Remembering Professor Emerita Jeanne Shapiro  Bamberger, a pioneer in music educationMIT Music and Theater Arts fondly remembers the legacy of Professor Emerita Jeanne Shapiro Bamberger, who passed away peacefully at home in Berkeley, California, of natural causes on Dec. 12, 2024 at the age of 100. For three decades at the Institute, Bamberger found ways to use computers to engage students and help them learn music. A trained pianist who became fascinated with the idea of using technology to gain insights into music education, Bamberger ultimately helped to change how music was taught at MIT and elsewhere.Bamberger was born on Feb. 11, 1924 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her mother, Gertrude Shapiro (nee Kulberg), from a Romanian Jewish family, studied child psychology and was active in the League of Women Voters. Her father, Morse Shapiro, of Lithuanian and Polish Jewish heritage, was a groundbreaking pediatric cardiologist.In 1969, Bamberger began her 32-year career at MIT, initially in the former MIT Education Department. While at MIT, Bamberger became the first woman to earn tenure in the Music and Theater Arts Section. She was know for pioneering the use of computer languages to teach children to learn music. She also used her computer innovations to study how children — and by extension, all humans — learn music, and this vector in particular became her life's work.Ahead of her time, Bamberger worked in the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in the 1980s and developed computer languages (MusicLogo and Impromptu) while at the MIT Division for Study and Research in Education from 1975 to 1995. She became associate professor in music and theater arts in 1981, earned tenure soon thereafter, and chaired the department in 1989-90. During this period, she continued to perform as a concert pianist, taking part in concerts with the MIT Symphony Orchestra, and actively playing chamber music both at MIT and in the community. She also taught at the Harvard University Department of Education.Institute Professor Marcus Thompson recollects, “During her time with us as a senior professor she was clearly a jewel in the crown. For someone who had studied piano with an historic legend in Artur Schnabel, who had studied with and known at least one of the French Six, Darius Milhaud, and worked with French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, she was among that group of our professors who continually advocated for a new music building, considered the possibility of a graduate program in music at a time when we were being pushed to grow, at a time when she was our only senior woman when the need to do better was finally seen.” Both the dedicated music building and the graduate music program are now a reality.Bamberger loved her work and was beloved and admired by her students and colleagues. Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor Evan Ziporyn shares that she “was very much a shaping presence for our section — MIT Music and Theater Arts wouldn't be what we are today without her contributions. She’s also just a very cool person — I mean, how many 90-year-old academics end up working with Herbie Hancock and taking their research to the White House?” Ziporyn adds that “among 7 million other singular accomplishments,” Bamberger published numerous articles and books including “The Art of Listening” with Howard Brofsky, “The Mind Behind the Musical Ear,” “Developing Musical Intuitions,” and “Discovering the Musical Mind.”While at MIT, Bamberger took many students under her wing and assisted many more with their academic careers. Elaine Chew SM ’98, PhD ’00, an operations researcher, pianist, current professor of engineering at King’s College London, and mentee of Bamberger, says, “I would not be doing what I am today if not for Jeanne. A child prodigy turned music philosopher, Jeanne was a pioneer in music and AI long before it was fashionable. She was deeply interested in people and passionate about how we learn. I will not forget the day when I came to her with complaints about things not working. Rather than telling me what to do, Jeanne said, ‘What are you going to do about it?’ prompting me to reflect on and develop my own sense of agency.” (Chew speaks more on Bamberger’s inspirational role in a 2016 interview.)All told, Bamberger had a creative, fertile mind and loved to ask probing questions, a quality she passed to her progeny and community — it was her excitement and her passion.While a professor at MIT, Bamberger was a force to be reckoned with. In addition to her long and productive academic career — in which she published four books and nearly 20 book chapters — she was politically active and supported the anti-Vietnam war and the civil rights movements. She continued teaching and publishing her work well into her 90s and had a strong community of companions and colleagues to the end. In 2002, Bamberger became professor emerita at MIT and moved to Berkeley, California, continuing to teach in the Music Department at the University of California at Berkeley.At 100, she was predeceased by her former husband, Frank K. Bamberger. She is survived by her two sons, Joshua and Paul (Chip); four grandchildren — Jerehme, Kaela, Eli, and Noah; and many caring relatives and friends.

Sam Gellaitry’s ‘curious’ is a tribute to his younger self— and his greatest influencesAnywhere Here Is Perfect; the idiomatic, polite conclusion to a thousand hazy late-night taxi journeys — and an apt title for the debut full-length album of Scottish producer, DJ, singer and songwriter Sam Gellaitry, slated for release on 7 November via Major Recordings. ‘Always rejoice when you get to your destination in one piece,’ instructs the official messaging. ‘Anything can happen.’

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If the album’s first two singles are to go by, anything can indeed happen. CURIOUS is a certified dancefloor filler driven by no-holds-barred bass and haywire beat slicing, interspersed with vocals from both Gellaitry and the track’s featured artist, indie-pop crossover star Toro Y Moi. Its genesis is highly personal, however, traceable to some of its creator’s most formative influences and even to his very earliest days of making music on the family computer as a wide-eyed 12-year-old.
Gellaitry, who is set to share the stage this month with the likes of Justice, Kaytranada, and Madeon, is not one to sit still. His decision at the outset to work with vocals as a lead instrument was key to the formulation of CURIOUS, and who better to enlist than one of his greatest influences?
“I could actually tell you the exact date I heard Toro Y Moi for the first time, because it was on a TV show,” laughs the producer, “October 2010, and it was on Waterloo Road. I’ve been a fan since then. The more I listened to his stuff— as well as people like Tame Impala, James Blake, even Sampha— producing and singing became my main focus. He’s the big reason as to why I started singing. So having him as a feature is a really nice, full circle moment for me. A lot of my vocal style is inspired by his; we do actually have a similar tone at times. So I feel like having us on the same track, sonically it really meshes well.”
Image: Press
Toro Y Moi was given free rein to write his own parts and send as much material as he pleased for Gellaitry to chop and piece together according to his own vision. The result might be vocally led, but for Gellaitry that vision begins invariably from the fundamentals of rhythm, which in this case came courtesy of the sounds of the Linndrum.
“I always start with the beat,” he explains. “All of my choices, including melodic choices, stem from the beat. The beat informs exactly the top line I’m going to go for. I used to do it with synthesisers: high, solo synths would be take on the melody that I’m now using my voice for. But nowadays, I’ll loop a beat and start doing mumble takes. I always feel like I’m uncovering a melody that’s already in the beat when I’m singing. And, when I’m done with the melody, it’s like I’m uncovering lyrics which are already in the melody! Sometimes, when you’re doing scratch takes, you’ll sing in a certain way, and the melody will lend itself to certain vowel sounds as well. It’s quite a subconscious experience!”
As for recording those vocals, Gellaitry’s go-to vocal signal chain might come as a surprise: “I recorded my vocals through a 1073 preamp, using an SM58 mic,” he explains, almost sheepishly. “It’s a weird one, using a cheap mic. I do have a [Neumann] U87 [condenser microphone], but the room I work in is not treated very much. So I just use the dynamic mic, which is actually better than the one that picks up every single corner of the room. Hopefully I’ll be able to fix that at one point… [laughs] but it’s fun. I just crank the EQ on the 1073 and I’m pretty much good to go!”
Image: Press
It’s an unpretentious workflow that sits comfortably alongside Gellaitry’s choice of DAW: FL Studio. The highly accessible software has been a constant in the producer’s output since day one, and his fluency with it is clear. Aside from its lead vocal chain, all of CURIOUS was crafted in the box. “It feels like a deep thing to think about my relationship with that software,” Gellaitry reflects, “because it really just changed so much in my life, and I’ve been working with it for so long— 16 years! In fact, it’s probably been one of the most consistent things in my life! I just, kind of, lose myself when I’m on it.
“It was my brother who told me about it; I was 10 and he was remixing stuff with samples— Happy Hardcore kind of stuff— on our family laptop. He told me about this software you could actually make your own music on. To me, at that age, it just sounded like utopia. This couldn’t be a real thing! And that was FL Studio. It was a mystical place to me.”
FL Studio became the producer’s go-to DAW, playing a central role in one of Gellaitry’s most formative experiences as a young musician, when he unsolicitedly sent a demo to one of his heroes in the hopes of receiving some guidance. The undulating bass and deftly chopped rhythms of CURIOUS tips its hat more than a little to the locomotive rhythms of French house; most notably Daft Punk’s 2001 Discovery cut Face To Face and its featured vocalist and co-producer Todd Edwards. Edwards, explains Gellaitry, was the first person to ever provide him with direct feedback on a track.
Image: Press
“I sent him the first song I ever wrote, when I was 12, on MySpace. I can’t remember exactly what he said… something like, it was good and it was on the right track. I mean, it was a very basic song. But to be fair, for my first song, it could have been worse! [laughs]. But it’s insane that he got back to me, because he’s always been a huge inspiration. In hindsight, I do think about how he must have felt, having some 12-year-old from Scotland message him on MySpace… must have been a bit weird, right? But the internet was a smaller place back then.
“To be honest, there aren’t many other songs in the French house genre that I know of which really sound like Face To Face. Which makes me really think it was Todd who had a huge influence on the production in that song. The chops are so small, it’s almost like you’re jumping into different rooms. CURIOUS is almost a homage to him.”
A near-homage it may be, but the track has its own fair share of in-the-box wizardry which is all of Gellaitry’s own; witness its blend of three different UVI Falcon-crafted bass sounds (“something I’ve not done ever, really”) or its harsh use of multi band compression on the mix bus to maintain a sense of space while squeezing certain frequency bands as far as they will tolerate (“even if I’m using vintage sounds for drums, it will still have a modern feel from the squash that I’m putting it through!”).

“A lot of unorthodox ways of doing things,” reflects Gellaitry, “But the older I get, the more I’m opening myself up to imperfections. The amount of times I’ve been too precious on a song, and it’s just never come out…!” As for the producer’s choice of plugins and instruments, one go-to developer is Swedish company Klevgrand. “They have a compressor that sounds great and is visually really clear. Just really helpful to have. And before anything else— they have a really clean noise reducer [Brusfri], which basically listens to and learns the sound, and then just cuts it out. Really clean. They have a really good de-esser as well [Esspresso]. All their stuff is really visually intuitive. It’s quite modern looking. It just makes sense. There’s nothing too shiny or glossy. Just a really good interface.”
Now that Anywhere Here Is Perfect is ready for release, what’s next for Gellaitry? “Knowing me, man, I’m probably going to do a ‘180’ from this sound I’m on,” laughs the producer. “Getting this album to the finish line, having it all in one sound, I can see myself going into a deep exploration of something completely different. It’ll be nice, being freed up a bit— maybe to work on other people’s stuff. But, mainly, I’m just going to enjoy the fact that it’s finished.”
The post Sam Gellaitry’s ‘curious’ is a tribute to his younger self— and his greatest influences appeared first on MusicTech.

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New Ticketmaster President to lead ‘AI transformation’ amid legal battlesSaumil Mehta has been named Global Ticketmaster President. He has a strong background in tech including 6 years at Square and joins with a mandate to "accelerate an AI transformation."
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Ocean Swift Sample Tester is a new FREE sampling tool for Kontakt Player
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Bus Transient plug-in from Arturia Bus Transient aims to become the go-to choice for transient shaping, offering intuitive control over attack and sustain while providing users with detailed, real-time visual feedback. 

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The Doors Live at the Aquarius Theatre: The First Performance Out November 21On July 21, 1969, The Doors took the stage at the intimate Aquarius Theatre on Sunset Boulevard for what would become one of the most captivating—and criminally underrated—performances of their career. Live at the Aquarius Theatre: The First Performance captures Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, and John Densmore in peak form: loose, loud, and locked in.

On November 21st it will be available as a 180-gram 3-LP Set on Analogue Productions. This definitive edition, limited to just 2,000 copies, is pressed at Quality Record Pressings and features a 2016 mix by longtime Doors’ engineer Bruce Botnick, who revisited the original 8-track analog masters for a stunning new high-resolution transfer, using the same lacquer cut by Chris Bellman who did the Record Store Day release in 2016. The result is a crystal-clear, high-fidelity experience that transports listeners straight into the charged atmosphere of that summer night in 1969.

For over forty years, Acoustic Sounds has championed the art of vinyl, reissuing historic recordings with the utmost care and precision. The company was founded by Chad Kassem, whose unlikely journey from a small apartment-based vinyl resale operation to the helm of the world’s largest vertically integrated vinyl production facility has transformed the high-end audio industry. His Salina, Kansas-based company houses Acoustic Sounds in its entirety, a reissue label (Analogue Productions), including a state-of-the-art pressing plant (Quality Record Pressings). Kassem’s relentless dedication to sound quality and preservation of historical recordings has made Acoustic Sounds a trusted source for high-fidelity music. 

"The new mix is a revelation," says Botnick in the liner notes, which also feature Robby Krieger, Ray Manzarek, John Densmore, Danny Sugerman (who would go on to become the band’s second manager), music critic and former editor of the Los Angeles Times Robert Hilburn’s review of the show, which originally ran on July 28, 1969, and extensive production notes by Botnick. "It's almost like hearing the show for the first time. Using tools we didn’t have in 2001, we were able to remove most of the hum and buzz that permeated the original tapes,” says Botnick. “The resulting clarity gives this concert new life—and as a bonus, side six features material from the soundcheck that preceded the show, offering fans something they’ve never heard before."

The setlist spans the full range of The Doors’ alchemy—part blues ritual, part psychedelic seance. From a swaggering “Back Door Man” to a hypnotic, fever-dream reading of “The End,” the performance unfolds like a trance. Morrison teeters between mystic shaman and wry provocateur; Krieger’s guitar slices through the haze; Manzarek’s keys swirl like a haunted carnival; and Densmore’s pulse keeps it all tethered to earth. Live at the Aquarius Theatre: The First Performance isn’t just a live album—it’s a portal. A snapshot of a band at the height of its creative powers, caught between chaos and transcendence. Pressed on the highest-quality vinyl and restored with unprecedented clarity, this release invites listeners to step back in time and experience the timeless music of the Doors.

In 2011 I spoke with Bruce Botnick and asked what astounds him 40 years later listening to his collaboration with producer Paul Rothchild and the Doors.   

“The thing that still works for me is, first and foremost, the music. The musicianship. The performance. And all of those when these guys connected as a unit and became unconscious is good or better than anything I’ve ever heard.  And that’s one of the things I have to hand to my friend producer Paul Rothchild. That we went for performance and tried to stay out of it not to become too technically in the front of the albums that were manufactured. 

“In the case of the Doors, Paul was the man who drove the train and kept it on the tracks. But the reality is that there were six of us in the studio making these records together. And it wasn’t a matter of one person ‘being the person.’ Paul never took that point. At some point during the relationship and especially when Jim got busted in Miami, where Paul had to step up and take more control. Because somebody had too or otherwise it would have never got done.  But generally, his approach was to get the performance. And we weren’t afraid of editing between takes. You get an amazing first verse and second verse and a chorus and verse into the bridge and it would sort of fall apart and we would grab another take that had it and edited it all together. And it was about the performance. It wasn’t about overdubbing. Because in the majority of what the Doors played on their records was played live.”        

Over a 40-year period, I interviewed Ray Manzarek a dozen times. 

During 2003, I asked him about Botnick and Rothchild, who helmed and guided the Doors in the recording studio. 

“Paul Rothchild was the guy who had produced the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and also Love, along with engineer Bruce Botnick. The two of them did those albums together. So, it was a great combination of six guys. That first album was basically the four Doors and the two other Doors in the control room making the sound. We made the music. They made the sound. And they did an absolutely brilliant job. And it was a real joy and a great learning experience. 

“Rothchild and Botnick were two alchemists with sound. We were the alchemical music makers but they were alchemists with sound-adding a bit of this-a bit of that. Some reverb. Some high end. Let’s hit it at 20k or 10k. Let’s dial in a bit of bass in there. They were making this evil witches brew concoction as we went along. And the sound just got better and better.” 

In a 2009 interview, Ray and I discussed the 1969 Doors.  

“After The Soft Parade and the Aquarius shows, we said, ‘Let’s go back to the blues. Let’s get dark and funky for Morrison Hotel.’ [Issued in January 1970]. 

“The Doors are a collective journey that's a good way of putting it. It's of course Jim Morrison as the charismatic lead singer, and I've got to address Jim Morrison, but it's Densmore, Krieger and Manzarek (too). It's a journey of these four guys, The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse, the diamond-shaped, no bass player that made a five-point pentagram, shape of the diamond. It's the inverted pyramid, it's an archetypal journey of four young men into the unconscious, and coming out of that and creating a musical art form. 

“The whole Doors’ organ sound, what makes that work, that’s my whole Slavic upbringing. That’s being a ‘Polish Pianist.’ That’s that dark Slavic Stravinsky, Chopin, that great mournful Bartok type thing. Dark, mournful Slavic soul married so perfectly with the southern gothic American Florida ‘Tennessee Williams’ boy poetry, that the two of us went ‘Crunch!” and the whole thing came right together perfectly.       

“The Doors were never part of the folk-rock country rock/laid back ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling’ of Los Angeles. The Doors were part of Raymond Chandler, John Fante, Dalton Trumbo. It was the dark streets and The Day Of The Locust, Miss Lonely Hearts. That’s where The Doors come from. You see, nobody came here to make it. Jim and I came to go to the UCLA School of film school, and John [University High School] and Robby [Pacific Palisades High School] are natives. Westside boys who surfed for God’s sake. The Doors are L.A. The beach, and downtown L.A.,” Ray summarized. 

In 2017 I interviewed Jac Holzman, founder of Elektra Records, who signed the Doors to his label in 1966. 

“I saw myself as a midwife to their music. They recorded it. I helped supervise how it was going to be taken in and what I hoped would be willing ears. That’s my job. And it’s my job to talk tough when I need to. But I never had that kind of problem with the Doors. 

“The only time was when there was much screaming about Miami. I said, ‘If your shows are being canceled, we will figure something out about how we’re going to bring you back live. In the meantime, go into the studio and start writing another album.’ And that was Morrison Hotel. And then we did two evenings of Doors concerts at the Aquarius Theatre on Sunset Boulevard and those tickets were two dollars. We underwrote the rest. We picked up the tab. But it was there where we launched them. And that idea came from us. That’s kind of what you do when you live your artists’ anguish and you try and help them and you over the tough spots.”      

[In 1969 Morrison was found guilty of indecent exposure to an audience on March 1, 1969 at a concert at Miami’s Dinner Key Auditorium in Florida. Morrison appealed the conviction, but died in 1971 before the conviction was resolved. 39 years after his death he was cleared of the charges and received a pardon by Florida’s Board of Executive Clemency from outgoing Florida Gov. Charlie Crist]. 

I remember mulling around the Aquarius on Sunset Blvd after the Doors’ show and eating with pals at The Hollywood Ranch Market.  

I had to work earlier in the evening before their local appearance at the West Los Angeles Junior College library in Culver City. The school had just opened that month and I had to stack books and magazines for summer school the next morning. It just wasn’t cool for me to ask anyone on the campus to sub and do my $1.35 an hour job in a newly opened facility. 

Besides, in November 1968 I had already witnessed a Doors’ concert at The Inglewood Forum.  

At the time, I was still upset by the July 3, 1969 swimming pool misadventure sudden death of Rolling Stones’ founder, Brian Jones. 

On July 21, 1969 when the Doors gave two performances at the Aquarius Theatre in Hollywood, a poem Jim Morrison wrote for the occasion, Ode to L.A. while thinking of Brian Jones was printed as a four-page pamphlet on textured yellow paper with dark green ink, and distributed to concert goers. Morrison’s work is a meditation on the death of Jones.     

Last decade I asked two friends of mine who attended the Doors’ Aquarius Theatre booking to reminisce about the event: Musician, singer/songwriter and actor, Bill Mumy and boxing scholar and author Gene Aguliera.   

Bill Mumy: The day before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, I was at the Aquarius Theatre with my Barnes and Barnes partner, Robert Haimer, seeing the Doors. We attended the early show and we got there early and secured seats in the very front row. The gig was great. Morrison was focused and low-key, but he was a mighty force. I thought he looked great. Thick beard, Mexican peasant shirt and orange Aviator sunglasses. Ray wore a white T-shirt. I took several photographs during the gig and have one of the few pics of Morrison onstage looking directly into a camera lens. ‘Celebration of the Lizard,’ ‘You Make Me Real’ and ‘Soul Kitchen’ were highlights for me. The Doors were such a unique band. To this day, I appreciate Morrison’s poetry and lyrics. He was a genuine artist. They all were great and had musical styles that were/are instantly recognizable. I consider myself fortunate to have been there.”  

Gene Aguilera:As an inquisitive teenager with a wandering mind, I used to love to look through the Los Angeles Free Press, the infamous, radical, undergroundnewspaper of the ’60s. One day, there it was: a small ad saying the Doors were coming to the Aquarius Theatre on July 21, 1969! Elektra Records, the Doors’ label, had begun a policy of renting the venue on Monday nights (this being the dark night of the play Hair) to showcase their roster. Naturally, I had to go, but was without wheels at that point; so, after much begging (my 16th birthday was coming soon), my aunt, Julie Gillis, agreed to take me and my two cousins to see one of my favorite bands. 

“As we departed East L.A., making our way toward the Sunset Strip, my aunt Julie began to worry about taking her 11-year-old daughter, Debbie, with us. Just a few months earlier in Miami, the Doors’ lead singer Jim Morrison had been arrested for indecent exposure onstage. She said, ‘What if he takes it out again? I don’t want Debbie to see any of this.’ But it didn’t matter to me, there was no other place in the world I would rather be. With its painted psychedelic exterior and an exquisite art-deco interior, we had arrived at the Aquarius Theatre and sat about halfway up from the stage. With the band still reeling from the Miami bust, an aura of danger lurked thick in the air; when suddenly to the stage strolls a dwarf (adding to the circus-like atmosphere), named Sugar Bear, to announce the band, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen... the Doors!’ 

“We were now ready for the Lizard King. Jim Morrison looked so much different in person than the album covers I had studied; he arrived with sunglasses, a thick beard, and a paunch around his waist. But for this hometown ‘live’ recording Morrison introduced an edgy new trick to his usual theatrical drama. With the spotlight on, Morrison appeared incredulously high up in the rafters, grabbed a rope and swung to the stage, Tarzan-style, leaving the entire crowd gasping at what they saw. My aunt Julie had her coat ready to cover Debbie’s eyes (if Jim was going to whip it out, as he did in Miami), but that never happened, thank God, Morrison instead throwing Styrofoam balls out to the crowd. 

“In my youthful excitement, I ran toward the stage and caught a few. A pretty hippie girl next to me was disappointed at not catching anything, so I gave her one, and in turn, she gave me a great big kiss; witnessed by all my group. This was the dawning of the age of Aquarius.”   

The Doors’ Live At The Aquarius Theatre - The First Performance

Track List

Side 1 

1. Tuning

2. Jim's Introduction

3. Back Door Man

4. Break On Through

5. What Do We Do Next?

6. Soul Kitchen

Side 2

1. You Make Me Real

2. Tuning

3. I Will Never Be Untrue

4. The Crowd Humbly Requests

5. When The Music's Over

Side 3

1. Universal Mind

2. The Crowd Requests Their Favorites And Tuning

3. Mystery Train / Crossroads

4. Build Me A Woman

Side 4

1. Tuning

2. Who Do You Love (False Start)

3. Who Do You Love

4. Light My Fire

Side 5

1. The Crowd Requests More

2. The Celebration Of The Lizard

Side 6

1. Soundcheck 

Produced and Mastered by Bruce Botnick

Recorded July 21, 1969 at The Aquarius Theatre in Hollywood, California 

“I knew Jim was a great poet,” Manzarek reiterated to me one afternoon in 1995 as we watched a UCLA NCAA championship basketball game on television with my brother Kenneth, father Marshall and Burton Cummings of the Guess Who.  

“See that’s why we put the band together in the first place. It was going to be poetry together with rock ‘n’ roll.  Not like poetry and jazz. Or like it, it was poetry and jazz from the ‘50s, except we were doing poetry and rock ‘n’ roll. And our version of rock ‘n’ roll was whatever you could bring to the table. Robby bring your Flamenco guitar, Robby bring that bottle neck guitar, bring that sitar tuning. John bring your marching drums and your snares and your four on the floor. Ray bring your classical training and your blues training and your jazz training. Jim bring your Southern gothic poetry, your Arthur Rimbaud poetry. It all works in rock ‘n’ roll. Jim was a magnificent poet.”  

In July 1995, at the MET Theatre on Oxford Avenue in East Hollywood, I produced and co-curated a month-long Rock and Roll in Literature series with director Darrell Larson and associate producer Daniel Weizmann.

Manzarek, Densmore, and Krieger reunited and played “Peace Frog,” “Love Me Two Times,” and “Little Red Rooster” on July 8. Music journalist Kirk Silsbee read from Art Pepper’s Straight Life, John Densmore read an entry from his new novel, and actor Michael Ontkean recited Ode to L.A. by Jim Morrison.

Last decade I discussed the Doors, Morrison and their relationship to cinema with writer and novelist Weizmann. 

He subsequently emailed me Motel Money Murder Madness: Jim Morrison and the Noir Tradition. 

“Some like to make fun of Jim Morrison for his poetic ambitions—he was young, ultra-serious, and at times he had the somber college student’s yen for Hamlet-like navel-gazing. What’s more, like Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor, the force of Morrison’s stardom at times threatens to overshadow his artistic gifts. Patti Smith recently wrote that she felt ‘both kinship and contempt’ watching Morrison perform. But Jim Morrison’s lyrics did introduce a whole new and highly literary sensibility to pop music—the Southern California noir of Raymond Chandler and the Southern Gothic tradition of William Faulkner. And pop music has never really been the same since.

“Of course, new things were already happening to the song lyric before Morrison made his move: Dylan shocked the airwaves with biblical passion and Whitmanesque frenzy. The Beatles followed with colorful utopian imagery that had roots in James Joyce, Lewis Carroll, and Edward Lear’s nonsense verse. But nobody brought the gravity, the hard realism and the psychological pressure of noir to the popular song before Jim. He represented a major leap toward adulthood in ’67 and the boomers flipped for it. After a youth saturated with sunshine and goody-goody-gumdrops consumerism, they had secretly been craving just such a counter-move. “The first album’s shadowy album cover and billboard, shot by Guy Webster, was a knowing nod to noir film posters like Out of the Past and In a Lonely Place. And Jim’s crooner voice and movie-star good looks defied the rock template, as well. But most of all, the words, their impressionistic, nightmare-like alienation, were strange and yet instantly recognizable. 

“We can’t know exactly what inspired Morrison to fuse the noir dreamscape to the popular song... but he was a military brat, raised in Florida and New Mexico. The South, with its backwoods quiet, its open highways, its malevolence, and its anti-culture, was in his bones. Throw a UCLA dose of Nietzsche, Rimbaud, the exotica of Eastern philosophy, Jungian psych, and the Native American tragedy into the mix, and you’ve got a potion powerful enough to challenge the lyrical norms as deeply as the sound of Hendrix’s guitar did.

“One of the last of the Venice Beach beatniks, Morrison self-published slim volumes of verse, even at the height of his rock stardom. He certainly had a hard time straddling his roles as shaman, youth leader, pop icon, and serious artist. But he struggled in earnest, and it’s impossible to talk about the Los Angeles tradition that stretches from Chandler, West and Fante to Didion herself, Bukowski and beyond, without seeing Morrison’s part. 

“What’s more, for better or worse, whole music genres have Morrison to thank for forging darkness to the pop song. Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy, post-punk, and even grunge couldn’t have happened without him. Some, like the Cult, seemed only to get the histrionics; others, like Jane’s Addiction, reached harder for poetry but lacked the warmth of Morrison’s highly intimate voice. Because, in the end, despite the shaman poses, the billboards and the spotlights, Morrison really portrayed himself as a lone human, in true noir fashion, struggling through the night. He wrote from the personal inner space that is poetry.” 

On January 28, 2018, I attended the memorial tribute and service to Rabbi Isaiah “Shy” Zeldin at the Stephen Wise Temple in the Bel-Air neighborhood of Southern California. Rabbi Eli Herscher praised Zeldin’s spiritual and visionary leadership in 1964 as he established an open-minded religious and musical community in the region, a mile from the UCLA campus where Manzarek and Morrison were then enrolled as students. From the Bima, Herscher politely encouraged the congregation of mourners “that today, memory is the only agenda.” 

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Library & Archives on July 10, 2017, invited me to be a guest speaker in their Author Series in Cleveland, Ohio. Before my appearance, one of the curatorial assistants took me into the private air-conditioned storage locker room not open to the viewing public. “We knew you were coming today and pulled out some specific items we wanted you to see.” 

I was given an envelope containing Jim Morrison’s UCLA diploma. 

It was a signal. Time to fly back home to Los Angeles. I was immediately reminded of Morrison's lyric line in "Celebration of the Lizard”: "Tomorrow we enter the town of my birth. I want to be ready."  

(Harvey Kubernik is the author of 20 books, including 2009’s Canyon Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon, 2014’s Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972, 2015's Every Body Knows: Leonard Cohen, 2016's Heart of Gold Neil Young and 2017's 1967: A Complete Rock Music History of the Summer of Love. Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. In 2021 the duo wrote Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child for Sterling/Barnes and Noble.  

Otherworld Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s Docs That Rock, Music That Matters. His Screen Gems: (Pop Music Documentaries and Rock ‘n’ Roll TV Scenes) is scheduled for a late 2025 publication.     

Harvey Kubernik wrote the liner notes to CD re-releases of Carole King’s Tapestry, The Essential Carole King, Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, Elvis Presley The ’68 Comeback Special, The Ramones’ End of the Century and Big Brother & the Holding Company Captured Live at The Monterey International Pop Festival. During 2006 Kubernik appeared at the special hearings by The Library of Congress in Hollywood, California, discussing archiving practices and audiotape preservation. In 2017 he lectured at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, in their Distinguished Speakers Series. Amidst 2023, Harvey spoke at The Grammy Museum in Los Angeles discussing director Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz music documentary. 

Kubernik is in The Sound of Protest documentarynow airing on the Apple TVOD TV broadcasting service. https://tv.apple.com › us › movie › the-sound-of-protest. Director Siobhan Logue’s endeavor features Smokey Robinson, Hozier, Skin (Skunk Anansie), Two-Tone's Jerry Dammers, Angélique Kidjo, Holly Johnson, David McAlmont, Rhiannon Giddens, and more. Harvey is interviewed along with Iggy Pop, Bruce Johnston, Johnny Echols, the Bangles' Susanna Hoffs and Victoria Peterson, and the founding members of the Seeds in director Neil Norman’s documentary The Seeds - The Seeds: Pushin' Too Hard now streaming online on Vimeo. This November 2025, a DVD/Blu-ray is scheduled for release via the GNP Crescendo Company).

The Doors’ Live At The Aquarius Theatre - The First Performance

Track List

Side 1 

1. Tuning

2. Jim's Introduction

3. Back Door Man

4. Break On Through

5. What Do We Do Next?

6. Soul Kitchen

Side 2

1. You Make Me Real

2. Tuning

3. I Will Never Be Untrue

4. The Crowd Humbly Requests

5. When The Music's Over

Side 3

1. Universal Mind

2. The Crowd Requests Their Favorites And Tuning

3. Mystery Train / Crossroads

4. Build Me A Woman

Side 4

1. Tuning

2. Who Do You Love (False Start)

3. Who Do You Love

4. Light My Fire

Side 5

1. The Crowd Requests More

2. The Celebration Of The Lizard

Side 6

1. Soundcheck 

Produced and Mastered by Bruce Botnick

Recorded July 21, 1969 at The Aquarius Theatre in Hollywood, CaliforniaThe post The Doors Live at the Aquarius Theatre: The First Performance Out November 21 first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

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Standalone CNC Tube Cutter/Notcher Does it With PlasmaTubes! Not only is the internet a series of them, many projects in the physical world are, too. If you’re building anything from a bicycle to a race cart to and aeroplane, you might find yourself notching and welding metal tubes together. That notching part can be a real time-suck. [Jornt] from HOMEMADE MADNESS (it’s so mad you have to shout the channel name, apparently) thought so when he came up with this 3-axis CNC tube notcher.
If you haven’t worked with chrome-molly or other metal tubing, you may be forgiven for wondering what the big deal is, but it’s pretty simple: to get a solid weld, you need the tubes to meet. Round tubes don’t really want to do that, as a general rule. Imagine the simple case of a T-junction: the base of the T will only meet the crosspiece in a couple of discreet points. To get a solid joint, you have to cut the profile of the crosspiece from the end of the base. Easy enough for a single T, but for all the joins in all the angles of a space-frame? Yeah, some technological assistance would not go amiss.
Which is where [Jornt]’s project comes in. A cheap plasma cutter sits on one axis, to cut the tubes as they move under it. The second axis spins the tube, which is firmly gripped by urethane casters with a neat cam arrangement. The third axis slides the tube back and forth, allowing arbitarily long frame members to be cut, despite the very compact build of the actual machine. It also allows multiple frame members to be cut from a single long length of tubing, reducing setup time and speeding up the overall workflow.
The project is unfortunately not open source– instead [Jornt] is selling plans, which is something we’re seeing more and more of these days. (Some might say that open source hardware is dead, but that’s overstating things.) It sucks, but we understand that hackers do need money to eat, and the warm fuzzy feeling you get with a GPL license doesn’t contain many calories. Luckily [Jornt] has put plenty of info into his build video; if you watch the whole thing, you’ll have a good idea of the whole design. You will quite possibly walk away with enough of an idea to re-engineer the device for yourself, but [Jornt] is probably assuming you value your time enough that if you want the machine, you’ll still pay for the plans.
This isn’t the first tubing cutter we’ve featured, though the last build was built into a C (It wasn’t open-source either; maybe it’s a metalworking thing.)NC table, rather than being stand-alone on the bench like this one.
Thanks to [Shotgun Moose] for the tip! Unlike tubing, you can just toss your projects into the line, no complex notching needed.