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FILM REVIEW February 22, 2020

The Doors: Break On Thru - A Celebration of Ray Manzarek

The Doors The Doors: Break On Thru -A Celebration Of Ray Manzarek Trafalgar Releasing Palace 9 Cinemas, South Burlington, VT February 12, 2020 The Doors: Break On Thru -A Celebration Of Ray Manzarek, lives up to the spirit of its subtitle. In the course of the film's roughly ninety minutes, director Justin Kreutzmann efficiently interweaves the main concert footage with interviews of the various participants plus vintage archival video in such a way ...

ALBUM REVIEW December 15, 2019

The Doors: The Soft Parade - 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition

By Doug Collette

The 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of The Doors' The Soft Parade might well be reconfigured to a great degree without sacrificing its multi-configuration format. In doing so, this milestone package would then even more vividly depict this turbulent period in the iconic band's history. Even as it is, however, the existing combination of compact disc and vinyl brings clarity to a controversial entry in the Doors' early discography. Given that the previously-unreleased content on CD two runs roughly ...

ALBUM REVIEW October 27, 2018

The Doors: Waiting For The Sun 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition

By Doug Collette

Even though it was just a year after their resounding debut, The Doors (Elektra, 1967) and a followup of sizable, if slightly lesser magnitude, Strange Days (Elektra, 1967)--arguably the stronger of the first two records out only months apart the same year--the bloom was off the rose for the Doors by the time 1968 rolled around, creatively if not commercially. Indeed, much of the mystery within and around the Doors was gone by their third album Waiting For The Sun, ...

FILM REVIEW February 24, 2018

The Doors: Live At The Isle of Wight Festival 1970

By Doug Collette

The Doors Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970 Eagle Vision 2018 Inveterate naysayers will inevitably disparage continuing archive releases by the Doors and, to some degree, it's a point well taken: is there any band with a comparable catalog and a greater preponderance of reissues? Yet negativism ignores a crucial point in the issue of titles such as the heretofore-unreleased Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 1970: this latest title, like ...

ALBUM REVIEW December 9, 2017

The Doors: Strange Days - 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition

By Doug Collette

The Doors' Strange Days did not have the cultural or commercial impact of the iconic band's eponymous debut earlier that halcyon year. And that's all the more regrettable because, in purely artistic terms, this second album is superior in (almost) every way. Accordingly, the more streamlined 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition of this laboriously-recorded landmark (compared to the lavish package afforded its predecessor) is wholly appropriate because it focuses on the band and its music, above all else.

ALBUM REVIEW October 1, 2017

The Doors: The Singles

By Doug Collette

Naysayers carping about the voluminous reissues of the Doors catalog conveniently forget to consider neither label nor management would proceed on a title like The Singles if there wasn't sufficient confidence the market, in terms of new audiences alone wasn't there to support sales. And say what anyone will about how dubious is the concept of this latest release, it serves a dual purpose: debuting tracks heretofore unreleased on CD (most on the second disc here, not surprisingly rendering it ...

EXTENDED ANALYSIS April 1, 2017

The Doors' 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition

By Doug Collette

In his usual evenhanded, deceptively passionate prose for The Doors' 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition, David Fricke neatly encapsulates the combined personal and universal significance of the record. Released in January of 1967, the quartet's debut album, produced by Paul Rothchild, predates other monumental titles of the year--the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper (Parlophone), Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow (RCA, 1967), Cream's Disraeli Gears (Atco, 1967) and Jimi Hendrix' Are You Experienced? (Track, 1967)--effectively setting the stage for the cultural paradigm shift at this ...