21st century Doors make grave decision

Three original members of the Doors will be together again in December.

No, drummer John Densmore has not dropped his lawsuit against keyboardist Ray Manzarek and guitarist Robby Krieger to get them to stop touring as the Doors 21st Century.

Rather, Manzarek and Krieger will be taking their show to Paris, where on Dec. 8 they will mark the 60th anniversary of the birth of singer Jim Morrison by visiting his grave at the Pere Lachaise cemetery. The next night they’ll perform their first-ever concert in the City of Light, where Morrison died in 1971.

And in the show at Le Zenith, the group, which features former Cult singer Ian Astbury handling the vocals, will do something it never had the chance to with Morrison: perform the original Doors’ final album, “L.A. Woman,” a collection that produced such FM radio mainstays as the title song, “Love Her Madly” and “Riders on the Storm.”

“The Doors never played Paris, even with Jim,” says the ever-ebullient Manzarek. “This is the first official French gig. We’ll go see Jim on the 8th, have a little happy birthday for him, and then the 9th is ‘L.A. Woman’ in Paris.”

The “L.A. Woman” performance will actually be premiered Aug. 24 in a concert at Jones Beach on Long Island, a show that will be shot for a DVD release, and will be the centerpiece of other coming concerts.

“We’ll be doing ‘L.A. Woman’ from top to bottom in honor of Jim’s 60th birthday,” Manzarek says. “We never got to play it live. We recorded it, then Jim went to Paris and never came back. But now we get to do the tour that never happened.”

Densmore, who believes it was inappropriate for the fellow survivors to hire a new singer and use the Doors name, is no more supportive of the Paris plans.

“I feel kind of like the French felt toward us when we bombed Iraq about the pseudo-Doors playing Paris and traipsing around Jim’s grave for publicity,” the drummer says.

While Densmore failed to get an injunction to stop the group from using the Doors as part of its name immediately, his actions did result in a court ruling requiring the group to be clearly billed as “the Doors of the 21st century,” and his suit against them is still pending.

Manzarek says that he and Krieger have been writing new songs with various lyricists, including Astbury and poets Michael McClure and Jim Carroll, and have been talking to both Henry Rollins and X’s John Doe about contributing as well, with plans to record an album after finishing the European tour.

“We’ll keep Jim’s poet tradition alive,” Manzarek says. “This is not a tribute band. We are playing 20th century Doors songs now, but there will be 21st century Doors music coming.”

Densmore, who has a jazz album due in the fall called “Tribaljazz,” is happy to hear about the new music but not the old appellation.

“I’ve known they might write new stuff,” he says. “I don’t care, except I’m trying to get the word ‘Doors’ eliminated.”

The vast world of the Internet

While the major labels are trying to figure out how to deal with the Internet, an artist who left the majors’ sphere is going into untested territory with an unusual cyberspace initiative. The act Vast, which had two albums of darkly textured rock on Elektra, has launched a Web venture in which fans can download the music from its coming album as it’s made, in various stages of work-in-progress.

Ten new songs -- some rough mixes, some unfinished recordings -- have been made available as the first offering of the new program under the collective title “Version 3.x Turquoise.” Fans can download the entire package for $2.99. Other batches of songs and updates of recordings will be released the same way through the completion of the album this year. The second, “Version 3.x Crimson,” will be available this summer.

“It just makes so much sense to do this,” says Jon Crosby, the one-man composer, producer and performer of Vast. “It’s stripping it down to its most basic level. I have the freedom to write a song on Sunday, and on Monday people in Finland can hear it. There are so many possibilities.”

Crosby says he’s encouraged by the initial response -- 2,000 paid downloads in just a few weeks, with no promotion outside of the Vast Web site, www.realvast.com.

Crosby is not afraid that hearing (and paying for) the unfinished work will stop fans from wanting to hear (and buy) the finished product. And he’s also not bothered that the tracks can be traded for free on the Internet once downloaded.

“We hope people like the music and buy the album,” he says. “We’re using the Internet as a big radio station for promotion. There’s always going to be big media, but going out and exposing yourself to more people without big media is possible.”

Small faces

* ‘N Sync’s J.C. Chasez has done a guest vocal for the coming album by English electronica duo Basement Jaxx, due from Astralwerks Records in the fall. Siouxie Sioux of Siouxie & the Banshees also makes a guest appearance on the album.

* Steve Earle, Ani DiFranco and Billy Bragg join Pete Seeger on “Bring Them on Home (If You Love Uncle Sam),” an Iraq-themed update of what was originally an anti-Vietnam War song, It’s featured on “Seeds,” the third in a series of releases honoring the folk singer. The first disc of the two-CD set, due Sept. 23 from Appleseed Recordings, contains the first new recordings by the 84-year-old Seeger himself since 1996. The second disc is a tribute collection with performances by Natalie Merchant, Holly Near, Janis Ian, Tom Paxton and Seeger’s former Weavers partner Ronnie Gilbert, among others.

* With the Dead on the road reuniting the Grateful Dead’s surviving members, a first-ever greatest-hits CD spanning the old band’s recording career and all three labels it worked for will be released Sept. 16 via Rhino Records, complete with a TV marketing campaign to promote it.

* Mandolinists Sam Bush and David Grisman have teamed as Sam & David with a new album, “Hold On, We’re Strummin’,” due from Grisman’s Acoustic Disc label Sept. 23. The title, of course, is a nod to the Memphis soul duo Sam & Dave, and the strummers do a version of their “Hold On, I’m Comin’ ” on the album. Hal Blaine, the drummer for nearly all of Phil Spector’s productions and many more hits, appears on the record as well.