The Doors: Perception

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

So this is what you are gonna get for your $150 (and twice that when it hits the UK) a whole lot of nothing much at all really..........the people who will be buying this will have most of the out takes anyway and the video is all stuff drom other videos except for the very interesting Aussie TV footage of the band in the studio in 1970 recording Crawling King Snake.
12 discs two copies of the same album videos we have already seen and a few scraps from the out take vault most of us already have...........but its in a nice box so well worth the price.......
And because of this BMR was once again dumped in the shitter..........I'd laff but it's not really very funny.......
Well at least we can look forward to the series of polls when the folks on the LL are asked a question that was answered 4 years ago there and more time is eaten up discussing what was discussed back then.........funny how we all enthused over the Bright Midnight which we thought would bring us a plethora of delights instead it turned out to be a shitty weekend in Barnsley with a beer strike meaning all the pubs were dry...........

RHINO OPENS THE DOORS TO PERCEPTION

40th Anniversary Boxed Set Due November 21
Features All Morrison-Era Studio Albums
Expanded With Bonus Audio and Video On 12 Discs

LOS ANGELES — Rhino and Elektra Records salute the 40th anniversary of one of the greatest rock bands of all time with the November 21 release of Perception. The 6-CD/6-DVD boxed set presents all of The Doors’ classic studio albums with legendary vocalist Jim Morrison, each supplemented with rare and unreleased audio and video tracks.

Perception was produced in cooperation with surviving band members John Densmore (drums), Robby Krieger (guitar), and Ray Manzarek (keyboards), with The Doors’ longtime engineer Bruce Botnick back behind the boards. Each of the six albums is presented with bonus audio – much of it previously unreleased – on a remastered CD with an additional DVD including a 5.1 Surround Sound mix of the album and additional tracks as well as a photo gallery, lyrics and discography, and two videos of songs from that album.

One of the most impressive debuts in rock history, The Doors (1967) was as commercially successful as it was musically daring, with the signature single “Light My Fire” reaching #1 on the singles chart (the LP spent more than two years on the album chart, eventually going double platinum). Bonus material includes two takes of “Moonlight Drive,” a previously unreleased version of “Indian Summer,” the promotional video of “Break On Through (To The Other Side),” and a Canadian television broadcast of “The End” from Toronto in 1967.

Strange Days (1967) capped The Doors’ breakthrough year in fine form, with “People Are Strange” narrowly missing the Billboard Top 10. Among the extras are previously unissued takes of that hit (including false starts and dialogue) and “Love Me Two Times.” “Love Me Two Times” and the album’s closer, “When The Music’s Over” are seen on the DVD in live performances taped in Europe in 1968.

The chart-topping Waiting For The Sun (1968) opens with one of the band’s most irresistible pop singles (and their second #1 hit), “Hello I Love You,” before delving into darker terrain. Audio extras include previously unreleased dialogue and two takes of “Not To Touch The Earth” plus the group’s interpretation of Tommaso Albinoni’s classical composition “Adagio In G Minor” and the 17-minute epic work-in-progress, “Celebration Of The Lizard.” The DVD features footage of “Spanish Caravan” from The Doors’ storied 1968 gig at the Hollywood Bowl, and a Danish TV performance from that year of “The Unknown Soldier.”

The Soft Parade (1969) showed the group’s willingness to explore more elaborate arrangements including strings and horns; one of those sonic experiments, “Touch Me,” became a #3 hit. An unreleased take and studio dialogue of that single, plus the previously unheard “Push Push,” two takes of “Whiskey, Mystics And Men” and “Who Scared You” are among the audio tracks added. Rounding things out are video performances of the album’s title track and “Tell All The People” taped for New York’s WNET-TV in 1969.

Morrison Hotel (1970) was issued in the wake of Jim’s notorious Miami bust for indecent exposure, and shows The Doors battling back with such powerful broadsides as “Roadhouse Blues.” Eight previously unissued takes of that song are among the many bonus tracks included here, along with never-before-heard versions of “Peace Frog,” “The Spy,” the intriguingly titled “Money Beats Soul,” and a quick run through of Chuck Berry’s “Carol.” Music videos of “Roadhouse Blues” and “Wild Child” are tenants of the Morrison Hotel DVD.

L.A. Woman (1971) was released just a couple of months before Morrison’s untimely – and still mysterious – death in Paris. The album includes some of his most visionary lyrics, as well as the hits “Love Her Madly” and “Riders On The Storm.” “Orange County Suite” and “(You Need Meat) Don’t Go No Further” appear as additional audio, with a music video of album-opener “The Changeling” and rehearsal space footage of “Crawling King Snake” shot in 1971 for Australian television providing supplemental visuals.

These landmark albums are housed in a package truly worthy of the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall Of Famers. Appropriately enough the box cover is designed as a door which opens to access the album digipaks within. The front also sports a peephole with a wheel of images behind it that can be rotated to display photos of the band. Perception will be available at all physical and digital retail outlets and at www.rhino.com for a suggested list price of $149.98.

In conjunction with the upcoming 40th anniversary of the release of The Doors’ first album is the release of the first authorized and legitimate autobiography by the remaining members of the band that forever changed the face of music, popular culture, and America—THE DOORS by THE DOORS (Hyperion; November 7, 2006; $45.00; Hardcover); includes never-before-seen photos, rare interviews with Jim, and the words of Ray, Robby, John, their families, and the pedigree prose of former Rolling Stone editor and scribe of Morrison’s obituary, Ben Fong-Torres.

[cobriaclord]

What is interesting the number of alternate takes of certain songs.
Isn't Money Beats Soul a blues number?

Peace

[darkstar]

High Fidelity Review - August 27 2006

High Fidelity Review
DVD-Audio News Story:

Rhino Announces The Doors’ Perception DVD-Audio Box Set



Rhino and Elektra Records have officially announced The Doors Perception box set, released to salute the 40th anniversary of one of the greatest rock bands of all time. Available on November 21st, the 6-CD/6-DVD boxed set presents all of The Doors’ classic studio albums with legendary vocalist Jim Morrison, each supplemented with rare and unreleased audio and video tracks.

Perception was produced in cooperation with surviving band members John Densmore (drums), Robby Krieger (guitar), and Ray Manzarek (keyboards), with The Doors’ longtime engineer Bruce Botnick back behind the boards. Each of the six albums is presented with bonus audio – much of it previously unreleased – on a remastered CD with an additional DVD-Audio/Video disc including a 5.1 surround sound mix of the album and additional tracks as well as a photo gallery, lyrics and discography, and two videos of songs from that album.

One of the most impressive debuts in rock history, The Doors (1967) was as commercially successful as it was musically daring, with the signature single “Light My Fire” reaching #1 on the singles chart (the LP spent more than two years on the album chart, eventually going double platinum). Bonus material includes two takes of “Moonlight Drive,” a previously unreleased version of “Indian Summer,” the promotional video of “Break On Through (To The Other Side),” and a Canadian television broadcast of “The End” from Toronto in 1967.

Strange Days (1967) capped The Doors’ breakthrough year in fine form, with “People Are Strange” narrowly missing the Billboard Top 10. Among the extras are previously unissued takes of that hit (including false starts and dialogue) and “Love Me Two Times.” “Love Me Two Times” and the album’s closer, “When The Music’s Over” are seen on the DVD in live performances taped in Europe in 1968.

The chart-topping Waiting For The Sun (1968) opens with one of the band’s most irresistible pop singles (and their second #1 hit), “Hello I Love You,” before delving into darker terrain. Audio extras include previously unreleased dialogue and two takes of “Not To Touch The Earth” plus the group’s interpretation of Tommaso Albinoni’s classical composition “Adagio In G Minor” and the 17-minute epic work-in-progress, “Celebration Of The Lizard.” The DVD features footage of “Spanish Caravan” from The Doors’ storied 1968 gig at the Hollywood Bowl, and a Danish TV performance from that year of “The Unknown Soldier.”

The Soft Parade (1969) showed the group’s willingness to explore more elaborate arrangements including strings and horns; one of those sonic experiments, “Touch Me,” became a #3 hit. An unreleased take and studio dialogue of that single, plus the previously unheard “Push Push,” two takes of “Whiskey, Mystics And Men” and “Who Scared You” are among the audio tracks added. Rounding things out are video performances of the album’s title track and “Tell All The People” taped for New York’s WNET-TV in 1969.

Morrison Hotel (1970) was issued in the wake of Jim’s notorious Miami bust for indecent exposure, and shows The Doors battling back with such powerful broadsides as “Roadhouse Blues.” Eight previously unissued takes of that song are among the many bonus tracks included here, along with never-before-heard versions of “Peace Frog,” “The Spy,” the intriguingly titled “Money Beats Soul,” and a quick run through of Chuck Berry’s “Carol.” Music videos of “Roadhouse Blues” and “Wild Child” are tenants of the Morrison Hotel DVD.

L.A. Woman (1971) was released just a couple of months before Morrison’s untimely – and still mysterious – death in Paris. The album includes some of his most visionary lyrics, as well as the hits “Love Her Madly” and “Riders On The Storm.” “Orange County Suite” and “(You Need Meat) Don’t Go No Further” appear as additional audio, with a music video of album-opener “The Changeling” and rehearsal space footage of “Crawling King Snake” shot in 1971 for Australian television providing supplemental visuals.

These landmark albums are housed in a package truly worthy of the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall Of Famers. Appropriately enough the box cover is designed as a door which opens to access the album digipaks within. The front also sports a peephole with a wheel of images behind it that can be rotated to display photos of the band. Perception will be available at all physical and digital retail outlets and at www.thedoors.com for a suggested list price of $149.98.

In conjunction with the upcoming 40th anniversary of the release of The Doors’ first album is the release of the first authorized and legitimate autobiography by the remaining members of the band that forever changed the face of music, popular culture, and America—THE DOORS by THE DOORS (Hyperion; November 7, 2006; $45.00; Hardcover); includes never-before-seen photos, rare interviews with Jim, and the words of Ray, Robby, John, their families, and the pedigree prose of former Rolling Stone editor and scribe of Morrison’s obituary, Ben Fong-Torres.

Each DVD-Audio disc will have:
A 5.1 mix of the album, with new parts, and all alternates and outtakes also mixed in 5.1
The "40th Anniversary Stereo Mix", with new parts
The classic stereo mix, as you have always heard them, but in hi-resolution 96kHz 24-bit audio
Videos (stereo only)
10-20 photos in a photo gallery

www.highfidelityreview.com/news/news.asp?newsnumber=15597242

[jym]

Well, well, well, this seems pretty pedestrian, it seems like most of this stuff has been offered before on/in other DVD/CD's, no surprise from The Doors then. The only new thing seems to be in studio Crawling King Snake from Australian TV. This would be impressive if I were a new/neophyte fan and knew & hadn't seen much, so maybe that's the audience Ray, Robby, and John want to cater to and I guess write off the fans who have been around a while. Anybody ready for the Wild Child video again?

[cobriaclord]

Does anyone know anything bout the studio version of carol?

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

I would not get too excited about it....it's likely as not just as it says a quick run through of Carol....probably only lasts a minute or so.......same with Money Beats Soul its prolly just a bit of Jim larking about...........interesting without doubt but hardly worth forking out $150 for.............the whole thing is just another rip off release by The Doors...........the sound only benefits you if you have an expensive system so anyone with a normal stereo just wastes their money...........and the DVD will prolly only work on specialised DVD players like the LAW DVD did...........likely play OK on a computer but thats not gonna get the sound ........so this basically is for collectors and people with nice expensive stereo systems.......... very little new and what is cannot be described as anything earth shattering......nice of course but where is the plethora of out takes that 4 years ago was gonna knock our socks off...........these people think we are a bunch of fucking idiots and that we forget their lies and deceits....and reading the LL they are probably right
Enough people are dumb enough to just take any scraps they throw and lap them up..........I guess collectively as Doors fans we deserve all we get ........or don't get as the case may be

[cobriaclord]

Don't worry, I wont buy it. I'll wait until the few songs that i want are widely circulating!

[cobriaclord]

its a 56 second snippet in case anyone was wondering. its prolly the same scenario for Money Beats Soul

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Wasn't wondering myself as this whole project is of little interest to me............it's a vanity project designed to rob 150 bucks from equally vain fans who see the value in the sound quality rather than the true heart and soul of the music............for me the vinyl version of The Doors LP I had 35 years ago sounded good to me so I for one place no value on a 5:1 mix.....as Rothchild commented in 1967 it was the muse they were searching for not the perfect take............when you think of the times wasted with this project and the Love/Death/Travel project that could have been spent sorting out some of the live stuff and the out takes rare tracks it makes you weep............
These vanity projects are destined to be in a Bargain Bin in a years time as there will hardly be a queue of people lining up fighting to buy a copy in your local record store....not at 150 dollars in the US and twice that here.........
A '40 year' remastered release of each album with ALL the rare tracks from that period added on CD at a normal CD price would have created a groundswell of interest that would have grown as the value of the release became known to other Doors fans.........but this is simply a joke of a project designed to stroke the ego of people like Jamplop................
Someone with a bit of vision could have done so much since 2005 to promote The Doors cause but trying to screw huge sums of money from Doors fans who can walk into any record shop and buy a copy of a Doors album for a few pounds/bucks shows how truly stupid these people are............this is the fourth box set Doors release in 10 years and none of them have been anything that exciting and that statement comes from someone with more than a passing interest in The Doors............

[cobriaclord]

"Stroke the ego" I always thought Jampol's "ego" was too small to stroke.

In my opinion this release is a transition. Collectors will go out, buy it, and end up getting robbed. But i just think its setting up for some releases next year (so i hope). I also think that the '97 box set was the best box set of them all because it had stuff that casual fans didnt have and actually want it. I had my friend burn two cds with the good stuff from that set.

Peace

[jym]

It seems like they're trying to ensure their legacy so I think that this new thing is for the new fan. I don't get it you think they'd put together something really cool with something NO ONE has seen before that would appeal to the older fan & a new fan who's looking to be bowled over.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The Perception box set is now for pre order through Amazon UK and is actually pretty much the price it is in the States which has amazed me......£61 via Amazon which is pretty damn good....cheaper by far than the rip off box set and cube.................
that surely is a major surprise here.......

BUT it also says its only 6 discs when its supposed to be 12 so I dunno whether that price might double to 120 quid which is what I expected and that is a bloody rip off....we shall see....
Its really odd as the US Amazon says 6 discs too.........there seems to be a bit of confusion here...........if you look at the photo the discs are doubles......I cannot see Amazon UK selling this box with 12 discs for 60 quid..........if they do its a pretty good deal for UK fans for a change.............



Amazon.co.uk
Price: £60.99
Availability: Available for pre-order

Perception: 40th... [Box set]
~ The Doors (Artist)

Our Price: £60.99 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions

This item will be released on 20 November, 2006. Pre-order now! Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Product details

Audio CD (20 Nov 2006)
Number of Discs: 6
Format: Box set
Label: Rhino
ASIN: B000ILYYJE
Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: None

Doors flung open 40 years on
IN 1967, Jim Morrison had it all. The rock god looks. The killer hooks. A voice to die for.

He was The Lizard King. He “could do anything”. He was Mr Mojo Risin’ (an anagram of Jim Morrison which he later used in the song L.A. Woman).
The Doors were flung open and, in the words of their debut album’s opening blast, they were ready to “break on through to the other side”.
With equal doses of gentle croons and primal screams, of summery psychedelia and bone-chilling menace, they produced an LP that still stands tall next to that year’s Sgt Pepper by The Beatles and The Velvet Underground’s “banana” album.
Most students of rock history are familiar with how Jim’s vivid story unfolded. A mere four-and-a-half years later, the bloated, bearded singer came to a sad end in a bath in Paris on July 3, 1971.
One of rock’s most outrageously brilliant frontmen was gone at 27. A slave to alcohol, he’d still found time to lead his band on a merry dance through six fine studio albums and a host of incandescent live performances. Mystery still surrounds the circumstances of his death.

But what was it like knowing and working with Jim and being a member of The Doors?

To celebrate the release of the definitive Doors boxset, Perception, SFTW reunited the band’s three surviving members to find out.
Ray Manzarek (keyboards), Robby Krieger (guitar) and John Densmore (drums) speak with huge affection about their late, great singer.

They talk about how they formed the band, about the high points such as the overwhelming reaction to Light My Fire and low points such as Jim’s rap for indecent exposure at a Miami gig.
And, as we discover, there was a lot more to The Doors than Jim Morrison. Four talented people with a shared, daring musical vision.

Perception brings together studio albums The Doors, Strange Days (1967), Waiting For The Sun (1968), The Soft Parade (1969), Morrison Hotel (1970) and L.A. Woman (1971). Each has fascinating bonus tracks and on six accompanying DVDs you can hear the albums as never before in surround sound and watch promotional and live footage.

Of the newly released material, most interesting are early takes of pivotal songs Moonlight Drive and Indian Summer, a jazzy version of Queen Of The Highway and some great work-in-progress takes of Not To Touch The Earth and Roadhouse Blues.
The slow, bar-room blues of Orange County Suite, a stunning out-take from L.A. Woman, points to a bright future Jim was never to have. Ray, Robby and John ... speak with huge affection about their late, great frontman

HERE Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore tell SFTW about their lives less ordinary in The Doors:

DESCRIBE the moment you joined the band.

Ray: Jim and I conceived The Doors on the beach of Venice, California, in the summer of 1965. We were recent graduates of the UCLA film school where we were classmates and formed a bond of friendship centring around film, music — jazz, blues and rock — and marijuana.
Jim was a poet and I was a musician. He sang me a few songs (that day on the beach) that he had been working on and I could hear the music in my head that would support his marvellous, psychedelic lyrics. Moonlight Drive was the first song he did.
Also: My Eyes Have Seen You and Summers Almost Gone. I said: “Brilliant! Let’s get a rock and roll band together.” He said, “Ray, that’s exactly what I had in mind”.

Robby: At our first rehearsal, the first song we did was Moonlight Drive. By the time the song ended, I knew I was in The Doors!

John: I was at Ray’s parents’ Manhattan Beach garage when I met Jim and we jammed on Moonlight Drive and I knew there was magic in the air.

WHAT sort of life were you living?

John: I was a college student, frustrated by getting Cs in everything but music and sports (for which I got As). I was also a professional drummer, playing weddings, bar mitzvahs and bars.

Robby: I was going to UCLA, living at home with the family, doing lots of acid (not in school. Well, sometimes).

Ray: Starving student artist.

CAN you describe the spirit of Doors music?

Robby: We had an intense desire to get to the other side and Break On Through captured it.

Ray: Freedom, exploration, danger, no fear!

John: The Doors music was about transcendence, freedom, but inner freedom.

JIM once yelled to an audience: “I wanna change the world!” Do you think he and you as a band did?

Ray: Yes, and for the better. You can dare to be free! Free of the rigidity of church, school and politics. With the ingestion of certain hallucinogenic substances, one can open the doors of perception and perceive things as they truly are — infinite. And that vision will create the new man on planet Earth.

John: We helped nudge along the anti-war movement during Vietnam and were sympathetic to civil rights and the women’s movement.

POET, musician, sex-god, friend etc – what was Jim’s best quality?

John: All of the above.

Ray: Poet, friend.

Robby: Jim had the ability to bond with people, not just in person but over the radio and TV as well. A very rare quality.

WHAT was he like to work with?

Robby: Unless he was drunk he was great at all times.

John: He was fantastic in the studio, very professional, unless he was drunk. On stage, he was more volatile, but that’s where the excitement lay. He was unpredictable.

Ray: A great deal of fun.

WHAT’S your fondest memory of Jim?

Ray: Walking along the beach with him and discussing man, God and the place of both in the universe.

John: Driving around in my VW Bug, talking about the future.

WERE you surprised by the reaction to Light My Fire?

John: Something in my bones told me Light My Fire was special. The transition from the verse into the chorus has some kind of intoxicating sound quality that seems to get everybody.

Ray: Not surprised, but extremely happy.

Robby: When we played it live, people went nuts every time, so we knew it was a hit song. If Feliciano hadn’t done it in a totally different arrangement, and very commercial too, not nearly so many people from all types of music would have covered it — so thank you Jose!

WHAT’S your proudest achievement as a member of The Doors?

Ray: Being IN the Doors.

John: My drumming on LA Woman.

Robby: Writing Light My Fire, Touch Me and others.

HOW did you manage to produce six albums in under five years?

Robby: After the first album, producer Paul Rothschild told Ray, John and I, “Boys, we better record as much as we can because Jim may not be with us too much longer”. A horrible thing to say, but true.

Ray: Hard work and concentration. But it was never gruelling. It was joyous! It was art.

John: It was 24/7, but extremely rewarding creatively.

WERE there any discoveries among the boxset’s bonus tracks that surprised you or are particular favourites?

John: I like the jazz version of Queen Of The Highway very much. There seems to be more stuff being found in our entrails.

Robby: Yes, thank God, the Roadhouse out-takes are very cool.

DOORS albums are beautifully structured with big setpieces like The End and When The Music’s Over as the final tracks.

Robby: We laboured over the order endlessly, but in reality most of the albums almost sequenced themselves. What else would open the first album but Break On Through?

What else would close it but The End?

HOW did you feel at the time about the notorious Miami incident (Jim’s rap for indecent exposure in 1969)?

John: I felt like it was a political evening, musically poor, but everyone went home laughing as if we’d had a good time. The lawsuit came much later due to the right wing trying to get us.

Ray: It was theatre of the absurd becomes reality.

Robby: It was a hatchet job by politicians running for office.

HOW do you remember the Isle Of Wight Festival?

Robby: It was a mess. Jim was in a daze because of the trial, Joni Mitchell was in tears about something, Hendrix was worried about where to score rather than his set — rock and roll as usual.

Ray: Vividly and with great fondness. Three quarters of a million English hippies! My God, what a sight. And what cool and fine vibrations. Peace and love — and now we have Iraq.

John: I was in awe watching The Who play Tommy but Jim was subdued because he was on trial.

DO you accept the criticism for The Soft Parade, generally regarded as the weakest Doors album with Jim?

Ray: Yes. It’s all my fault.

John: No. We talked about strings and horns before the first album. We were trying to make our Sgt. Pepper’s. Touch Me was No1 and the critics just didn’t get it.

Robby: I agree on the overproduction, but don’t consider it the weakest album by far. Touch Me, Wild Child and Soft Parade are some of our strongest songs.

YOU developed a much meatier sound for Morrison Hotel. Ray: Yes, we thought, “Let’s make it meaty, beaty, big, and bouncy”. I think we did.

John: After Soft Parade, we wanted to get back to our raw, original garage sound. if we hadn’t gone through Soft Parade, we wouldn’t have gotten back.

HOW were the recording sessions for L.A. Woman, the last time you guys saw Jim?

Robby: Those were the most fun sessions we ever did, mainly because we produced ourselves and recorded at our rehearsal place with a portable board.

Ray: Great sessions. Fast, hard and rocking. But cool and dark, too.

John: It was extremely relaxed, producing ourselves with our long-time engineer Bruce Botnick.

DO you have a favourite Doors album, one that brings back the best memories?

Robby: They were all memorable, but L.A. Woman was a true Doors album.

John: The second album Strange Days and the last L.A. Woman are my favourites.

Ray: No, love them all.

WHAT was it like collaborating again on this box set?

John: Every generation or so, technology improves the sound and it’s even better, plus the drums seem to be louder and clearer. I like that!

Robby: Remixing with Bruce Botnick in surround sound was great.

Do you hear The Doors legacy in today’s music?

Robby: It’s hard not to. Check out Stoned Immaculate, The Doors tribute album, you’ll get an idea.

WHAT do you imagine would have happened if Jim had lived?

John: Either he would be a drunk playing the blues in a club, or a vibrant, creative artist, clean and sober, like Eric Clapton.

Ray: Who knows? The future’s uncertain and the end is always near.

Robby: I have no idea. But I know it would have been a blast!

By SIMON COSYNS
The Sun 'Something For The Weekend' Saturday Supplement
December 01, 2006

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Nope seems about right as HMV have it for £75 in shop and £58 on line and know its twelve discs....................
Can't complain with that one as the set is 20 cheaper than the cube which cost £80 and even a coupla quid cheaper than the box set...........
Nice to see the fans this side of the pond getting a fair deal for a change.........

I just got this via email....apparently someone has an advance copy and this is the tracklist...........can't say I am over impressed



the doors
1 break on through
2 soul kitchen
3 crystal ship
4 20th century fox
5 alabama song / whiskey bar
6 light my fire
7 backdoor man
8 i looked at you
9 end of the night
10 take it as it comes
11 the end

original album total 44:08

12 moonlight drive #1
13 moonlight drive #2 (previously unissued)
14 indian summer - august 1966 vocal (previously unissued)

spare total 7:50
total album playing time by clock 51:59

video content
1 break on through (to the other side) (music video)
2 the end (soundstage performance, toronto, 1967)


strange days
1 strange days
2 you're lost little girl
3 love me two times
4 unhappy girl
5 horse latitudes
6 moonlight drive
7 people are strange
8 my eyes have seen you
9 i can't see your face in my mind 3
10 when the music's over

original album total 35:13

11 people are strange (false start & dialogue, previously unissued)
12 love me two time • take 3 (previously unissued)

spare total 5:17
total album playing time by clock 40:38

video content
1 love me two times (live in europe, 1968)
2 when the music's over (live in europe, 1968)


waiting for the sun
1 hello i love you
2 love street
3 not to touch the earth
4 summer's almost gone
5 wintertime love
6 the unkown soldier
7 spanish caravan 2:59
8 my wild love
9 we could be so good together
10 yes, the river knows
11 five to one
original album total 34:04

12 albinoni's adagio in g
13 not to touch the earth • dialogue (previously unissued)
14 not to touch the earth tk1 (previously unissued)
15 not to touch the earth tk2 (previouosly unissued)
16 celebration of the lizard (an experiment/work in progress)

spare total 30:41
total album playing time by clock 64:46

video content
1 spanish caravan (live at the hollywood bowl, 1968)
2 the unknown soldier (soundstage performance, denmark, 1968)


soft parade
1 tell all the people
2 touch me
3 shaman's blues
4 do it
5 easy ride
6 wild child
7 runnin' blue
8 wishful sinful
9 the soft parade
original album total 34:58

10 who scared you?
11 whiskey mystics and men
12 whiskey mystics and men #2 (previously unissued)
13 push push (previously unissued)
14 touch me dialogue (previously unissued)
15 touch me take 3 (previously unissued)

spare total 19:46
total album playing time by clock 54:49

video content
1 the soft parade (soundstage performance, new york, 1969)
2 tell all the people (soundstage performance, new york, 1969)


morrison hotel
1 roadhouse blues
2 waiting for the sun
3 you make me real
4 peace frog
5 bleu sunday
6 ship of fools
7 land ho
8 the spy
9 queen of the highway
10 indian summer
11 maggie m'gill

original album total 37:45

12 talking blues (previously unissued)
13 roadhouse • tks 1&3 • 11/4/69 (previously unissued)
14 roadhouse • tk6 • 11/4/69 (previously unissued)
15 roadhouse • tk 1 • 11/5/69 (previously unissued)
16 money beats soul • 11/5/69 (previously unissued)
17 roadhouse • tks 13-15 • 11/5/69 (previously unissued)
18 peace frog • dialogue 1 (previously unissued)
19 the spy#2 (previously unissued)
20 jazz version -queen of the highway

spare total 41:31
total album playing time by clock 79:32

video content
1 roadhouse blues (music video)
2 wild child (music video)


l.a. woman
1 the changeling
2 love her madly
3 been down so long
4 cars hiss by my window
5 l.a. woman
6 l'america
7 hyacinth house
8 crawling king snake
9 the wasp / texas radio
10 riders on the storm
original album total 48:51

11 orange county suite
12 (you need meat) don't go no further

spare total 9:58
total album playing time by clock 58:49

video content
1 the changeling (music video)
2 crawling king snake (footage from the doors rehearsal space filmed for australian tv, 1971


Not a lot on this that we have not already seen appear in trade circles......but I am told the bloke who got this is some magazine critic and says the sound is rather good.......To be utterly honest the sound upgrades are not that important as they are just vanity projects.....the copies I had on vinyl sounded damn good to me 30 odd years ago and must have sounded OK to The Doors as well.......... eventually all this drive for techno perfection will produce a sterile version of The Doors which misses the fact that the 'muse' motivated them not the fact the records sounded really cool...........we seem to be in the process in The Doors world of being taken over by people who judge being a real Doors fan by the appreciation of the standard of the 'coolness' of the sound on a fancy DVD player rather than the art that drove the four guys to make that sound...eventually that sound will be technically perfect but devoid of any soul..........The Doors even made albums using older rather than utilising the most up to date technology because they sought that elusive 'feel' to the music they produced..........now it seems that 'feel' is unimportant because 5:1 sound is cool and DVDA with a shitload of technical babble sound is more important than the soul of the music............anyone who disagrees is accused of being some cave dwelling luddite who is too stupid to appreciate the finer points of taking music from the 60s and giving it the 21st century treatment........but it seems to me that just because we can take classic music like The Doors and bring out every nuance from the recording sessions of 1966 and 1967 does not particularly make that 'better' than what was on offer 40 years ago. It just makes it 'cooler'.....

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

THE DOORS - PERCEPTION
The Doors (Rhino)

Although this impressive 40th anniversary box set is audio-led (its cornerstone being the six CDs, not the short DVDs that accompany them), it’s obvious we should begin with the 1967 Canadian television broadcast of "The End", the first great Doors psychotropic epic.

Insert the DVD. Action. They crash into an almighty death-chord, Jim Morrison glaring at the camera and screaming: "Wake up!" For 11 minutes he commands his stage, writhing against the mic stand with lava in his eyes. The urgency mounts, the hippychick dancers lose their inhibitions and Morrison whips the hysteria upwards and upwards. Finally he sinks to his haunches to survey the mayhem he’s created. It’s amazing, riveting footage.

Today, 35 years after Morrison’s death, The Doors are a rock’n’roll institution whose legacy is surprisingly brittle. After being revered for decades, they’ve recently slumped in stature – derided for meretricious poetry, leather trousers and worse. The current generation doesn’t seem to rate them. Even in older milieux, it’s become fashionable to damn them with faint praise: coupla good albums, then lost it big-time... A decent existential trip for teenagers, but a band you grow out of when you mature.

Scarcely helping matters, a previous multi-disc anthology in 1997 ("The Doors Box Set") was a notorious botch-job that lost its way in dire rarities and absence of narrative. More seriously, the six Doors studio albums – the really important stuff – sounded lifeless on CD for 13 years until 1999 brought new, scintillating remasters by former engineer/producer Bruce Botnick.

Packaged like a door with a peephole, "Perception" takes those 1999 remasters and adds out-takes to all six albums. Sharing each double-digipack is a 20-minute DVD of television clips and promo films. And that’s it. No live albums. No specious attempts to jiggle chronology. No “unreleased” poetry surreptitiously glued on to 1980s jazz-funk overdubs.

The 33-minute blushing-pink pop album "Waiting For The Sun" swells to an hour, feasting on the bonus cuts: "Celebration Of The Lizard", a brutal phantasmagoria excised from the original 1968 tracklisting; "Albinoni’s Adagio In G Minor", a Morricone-style art-piece. "Morrison Hotel"’s out-takes are more prosaic: eight interminable cock-ups of "Roadhouse Blues".

Not every Doors album benefits from these CD/DVD combinations. Unlike its freeway-haunting music, "LA Woman"’s DVD is claustrophobic and turgid. Indisputably, though, synthesis occurs elsewhere – magical unions of sight and sound – just like the leering, hunchbacked Doors riffs where wire-rimmed intellectualism and bone-hard carnality conjoin in electraglide guitar and harpsichord scales. And you realise how revolutionary, how thrilling The Doors really were, before all those biographies, movies and TV-advertised compilations turned them into cliché.

Let’s acknowledge their versatility, for a start. Released at either end of 1967, "The Doors" and "Strange Days" are towering statements of crepuscular psychedelia that actually, when analysed, visit none of the usual psychedelic geography. "Break On Through (To The Other Side)" is a mambo. "Moonlight Drive" is a tango. They’re ecstatically embroidered ("Light My Fire", "The Crystal Ship"), then gammy-legged ("Love Me Two Times", "Back Door Man"), then suddenly we’re at the Kit Kat Club ("People Are Strange") where life-is-a-cabaret-old-chum.

With no bassist to make them swing, the hypnotic repetitions of Ray Manzarek’s keyboard basslines were crucial. Black-and-white 1968 film of "When The Music’s Over" shows us what it looked like. Morrison is already puffy from the drinking, but Manzarek’s left hand is a bass machine, techno-repetitive, relentlessly risking RSI.

Stretched wide by ’60s stereo separation, Manzarek and guitarist Robby Krieger evidently felt embellishment was necessary. Following the successful pop departure of "Waiting For The Sun", a cavalry of strings and brass reinforcements arrived for "The Soft Parade" (1969), prompting criticism that The Doors were selling out to muzak. The suave production textures (and inconsequential Krieger-written lyrics) must have disappointed many; others, myself included, swear by the poignant stoicism of these pop tunes.

"The Soft Parade"’s DVD has a TV performance of the title track. Morrison is pissed and downright fat, with bouffant hair and preacher’s beard. He looks like a deranged, sweaty Bee Gee.

Arrested that March in Miami for exposing his genitals onstage, it all went wrong for Morrison. Living the life of the anarchic drunk, he daily faced imprisonment but was hardly a free man in any case. The DVD for "Morrison Hotel" (1970) has jaw-dropping scenes of him being violently manhandled – by police, by girls, by freaks – while "Roadhouse Blues" blares out sardonically: "Let it roll, baby, roll... all night long." The craziness is frightening.

"Morrison Hotel" and "LA Woman" (1971) were returns to a raunchy blues approach, but with provisos. The former revels in tonal contrasts (the exquisite "Peace Frog"/"Blue Sunday" segue), also suggesting a bizarre nautical bent ("Land Ho!", "Ship Of Fools"). The latter album is dominated by its original side-closers "LA Woman" and "Riders On The Storm" – ineffable road songs both – but is arguably the closest The Doors came to sounding like other bands. Morrison died in Paris while it was climbing the charts.

He is not the messiah, not then, not now; and talk of snake-hipped shamen leaves many of us cold. But there’s infinitely more to Morrison than unfettered chemical experimentation and an oedipal encounter with the old lady. He deserves respect, not ridicule. And The Doors finally produce a box set that illuminates their shapeshifting music, where kaleidoscopes bumped into triskaidecahedrons. No wonder there’s so many ways of perceiving them.

From Uncut December 2006
By DAVID CAVANAGH

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The King -- and Lizard King -- start year off on vintage rock note

I hate to break this to you, stoner conspiracy theorists, but Jim Morrison, the incendiary lead singer of the Doors, died at age 27 in a Paris bathtub in 1971.

I'll repeat that. He is dead. He is not running guns in Africa. He has not been reincarnated as a Navajo shaman. He is not writing funky post-modern poetry under a banyan tree, or under a pseudonym.

Yet for all the recent froth on the home entertainment front, the rest of us might well decide that "Jim is alive" after all.

Amid the oh-so-many megasets released at the end of 2006, the Doors were represented by "Perception" (DMC/Rhino, $149.98) -- a package crammed with six CDs and six DVDs of audio and video content to commemorate the band's 40th anniversary.

Along with "Perception" comes a new 15th anniversary edition of Oliver Stone's film "The Doors" (Lionsgate, $19.98). Though I'm no fan of Stone's revisionist history, his Doors biography has merits aplenty.

Long before Joaquin Phoenix stunned the masses with his portrayal of Johnny Cash in "Walk the Line," there was Val Kilmer -- who did his own singing in the film, reportedly causing the surviving Doors to do double takes on playback. As the late Gene Siskel raved in his 1991 review, "Morrison [is] superbly represented by Val Kilmer in body and song . . . portrayed as a poet and a drunk."

As for "Perception," a recent article in Paste magazine slammed the package, claiming it was yet another attempt by the band to cash in by repackaging its limited catalog of studio material in an almost-complete box.

Although there's some merit to this argument, it also smacks of purist whining; after all, new generations of fans discover classic-rock bands such as the Doors, Beatles and Led Zeppelin on a daily basis. Sometimes, new configurations of product serve as a fresh starting point for crash courses in a group's history -- and on that score, "Perception," though not complete (it lacks any organized compilation of live material, for example), will do in a pinch.

Provided you have $150 to spare, of course.

"Bruce Botnick remixed the DVDs to 5.1 surround sound, so you can listen to the Doors as if you were standing where Jim Morrison stands and the stuff sounds just fabulous," says Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek.

Speaking of busy, Manzarek is hardly resting on the Lizard King's laurels; he has a new Civil War novel out called "Snake Moon" (Night Shade Books) and a CD of electronic jazz music, "Atonal Head" (PBM Records). ("It was like being mad scientists locked in an electronic laboratory," muses Manzarek of the disc.)

Though Manzarek musters grace when handling the same Doors talking points in interviews, we asked him what's the most annoying Doors question he has to deal with.

"That he's alive," Manzarek said, referring to Morrison. "He's alive; Elvis is alive; Tupac is alive. They never said John Lennon was alive, but Morrison is alive. After his death, he was sighted all the way around the world. ... And that's what I have to put up with. But, fortunately, there's the opening of the doors of perception through certain hallucinogenic substances that gives you a different perspective on life -- that allows you to step back from the swirl and the madness and view the divine comedy."

By Louis R. Carlozo
Chicago Tribune staff reporter
Published January 9, 2007

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

RHINO AND THE DOORS ALTER PERCEPTION

All Six of The Doors' Studio Masterpieces
Remastered and Expanded With Rarities and Outtakes
Are Now Available Individually for the First Time
as Single-Disc Releases and Digital Downloads

Each Deluxe Edition Available March 27 from Rhino

LOS ANGELES - The honors just keep coming for The
Doors, one of rock's most original and daring
bands. The band will receive a Lifetime
Achievement Award from NARASR during the 49th
GrammyR Awards on February 11th. Then the band
gets the Hollywood treatment February 28th when
the group receives a star on the city's iconic
Walk of Fame. Finally, the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of
Fame will spotlight the band with a massive
exhibit opening in May. All this recognition
continues Rhino's celebration of the Rock 'n' Roll
Hall of Famer's 40th anniversary, marked by last
year's release of Perception. The landmark boxed
set featured all six of The Doors' studio albums
with Jim Morrison remastered with premium sound
quality, 5.1 Surround mixes and expanded with
previously unreleased sonic treasures and
essential rarities.

Now, for the first time, those albums will be
available individually as single-disc releases and
digital downloads featuring each album plus bonus
tracks. THE DOORS, STRANGE DAYS, WAITING FOR THE
SUN, SOFT PARADE, MORRISON HOTEL and L.A. WOMAN
will be available March 27 at all retail outlets,
www.thedoors.com and at www.rhino.com for a
suggested retail price of $11.98 each.

Each release will also be available digitally for
$7.99 (with the exception of MORRISON HOTEL, which
costs $9.99) and will include an interactive
booklet. Each digital interactive booklet includes
U-MYX, a music format application which allows a
user to arrange and create his or her own mix of
songs.

Users can create and play back U-MYX files using
the U-MYX Player application. The U-MYX Player
arranges the song in a grid format, divided into
Tracks and Sections. Users can turn individual
blocks on and off (muting the instruments), adjust
the volume curves of tracks, copy, paste, insert
and delete sections in order to create their own
mix of the track. The U-MYX player is a standalone
application that requires no installation on the
host computer.

All six studio albums are newly mixed as
supervised by The Doors and Bruce Botnick, their
original engineer/ co-producer.

"We want our fans, both new and old, to hear what
we discovered on listening to the actual
multi-track recordings," says keyboard player Ray
Manzarek. "There are background vocals by Jim
Morrison, piano parts of mine that weren't used,
and guitar stingers and solos by Robby Krieger
that never made the original recordings, that can
now be heard for the first time. We used
state-of-the-art techniques to bring these discs
to the same sound quality we experienced in the
studio when we initially recorded our songs. We
invite all our fans to join us in this recreation
of the legendary recording sessions of The Doors.
And to be a part of our original conceptions."

One of the most impressive debuts in rock history,
THE DOORS (1967) was as commercially successful as
it was musically daring, with the signature single
"Light My Fire" reaching #1 on the singles chart
(the LP spent more than two years on the album
chart, eventually going double platinum). Bonus
material includes a previously unreleased version
of "Indian Summer" along with two takes of
"Moonlight Drive," a song that appeared on the
band's follow-up.

STRANGE DAYS (1967) capped The Doors" breakthrough
year in fine form, with "People Are Strange"
narrowly missing the Billboard Top 10. The extras
include previously unissued takes of that hit
(including false starts and dialogue) and "Love Me
Two Times."


The chart-topping WAITING FOR THE SUN (1968) opens
with one of the band's most irresistible pop
singles (and their second #1 hit), "Hello, I Love
You," before delving into darker terrain. Extras
include previously unreleased dialogue and two
alternate takes of "Not To Touch The Earth" plus
the group's interpretation of Tommaso Albinoni's
classical composition "Adagio In G Minor" and the
17-minute epic work-in-progress "Celebration Of
The Lizard."

THE SOFT PARADE (1969) showed the group's
willingness to explore more elaborate arrangements
including strings and horns; one of those sonic
experiments, "Touch Me," became a #3 hit. An
unreleased take and studio dialogue of that
single, plus the previously unheard "Push Push,"
two takes of "Whiskey, Mystics And Men" and "Who
Scared You" are among the bonus tracks added.

MORRISON HOTEL (1970) was issued in the wake of
Jim's notorious Miami bust for indecent exposure
and shows The Doors battling back with such
powerful broadsides as "Roadhouse Blues." Several
previously unissued takes of that song are among
the many bonus tracks included here, along with
never-before-heard versions of "Peace Frog," "The
Spy," the intriguingly titled "Money Beats Soul,"
and a quick run through of Chuck Berry's "Carol."

L.A. WOMAN (1971) was released just a couple of
months before Morrison's untimely - and still
mysterious - death in Paris. The album includes
some of his most visionary lyrics, including the
hits "Love Her Madly" and "Riders On The Storm."
"Orange County Suite" and "(You Need Meat) Don't
Go No Further" appear as bonus tracks.

In August Rhino will release a seven LP box set of
180-gram HQ vinyl reissues of the above Doors
albums in stereo, plus a mono version of the debut
album. The entire set will be remastered and
personally supervised by Jac Holzman, founder of
Elektra Records and production supervisor for The
Doors, and Bruce Botnick, The Doors'
engineer/co-producer/mixer for all six studio
albums. All albums are exact replicas of the
original releases, including all artwork,
packaging, and inner sleeves. The box will be
available at rhino.com and regular retail outlets
in a limited edition of 5,000 and carries an SRP
of $149.98.

Track Listings

THE DOORS
1. "Break On Through (To The Other Side)"
2. "Soul Kitchen"
3. "The Crystal Ship"
4. "Twentieth Century Fox"
5. "Alabama Song (Whisky Bar)"
6. "Light My Fire"
7. "Back Door Man"
8. "I Looked At You"
9. "End Of The Night"
10. "Take It As It Comes"
11. "The End"
12. "Moonlight Drive" (Version 1)*
13. "Moonlight Drive" (Version 2)*
14. "Indian Summer" (8/19/66 Vocal)*

STRANGE DAYS
1. "Strange Days"
2. "You're Lost Little Girl"
3. "Love Me Two Times"
4. "Unhappy Girl"
5. "Horse Latitudes"
6. "Moonlight Drive"
7. "People Are Strange"
8. "My Eyes Have Seen You"
9. "I Can't See Your Face In My Mind"
10. "When The Music's Over"
11. "People Are Strange" (False Starts &
Dialogue)*
12. "Love Me Two Times" (Take 3)*

WAITING FOR THE SUN
1. "Hello, I Love You"
2. "Love Street"
3. "Not To Touch The Earth"
4. "Summer's Almost Gone"
5. "Wintertime Love"
6. "The Unknown Soldier"
7. "Spanish Caravan"
8. "My Wild Love"
9. "We Could Be So Good Together"
10. "Yes, The River Knows"
11. "Five To One"
12. "Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor"*
13. "Not To Touch The Earth" (Dialogue)*
14. "Not To Touch The Earth" (Take 1) *
15. "Not To Touch The Earth" (Take 2)*
16. "Celebration Of The Lizard" (An
Experiment/Work In Progress)*

THE SOFT PARADE
1. "Tell All The People"
2. "Touch Me"
3. "Shaman's Blues"
4. "Do It"
5. "Easy Ride"
6. "Wild Child"
7. "Runnin' Blue"
8. "Wishful Sinful"
9. "The Soft Parade"
10. "Who Scared You"*
11. "Whiskey, Mystics And Men" (Version 1)*
12. "Whiskey, Mystics And Men" (Version 2)*
13. "Push Push"*
14. "Touch Me" (Dialogue)*
15. "Touch Me" (Take 3)*

MORRISON HOTEL
1. "Roadhouse Blues"
2. "Waiting For The Sun"
3. "You Make Me Real"
4. "Peace Frog"
5. "Blue Sunday"
6. "Ship Of Fools"
7. "Land Ho!"
8. "The Spy"
9. "Queen Of The Highway"
10. "Indian Summer"
11. "Maggie M'Gill"
12. "Talking Blues"*
13. "Roadhouse Blues" (11/4/69, Takes 1-3)*
14. "Roadhouse Blues" (11/4/69, Take 6)*
15. "Carol" (11/4/69)*
16. "Roadhouse Blues" (11/5/69, Take 1)*
17. "Money Beats Soul" (11/5/69)*
18. "Roadhouse Blues" (11/5/69, Takes 13-15)*
19. "Peace Frog" (False Starts & Dialogue)*
20. "The Spy" (Version 2)*
21. "Queen Of The Highway" (Jazz Version)*

L.A. WOMAN
1. "The Changeling"
2. "Love Her Madly"
3. "Been Down So Long"
4. "Cars Hiss By My Window"
5. "L.A. Woman"
6. "L'America"
7. "Hyacinth House"
8. "Crawling King Snake"
9. "The WASP (Texas Radio And The Big Beat)"
10. "Riders On The Storm"
11. "Orange County Suite"*
12. "(You Need Meat) Don't Go No Further"*

* bonus tracks
__________________
Thanks - Jeff
Jeff Jampol
The Doors Music Co.
Los Angeles, CA

[darkstar2]

Pitchfork - Documenting Independant Music
December 5 2006

The Doors
Perception
[Elektra/Rhino; 2006]
Rating: 6.5



The Doors aren't so much a band as a phase you go through, rarely to be visited again, like so much of the high-school-notebook poetry that Jim Morrison's lyrics inspired. Though their songs could be as transgressive as the Velvet Underground's, the Doors are denied the same name-drop cachet, their legend reduced to a punchline-- no thanks to a 1991 Oliver Stone biopic more self-indulgent than the band itself, and recent efforts by Ray Manzarek and Robby Krieger to revive the band with Ian Astbury as the Doors of the 21st century, like some reality-TV-show experiment minus the TV-show part.
Amid these sorry attempts to update the Doors' legacy, it's easy to forget that without Morrison's brooding baritone, there'd be no Iggy, no Ian Curtis, and it's safe to say that Morrison taught Bono more about rocking a Jesus Christ pose than JC himself. So Perception's extensive repackaging of the Doors' six albums (each complemented by a bonus disc of DVD footage and Surround Sound mixes) arrives at a fortuitous time-- not because it coincides with the band's 40th anniversary, but because it helps contemporize a band tethered to a 1960s hippie ideal to which, spiritually, it often stood in opposition.

For all the mythology surrounding the band, the Doors-- like so many 60s garage-rockers-- arguably peaked with their first single. "Break on Through (To the Other Side)" is a taunt and a dare, drawing the line between who was down and who was out. But the 1967 debut album that the song introduced wasn't your typical Nuggets-variety noise, looking to the Weill/Brecht songbook for "Alabama Song (Whisky Bar)" and beyond pop structure entirely for "The End". The 11-minute closer set the standard for the Doors' long songs: Morrison dropping stream-of-consciousness prose in the place where most bands would put the guitar solo, his words gradually wearing down the players' accompaniment before summoning them back for the climax. "The End" is also the song that helped define the Morrison caricature as pabulum-spouting narcissist, but the song's ominous drift-- guided by Krieger's sinister riff and disrupted by Morrison's Oedipal intimations-- remains eerily compelling, and established the sex/death dichotomy that would play out in so many Doors songs. (Also: the song is actually shorter than you remembered: The Doors was originally mastered at a slightly slower speed, due to technical error that's been corrected by Perception's new version-- so you'll get a few seconds of your life back.)


Strange Days (1967) closely adheres to the debut's winning formula: short songs about love and one long song about apocalypse ("When the Music's Over"). But 1968's Waiting for the Sun shows the first signs of fatigue, opening with the weakest of the Doors' hit singles (the Kinks-nicked "Hello, I Love You"), and weighed down by start/stop multi-sectional three-minute songs ("Spanish Caravan", "The Unknown Solider") that feel more meandering than the band's longest pieces. But it could've been worse: Among Perception's featured outtakes is the 17-minute free-form tone poem "The Celebration of the Lizard", amusing as an anti-pop gesture from a top 40 act, but so portentous that, even at the height of their chemical ingestion, the band still thought it better to edit down its most coherent passage into the pulsating acid-rock throbber "Not to Touch the Earth".

History has relegated 1969's The Soft Parade to the same Spectacular Failure file as the Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request; the problem, however, isn't the opulent TV talk-show orchestra arrangements (which lend "Touch Me" a schmaltzy charm) but the bloodless, Fat Elvis performances. A DVD performance clip of the title-track suite makes for a fitting summation of the Doors' half-hearted dalliance with symphonic psychedelia and their subsequent abandonment of it: John Densmore and Krieger look bored and embarrassed performing the song's poncey opening passages, before the game-saving swamp-funk finale allows a bloated, bearded Morrison to reconnect with his younger, more dynamic self.

Like so many of their peers, the Doors responded to the post-hippie hangover with a back-to-basics approach (read: the blues, man) that informed their last two albums, 1970's Morrison Hotel and 71's L.A. Woman-- though the significance of this move is overstated by Perception's inclusion of eight (mostly incomplete) consecutive session takes of "Roadhouse Blues" that merely chart the song's evolution from sloppy bar-band jam to somewhat less sloppy bar-band jam (though the between-song banter is amusing). L.A. Woman is also marred by its share of blooze snoozes ("Crawling King Snake") but finds the band effectively shaping up for the hard-rock 70s with the hypno-grooved title track and "The Wasp (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)", the most successful union of the band's bluesy tendencies and Morrison's beat-poet babble. But even if his death was still months away, on "Riders on the Storm" Morrison has already turned into a ghost, lending the song an eternally haunted quality that even the band's detractors can't deny.

When Morrison first urged his fans to break on through, he wasn't asking for their money, he was asking for a commitment. At $120 and 12 discs, Perception is asking for both, but the audiophile end of the fanbase will be pleased by the new masters (as well as engineer Bruce Botnick's gearhead-oriented liner notes). In contrast to the multi-tracked splendor of much 60s psychedelic rock, the Doors made great use of space, a virtue highlighted by the new masters' foregrounding of the two most overlooked Doors: guitarist Krieger, whose finger-picked leads so often took a backseat to Manzarek's organ arpeggios; and drummer Densmore, whose playing hits harder the lighter his touch.

The band's prolific album output means Perception offers little in the way of essential leftovers, but that's more of a relief than anything. The lasting perception of Perception: Had the Doors' six albums been condensed to three-- cherry-picking the best material from The Doors/Strange Days, Waiting for the Sun/The Soft Parade and Morrison Hotel/L.A. Woman-- the band would've had a discography as airtight as Jimi Hendrix's. Instead, each ensuing album-- drawn from increasingly depleted sources of inspired material and an increasingly intoxicated frontman-- put greater stress on the band's internal contradictions: A proto-punk band with baroque-classical aspirations, fronted by a California-dreamy pop idol who really wanted to be a reclusive fat beardo poet in Paris-- a would-be idealist who made a more convincing nihilist.

The singer's decline is laid bare in Perception's DVD clips: While an entrancing 1967 Canadian television performance of "The End" (incest rant excised) focuses on the young Morrison's face to the point of denying the other band members' existence, a grainy 1970 Australian live taping of "Crawling King Snake" seems to be deliberately avoiding his burly figure. By placing these images alongside the erratic artistic trajectory that plays out on Perception's six discs, we see that Morrison was not just a victim of his own excess, but also an early victim of a burgeoning music-business machine that demanded quantity over quality, regardless of the personal or creative toll.

-Stuart Berman, December 05, 2006

www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/39965-perception

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Perception (6CD/6DVD, Boxset) [Box set, Limited Edition, Original recording remastered]



Disc 1
Break On Through (To The Other Side)
Soul Kitchen
The Crystal Ship
Twentieth Century Fox
Alabama Song (Whisky Bar)
Light My Fire
Back Door Man
I Looked At You
End Of The Night
Take It As It Comes
The End
Moonlight Drive (Version 1)
Moonlight Drive (Version 2)
Indian Summer (8/19/66 Vocal)


Disc 2
Strange Days
You're Lost Little Girl
Love Me Two Times
Unhappy Girl
Horse Latitudes
Moonlight Drive
People Are Strange
My Eyes Have Seen You
I Can't See Your Face In My Mind
When The Music's Over
People Are Strange (False Starts & Dialogue)
Love Me Two Times (Take 3)


Disc 3
Hello, I Love You
Love Street
Not To Touch The Earth
Summer's Almost Gone
Wintertime Love
The Unknown Soldier
Spanish Caravan
My Wild Love
We Could Be So Good Together
Yes, The River Knows
Five To One
Albinoni's Adagio In G Minor
Not To Touch The Earth (Dialogue)
Not To Touch The Earth (Take 1)
Not To Touch The Earth (Take 2)
Celebration Of The Lizard (An Experiment/work In Progress)

Disc 4
Roadhouse Blues
Waiting For The Sun
You Make Me Real
Peace Frog
Blue Sunday
Ship Of Fools
Land Ho!
The Spy
Queen Of The Highway
Indian Summer
Maggie M'gill
Talking Blues
Roadhouse Blues (11/4/69, Takes 1-3)
Roadhouse Blues (11/4/69, Take 6)
Carol (11/4/69)
Roadhouse Blues (11/5/69, Take 1)
Money Beats Soul (11/5/69)
Roadhouse Blues (11/5/69, Takes 13-15)
Peace Frog (False Starts & Dialogue)
The Spy (Version 2)
Queen Of The Highway (Jazz Version)

Disc 5
The Changeling
Love Her Madly
Been Down So Long
Cars Hiss By My Window
L.A. Woman
L'america
Hyacinth House
Crawling King Snake
The Wasp (Texas Radio And The Big Beat)
Riders On The Storm
Orange County Suite
(You Need Meat) Don't Go
No Further

Disc 6
Tell All The People
Touch Me
Shaman's Blues
Do It
Easy Ride
Wild Child
Runnin' Blue
Wishful Sinful
The Soft Parade
Who Scared You
Whiskey, Mystics And Men(Version 1)
Whiskey, Mystics And Men (Version 2)
Push Push
Touch Me (Dialogue)
Touch Me (Take 3)



SPECIAL FEATURES
DVD-A's:
Disc 1
All songs in 5.1 DTS encoded
Surround Sound and new
Advanced Resolution stereo mixes
Video Content:
Break On Through (To The Other Side) (Music Video)
The End (Soundstage Performance, Toronto, 1967)
Disc 2
All songs in 5.1 DTS encoded
Surround Sound and new
Advanced Resolution stereo mixes
Video Content:
Love Me Two Times (Live In Europe, 1968)
When The Music's Over (Live In Europe, 1968)
Disc 3
All songs in 5.1 DTS encoded
Surround Sound and new
Advanced Resolution stereo mixes
Video Content:
Spanish Caravan (Live at the Hollywood Bowl, 1968)
The Unknown Soldier (Soundstage Performance, Denmark, 1968)
Disc 4
All songs in 5.1 DTS encoded
Surround Sound and new
Advanced Resolution stereo mixes
Video Content:
Roadhouse Blues (Music Video)
Wild Child (Music Video)
Disc 5
All songs in 5.1 DTS encoded
Surround Sound and new
Advanced Resolution stereo mixes
Video Content:
The Changeling (Music Video)
Crawling King Snake (Footage from The Doors rehearsal space filmed for Australian TV, 1971)
Disc 6
All songs in 5.1 DTS encoded
Surround Sound and new
Advanced Resolution stereo mixes
Video Content:
The Soft Parade (Soundstage Performance, New York, 1969)
Tell All The People (Soundstage Performance, New York, 1969)

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

magazine advert for Perception box set

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

THE DOORS, Perception (40th Anniversary Box) [director's cut]

The Doors are the perfect band for when you’re seventeen, a time when you’re waking up to life’s possibilities, the future’s a wide-open frontier, and ten thousand volts of libido pulse through your flesh. In that highly impressionable and lusty state, a Doors classic like “The End”, with its Oedipal psychodrama and entrancing guitar-as-sitar aura of faux-Oriental mystery, sounds like the most profound and intense thing you’ll ever hear. Factor in the attractive shape of Jim Morrison’s life arc, its mythic surge through reckless hedonism to early death ensuring no embarrassingly twilight-of-the-idol comebacks or je-regrette-everything VH1 confessionals, and it’s easy to see why The Doors endure as the ultimate band for clever teenagers craving music that rocks hard but has some book-learnin’ under its belt.

Yet there are potent arguments in favour of the proposition that nobody much older than seventeen should really have an ounce of time for the man or his band. Wasn’t Morrison a real pig of a human being, a (literally) stinking drunk egomaniac who rampaged over most everybody he had any dealings with? Aren’t his poet-as-prophet pretensions insufferably clunky and self-aggrandising? When he goes into “erotic politician”/ counterculture-revolutionary mode (“Five To One”, “The Unknown Soldier”) doesn’t your skin just crawl off your bones and leave the room in embarrassment? Finally, the music itself--most of it’s kinda dated and overblown, surely? All those epic song-suites like “Celebration of the Lizard”, or worse, the dreary bleary blooze of “Backdoor Man” and “Maggie McGill”?

Yet Morrison is hardly short for company when it comes to rock’n’roll assholes who overdid the liquor, while his psychedelic doggerel is really no more cringe-worthy than John Lennon in LSD mode. People always forget Jimbo’s sense of humor, manifested in his surreal ad-libs-- “cobra to my left, leopard to my right” in “The Soft Parade”--and the sheer zest with which he threw himself into his shaman-as-buffoon persona. As for the music--most it still sounds pretty darn glorious.

It remains an unusual sound, not just because of the lead-instrument prominence of Ray Manzarek’s ornate keyboards but because of the way The Doors combined driving rhythm-and-blues with a cinematic clarity, thanks to spacious, glistening arrangements and production (more vivid than ever in this fabulously remastered incarnation). Robbie Krieger is an under-rated guitarist, his solos elegantly restrained, piercingly poignant, and mercifully succinct, while John Densmore’s drumming is deft enough to make a waltz rhythm swing on “Shaman’s Blues.”

The meat of the sound is hard-funking blues, but the Doors salted in all kinds of unlikely flavours: flamenco on “Spanish Caravan”, musique concrete on “Horse Latitudes”, Weimar-era cabaret with their cover of Brecht & Weill’’s “Alabama Song”, cocktail jazz with “Riders on the Storm”. They even bizarrely anticipate disco with one segment of the audacious song-suite “The Soft Parade”

Perception contains all six studio albums the Doors recorded before Morrison’s death, bolstered with the inevitable out-takes (a highlight of which is the demo prototype of “Celebration of the Lizard”) and partnered with DVDs of performance footage. You can retrace the band’s journey from the bold entrance of The Doors (their best album, if suffering slightly from over-exposure) through Strange Days (their darkest and most psychedelic album), onto Waiting For The Sun (their most confused and least satisfying), The Soft Parade (their funniest and most under-rated) and the alleged return-to-bluesy form of Morrison Hotel (their dreariest and most over-rated, while still containing plenty of gems) before winding up with LA Woman (their most accomplished and poignant). The latter’s title track, a freeway-rolling travelogue across Los Angeles with Morrison imagining their home city as a sad-eyed woman, is a last gasp of ragged glory that--and this is a rare example of the benefits of knowing your rock history--sounds all the more grand and moving because the singer wouldn’t be much longer for this world.

Morrison’s version of “the blues” owed as much to Frank Sinatra as Muddy Waters, and his sonorous majesty of tone and commanding cadences made him one of rock’s true originals as a vocalist. One measure of this eminence is how so many of the legion of Jim-itators are rock greats in their own right. Iggy Pop converted Morrison into the pure sexless monomania of punk rock, while Patti Smith adapted his persona to become the world’s first female rocker-as-shaman. Joy Division’s Ian Curtis translated the baritone-booming doomy side of The Doors into Goth, while Echo & The Bunnymen and Simple Minds conversely picked up on the music’s panoramic grandeur and wonderlust. And Jane’s Addiction’s Perry Farrell updated Morrison’s excess-as-the-road-to-the-palace-of-wisdom shtick.

And is there any wisdom to be found at the end of that highway, or along the way? This is a more pinched era than the Sixties, its sense of adventure and entitlement often seeming impossibly remote. In hindsight, the freedom-chasing can look more like irresponsibility, the lust for “experience” weirdly close to a sort of spiritual greed. Yet in an era when seventeen year olds are confronted by a resurgent Puritanism that seeks to roll back the gains of the Sixties, forces of anti-life looking to constrain the scope for pleasure and adventure, there’s a certain imperishable truth and urgency to Morrison’s warning that “no eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn”. In a strange way, he was a true American patriot, his spirit as large as the land itself.

Blender, 2006
by Simon Reynolds