Felt Forum (1st Set),
New York City, New York - January 18, 1970.

1.Tuning 1:55
2.Roadhouse Blues 2:26
3.Ship of Fools 6:06
4.Break on Through 5:25
5.Universal Mind 5:32
6.Alabama Song 2:19
7.Backdoor Man 3:10
8.Five to One 8:14
9.Moonlight Drive - Horse Latitudes 5:50
10.Who Do You Love 7:59
11.Money 4:09
12.Light my Fire 11:32
13.When the Music's Over 10:22

Comments:

"Roadhouse Blues" was the opening number on Sunday night’s early show. Unlike other live versions of this song, the song was cut short without containing any lyrical improvisation by Morrison between the first and second verses. The group then played one of their newer songs, "Ship Of Fools" from their soon to be released album, "Morrison Hotel" and also played one of their earlier numbers, "Break On Through". At the end of "Break On Through" some one in the audience had yelled out: "Light My Fire", then one of the girls in the audience screamed out:

"Show us your ass !"; probably referring to Jim’s alleged exposure in Miami last March.

Jim sang, "Universal Mind", a song which seems to have made it’s debut on this night at the Felt Forum. At the end of "Universal Mind", the crowd was shouting out for their favourite requests, such as "Celebration Of The Lizard". When The Doors just started to play a few bars into their next song, "Alabama Song", they all of a sudden stopped for a short moment and one audience member yelled out again for "Celebration Of The Lizard". They quickly picked up this song and started to play "Alabama Song" and was followed through with a rather effortless version of "Moonlight Drive".

"Who Do You Love", had started off with Densmore’s drum solo and Krieger slowly slipping through with his clever slide guitar work later followed by another blues classic, "Money". Jim finally started talking to his audience:

"Hey, thank you all for being so patient with us tonight. It usually takes an hour or so to get warmed up you know, so I hope no one has to go anywhere for a while."

The audience applauded Jim and resumed with his monologue:

"I think , I think...aahh..why don’t we do a famous radio song."

The crowd had been requesting this song for sometime, so The Doors played "Light My Fire" which seemed to be well appreciated by the audience whom clapped along with this song. Listening to this recording, one may tend to think that the Morrison’s performance was not up to par as the previous night, however the audience’s demanding encore could be seen to disprove this. The concert came to an end when the group played their final song, "When The Music’s Over". The final words on this recording are from the house announcer:

"The Doors ! Thank you very much for coming...".

The sound quality of this show compared to the other two Felt Forum shows, seems to be fairly flat and dull - it doesn’t have the sharpness and clarity as the other two shows.




Felt Forum (2nd Set),
New York City, New York - January 18, 1970.

1.Jim's Dialogue With The Audience 1:48
2.Roadhouse Blues 5:39
3.Peace Frog 3:44
4.Alabama Song 2:00
5.Back Door Man 2:19
6.Five To One 6:36
7.The Celebration Of The Lizard 19:46
8.Soul Kitchen 7:33
9.Petition The Lord With Prayer - Light My Fire 13:03
10.Build Me A Woman 4:01
11.When The Music's Over 13:20
12.Rock Me 5:43
13.Ship Of Fools 7:02
14.Goin' To New York 4:42
15.Maggie M'Gill 7:18
16.Gloria - Coda Queen - My Eyes Have Seen You 11:56

Comments:

Although The Doors’ first set on the Sunday night seemed to be missing that element of "magic", the group definitely made up for this on their second set later that night. The Doors played their best show on their fourth and final concert and probably played one of their best 1970’s concert. Jim was in a really good mood that night and he started to talk to his audience in high spirits:

"How ya doing man ? All right, everybody.....Everybody sit down, come on let’s..... Hey get those people to sit down man, there’s to much activity around here, come on"

Densmore quickly rolled a few drum beats of his drum kit.

"You people spend much to much time in those rest rooms, I tell you that...and we know what you’re doing there, yeah !."
"All right, is everybody ready ? We are going to have some fun tonight, right ? All right, All right." "Everybody is really going to get it on right ? All right !"

The Doors started off with "Roadhouse Blues", a typical number that the group would play as their opening song during most of their 1970’s concert. The group then played "Peace Frog" straight after "Roadhouse Blues", with out any intermediate break. The only other recording which has "Peace Frog" on it, surfaced from the concert at the Long Beach Sports Arena in Longbeach, California during February of the same year - unfortunately, the Longbeach version of "Peace Frog" was cut off, however the Felt Forum version is the complete song. The Doors’ next song "Alabama Song" was immediately applauded, from the minute Ray had just started to play the first few bars of this song. Jim had added the line, "I hope not !" after he sang "I tell you we must die". "Back Door Man" was perhaps one of Morrison’s best versions of this song that he ever performed - his vocals were hoarse which suited this bluesy number; tough, uncompromising and convincing. "Five To One" was similarly as forceful as "Back Door Man", Morrison was in full swing with a powerful and energetic vocal deliverance.

"All right, listen man, we got a special treat for you right now."

"This is a little...this is a little tour de force that we’ve only done a couple of times in front of strangers.....and ah it starts off kind a quiet so if every body just kind a relax, take a few deep breaths, think about your eventual end and what’s gonna happen tonight....and we’ll try and do something good to your head, right man ?"

" Now listen, listen, I want to remind you of something very important. I don’t know if you are aware of it, but this whole evening is being taped for eternity and beyond that too...and so listen man, if you want to be represented in eternity, with some uncouth language..then I hope you’ll stand up on the top of your seat and shout it out very clearly or we’re not gonna get it on tape, right ? Don’t worry, the operation won’t take long and you’ll be much better in the morning."

"Maybe I better tell you what this story is about. It’s about, it’s about a bunch of young people that got fed up with where they were living and what was happening, and they got a group of them together and they went out to the desert to live away from everyone.....and each night they build a fire and they’d sing songs and discuss what was happening and where they were at, and all that"

Following straight after "The Celebration Of The Lizard", "Soul Kitchen" was overwhelmingly well received by The Doors’ audience - more than most of the other songs performed on that night.

"All right ! All right ! All right !"

" Now listen, for fear of getting of too patriotic....we’re going to attempt to ren...a rendition of the national anthem. So everyone will respectively, I mean respectfully get up on their feet.....at full attention, right ?"; Jim then paused for a while and continued.

"SSSSH-SSSH. All right, have some respect, now have some respect please. SSSSH-SSSH-SSSSH-SSSH. Pretend you’re at a football game. Every one respectfully gets very quiet".

Some one in the audience yelled out for "Light My Fire" - the group played this song, straight after Jim had given his sermon, "Petition The Lord With Prayer". The crowd erupted when The Doors had played "Light My Fire".

"All right ! Let’s Boogie !!!! All right ??"; Jim told his audience just before they played "Build Me A Woman".

"When The Music’s Over" and "Rock Me" were to follow next, respectively.

Guest musicians on this night included John Sebastian (former member of the Lovin Spoonful) and Dallas Taylor of Crosby-Stills-Nash & Young. John Sebastian played harmonica on "Rock Me" and "Close To You" (not recorded).

"All right, we’d like to aah... we’d like to bring in ..aah.. a man that aah.. we’d like to play this on our next few songs"; said Jim.

"Bring him on already"; yelled out a girl from the audience.

"Aaah.. a very talented guy named John Sebastian"; Jim said as he introduced his studio session harmonica player.

"All right ! Man, that’s what I call a New York joint man. Man...you can pick your teeth with a New York joint.";

Jim said to his audience, referring to the joints that the audience were throwing on stage. The Doors played "Ship Of Fools" as their next song.

"All right, hey listen, hey listen, we’ve got a guy playing drums with us...ah on this song, his name is Dallas Taylor give him a hand". By the time Jim reached this part of the performance, his voice was starting to sound really hoarse. The crowd responded enthusiastically and were yelling amongst each other, telling one and another to sit down.

The group played "Goin’ To New York" with John Sebastian on harmonica and Dallas Taylor on drums. John also played harmonica on the following song, "Maggie M’Gill". Last but not least, The Doors started to play "Gloria" which some how flowed onto "Easy Ride" and "My Eyes Have Seen You". Had the other three Doors members not started to play the music for "My Eyes have Seen You", then Jim would’ve probably had never sung this song.

Of the three recordings from the Felt Forum shows, this show was definitely the best performance that The Doors had done and the sound quality of the recording is much better than the earlier set. This concert was also the last time that Jim would ever play for his New York audience.