The Doors July 22, 2007

Todays picture is an original poster from the Doors concert at Memorial Arena, July 21 1967. Here's a memory from David Lloyd Glover about the show:

Greetings from West Hollywood CA.
Always enjoy looking over your site for some Victoria nostalgia.

My wife Judy Rose is directing and producing a new play about the life and death of Jim Morrison (The Doors) in Hollywood this fall. http://swimtothemoon.websiteward.com . You can imagine that peaks my interest for a lot of reasons. But I realized that it was 40 years ago yesterday, that The Doors played Victoria at the Memorial Arena. I even found the original show poster. Tony, a Vancouver promoter who did concerts at Dante's Inferno called me up about a week earlier than the concert date. The Victoria date was kind of a last minute deal but he wanted Nerve Center ( Len Bentham, Derek Walsh and myself) to do a liquid light show. I was up on The Doors having gotten an advance copy of their first album from Elektra records. I wanted to do the show but Len said we had to pass. He was right because the logistics of lighting the Arena would have taken more time and cost more money than Tony was prepared to budget. They needed another band (The Doors only performed the material off the album so the night needed stretching) so at least we were able to help get the Blues X Five on the bill (they missed the show poster).

The show should have been huge but I remember the count was only around 460 ticket buyers. Collectors, Painted Ship and the Blues X Five were themselves a good draw but not enough advance to get the word out. Great for those who bought tickets because we chucked the seat assignments. The Collectors were polished and were able to show off their musicianship. Painted Ship has had many versions of its personnel so I don't recall their lineup as being as good as a show I did with them at the Club Tango. The Blues X Five did a reliable set but were using The Doors Jordan amp setup so I don't think they got up to their potential . Ron Flatman though did some outstanding percussion work but John Densmore was in the green room and missed it.

Morrison and the rest of the band were electrifying. Very few bands have ever done so much with so little gear as The Doors did. Even Norm McPherson who was never too impressed with other guitar players was very complimentary about Robby Kreiger's sound. I remember him telling anyone around the next day that Kreiger was "ballsy". It was an historical event but unfortunately one that was not shared by too many Victorians.