7. The Doors – Touch Me

It was our ever-reliable, finger-picking guitarist, Tom Halim, who finally figured out the chords to this song. For our last gig, we wanted to play this song partly  because I’ve never seen any Pinoy band cover this song, at least in the music scene I was part of in the late 90s. Of course, we loved The Doors but we didn’t want to cover  Break on Through or Light My Fire.

Last Band. After deciding to quit playing after I disbanded Flowers for Zoe in 96, I found myself aching to play again four years later. When we had rehearsed a few songs to last us at least a set, we decided to perform again. Good thing, my friend Khavn (who was stil Khan then) had a bar called Oracafe along Kamias Road. It was there where my band, re-christened Milk Bar (after a Anthony Burgess’ Clockwork Orange) performed covers of Radiohead, Belle and Sebastian, Tommy James and the Shondels, Velvet Underground and a few of our original songs from Flowers for Zoe.

Eventually, our song Wasakin ang Pader would end up in the Khavn’s DIY production of Indie Yo!, a compilation of new alternative music mashed up with some found sounds. The song is different from my previous ones in the sense that I used my baritone here and not the high-pitched punk voice.

Tell Me When. When I first heard Touch Me, I thought it was the best song the Doors ever wrote. It was different from their hits and more something like Engelbert Humperdinck would  perform. I thought it was more along the leagues of Cuando, Cuando than Roadhouse Blues. And because of this ‘abomination,’ I found it quite brave, avant-garde if you will, for them to sing this. Hello, I Love You is another different one as well as most songs in The Soft Parade album, but Touch Me makes macho rockers a bit uncomfortable.

I like how the brass section breathes in a fresh and ecstatic feel about the band which I usually associate with goth -  dark as [ their song] The End-dark. With Touch Me, it was a different Jim Morrison with sideburns, pompadour and a flowery shirt barely buttoned.

Til Stars Fall From the Sky. So Tom taught us the chords and the random number of times the last bar would be repeated. Instead of the brass section, we had guitars. We surely did have the energy and the balls to perform it live but we never did. We weren’t able to perform in our supposed last gig for some reason or other. Our second to the last gig, a forgettable one at that, became the final performance of Milk Bar.

Before you click on the video, check out this interesting wikipedia entry about it:

One of the most famous television appearances of the Doors is of the group performing Touch Me on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour along with the single’s B-side, Wild Child. During the performance, Jim Morrison missed his cue for the lines “C’mon, c’mon” and Robby Krieger could be seen with a black eye—the result of a bar fight the night before. (click here for the complete article)