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The Doors 21st Century
Oakdale Theater, Wallingford, Connecticut
April 28, 2003
Doors Show Morrison Was Not Only Star
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By JAMES CAIN
Hartford Courant Staff Writer
April 30, 2003
There was the guy in the long, black hair, tie-dyed muscle shirt and the scrawly
little mustache, looking back up at the crowd from the front row with glassy
eyes, staggering just ever so slightly. He looked right. Then there was the guy
who looked like an attorney, gray hair coifed in the beauty salon, black
mock-turtleneck jacket. And then the girls, near the front row, in short tight
black dresses, waving like sirens on a forgotten island. Then the boom-humba-thaw,
boom-thumba-thaw of "Love Me Two Times."
It was a Doors concert again, 30 years after the legendary New Haven
performance, absent the sweet, acrid smell of pot, or tobacco, or rebellion, or
the arrest of the lead singer for obscenity.
So the concert Monday night at the careerbuilder.com Oakdale Theatre in
Wallingford was a little flat at times, but the old music works better than
ever, particularly when Robbie Krieger takes the helm and proves that in "The
End," the best artist in the bunch wasn't the late Jim Morrison the poet and
ladies man, but Krieger the self-effacing musician.
The band opened with "Roadhouse Blues," and most songs were greatly extended
from the little over 2-minute Top-40 versions that pushed the band to the
forefront, of first the Los Angeles band-scene and then the fracturing nation in
the early '70s. It was
the long version of "Light My Fire" that helped ignite FM radio.
Ian Astbury, from Cult, filled in as Morrison and did admirably well in
re-creating the oft-screaming poet. His "Save Our City, Save Our City" lines,
from "When the Music's Over," seemed full of the expected anthem-driven angst.
His sulking hulk during solos by other musicians and the windmill, spinning
dance were Morrison trademarks. Astbury did a creditable job with the ballad
"The Crystal Ship," a beautiful respite in a mostly flame-broiled show.
Ray Manzarek was still bright on "Light My Fire," and some of the other
signature piano and organ solos of the Doors' early work, but a couple of new
songs worked into the mix were just a little too breezy for the general tenor of
a Doors show.
The audience, though fidgety through the new stuff, was enthusiastic, loud and
greeted each new old song (intros were artfully rearranged so as to keep old
heads as fuzzy as possible) with wild applause. For an older crowd, it stayed on
its feet a long
time.
Krieger was the stalwart of the show. His extraordinary guitar work, playing
piano-like chords over lead licks, sparkled, and he drove "L.A. Woman" into the
night streets with the determination and horror the song demands.
The last encore? Well, could it be anything other than "Peace Frog," and "Blood
on the Streets in the town of New Haven?"
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(thanks, Steve)
return to Ida's
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