Tickets There wouldn’t normally be ones for tribute bands, but then again The Doors Alive are not your average cover act. We were fortunate enough to catch one of their packed midnight shows at the Academy a few years back and instantly became fans.
For those that weren’t alive (no pun intended) when the Doors were going, this is the closest you’ll ever get. All members invoke the spirit of the Doors music and relay that through their performance. You won’t catch them delivering note perfect renditions of the albums but instead they relay the sounds and experience of a genuine Doors show from the late sixties. There are no cheap gimmicks and Mr. Morrison manages to keep things in his trousers! What you get is a couple of hours of brilliant Doors classics for an excellent band.
Not to be missed – September 14th @ The Academy. Stage time (looks like) 8pm and it’ll only you cost you €15.
Ohhhh wow, so much killer rock here you’ll go mental. Back from the pub? looking for some unbelievably savage tracks to start the buzz for MJ passing time?? Load em all, listen in order and enjoy. Damn it folks, Tickets There wants a radio show!
I always hated The Doors. Generally when I hate a band it means I’ve given them their time and tried several times to enjoy them because I hate it when I’m wrong so I like to really give things my all before passing such an extreme judgment. Believe it or not I do have three or four Radiohead albums because I was told after I’d listen to each one that such a one was better and you know what, they weren’t. I also have two Coldplay albums because I wanted to believe the hype and turned out I was right from the beginning about them too. The Doors however are a different story. I hadn’t ever given them a chance and the main song I knew, Light My Fire, was a little boring for my tastes. Then one faithful summer they found me.
I was staying at a friend’s house for a few weeks during the summer of 04 (all those years ago J) and he played the Doors constantly. After a few days of this and then a screening of the movie to help persuade me, I finally gave in. I wouldn’t say I turned total fanatic but just enough to make me buy every album over the following year and give each ones a good grilling. Honestly I never really picked a flat out favorite and only for the sake of this review have I picked their 67 self titled debut, The Doors.
If you don’t like the Doors yet, then opening song Break on Through will go along way in convincing you of their greatness. I’m not going to say it’s a full on, stampeding chaotic master piece because that just doesn’t do it justice…but it is all those things. It’s so full of energy and quiet / loud changes with underlining D word themes a go go. In sharp contrast, Soul Kitchen is everything the tin promises. A relaxed, stripped back verse of simple guitar and piano melodies with Jims voices croaking in the background before everything collapses together for a foot stomping chorus. At times it sounds like Johns drumming is too fast for Robby’s guitars and Ray’s keyboards but oddly enough, it all works perfectly. The Crystal Ship slips even further into the albums melon collie state. Jim’s deep voice booms over the music, haunting every change and note the band play. It’s no secret that a lot of the love people have for the Doors also relies heavily on the myths, stories and a general love for Morrison himself. He’s one of music’s true icons, appealing to people in all walks of life…except those who just don’t like him off course.
Twentieth Century Fox wouldn’t be one of my favorite tracks. It’s very plain compared to the albums first three songs and falls a little on its face amidst a mess of guitars and organ melodies. Alabama Song(Whiskey Bar), a cover of a Bertolt Brecht’s song (I’ve never heard of him either, don’t worry ;), is without a doubt one of the funniest songs they’ve ever recorded and could easily be used a sea chantey in the next Pirates or, if you’re like me, you have walked home many times from the pub singing this at full volume. Light My Fire follows and ya know…it’s good. Personally I think seven minutes was a bit much and the guys don’t really pull it off but many, many others would strenuously disagree so it depends from fan to fan. Back Door Man (written by Willie Dixon) on the other hand is one of the best songs they’ve ever recorded. Since it’s another cover, I won’t praise it too much in words or it may overshadow the other tracks I’ve written about….but god it’s a savage song.
I Looked At You sounds like something The Beatles could easily have come up with but still manages to retain some of the Doors quality. Not incredibly great but simple, fun pop. After all, many people forget the Doors did start of as a more a pop group than the bluesy poets they turned into. End of the Night is more of a definitive Doors piece. Broken melodies, slow changes, hits of spiraling melodies…etc. Again it’s not amazing but there’s more Doors atmosphere here than many of the songs. The best way you can describe a truly Doors-esque song is broken music and Jims lyrics. The sort of atmospheric, incoherent yet hauntingly good music they play in seedy L.A. bars at 4:00 in the morning. Take It As it Comes is one of the better tracks at the end of the album. The lyrics are bogged down in Jims over thinking and the music flows extremely well. Ray’s keyboards belt away behind Johns crashing drums and Jims iconic vocals.
I lied, I lied about End of the Night. It is not a definitive Doors classic. Not compared to the albums final track, The End. While its style is pretty general for the Doors, it is nowhere near as far reaching, over blown and mind bendingly good as The End. The lyrics represent a peak Morrison always strived for with his music. The band comes together more here than anywhere else on the record, despite the hap hazard sound. The entire group seems to spiral off in their own little tangents, all at the same time yet they seem to pull together like waves and re-group momentarily before drifting apart again. Jims voice is once again the glue holding everything together and the song loses all sense of time and structure. The music repeats and repeats but never gets stale. Jims vocals become more and more prominent at the song moves along culminating in his screams referencing the Oedipus complex.
If you give the Doors time, it’s very hard to hate them. If you like Rock n roll, folk, pop or blues, the Doors have something for you and it’s good. Jim may be long gone, or just hiding somewhere but his music and the band’s music is still very much alive and ready for any curious new generations that are willing to open their mind and experience what music drove a generation to throw up their arms and say ‘No’ when it counted.
What happened folks? In the mid 50’s, Mr. Elvis A. Presley walked into Sun Studios in Memphis, Tennessee and became the very first, the best, the symbol, legend, embodiment and icon of rock n roll. Like Sid Vicious to Punk, Frank Sinatra to big band, Johnny Cash to country and western or even Dana to lunatics, Elvis was the total hero, founder and creator of rock n roll. Don’t listen to music nerds, geeks and critics (ahem), Elvis started everything. Forget who influenced him, forget who wrote for him and forget who marketed him, Elvis was it.
Ever since the Kings death, music has flourished through the efforts, talents and hard work, creativity of various people and constant changes in popular culture. From Elvis, Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis in the fifties, rock expanded and produced the likes of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks and many others throughout the early sixties. Before long Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, The Yardbirds, Jimi Hendrix, Cream and many more appeared. The Doors came out of the west coast.The Who went rock, Led Zeppelin were formed and Jefferson Airplane stayed touring after Woodstock. Just before things could get civilized, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple came out. Queen, Clapton, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Stooges, Alice Cooper, T-Rex, KISS,…the list is endless people. Then came the 80’s, when pop reached a true peak before the ever looming wave of commercialism took it’s firm grip and strangled the genre, until it’s credibility was lower than Gary Glitters. On the other hand you had Iron Maiden, Metallica, Megadeth, Guns N Roses, Def Leppard, Whitesnake, U2, Judas Priest, OZZY, Slayer, Sepultura, before the end of the decade when Nirvana, The Chilli Peppers, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Blur, Oasis, The Stone Roses, The Smashing Pumpkins, The Smiths, The Pixies, Joy Division, The Happy Mondays, New Order (yes the 24 lot), Faith No More, Nine Inch Nails and then (phew this is a long one) onto Marilyn Manson, The Foo Fighters, Weezer, Korn and so on before the late nineties and boom…nothing happened……funnily enough, fuck all has happened since. How in the hell did almost five decades of amazing, astonishing and diverse creation suddenly grind to an almost complete stop?
Things seemed to fall completely off course. Metal bands suddenly merged rapidly with dance music and rap. Korn had dabbled but so did Aersomith and nothing happened to them. Instead of Angus Young and the D belting out solid, hard hitting blues rock anthems you had fat ugly guys in costumes roaring at you about being bullied and still being virgins living in their mothers houses. Metro sexual, stylish geeks whining on about falling and crying about some girl next door that Lemmy would probably kidnap and turn into a hooker on sun-set before the night’s out. These guys in fitted suits, wearing ties with spiky hair, tattoos and dog collars were mixing Kraftwork with the eighties glam rockers like Twisted Sister, Poison and the likes while wearing their hair like girls. And I don’t mean the old style of hairy bikers drooling over a bar counter girly style, I mean a female hairdresser on a night out style. Like they were trying to keep disobeying the nagging disapproval from generations past and pushing things to some ridiculous limit that nearly goes full circle.
As for Pop music, that fell into the hands of TV companies, dance got old and turned into some demented, hindered state of destruction while indie music became overwhelmed by a horde of Eco-Friendly, Voices of poverty, injustice, animal cruelty and environmentally conscious millennium hippies. Voices that turned away from Indies recreational drug use, love and loss, party image and transformed it into a voice for all the issues in the world rock stars shouldn’t give two shits about, at least not on stage. The likes of Tom Yorke, Chris Martin, Bono, Snow Patrol, Kings of Leon, Kasabian and all that other horse shit. Their songs were so impotent, corpses of tax attorneys could laugh at them. Complaining, moaning and whining about the poverty and cruelty in the world they wouldn’t think of donating their profits to. Bands that appeal to societies total dregs. Bored children, housewife’s, grandparents, indie fans, jocks and just about every member of the heard the western world boasts. Droning brought to extremes of the human soul to a point it becomes so bogged down in ego, insincerity and boredom it would fail to shock a timid kitten.
Metal fell even more of the pits as the old genres piled up with hopeless hack impersonators before bursting at the seems into millions of decaying breakaways. Nu-Metal even buckled (not a bad thing, pile of shite aswell) as Emo broke through their last stand along with nu-punk and metal became even more appealing to the ugly, fat rejects of social society and the fashionable, jock culture more than ever before. After Radiohead’sCreep on the jukebox American Idiot and the Killers would follow and all the trendy’s and Goths alike would bop along. Metal was again infiltrated by main stream culture and unlike before the last ‘icons’ weren’t strong enough to tear it right back for the people of society who used the music as it should be used. Not for pusses crying and ugly nerds to find shelter. Metal is the music for the angry soul (sounds gay I know but hey, I am smoking in case you hadn’t noticed), the serious partiers, the ‘dangerous’ people of society.
Rock N roll lost it’s fight much earlier. After the Guns N Roses era came to a close, few rock bands ever managed to reach those heights again. Don’t even bother with the Killers and The Kings of Leon…or The Strokes bitch. I’m talking about real fucking n roll. The kind of rock n roll that made all the bad things bands these days demonize like drinking, sex, destruction, rebellion and a good hearty message of Fuck You to anyone who bothered them, fun!. Elvis shock things up, the Stones defined it, Aerosmith brought it miles higher while AC/DC put the fucking boots on before Guns N Roses perfected it in every single sense of the word.
The world is losing it’s icons. Right now I can’t think of any that have come out since the early nineties. I mean a true icon of rebellion. Pete Doherty, and Amy Winehouse make a mockery of drug addicted musicians which, throughout the history of music, have written some of the most amazing music ever created. The Beatles, Jim Morrison, The Grateful Dead, Hendrix, Keith Richards, Janis Joplin, Kobain etc. Bono, Yorke and Martin take the places of people like Neil Young with his stories, Springsteen and his zest for life and Bowies ever changing persona, image and style only to replace it with gilt tripping, giver of life wannabe humanitarian ideologist façade while they doge taxes and pontificate to fans what they should do, wear, believe in, live and breath. Forget ‘think for yourself’, the message was spelled out in bold impact lettering and strangely enough, a discontented mass fell for it, hook line and sinker.
That’s pretty much where we are in my eyes. I’ve forgotten many of the previous generation’s true greats but there’s only so much you can write in an hour and keep semi-coherent. I’ve also neglected some of the better talents to emerge on the international scene and some of the worse ones. Arcade Fire and MGMT to name a couple. But that’s how I see things, pretty much that black and white. Most of the old styles got confused, disjointed, lost in translation and overwhelmed in image, style and forced restrictions and beliefs and turned them into uninspired shells of their former selves. I’m not saying charity is bad, I’m not saying there’s no credibility in any of the new bands these days and I’m not saying looking after the environment is wrong, animals should be mistreated, people shouldn’t be nice to each other and drugs are good. I believe the exact opposite of each one and a conscious attitude is essential to the basic fabrication of mankind’s cohabitation together and civilized society. What I’m saying is people should learn this from other sources like parents and a proper education rather than one of mankind’s forms of entertainment. Aren’t we allowed to relax, switch totally off and dream sometimes with the horrors of some societies and the worlds problems being shoved in our face at every fucking turn?
Maybe there was one message spelt out by one of the golden age icons that we should listen to is the words of Jim Morrison.
“When the music’s over, turn out the lights, turn out the lights,”
Tickets There wouldn’t normally be ones for tribute bands, but then again The Doors Alive are not your average cover act. We were fortunate enough to catch one of their packed midnight shows at the Academy a few years back and instantly became fans.
'Ticket's There' - Irish and International Music Blog 