The Doors Band

The Doors fifth studio album, Morrison Hotel, will be reissued in October for its 50th anniversary. The album was recorded in late 1969/early 1970 and released in February 1970. It’s newly remastered for this release by Bruce Botnick. The goodies are all on the bonus CD with more than an hour of unreleased recordings taken from the sessions for Morrison Hotel. Botnick says: “There are many takes, different arrangements, false starts, and insightful studio conversations between the band – who were in the studio – and producer Paul Rothchild – who was in the control room. It’s like being a fly on the wall.” The outtakes include rough versions of Morrison Hotel tracks ‘Peace Frog’ and ‘Blue Sunday’ as well as The Doors rarity ‘I Will Never Be Untrue.’ The bonus CD also features the band jamming on cover versions of the Motown classic ‘Money (That’s What I Want)’ and B.B. King’s’ ‘Rock Me’.

Many of the songs on Strange Days had been written around the same time as the ones that appeared on The Doors, and with hindsight one has the sense that the best of the batch had already been cherry picked for the debut album. For that reason, the band's second effort isn't as consistently stunning as their debut, though overall it's a very successful continuation of the themes of their classic album. Besides the hit "Strange Days," highlights included the funky "Moonlight Drive," the eerie "You're Lost Little Girl," and the jerkily rhythmic "Love Me Two Times," which gave the band a small chart single. "My Eyes Have Seen You" and "I Can't See Your Face in My Mind" are minor but pleasing entries in the group's repertoire that share a subdued Eastern psychedelic air. The 11-minute "When the Music's Over" would often be featured as a live showstopper, yet it also illustrated their tendency to occasionally slip into drawn-out bombast.

The Complete Studio Recordings is a seven compact disc box set by American rock group The Doors, released by Elektra on November 9, 1999. It contains six of the original eight Doors albums, digitally remastered with 24 bit, with the inclusion of stray previously unreleased tracks that had surfaced on the The Doors: Box Set series, on disc seven.

On May 8, 1970, Detroit's Cobo Hall was the setting for Live in Detroit, the first complete concert performance on the Doors' own Bright Midnight label…

In Concert is the successor CD set to the individual releases of Absolutely Live (which remains in print as a single CD), Alive, She Cried, and Live at the Hollywood Bowl – as none of them presented more than a single angle or two of the group's sound and each confined itself to only a portion of the group's repertoire, the three-in-one release makes perfect sense and is a decent bargain…

Ideally, one would avoid compilations of the Doors' work, except perhaps for the hit singles and moments when one wanted very light listening. This was a band that took itself very seriously, almost to the point of self-parody at times, and their music ought to be discovered in the setting and context in which it was intended, but assuming that one needs a Doors anthology, this 19-track collection is the place to start. It started life during the quadrophonic era as a single LP of the same title, with programming intended to combine the concepts behind two earlier compilations, 13 and Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine, under one cover. In 1985, the two-LP version, the fourth compilation of the group's work, and the most comprehensive, was released, providing a good overview to the most obvious different sides of the group's output, and in 1991 this was remastered for CD with improved sound and an extra track…

Originally released in 1972, Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine was one of the earliest "best-of" Doors collections, compiling 22 tracks from the band not just limited to their many ubiquitous hits but including some more experimental tunes and a few obscure B-sides. This strange and sprawling playlist is heavy on material from L.A. Woman, and seems particularly invested in the darker, more sinister side of the band. Lesser-known songs here include "Who Scared You" and the goofy, awkward blues run "(You Need Meat) Don't Go No Further" sung by keyboardist Ray Manzarek. With the exception of a few pop moments, this lengthy collection sets a heavy and sometimes menacing mood, highlighting the Doors' most depraved, shamanistic moments in tracks like the brooding "The End," "Maggie McGill," and the absolutely evil groove of "When the Music's Over."