this tune during performances when the group was unsure what to play next. John Sebastian would occasionally drop in on mouth-harp as he did on this version. If there were any dubs on this the vibe was kept intact very well.
I doubt there were any

Track 7 "Moonlight Drive"
The finale for this album is a good example of poetry in motion. Morrison would sometimes break into poetry during the middle bits of popular songs.. such as the graveyard poem during "Light My Fire" on this very album. Usually these poems would never surface on an official release or not until years later. The fore-mentioned "Texas Radio" is a good example of that. On this we hear poetry from the past. The seemingly random and tuneless "Horse Latitudes" from 1967's "Strange Days" record fits in all to well during the out-ro to "Moonlight Drive". Mix that in with some extended "Down down down down... go down...." jams, throw in an extra refrain and this all makes for an excellent closer to the record rather then just the old fade out.

Fade outs on live albums should be a no-no.
That is one thing I dislike about this record is that during the tracks that were actually live, the audience fades away to nothing.. and then fades back with the next number.
This makes for a disjointed listening experience and further hinders the ability to at least pretend its a live performance you're listening to. I liked on "Absolutely Live" how they would blend one into the next and it made it seem like a performance in its entirety. You knew it was edited but you could easily forget such details while listening and it gave you the feeling of actually being there.
Overall, worth buying but it could have been put together a lot better and with more honesty.
Review by Ian F. Brown from New Jersey.
From The Doors4Scorpywag September 2005 Issue

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The Doors: Alive, She Cried

WHAT WAS that he said? "No time to wallow in the mire." Tell that to the folks who have somehow managed to turn a band that had maybe eight terrific months into a mini-industry.

Is there a deep need for a live ‘Light My Fire’ with the kind of instrumental doodling that used to send the lead singer off to the wings to grab a Snickers? Has the world had enough mute nostril agony carefully refined and/or sealed over? As the skipper said to Mrs. Howell, "True sailing is dead," but that hasn't stopped people from booking cabins on the crystal ship of fools. Maybe we should be grateful that it's DePalma who's set to direct Travolta as the fictionalized Jim Morrison character in Fire; if it were Stallone, the climactic scene might have Morrison getting up on stage at Woodstock and beating the shit out of Jimi Hendrix.

Alive, She Cried isn't exactly a revelation, but it isn't the bloated embarrassment it might have been, either; in some ways it's a truer representation of the Doors on an OK night than Absolutely Live. On these recently discovered tapes there's a minimum of Morrison the poet of epic-scaled ravings. Instead, on the long-rumored Doors interpretation of ‘Gloria’, we get a candid glimpse of Morrison, master of lyrical improvisation, conducting a seduction like a job interview: "Here she is in my room. Oh, boy! Hey, what's your name? How old are you? Where'd you go to school? Uh-huh. Yeah." It must work, because moments later he's doing his Sky Saxon (c.f. the 14-minute ‘Up In Her Room’) impression: "You took me home to your house. Your father's at work. Your mom is out shopping around." As Morrison barks out gymnastic instructions – "Wrap your legs around my neck, wrap your arms around my feet, wrap your hair around my skin" – Krieger, Manzarek and Densmore just slam away with punk glee.

What else does Alive, She Cried teach us? That Jim Morrison's speaking voice was eerily like Phil Ochs's. That, like almost every other late '60s band, the Doors dug wailing on some 12-bar blues: the version of ‘Little Red Rooster’ here has John Sebastian on harmonica, and darned if the slidin'n'rollin' of Krieger and Manzarek isn't a pre-echo of the Bros. Allman. That ‘Moonlight Drive’ holds up as the quintessential Doors song, even with the interpolation of ‘Horse Latitudes’. That the Doors could also be like a west coast counterpart of Vanilla Fudge (is that a hint of ‘Eleanor Rigby’ that Krieger tosses into his ‘LMF’ solo?), only with a boho-mystic-lush out front. After Ray and Robbie have done their bit on ‘LMF’, Morrison strolls back to center stage and makes like a stoned Myron Cohen, spinning this anecdote about – what else? – a night at the graveyard when he and some buddies stumbled around in the wet dew, awaiting the milky coming of the day. "A girl got drunk and balled the dead," Morrison intones. The guy sure did know some knee-slappers.

This is lateish Doors, so Morrison's grunting is a little ragged, but the sound on Alive, She Cried is top notch, the band, especially Krieger, sprints through the familiar material – ‘Love Me Two Times’ is about as pared-down as their pop-blues songs ever got, and it's more durable than ‘The End’ (not on this LP), no matter that Coppola and Scorsese have found the latter suited to their cinematic purposes – and no Jim Morrison fan will mind his trips through "forests of azure." And within Morrison's overwrought blues bellowing just might be a clue to that infamous Miami incident. See, he meant to say, "If you see my little red rooster...," and it just came out, "You wanna see my cock?" Defense rests.

Mitchell Cohen, Creem, January 1984

[othercircles]

I think its funny that they made all taht effort to clean up Gloria and then leave the bit on LMF.......


"dread the milky cumming of the day................ FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK.........FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK..........FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK........FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK.......OHHHHH...UHHHHHHH UHHHHHHHH UHHHHHH UHHHHH

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The Doors: Alive, She Cried

WHAT WAS that he said? "No time to wallow in the mire." Tell that to the folks who have somehow managed to turn a band that had maybe eight terrific months into a mini-industry.

Is there a deep need for a live ‘Light My Fire’ with the kind of instrumental doodling that used to send the lead singer off to the wings to grab a Snickers? Has the world had enough mute nostril agony carefully refined and/or sealed over? As the skipper said to Mrs. Howell, "True sailing is dead," but that hasn't stopped people from booking cabins on the crystal ship of fools. Maybe we should be grateful that it's DePalma who's set to direct Travolta as the fictionalized Jim Morrison character in Fire; if it were Stallone, the climactic scene might have Morrison getting up on stage at Woodstock and beating the shit out of Jimi Hendrix.

Alive, She Cried isn't exactly a revelation, but it isn't the bloated embarrassment it might have been, either; in some ways it's a truer representation of the Doors on an OK night than Absolutely Live. On these recently discovered tapes there's a minimum of Morrison the poet of epic-scaled ravings. Instead, on the long-rumored Doors interpretation of ‘Gloria’, we get a candid glimpse of Morrison, master of lyrical improvisation, conducting a seduction like a job interview: "Here she is in my room. Oh, boy! Hey, what's your name? How old are you? Where'd you go to school? Uh-huh. Yeah." It must work, because moments later he's doing his Sky Saxon (c.f. the 14-minute ‘Up In Her Room’) impression: "You took me home to your house. Your father's at work. Your mom is out shopping around." As Morrison barks out gymnastic instructions – "Wrap your legs around my neck, wrap your arms around my feet, wrap your hair around my skin" – Krieger, Manzarek and Densmore just slam away with punk glee.

What else does Alive, She Cried teach us? That Jim Morrison's speaking voice was eerily like Phil Ochs's. That, like almost every other late '60s band, the Doors dug wailing on some 12-bar blues: the version of ‘Little Red Rooster’ here has John Sebastian on harmonica, and darned if the slidin'n'rollin' of Krieger and Manzarek isn't a pre-echo of the Bros. Allman. That ‘Moonlight Drive’ holds up as the quintessential Doors song, even with the interpolation of ‘Horse Latitudes’. That the Doors could also be like a west coast counterpart of Vanilla Fudge (is that a hint of ‘Eleanor Rigby’ that Krieger tosses into his ‘LMF’ solo?), only with a boho-mystic-lush out front. After Ray and Robbie have done their bit on ‘LMF’, Morrison strolls back to center stage and makes like a stoned Myron Cohen, spinning this anecdote about – what else? – a night at the graveyard when he and some buddies stumbled around in the wet dew, awaiting the milky coming of the day. "A girl got drunk and balled the dead," Morrison intones. The guy sure did know some knee-slappers.

This is lateish Doors, so Morrison's grunting is a little ragged, but the sound on Alive, She Cried is top notch, the band, especially Krieger, sprints through the familiar material – ‘Love Me Two Times’ is about as pared-down as their pop-blues songs ever got, and it's more durable than ‘The End’ (not on this LP), no matter that Coppola and Scorsese have found the latter suited to their cinematic purposes – and no Jim Morrison fan will mind his trips through "forests of azure." And within Morrison's overwrought blues bellowing just might be a clue to that infamous Miami incident. See, he meant to say, "If you see my little red rooster...," and it just came out, "You wanna see my cock?" Defense rests.

Mitchell Cohen, Creem, January 1984

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The Doors: Alive She Cried
"NOT LIVE" She Cried!

This was my first Doors record several years ago.
To me some of these versions I always think of when I listen to the album cuts. I hardly thought of it as a live album though. Really it's right up there with "Kiss Alive" as far as actually being live. As far as what I've heard combined with what my ears tell me here is a quick run down on this 1981 "Live" album.

Track 1: "Gloria"
Anyone who's heard this.. and also heard the "LIVE IN NYC" version who has any kind of ear has to notice. "Hey.... this is the exact same vocal". Sound-check my ass!!! They took the live NYC version.. redid the drums and most if not all of the keyboard and guitar part.. and moved around Jims vocal phrases toward the end so they weren't so completely off cue. Also they totally removed Rays shitty backing vocal and redid it in a layered fashion. So now it has two backing vocals. For that to be live would mean Robbie sang too and I can't say I've ever seen or heard him sing a note during the Morrison years (except the little bit during "Runnin' Blue") Even less likely he sang anything live. They have some balls officially releasing both versions and still expecting us to believe this version was just a sound-check that happened to get recorded. I don't think so guys. Unless.... I have considered the possibility that the instrumental track was indeed from a sound-check.. and maybe Jims vocal from that sucked so bad that they supplemented it with the one from the concert... or..... because Jim wasn't even at the sound-check at all. Who knows? We'll never be told the truth I'm sure. And it's not like knowing this makes me like listening to it any less. As I'm sure barely anyone else would give a crap when it was done. So why the lies? The Doors and their management confuse me sometimes. I for one think its pretty cool that they made a new song utilizing an old Jim vocal. That's much more interesting then claiming it was just some lost sound-check recording!

Track 2 "Light My Fire"
Most of us are aware that this was edited from several performances. Why? I have no idea. But at least with this one there's no big conspiracy behind it. It's an excellent mix, however I wonder why they edited the solo section so much. In order to comprise the best moments you would think? But there's a lot of clunkers and bad chords left in. Why edit to make it the best it can be and leave such obvious blunders? Again.. no clue. Maybe that was something Jim instilled in the rest of the them. The desire to just fuck with people and see how they react.

Track 3 "You Make Me Real"
A great "Morrison Hotel" number. The ASC version of this song is the first I'd ever heard and I always liked it. I never doubted it was live until I heard "Live In Hollywood" The Aquarius 1969. Here again we have a situation similar to "Gloria" The vocal on these two versions is identical. Jims vocals could not have been that identical on two performances. Most noticeable is that the guitar is considerably BETTER on the ASC version. It's more pronounced and the solo is more confident, while the original Aquarius cut is riddled with missed cues and subdued almost 'palm muted' sounding notes. Again with the mystery. No idea. I can't say I'd do any differently to be honest. They make the track a lot better by doing this. But why not just be honest about it? Or why not pick another song. There's plenty to choose from. Especially back before BMR came along.

Track 4 "The Wasp (Texas Radio & The Big Beat)"
This doesn't seem really suspicious at all except that there's no audience apparent. It was apparently done on some Danish television show. This really defeats the purpose of having a live album. However it did fit in well.. and I imagine it must be interesting to hear after hearing the classic "LA Woman" version first. I, myself heard this first... When one goes in expecting a live album, it's a bit confusing when there's suddenly no applause. The same goes for the next track.…

Track 5 "Love Me Two Times"
This is just a watered down version of album cut. No good reason to release it except as part of a "Television Appearances" package... and/or accompanied by video of the performance. Now THAT would be interesting.

Track 6 "Little Red Rooster"
Possibly the most relevant and genuinely live track on the entire disc, this one shows the prominent blues vibe that dominated a fair portion of the Doors later work.
Jim would often suggest this tune during performances when the group was unsure what to play next. John Sebastian would occasionally drop in on mouth-harp as he did on this version. If there were any dubs on this the vibe was kept intact very well.
I doubt there were any

Track 7 "Moonlight Drive"
The finale for this album is a good example of poetry in motion. Morrison would sometimes break into poetry during the middle bits of popular songs.. such as the graveyard poem during "Light My Fire" on this very album. Usually these poems would never surface on an official release or not until years later. The fore-mentioned "Texas Radio" is a good example of that. On this we hear poetry from the past. The seemingly random and tuneless "Horse Latitudes" from 1967's "Strange Days" record fits in all to well during the out-ro to "Moonlight Drive". Mix that in with some extended "Down down down down... go down...." jams, throw in an extra refrain and this all makes for an excellent closer to the record rather then just the old fade out.

Fade outs on live albums should be a no-no.
That is one thing I dislike about this record is that during the tracks that were actually live, the audience fades away to nothing.. and then fades back with the next number.
This makes for a disjointed listening experience and further hinders the ability to at least pretend its a live performance you're listening to. I liked on "Absolutely Live" how they would blend one into the next and it made it seem like a performance in its entirety. You knew it was edited but you could easily forget such details while listening and it gave you the feeling of actually being there.
Overall, worth buying but it could have been put together a lot better and with more honesty.

Review by Ian F. Brown from New Jersey.

[aztecadoors]

LMAO....Ray saying "Suck it" "Eat it... Taste it" His whistle.....
Jim signing "I'm gonna ripp ya two!"....and FUCK at the end of Gloria....they should have kept the original mix of the soundcheck.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Aug 31, 2012 19:54:02 GMT aztecadoors said:

they should have kept the original mix of the soundcheck.

There is major doubt that this EVER was a soundcheck
The Doors seem to have a default Lie Mode which they seem to prefer to just telling the truth as we fans don't really give a crap as long as we get to hear the stuff.
Rothchild was such a devious person (brilliant as he was) that he cut and pasted so much Doors stuff that nobody seems to know what is what anymore. Instead of saying 'we don't really know' they just make shit up such as the recent Bowl release where instead of just saying 'Jim's vocal on HILY was lost' they lie about 1970 versions that did not exist.
What a crazy band we worship

[porawrwi]

Fade outs on live albums should be a no-no.

ทางเข้า จีคลับ

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Creem January 1984



20-11-1983
Cumberland Sunday Times TN