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The Doors: Waiting For The Sun 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
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, ...
read moreThe Doors: Live At The Isle of Wight Festival 1970
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 ...
read moreThe Doors: Strange Days - 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
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.
read moreThe Doors: The Singles
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 ...
read moreThe Doors' 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
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 ...
read moreThe Doors: Feast of Friends
The Doors Feast of Friends Eagle Vision 2014 As with the previously-released archive titles of the Doors, Feast of Friends elevates the standard for such vault projects to another level by including pertinent content from the time period in which the band's self-financed and produced film was made. current group manager Jeffrey Jampol and sound engineer Bruce Botnick, as well as essayist Len Sousa and the filmmaker himself Paul Ferrara, place the piece in the ...
read moreDoors: Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine
Given his fascination with media, the late Jim Morrison would no doubt be deeply bemused at the irony of the release of a Doors compilation on cd (a dying configuration) due its popularity as a Record Store Day 2014 issue on vinyl lp (the configuration that won't die). It's no accident that Bruce Harris' original liner notes for Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine have been retained (nor pure expedience either, though there's no indication these tracks have ...
read moreThe Doors: The App and Beyond
Given the late Jim Morrison's fascination with media, plus the film school experience he shared with Ray Manzarek, it's more than a little fitting The Doors have unveiled their own computer app. Few rock bands have their own app, apart from those centered on a specific release, but then, few have the near half-century history to draw upon, as do The Doors. Subtitled “An Immersive Journey," the app certainly is that. With a dense multi-layered menu of music, ...
read moreThe Doors: R-Evolution
The Doors R-Evolution Eagle Vision 2014 The pristine clarity of the audio and video content on The Doors' Re-evolution, much of it unreleased, lends a ghostly quality to the film, perhaps to an even greater extent than its creators imagine. Not intended to be definitive, this two hour-plus compilation of music videos and conceptual pieces instead illustrates the ever-growing legacy of this iconic band. From the staged likes of the 'music film' for ...
read moreThe Doors: Live At The Bowl '68
The Doors' Live at The Bowl '68 is a remarkable piece of work, as much for the technical wizardry of the recording it comprises as for the pointed restraint on the part of the iconic band as it performs.Arguably at the height of its popularity at the time of this July 5, 1968 performance at the famed Los Angeles venue, The Doors was about to peak in commercial terms, at which point its music suffered as much as ...
read moreThe Doors: L.A. Woman - 40th Anniversary Edition
The DoorsL.A. Woman: 40th Anniversary EditionElecktra2012 In the end, The Doors were a jazz organ trio playing the blues, what keyboardist Ray Manzarek called “The Modern Jazz Quartet of Rock." Flirting with psychedelia on its first four albums, providing an acid soundtrack to 1967's Summer of Love, and releasing a critical career- killing album in The Soft Parade (Elektra, 1969), the band found its roots and made comeback skid-marks with Morrison Motel ...
read moreThe Doors: LA Woman: 40th Anniversary Edition
The two-disc reissue of The Doors' L.A. Woman (Elektra, 1971), released to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the original album, documents how this band achieved what The Beatles could not with Let It Be (Apple, 1970). Jim Morrison and company effectively and authentically went back to their musical roots and, in so doing, restored their camaraderie as a band.It matters little whether disc one or disc two is approached first--the former contains the now-classic, finished product, the latter ...
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