Oil Well Bootlegs - RSC CD: Jim Morrison & The Doors - Mystery Train

Jim Morrison & The Doors - Mystery Train
Oil Well RSC CD 097

1 Who Do You Love 7:37
2 Someday Soon 3:35
3 Peace Frog 3:44
4 Alabama Song 2:00
5 Backdoor Man 2:21
6 Five To One 6:17
7 Light My Fire #1 11:13
8 Fever 4:39
9 Light My Fire #2 2:19
10 Build Me A Woman 3:44
11 When The Music's Over 12:18

Note:
All songs by Morrison/Manzarek/Krieger/Densmore unlesss noted.
~~Live in St. Petersburg, FL - January 19, 1970~~

Tracks 1,5,7,8,9,11 recorded live at Pacific Coliseum, Vancouver, Canada, June 6th 1970
Track 2 recorded live at Seattle Center Coliseum, Seattle, WA, June 5th 1970
Tracks 3,4,6,10 recorded live at Felt Forum, New York, NY, January 18th 1970, late show

Lineup:
Jim Morrison - vocals
Ray Manzarek - organ, keyboard bass
Robby Krieger - guitars
John Densmore - drums
Albert King - guitar on "Who Do You Love"

This album is a copy of Collectors Items (IBR 2395), which was also disc two in the double CD set
The Last Farewell (Vivid Sound Productions VSP 51001/2).
This is a limited edition of 200 copies only. The sound quality is above average, but the material is very common. This release is definitely for the collector who must have everything.
Back cover says "live in St. Petersburg, FL - January 19, 1970" but it's a wrong date.
It contians some tracks from three different concert of 1970 tour: Seattle Center Coliseum, Seattle, WA, June 5th 1970, Pacific Coliseum, Vancouver, Canada, June 6th 1970 and Felt Forum, New York, NY, January 18th 1970, late show.

Audio quality:
Quality content:

© Official released material:
Tracks 1,5,7,8,9,11 have been released officially on: Live in Vancouver 1970 by Bright Midnight Archives/Rhino.

Tracks 3,4,6,10 have been released officially on: Live In New York, Felt Forum, January 17-18, 1970 (2009)
______________________________________________________________________

The Doors live in Vancouver 1970
Live in Vancouver 1970 is a two-disc live album by the American rock band the Doors. The album was released from the Bright Midnight Archives collection which contains a number of previously unreleased live concerts by the Doors. It was recorded at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver, British Columbia, on June 6, 1970. The band were joined by guitar legend Albert King on four songs; Willie Dixon’s "Little Red Rooster", the Motown classic "Money" and the blues standards "Rock Me" and "Who Do You Love?".

The concert was four months into the band's 1970 Roadhouse Blues Tour. Vince Treanor, the Doors’ tour manager, recorded the show for the band on a Sony reel-to-reel machine using two microphones placed on the stage. While not a multi track high fidelity recording, it is clean, quiet and clear recording.

The blues master Albert King opened for The Doors in Vancouver June 6, 1970, The Doors asked him to jam with them for four blues standards, they were only months away from starting the recording of L.A. Woman in the fall of that year. And from the versions of the songs The Doors played “Live in Vancouver” it seems they already had the blues on their minds.

"We were all blues boys. We had all gone to the south side of Chicago, which appeared magically in Vancouver, Canada. And we're playing the blues. We're a blues band on the south side of Chicago playing with Albert King. Great night, absolutely great, had a fine time."
When asked if the band rehearsed with Albert King, Manzarek laughed and said, "Hell no! Are you kidding. What are we playing? The blues...is no problem."

Doors in Vancouver
There was some experimenting going on in Vancouver. The Doors were seemed to be pushing the limits of rock or at least stretching those limits between rock and the blues. At first it sounds like the Vancouver show is more sedate (not sedated) than the Felt Forum shows a few months prior. Upon a closer listening you can see The Doors were going for more of a bluesy feeling than a hard rock sound, and explains why Morrison, in introducing Albert King gives a quick tutorial to the audience about the two main indigenous forms of American music blues and country coming together in rock `n’ roll, he`s tipping the audience off as to what they’re doing.

Ray Manzarek, the Doors' keyboardist recalled the concert as "A large audience, lights shining in my eyes, can't see the audience... The Doors are excited because Albert King is coming onstage, so we played great. Then Albert comes on, and we played even better. We played dark and deep and funky. Morrison was just transfixed by Albert King's manual dexterity and adroitness on the guitar, so he was in blues-boy heaven.
The instrumentals in most of the songs highlights the bluesy feeling such as in “5-1” and “Light My Fire.” While they didn’t change the song substantially, during the instrumental of “Light My Fire” Morrison comes in using “St. James Infirmary” as a starting point and slips in some bucolic, blues tinged imagery from “Porgy and Bess” to highlight the bluesier aspects of The Doors usual repertoire “the fish were jumping, and the cotton is high.” What band today of the same calibre as The Doors would or could risk such onstage experimentation?

That’s not to say The Doors didn’t delve into their psychedelic roots they played “When The Music’s Over” and an interesting rendition of The End. Early in their career The Doors were interested in dissonance for their experimental journeys, in Vancouver they show that assonance had taken over their experimental interest. The End in Vancouver is a mature rendering of that song, it isn’t as frantic as earlier versions, The Doors let it play out like a noir film, Morrison stacking the familiar images upon each other, until the dramatic crashing climax, creating a movie for the mind of the audience.

Special surprise, Albert King
Albert King played four songs with the band onstage, “Little Red Rooster,” “Money,” “Rock Me,” and “Who Do You Love.” King’s solos on these songs, like the rest of the CD doesn’t display a lot of unnecessary pyrotechnics but is solid playing all the way through.
I’ve been to a lot of rock concerts and listened have listened to a lot of live albums but none of those seem to have the context or coherence that The Doors were able to imbue into their best shows, and this is one of their best.

These Bright Midnight releases are great for fans like me who didn’t have the connections to get bootlegs, or weren’t’ collectors but still longed to hear the shows they’ve long heard about. The Bright Midnight releases are like raiding The Doors archives without having to worry about the quality, the sound is crisp and clear. The liner notes give you some background right from The Doors’ own pens that’s more reliable than second generation legend. “The Doors Live in Vancouver” will make a nice addition to your collection.