The WiFi in Aruba is spotty at best, so Live Month will be abbreviated this week as we dive into Archive week. The May 8, 1970 Detroit show at the Cabo Arena has long been considered one of the top performances from The Doors. One of their longest set ever performed, it’s long been considered “the” live recording of the band to get. Rhino finally collected the show in its entirety back in 2000 on CD and last year put out a gorgeous box set on vinyl for RSD. I had only known it in digital form thanks to the band’s Bright Midnight Archives Concerts series, where it lived with two sets from Aquarius Theater in 1969. But now Live In Detroit is here, so let’s get into it…briefly, before the terrible WiFi cuts out again.

For a lot of people I can imagine The Doors are the archetypal classic rock band, but for me they’ve always been a band part, fearless in their pushback against what was ecpected at the time with bands like The Who and The Rolling Stones were doing, instead creating this mysterious hybrid of rock, psych, prog and lounge with a beatnik’s sense of poetry and danger in Morrison. They’re also for better or worse the band personification of indulgence when it comes to their live shows, but on Live In Detroit it really all comes together beautifully. Or, it does after some playful vamps and greetings – the show proper doesn’t kick in until the fifth track when after Morrison twists the lyrics into something called “Dead Cats Dead Rats” they finally launch into a blistering “Break On Through (To The Other Side)”.

So much attention and mythologizing has been paid to Morrison, and while it’s entirely justified, listening to the band live you have to give it up to Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, and John Densmore. The stellar recording of this show really lets them shine, and without them Morrison would have been nowhere. The recordings themselves were done by Bruce Botnik, the band’s sound engineer who recorded a number of shows at the time to be used to assemble the official Absolutely Live, and the addition clean-up done for Live In Detroit is phenomenal. The band hits the ground running, moving through “Alabama Song (Whisky Bar)” and a truly gnarly “Back Door Man” before hitting “Five To One”, one of my favorite Doors songs.

But the workouts are where it’s at. I really love the seven and half minute showcase for Manzarek on “Ship Of Fools” which turns from lounge to ominous to full throated rock with a Krieger guitar solo. Then there’s the REAL workouts, like the near 20 minutes of “Light My Fire” and the 17 minutes of “When The Music’s Over”. Both are fantastic, lengthy jams, and I especially love how demonic Morrison yelps at the beginning of “When The Music’s Over” over some crushing, almost doom chords from Krieger.

And then there’s “The End” closing out the show at over 17 minutes. It’s a suitable monster of a closer, and as I mentioned fans will go crazy over the workouts those extended pieces get. All good and proper, but as I listen again today I’m really drawn to the shorter covers The Doors sprinkle in through the massive set. Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads Blues”, Muddy Waters’s “Close To You” and Slim Harpo’s “I’m A King Bee” are fantastic peeks into their influences.

I’ve never been one to dismiss The Doors, and listening to Live In Detroit is as good a reason as any as to why.