Absolutely Live, <\/i>released in 1970, was an attempt to provide the fans with the perfect album while killing time until the next studio disc. It’s not a true live disc, since songs from different concerts are spliced together; a beginning here, a middle there and the end from still another performance. <\/p>\n
Despite this attention to detail and The Doors coming down off the height of their recording and performing powers, Absolutely Live<\/i> comes off as spotty in quality and ultimately average. <\/p>\n
Jim Morrison was one of the most charismatic performers in rock history, yet that barely comes through on the disc because the listener cannot see him. In addition, the sound is thin, since Ray Manzarek has to play the bass parts on his keyboard because the band had no touring bassist. <\/p>\n
Absolutely Live<\/i> begins with one of the better songs on the album. The old Bo Diddley tune \u201cWho Do You Love\u201d features a strong Morrison vocal and some excellent guitar work by Robby Kreiger. The other excellent song is the extended version of \u201cSoul Kitchen\u201d that closes the album. The concert setting allows the group to extend itself beyond the confines of the studio version. Manzarek\u2019s improvisation on his keyboards provides a nice counterpoint to Morrison\u2019s vocal work. <\/p>\n
The long medley of “Alabama Song\/Back Door Man\/Live Hides\/Five To One” has both highs and lows. \u201cBack Door Man\u201d is a good vehicle for Morrison to provide one of his best live vocal performances and Kreiger\u2019s guitar work also is above his norm. \u201cAlabama Song\u201d was an average performance of an at-best average song, dragging down the release, and \u201cFive To One\u201d is just terrible. The structure of the original song, which was its strength, is missing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Celebration Of The Lizard\u201d is an extended indulgence on the part of Morrison. Thirty years after its release, it has become part of Jim Morrison\u2019s mythology … but can anyone listen to his rambling poetry more than once? This version is reality meeting myth, and reality not faring well at all.<\/p>\n
The rest of Absolutely Live <\/i>is average. The Willie Dixon song \u201cClose To You\u201d features a rare lead vocal by Manzarek. \u201cUniversal Mind\u201d is a mellow performance and, while not great, is a good vehicle for Morrison\u2019s voice. \u201cBuild Me A Woman\u201d was a new song and below average from what the Doors were producing in the studio, while “Break On Through #2” is just the same song with some different lyrics. And so it goes. <\/p>\n
Absolutely Live <\/i>is not a terrible album, but it does pale against The Doors’ studio material of the time. In some ways, they tried too hard production wise. They would probably been better served to just let the tape run and record one concert, flaws and all. This would have presented The Doors as they actually were at that point in time, instead of how Elektra wanted them to be.<\/p>\n
Absolutely Live <\/i>was re-released on CD in 1996 in an extended version, which adds some better songs that probably should have been on the original. Overall, though, it remains a flawed disc from one of rock\u2019s legendary groups.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":29031,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5647],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-40545","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-doors","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40545"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40545"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}