Pics from The Doors.at Facebook
What a better gift for the owner of a blog called ‘When the Music is Over’ than a gig called ‘The Doors Experience’? The amazing boyfriend I already mentioned at least a couple of times just got us two tickets for this Austrian band playing in Vienna last 14th February. Slightly deceived at the beginning by one of the band members, which reminded us how Jim would have looked like if he had survived till his 40s, we got into Szene, Vienna.
I felt quite young for once, usually being around indie lovers in their 20s, I was actually surrounded by the so-called ‘Jim generation’, old rockers who may have been fangirls and -boys at the time, so as critical as judges as I was. As a good journalist and reporter, in order to get completely into the mood, we provided a couple of beers and rolled to the stage, where I was eventually reassured about the fact that the fake ‘Jim’ is the quite good Austrian singer Jason Boiler, really similar in appearance, even if the similarity increased the further away I was from the stage.
The voice itself instead was really accurate, as songs like ‘Alabama Song’ could effectively prove. The band performed two sets, swinging back and forth between the five albums, almost skipping ‘the Soft Parade’ (’Touch Me’), going through some of ‘Waiting for the Sun’ (’Waiting for the Sun’, ‘Hello, I love You’ and playing almost all of their eponymous début. Jason-Jim also provided some interludes in American-English, a pretty accurate pronunciation (not sure about how much of that was improvised, but oh well). His singing was fluent and lacked any Austrian accent, and even if not flawless it was really good entertainment. What was missing was probably their stage presence, and apart from the reproduction of ‘The Unknown Soldier’ performance done originally by Robby and Jim, Jason-Jim tended to be quite unnatural in his moves and bursts of energy. A last comment came from my boyfriend, who referred to his moves as Angus Young’s duck-walk.
The other members themselves proved to be quite good, as the fake ‘old Jim’, who was actually the keyboardist, who played both ‘bass guitar’ and keyboard as Ray would have done, going from the ‘When the Music’s Over’/’Riders on the Storm’ medley to ‘Twentieth Century Fox’ and ‘End of the Night’. The drums were clear and in time, doing exactly John’s work, even if my comment about the drummer being the exact copy of ‘John Malkovich’ got stuck in Mark’s head for the whole night. Anyway, the guitar was mostly bluesy and acid rock, even if in some songs got slightly carried away, becoming almost garage and quite heavy, really too much for The Doors (’Peace Frog’).
Writing and remembering both setlists may be a bit too much, especially being a hardcore fan, because songs like ‘Break on Through’, ‘Roadhouse Blues’ and the finale ‘Light My Fire’ distracted my sense of journalism and turned me into a Justin Bieber-like fangirl (thankfully with more dignity), but I hope that my report can give you a hint of what ‘the Doors Experience’ can provide. As long as you do not get distracted by the big belt and leather pants shaking on stage. Oops.
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