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Rating: The Doors Live in Boston. Or the other side of the coin.
Many, many live recordings of The Doors have been released over the years. We've enjoyed the wonders of the New York and Matrix shows, been satisfied with the excellent Pittsburgh, and recently even a bit disappointed by the last -anonymous- Vancouver live; a release that made many think that The Doors' archives are now a barrel from which it's hard to scrape anything else worth publishing beyond what has already been given. Especially if we continue to delve into that 1970, a year of highs but especially many lows in concert terms.
Speaking of lows, the Boston live is undoubtedly the bottom among all those ever released by the band. The three discs that make up the (wonderful) Rhino box set document a night that can only be described as disastrous.
Jim Morrison is completely drunk and gives way to his "evil" alter ego Jimbo; the two shows become a runway on which the leader of The Doors stumbles awkwardly and defiantly, heedless of the audience and his three bandmates whom he constantly risks putting in trouble. Jim messes around cheerfully, yells into the microphone, fails to sing entire verses, and ruins pieces like "Break On Through to the Other Side" or "When the Music's Over". For their part, Manzarek, Densmore, and Krieger perform admirably, and their long instrumental improvisations serve to salvage what can be salvaged from the show (exceptional are those of "Light My Fire" from the first disc, or "Break on Through" from the second): all this, however, is not enough to recover a performance inevitably destined to be a failure as big as a house. The show is no longer about the songs but about Morrison's constant provocations to the audience, his violent instigations that stir up the arena. And even the closure does not succeed properly: due to Morrison's ramblings, which make every piece much longer than usual, the performance drags on too long until, during "Been Down So Long", the power has to be cut to prevent (as Jim "promised") the show from going on until the following morning.
At this point, I wonder what prompted Rhino to release such a live recording. Certainly not the musical quality, on that we agree. But then what? Evidently, the usefulness of this box set lies in showing for the first time what this dark side of The Doors really was, what could happen when the fate of the band was placed in the hands of a completely erratic and uncontrollable Jim. Because naturally, The Doors were often and gladly also this, not a band with legendary performances but a group completely at the mercy of their leader's mood swings.
A Lizard King without a crown, ready to have the plug pulled once and for all.
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