Jaime got me tickets to the Symphony for Christmas this year. Pretty cool gift. We rocked the fourth row. The program was the HealthOne Pops doing the music of the Doors. Interesting show. There was a singer, Randy Jackson of the band Zebra, who did a pretty dang good job of being Jim Morrison for the evening, which is a tough vocal assignment to be sure. I never heard of the guy, but he appeared to have some fans present from his other work. He did a very nice job of working the crowd and intrducing the songs.
The setup was centered around a regular rock band quartet. Bass guitar, Drums, Lead guitar, Keyboard/Piano. Then the regular orchestra surronded the band, with director Brent Havens, who did the arrangements, doing his thing on the podium. The players, were, of course, all pro. The sound was great and I enjoyed the show more than I thought I might. All the songs really do have some depth and the arrangements were all strightforward and fairly close to the original. They did jam out here and there. There was some pretty hot trading of licks between the piano guy and the guitarist. It was basically a rock show, not a symphony show. The guy on guitar was pretty much awesome, really they all were. The tempo of the show was pretty fast. Even though they are known for some of their longer songs, a lot of Doors songs are short and radio-friendly. They didn’t just stick to radio faves either. They played some deeper cuts like The Changeling and Wishful Sinful, and avoided some obvious ones like The End and Peace Frog. Spanish Caravan was a highlight, and they even did a spoken word piece from An American Prayer, which worked out better than I thought.
A fun time, even though it was 0 degrees and snowing when we got out of there (will it ever end?). Defintely not the average evening at the rock show, and of course I had my Doors stage, so I really like the songs and hadn’t heard them in a long time. Next time, though, it’ll be classical.
