POP MUSIC REVIEW : Poetry and Melody Ring Out in This Collaboration

Jazz was the original soundtrack for the writers of the Beat Generation, but as bohemia marched on, rock music attracted some of its leading figures, including Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Michael McClure.

McClure befriended Jim Morrison and the Doors early in the group’s history, and for the past eight years he and Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek have been teaming as a words-and-music duo. With spoken-word performance a hot ticket these days, their appearance at McCabe’s on Sunday drew a good crowd out for a taste of the real thing.

The respected poet and playwright and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member didn’t settle for casual improvisation behind the reading. While allowing for some musical freedom, Manzarek has carefully designed his settings to underscore the rhythm, shape and content of McClure’s pieces.

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Hunched over a small, upright piano, he ranged from boogie-woogie and jazzy vamping to classically derived explorations. His responses to McClure were sometimes direct and obvious (a Spanish-flavored passage after “no smell of Spanish roses,” a dash of “Riders on the Storm” during a memorial to Morrison), but usually more impressionistic and abstract.

As a speaker, McClure didn’t show a musician’s rhythm and dynamics, and on his own he might tend to be a bit song-song. But with the aid of Manzarek’s sensitive shifts and strong beat, everything from straightforward political invective to grandly mystical, biology-rooted verses came across with absorbing impact.