Joel Selvin, the Chronicle’s senior pop music critic, has a very interesting piece about Doors and their new CD (“Early S.F. Doors show breaks on through to CD”) in this morning’s paper:
Only a few tables of curious spectators showed up at the club each night, so the musicians pretty much played for themselves. In between two weekend engagements at the Avalon Ballroom, a little-known rock group from Los Angeles called the Doors played Tuesday through Friday at a 100-seat Marina district club called the Matrix. Even the musicians might have forgotten all about the gig if the club manager hadn’t decided to tape the shows.
The Doors were making their second trip to the thriving San Francisco ballroom scene in March 1967. It was an unseasonably chilly end of winter before the Summer of Love and just three months after the little-noted release of the band’s now-historic debut album.
“We were on the lip of great success and we didn’t know it,” drummer John Densmore says. “Neither did the audience, which was very cool.”
