The Whole Thing Started With Rock & Roll Now It's Out of Control

Ray Manzarek - The Whole Thing Started With Rock & Roll Now It's Out of Control - 1974

Curiosity about the former keyboardist from The Doors led to the purchase of this one from CD Cellar in Falls Church, VA, and its definitely worth a spin, or two, or three (getting the idea?).... The record starts off as you would expect with classic Door-sy sounding keyboards and vocals. Who knew that Mr. Manzarek could sing too? He sounds strangely like he's doing his best Jim Morrison impersonation, and this is in no way depressing. It all works well, but give it til track 3, "Whirling Dervish" where you will realize you've found something special. Steve Reich-esque minimalist scaling, featuring clarinets and sax, morph into what sounds like a middle eastern Hava Nagila inspired break from the main loop. Wait for the end of Side A with "Begin the World Again" that funkifies the whole album.

This record is spattered with Manzarek's deep voice which falls somewhere in the range of Johnny Cash or Glen Danzig especially on the catchy "I Wake Up Screaming" and "Bicentenial Blues" (which features Manzarek's liberty in including the hook from "Light My Fire"). It's a dancing disco tinged affair that is well worth your time and boogie.


On a side note, if you care what your neighbors think, don't play the end of Side B during the summer with the windows open in the middle of the day. It starts off innocent enough, but quickly takes a turn for the worse, when it vividly could double for the soundtrack to a raunchy 70's porn.


Of Note: the sleeve give a special thanks to Iggy Pop and credits Patti Smith as Poetress. Nice.

The Doors - Alive, She Cried - 1983

So usually the year an album is released has something to do with how good an album is, or at least, if I know nothing about an album, I do a year check, and that gives some insight to where the artist was in their musical development. Alive, She Cried was released in 1983. Ummm, this must be a greatest hits live album from The Doors....blah. Au contraire, this live album is a compilation from performances recorded from 1968-1970, which vanished in the 70s and was considered to be lost forever. That is until a videotape of a Copenhagen performance surfaced and yielded "Texas Radio and the Big Beat" (full of Jim Morrison's spoken poetry) and "Love Me Two Times". The rest of the live recorded tapes from these years were found in an undocumented shipment at an LA storage facility that longtime Doors producer, James Rothchild, used in the rest of this album. Rothchild notes that in the making of this live compilation album, he would not repeat any titles from Absolutely Live, no matter how different the recordings were, making this album chock full of totally unique live recordings. Thank you to the Black Cat's Record Fair where we scored this one.

The story behind the making of this album is intriguing, but I have yet to mention how good the music is. For live recordings, the fidelity is as good as any studio album. The album opens with a version of Van Morrison's "Gloria" as recorded in the Aquarius Theater in Hollywood as a trial run in a series of future upcoming shows. The harmony of the band is unparalleled and you can tell they are having a great time playing for the crowd. A shoutout to Krieger for his sweet waaah wah waaah on the bottleneck guitar on "Moonlight Drive." "Little Red Rooster" is in full glory in this recording with an appearance from John Sebastian of The Lovin Spoonful, and easily sounds as if they were having a blues jam with Taj Mahal or Buddy Guy. The whole disc is infused with a ramshackle stuttering blues swing.