As fast as I got out of work I didn’t make it to Tecumseh Park until the band was half through Roadhouse Blues. There was some minor hilarity when I gave my ticket at the entrance. Some kid behind me actually stuck his arm between my waist and elbow expecting the staff to think it was my arm and slap a licensed band on them instead. Not so fast: none of us were that slow, and it wasn’t that dark -- to the all-ages pit with you.

As I made my way into the crowd, and I finally saw some rock heroes of mine for decades for the first time live, they were kicking right through an intense version of Break On Through. Dave Brock (not the singer/ guitarist from Hawkwind) was the spitting image of Jim Morrison and his vocals emulated him at his best. There was no freak show: everything was in service to the song, and the song is the thing. It was kind of funny when Ray Manzarek said he was surprised that there were that many people there for the size of Chatham. Well, municipal amalgamation helps the numbers out I’m sure.

The next song could have gone so wrong for any vocalist. When The Music’s Over. This is one of those signature Doors songs. A lot can be forgiven if a singer is challenged by some songs, but this is one song where people aren’t so forgiving. So it was a relief and a real blast to see Brock handle the song so well. There was some serious synergy going on with the entire band at this point that had only been hinted at with the earlier songs. This was, for me, only the first of a number of A+ musical moments in time. It was a strange irony to hear Brock singing about the "scream of the butterfly" and see the moths flying too close to the lights: the end is always near.

An appropriately jaunty version of Peace Frog led into a nice and placid version of Blue Sunday. Ray Manzarek’s introductory banter which preceded Moonlight Drive really amped up the crowd. Along the way Manzarek worked in his take on Horse Latitudes into Moonlight Drive, with Robby Krieger adding his vocals too.

The band’s version of Wild Child was mostly an emulation of the original, but Krieger’s guitar work was closer to his own version from his solo album, No Habla. It was not a slavish rendition. Krieger played the crowd as much as he did his guitar.

Alabama Song, Back Door Man, and Crawling King Snake, were electrifyingly rendered, but the version of Love Me Two Times was simply thunderous. Ty Dennis' drumming for this song was incredible. It was like he was doing his best to make people not miss John Densmore, and I say he came very close. Although it should go without saying, most of us would like to see him behind the kit again.

One of my personal favorite Doors songs, penned by Robby Krieger, is Spanish Caravan. We were treated to an extended solo intro to the song, that was at times subtle and other times searing. When the song proper kicked in there was a lot of madness around. You could feel what others felt, and they felt the same. It was yet another A+ moment that night.

The odds of any Doors line-up ever doing Celebration Of The Lizard would not seem to be very good. It seems like, as with The End, it may be permanently retired because it was such a "Jim" song that without him the band doesn’t "feel" the song enough to make it true. But, the version of the Not To Touch The Earth segment was pure rock theatre overdrive. It really made me want to see the whole thing played out on stage sometime somewhere.

I couldn’t hear much of Dave Brock’s vocals on Touch Me, for the simple reason that everybody else seemed to be singing it. From where I was that seemed to be the loudest sing-a-long from the crowd all night. No lie, it really seemed like the band had enacted some kind of catharsis upon us all when they finished Touch Me and led into L.A. Woman. It was such a momentous build up. And then they left.

But encores there were.

The first encore was Riders On The Storm. The important thing about songs like L.A. Woman and Riders On The Storm, from the L.A. Woman album, is that they never had the chance to play them live with, and record live versions with, Jim Morrison. So it is, when hearing any member(s) of the Doors playing renditions of these songs, I imagine it is kind of like a spiritual bookend: there is a sense of addressing some unrequited musical magic, as if an incomplete incantation was dutifully completed by those closest to a passed on mage.

And then the lights went out. But the crowd called out for more. The whole line-up eventually returned, and Manzarek joked that they didn’t mind "doin’ it in the dark" because nobody minds that in the dark do they. They teasingly led into an incredible version of Light My Fire. They left it to last for a very good reason: they simply couldn’t have bettered themselves after. Everybody on stage was full tilt, furiously playing, and unlike the original release, Brock let loose with those verboten "F" words.

And then some lights finally came on again towards the end, if only for us to navigate our way through the ankle deep sea of crushed cans on the ground. The night was its own instant legend as we all left.

Overall, I feel that Phil Chen’s bass playing deserves a lot of credit throughout the whole set, as he and drummer Ty Dennis really worked well behind Krieger and Manzarek, and they provided a serious rhythm. They gave a deeper bottom end to the sound of every Doors song played, some of which never had such in studio versions and some of the live recordings.

While I would have liked to have heard Ray and Robby ripping through "Runnin’ Blue" it was likely never a big enough crowd favorite and I have to give credit to them for working in all the songs that they did. It was especially just that they worked in some of the poetry of Jim Morrison. When the band had been calling out to the audience for song suggestions, I actually heard somebody yell out for In The Eye Of The Sun (from the post-Morrison Doors album, Other Voices) so some people still have a good appreciation and knowledge of the band’s entire history.