Ray Manzarek performed to a full house on Saturday night (October 14, 2006) at the Throckmorton Theater in Mill Valley, California (just north of San Francisco).  It was the last night before the closing of the Mill Valley Film Festival.  My friend Beverly and I attended the show.

The Throckmorton Theater is a charming little theater that will packed in both the orchestra section and the balcony.  The program began at 9:00 with an introduction and then the showing of Ray's UCLA student film, "Evergreen."  (That film and Ray's other student film, "Induction," can be found on The Doors Collection DVD.)   Next we heard a 1967 interview with Jim, followed by a film collage of photographs and performance clips.

At 9:45 three chairs were moved to center stage.  Writers Paul Liberatore and Ben Fong-Torres were introduced, along with Ray, for discussion and interview.  Ben Fong-Torres recapped that he did the last interview with Jim Morrison before Jim left for Paris, and then wrote the Rolling Stone obituary a few months later.  He also talked about how he came to be involved in the soon-to-be-released coffee table book, 'The Doors By The Doors.'   While talking about the book project, Ray was leafing through the book and  pointing out photos to the audience.

Ray mentioned that he has written an autobiography along with two novels ('Poet In Exile' and 'Snake Moon'.)  He said he is researching another book but it won't be out for awhile.  He told some Doors stories and answered questions from the other two.  This portion of the program ended at 10:30.  There was a brief intermission while instruments were moved into place on the stage.  At 10:45 the performance part of the program began.  Joining Ray were Michael McClure reading poetry and haikus, Rob Wasserman on skip bass, Alan Sitar Brown on sitar, and Larry Kassim on flute.