THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION (BREAK ON THROUGH)

The Doors concert at the Singer Bowl in Queens on August 2, 1968 was my first big-deal, legitimate rock concert experience outside of the home territory of my local high school, which on a couple of occasions hosted rather wonderful “package tours.”  (Once I saw The Shirelles, Neil Diamond and Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels, all at their best then.)

I was only 15, but the Long Island Railroad was an efficient way to get around and for some reason (ignorance, probably), my parents were ok with me attending the show, although I was going alone.  The Doors were at their early huge-est and The Who (at the time the U.S.-only Magic Bus compilation with that great cover photo of the psychedelic London omnibus was in release) were second on the bill.  Also, a group called Kangaroo, which featured ubiquitous drummer Norman Smart, who later played with all sorts of people.

 

Here are a couple of atmospheric shots from the show.  The Doors photo, showing Jim Morrison weakly lying on the stage, is mostly what I remember from their performance, along with a strong version of Break On Through (To The Other Side).  After Jim failed to stir himself for a while, I left early.  It was pretty disappointing and I can see why, as charismatic as he was, he must have been trying to cope with as a colleague.  (Much later in my life, I heard some hysterical stories from their former manager that added detail to my understanding of the man and band and put things into perspective.) 

 

The Who were simply astonishing.  Pete Townshend’s guitar solos alternated between the inspired and boring, but the splendor of The Who in full and literal flight (i.e., apart from John Entwistle, the band seemed constantly to move in all dimensions) playing their Happy Jack/Sell Out material (plus Fortune Teller and Summertime Blues) was riveting, stunning and timeless.  I’ve never seen anything like it since.

The Doors took their name (by way of Aldous Huxley) from a section of William Blake’s The Marriage Of Heaven and Hell (1790-93) reading: 

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narow chinks of his cavern.”

I’m a little more “I suppose so,” and less gung-ho on those sentiments than I once was, perhaps, but year’s end brings both summing-up pessimism and (still, thank heaven) the seeds of optimism.   I’ve given myself marching orders and will once again try to put my shoulder a little more firmly and forcefully to the wheel and first do no harm.

By the way, don't the upcoming shows on the poster look great?  Jimi Hendrix and Soft Machine, Rascals and Vagrants.  The photo below shows me giving my school report about the concert.  I was much younger, shorter and friendlier then than I am now.

The Doors: Break On Through (To The Other Side) (Link)

The Who: I Can See For Miles (Link)

LIVE LIFE (THE PASSING SHOW)

“Who could wonder that foreigners loved London?  Though as different from Vienna or Paris as Peking, it was no less essentially a capital, with all the attractions of the centre of an Empire.It remained unique in being a masculine city, as it had been throughout its history, created to the same degree for men as Paris for women.  The luxury shops were unrivalled in their appeal to male tastes, were full of cigarettes, and objects made in leather, glass or silver, better than those to be seen anywhere in foreign capitals; solid, plain, unimaginative, but showing the English feeling for material; the English sobriety. As for suits, shirts, shoes, ties, hats, London was acknowledged throughout the world, by all races, by all colours, [1] to set the fashion for men.  And these years, 1913 and ’14, were the last when there was a successor to the long line of fops, macaronis, dandies, beaux, dudes, bucks, blades, bloods, swells and mashers, who for so many centuries had given life to the London world of pleasure.  To these was now added the nut or, more jocularly, the k-nut, as personified by a young actor, Mr. Basil Hallam, who in this respect both summed up and set the tone in a song entitled  Gilbert The Filbert, the Colonel of the Nuts!’ – the refrain ran 

 

I’m Gilbert the Filbert, the Nut with a K,

The pride of Piccadilly, the blasé roué,

Oh, Hades, the ladies all leave their wooden huts

For Gilbert the Filbert , the Colonel of the Nuts. 

 

  Dressed in a grey tall-hat and a morning-coat, Hallam gave a rather languid rendering of this song at the Palace Theater every night in the Passing Show, a revue which was running throughout the summer of 1914 and until after the outbreak of the war.  It was no unusual greeting for a young man, wearing a new suit, to be told, ‘What a k-nut you look !’  The nut must be thin, clean-shaven except for a small cut moustache, and have an air of concave and fatigued elegance, in this taking after his Dundreary grandfather rather than his father the swell.  On the other hand, he had to dance with vigour and ease, in the new style . . . The nut died fighting in the trenches of 1914, and Mr. Basil Hallam, his amiable exemplifier, was killed in the spring of the following year.  He was in a captive balloon with a rather inexperienced observer, and when the balloon was shot down this man had difficulty in fixing his parachute harness.  Hallam stayed to help him and was too late to save himself.”

[1]  The tradition survived.  In 1925, when I was in New York, I asked a Negro singer, Taylor Gordon, how he liked Aldous Huxley, whom he had met; and received a rich-voiced reply, “When I think that that man comes from the capital of the world’s tailoring !”

NOTE: Breaking from dizzy-making work today to read about Basil Hallam in Osbert Sitwell’s Great Morning (1948) was restorative and uplifting. 

  Unfortunately, the contrast this afternoon between vivacious and virtuous Basil and serially dishonest, sanctimonious, hideously ugly Rep. Elijah Cummings, Maryland’s ranking troll in Congress, could not have been more distressing. 

  Addressing State Department officers testifying about the worst work fuck-up they had ever witnessed, and the Benghazi victims’ families, Cummings said:   “As I listen to your testimony I could not help but think of something that I said very recently -- two years ago now -- in a eulogy for a relative. I said that death is a part of life, so often we have to find a way to make life a part of death.” 

 The brave, hapless, doomed, Benghazi dead were what – 30 years old?  35?   40?

 Words As Shields; Words As Weapons. Contempt, Theft, Murder. Shit happens.

 Caroline said something to me recently that I will never forget:

 We’re living in the Dark Ages, but even during the Dark Ages people managed to live pleasant, productive lives. 

Basil Hallam -- Gilbert The Filbert (The Passing Show, 1914) (Link)

The Beatles -- She Said She Said (Link)

The Kinks -- Live Life (Link)