i went, mostly because from the ages of 13-15, the doors and the cult were my two favorite bands. i figured this show was going to be awful, but not in the musical sense...more in the tastelessness sense. it's obvious they are doing it for the money, but that doesn't necessarily mean a show can't be entertaining.
well, i have to say that i was pleasantly surprised at their overall performance. IMO, robbie krieger was always the most interesting musical aspect of the band, though we shouldn't short-change ray manzarek's or john densmore's skills. krieger has an inimitable style and last night proved that he hasn't lost his touch. his solo during "when the music's over" was as great as anything i've seen this year. manzarek was in decent form, but couldn't reproduce the sounds/textures of his original playing (whereas krieger mostly did). ian astbury is a ham, but we already knew that. the guy's voice is as close to morrison's as it gets, and he had the arrogant rock-star moves down to a tee. i don't know who the rhythm section was, but they were serviceable.
what mostly sucked was the banter between songs. astbury attempted to go out on a limb by spouting spontaneous jibberish, like morrison used to do, but it mostly fell flat. then again, morrison's jibberish was arguably the shakiest aspect of the band anyways. 90% of the time it was pretentious babble, and 10% of the time he said something genuinely striking and provocative (and i'm probably being liberal with 10%). manzarek's commentary was trite and tried way too hard to appear youthful and relevant (quips about the iraq war, etc).
the funniest part of the show was when manzarek was talking about getting sued by densmore, and he didn't show any restraint in calling densmore out. there's obvious bad blood and hatred there. at the end of the day, i'm sure ray is pretty happy about his paycheck.
they played these songs (in chronological order, not actual):
break on through
the alabama song
light my fire
back door man
love me two times
moonlight drive
when the music's over
five to one
touch me
wild child
roadhouse blues
peace frog
the changeling
l.a. woman
riders on the storm
the crowd mostly consisted of fiftyish burnt-out hippies and drunken obnoxious fratboys and their girlfriends. i didn't see much deviation from that in demographic (no minorities, indie rockers, metalheads, etc), probably because the old hippies and drunken fratboys have less problems parting with $55 to see half of the doors.
now off to see 40% of "the new york dolls"...
