Manzarek & Krieger of The Doors with Pearl

Manzarek & Krieger of The Doors with Pearl
Date: 10/06/09
Place: Club Nokia, Los Angeles CA
Review by: ~ Aniruddh (Andrew) Bansal

The show got going at 8.30 with the opening band Pearl, fronted by Pearl Aday who is Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian's wife and Meat Loaf's daughter. They played an acoustic set which wasn't bad at all, except for a couple of songs which I felt were too slow for my own taste. The crowd gave them a decent enough response. Their music is definitely better than some of the stuff that keeps getting radio air time. Pearl's voice is really good. They are talented musicians for sure. Their new album comes out in January and features Scott Ian on guitar. I'll definitely give it a listen.

Manzarek and Krieger's band hit the stage at 9.45 with the song Love Me Two Times much to the excitement of the crowd present at the show. It was an honor to attend this show and witness a live performance featuring two members of one of my ultimate favorite bands, and one of the greatest bands of all time The Doors. Getting to take pictures for them made it even better for me. The opening song was followed by the delightful Love Her Madly. Then it was my favorite song Break On Through. The lyrics of this song are just amazing and they inspire me every time I listen to it. Its always great to see this song being played by Doors tribute band Wild Child and I can't even express how happy I was when I got to see the original guitarist and keyboard player performing on it!

It was then time for the slower yet enjoyable When The Music's Over. I'm pretty sure it went on for longer than the 11 minute studio version as they improvised a lot on it with new lyrics and solos. Peace Frog was next and it was good fun. They announced that the Doors documentary movie 'When You're Strange' will be out in January and that Johnny Depp has done the narration for it. After that they continued with another song off of the Morrison Hotel album, Waiting For The Sun before playing one of the crowd favorites which Ray Manzarek introduced as the Whisky Bar song. Yes of course, it was the Alabama Song! We all went crazy on this one. Some of the crowd even started dancing to it, something that does happen at Doors and Doors tribute shows. Another reason why this song is enjoyed the most is that it's the easiest sing along of all Doors songs.

The vocalist Brett Scallions asked if there were any women named Gloria in the crowd tonight, as that was the name of the next song. Another fun-filled tune. Then the legendary Robby Krieger brought out his flamenco guitar to play a solo for us. I really enjoyed it and it was a refreshing change from most of the electric guitar solos that we're used to hearing. He stayed on the flamenco for the next song Spanish Caravan. Another Doors classic Touch Me was played after that. Brett did a really good job on this one, doing justice to the original version pretty well. They closed out the main set with the one song that everyone in a Los Angeles crowd wants to hear the most, L.A Woman.

They had to come back out for the encore. We were not about to let them go after just 12 songs! They appeared to the sound of thunder and rain with the song Riders On The Storm, a slow classic with the best keyboard solo out of all the Doors songs in my opinion. Its just hard to describe how blissful that keyboard solo really is. Then came one of the most legendary road-trip based songs of all time, Roadhouse Blues. I know I've used the word 'legendary' a lot in this review, but everything about the Doors really is worthy of that kind of praise. They closed out the set with the one and only Light My Fire. The band's performance was top notch. Other than Manzarek and Krieger who showed how to rock at ages 70 and 63 respectively, Brett Scallions on vocals did a very good Jim Morrison impression both in terms of voice and stage moves. Phil Chan was good on bass and Ty Dennis the same on drums. Special mention should be made of the guy named Michael (I hope I'm remembering his name correctly) who was drawing paintings even while the band played on stage! Some of his work was truly admirable.

On the whole I would like to say that these musicians made me feel the true spirit and music of the Doors, and I even felt the divine presence of Jim Morrison somewhere on that stage.

Here's their complete set list:

1. Love Me Two Times
2. Love Her Madly
3. Break On Through
4. When The Music's Over
5. Peace Frog
6. Waiting For The Sun
7. Alabama Song
8. Gloria
9. Robby Krieger flamenco guitar solo
10. Spanish Caravan
11. Touch Me
12. L. A. Woman

Encore
13. Riders On The Storm
14. Roadhouse Blues
15. Light My Fire