The Doors – Moonlight drive Oil Well – RSC 115 CD

The Doors – Moonlight Drive
Oil Well – RSC 115 CD

1 Twentieth Century Fox 2:59
2 Moonlight Drive 6:41
3 Summer's Almost Gone 3:53
4 Unhappy Girl 4:12
5 Woman 8:36
6 Break On Through 4:25
7 Light My Fire 8:36
8 The End 14:29

Note
All songs by Morrison/Mankzarek/Krieger/Densmore unless noted.
Live in San Francisco, CA - March 7, 1967 - Vol.2

Tracks 1-6 recorded live at the Matrix, 7 Mar 1967,
Tracks 7-8 recorded live at Matrix 10 mar 1967

Lineup:
Jim Morrison - vocals
Ray Manzarek - keyboards, piano, organ, vocals
John Densmore - drums
Robby Krieger - guitars

This album is a digital copy of disc two from The Complete Matrix Club Tapes.
Due to its rarity and good quality, this disc is recommended.
On the front cover two pictures of The Doors, one from the Morrison Hotel photo session.
Please note that  track 5 here noted as Woman is a medley of: Me And The Devil Blues/Sittin' Here Thinkin'/Rock Me Baby

Audio quality: 

Quality content: 

 © Official released material:
This bootleg has been released officially as Live at the Matrix 1967 in 2008 by Rhino - Bright Midnight Archives and as  Live At The Matrix 1967 The Original Masters (2023 Elektra – 603497835911, Rhino R2 698484) 3CDS
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 Live at the Matrix 1967 - BBC Review
So long after their explosive heyday The Doors and Jim Morrison retain their gold-standard of cool. Like all major acts they’ve been incorporated, corporatized and accessorised to the nth degree – a pair of Doors-branded Coverse All-Stars anyone? Of course not everyone however buys into the myth of Morrison as the epitome of rock n' roll shaman dispensing visionary wisdom. As David Crosby caustically wrote about such myth-making in his 1998 CPR song, Morrison, "I've seen the movie and it wasn't like that."Strip away the fables surrounding Morrison and The Doors and what are we left with? The answer, or at least something approaching part of it, tantalisingly hovers in and out of view on this 2 CD live bootleg.

Although these tapes will be well known by hardcore Doors fans, this is the first time they’ve seen the official light of day. Massaged into life by Bruce Botnik (engineer on those original Paul Rothschild produced albums), they offer a glimpse, as Ray Manzarek observes, of the band having fun. Playing a sizable chunk of their first album and half of their follow up record (yet to be laid down in a studio), the rest of the set is upholstered with a few greasy-spoon standards.
Just a few weeks on from the release of their debut, word about the band’s impending canonisation does not appear to have reached the handful of punters who turned up to Marty Balin’s nightclub in San Francisco, and who can be heard offering only the politest of applause between numbers.
Without the catalyst of audience reaction and in the face of such indifference, the sparks rarely fly and despite Manzarek's assertion about the extent to which this meant the band could stretch out and experiment, we have a performance that only occasionally smoulders, never quite ever catching fire. In truth, ther'’s little evidence here of a group that matches essayist Joan Didion’s description of The Doors as "the Norman Mailers of the Top Forty, missionaries of apocalyptic sex." Morrison’s celebrated "wardrobe malfunction" was still a couple of years off

Though he would become the patron saint of the rock-star-in-leather-trousers look, here Morrison stands awkwardly at the microphone oozing something between lounge-singer schmaltz and half-hearted karaoke chutzpah that’s a few shot-glasses short on Dutch courage.
Die-hard Morrisonologists will however be cheered by the inclusion of alternate words grasped from his poetic writings and scattered about in songs such as a pulsing cover of the old Them stomper, Gloria and their sinuous classic, The End.

With Kreiger's blazing guitar solo on When The Music's Over, and Manzarek's faux-classical noodling, there's a lot of potential waiting to be called upon. However, at The Matrix we’re in the company of a somewhat quaint and reserved bar band, prone to stretches of timorous research, rather than anyone dropping their trousers in the face of the establishment. That would all come later and with it, quite literally in the case of The Doors, the stuff of legend.

Who are The Doors
The Doors, one of the most influential and controversial rock bands of the 1960s, were formed in Los Angeles in 1965 by UCLA film students Ray Manzarek, keyboards, and Jim Morrison, vocals; with drummer John Densmore and guitarist Robby Krieger. The group never added a bass player, and their sound was dominated by Manzarek's electric organ work and Morrison's deep, sonorous voice, with which he sang and intoned his highly poetic lyrics. The group signed to Elektra Records in 1966 and released its first album, The Doors, featuring the hit "Light My Fire," in 1967. Like "Light My Fire," the debut album was a massive hit, and endures as one of the most exciting, groundbreaking recordings of the psychedelic era. Blending blues, classical, Eastern music, and pop into sinister but beguiling melodies, the band sounded like no other.

With his rich, chilling vocals and somber poetic visions, Morrison explored the depths of the darkest and most thrilling aspects of the psychedelic experience. Their first effort was so stellar, in fact, that the Doors were hard-pressed to match it, and although their next few albums contained a wealth of first-rate material, the group also began running up against the limitations of their recklessly disturbing visions. By their third album, they had exhausted their initial reservoir of compositions, and some of the tracks they hurriedly devised to meet public demand were clearly inferior to, and imitative of, their best early work.

Long available on bootleg, Live at the Matrix captures the Doors in the period just before Light My Fire made them stars. Here they perform their debut, some blues standards and much of what would become Strange Days in a near-empty LA nightclub. There's a ghostly, eerie atmosphere as storming renditions of Soul Kitchen and The Crystal Ship are met with polite applause. Although Back Door Man hints at sexual deviance, Jim Morrison has not yet discovered the Dionysian power that made him such an explosive (if excessive) performer; he sounds focused, innocent and eager. The instrumental flights of Ray Manzarek, John Densmore and Robbie Krieger show the Doors were a mighty force even without him, although Morrison's poetry and ad-libs dwelling on death hint at what's to come.

The Doors’ ‘Live at the Matrix'

By March of 1967, the Doors had been in existence for the better part of two years and their eponymous debut album had been out for two months. But the record—which would ultimately spend more than two years on Billboard’s Hot 100, peaking at No. 2—still hadn’t charted. Moreover, the release of its big No. 1 single, “Light My Fire,” was still more than three months away.

As such, the band was little known when it took the stage for five nights—March 7 to 11—at San Francisco’s tiny but important Matrix Club, where acts like the Velvet Underground and Jefferson Airplane also played. The venue could seat about 120 but was reportedly almost empty for the Doors shows, two of which were recorded by Peter Abram, who co-owned the club with the Airplane’s Marty Balin.

A couple of tracks from these recordings—which were among the first of the quartet’s concerts to be preserved on tape—appeared on The Doors: Box Set in 1997, and a two-CD 2008 release featured 24 of the songs that had been taped. However, these albums did not draw on the original master tapes. And while there have also been bootlegs, these have evidenced inferior sound quality as well. Those shortcomings are addressed on the new Live at the Matrix 1967, a limited-edition three-CD (or five-LP) set that is drawn from the first-generation seven-inch tape reels and includes all 37 songs that Abram recorded. Eight of them were previously unreleased, while most of the others have not previously been available from first-generation tapes (though 15 such tracks were offered as Record Store Day vinyl exclusives in 2017 and 2018).
The program, which runs well over three hours and includes two complete shows, is wide-ranging. It embraces eight of the 11 songs from the Doors’ debut LP, among them “The Crystal Ship,” “Light My Fire,” “Twentieth Century Fox,” and two versions each of “Alabama Song (Whisky Bar),” “Back Door Man,” “Break on Through,” “The End,” and “Soul Kitchen.” Also featured are early versions of six of the 10 tracks that would show up on Strange Days, whose release was still more than half a year away: “Unhappy Girl,” plus two renditions each of “I Can’t See Your Face,” “Moonlight Drive,” “My Eyes Have Seen You,” “People Are Strange,” and “When the Music’s Over.” In addition, there are two readings of “Summer’s Almost Gone,” which wouldn’t surface on disc until nearly a year and a half later with the release of Waiting for the Sun.

That’s not all. The setlists include a variety of blues and R&B covers, among them Willie Dixon’s “Close to You,” John Lee Hooker’s “Crawling King Snake,” Van Morrison’s “Gloria,” James Moore’s “I’m a King Bee,” Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love,” B.B. King’s “Rock Me Baby,” and Allen Toussaint’s “Get Out of My Life Woman.” Believe it or not, the Doors also offer an instrumental take on “Summertime,” the George Gershwin and Dorothy and Dubose Heyward standard.

Perhaps most intriguing are previously unheard instrumental covers of two jazz numbers, Miles Davis’s “All Blues” and Milt Jackson’s “Bags’ Groove,” both of which incorporate elements of the Doors’ trademark sound. As for the group’s original material, most of it features arrangements, instrumentation, and vocals that are not far removed from what you hear on the now well-known studio recordings. There are exceptions, though, such as on “Light My Fire,” which in the Matrix version is missing the Ray Manzarek keyboard intro that launches the studio rendition so powerfully.

The music is consistently excellent. Just don’t expect it to be particularly revelatory—except to the extent that it shows how fully formed the Doors’ vision was early on.

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