THE DOORS PLAY AT COLORADO SPRINGS: THE BOOTLEG

 

The day after The Doors' controversial performance in Ann Arbor (Michigan,) on October 21, 1967, the group stopped for a date in the town of Colorado Springs on its way to California.

This concert takes place about a month after the release of the band's second LP ("Strange Days"). The venue was a hotel ballroom and the evening attracted a medium sized crowd.

The setting was elegant, as can be seen in a photoof the evening, providing a strange and unlikely backdrop for the band's brief performance.

In fact, the live recording from that night lasts only twenty-one minutes, with the following songs played in this order: "Break On Through (To The Other Side)", "People Are Strange", "Back Door Man" and finally the sequence "Wake Up" + "Light My Fire".

The concert should not have lasted much longer and luckily a bootleg of the show does exist.

Despite its poor audio quality, it is a document that is still very important to cover a period in which The Doors did not record official live performances.

The music we can hear here (among the audience and the tape noise) seems to be played with passion, resulting in a more than good performance.

A live show that erased the memory of the crazy events of the previous night in Ann Arbor.

Especially noteworthy is Ray Manzarek's electric organ solo on "Break On Through" (at the beginning of the bootleg). It is an elusive musical passage, but one that hints to Indian music; an element which, although fashionable at the time, was quite unusual for this composition.

Anyway, what really stood out in the Colorado Springs show was the version of "Light My Fire" that the group played that night.

The solos that make up the middle section of the song were of excellent quality, with a significant dose of experimentation and improvisation adding to their artistic value.

The piece ends with the audience joining Morrison in singing the famous final verses of the song. A circumstance that cannot be heard so clearly in any other live performance of the band, and which was captured on tape due to the close proximity between the audience and the musicians.

In addition, "Light My Fire" was punctuated by Morrison's harsh incantations and wild screams, which made the overall mood all the more exciting, authentic and intriguing.

Among the tracks from the band's recent album ("Strange Days"), only "People Are Strange" found its way onto this bootleg.

This is not too strange, as tracks from the first LP ("The Doors", January '67) were usually favored in The Doors’ concerts.

This bootleg is worth listening to if you want to immerse yourself in the musical climate The Doors created in the weeks immediately following the release of "Strange Days".

Weeks that were as artistically unforgettable as they were unfortunately stingy with live recordings of good audio quality.