The Doors - "Live at the Bowl '68" CD Review (Rhino)

"What the world needs now is another folk singer
like I need a hole in my head." - "Teen Angst" by Cracker

Over the last decade, there has been overabundance of archival live material from The Doors so the key question with this release is whether the world needs yet another Doors' live album.

While the other Doors live albums have all been previously unreleased (commercially), Live at the Bowl has an interesting heritage as this July 5, 1968 performance was originally released as a 22 minutes / seven track mini-album in the late 80's and appeared to be just a teaser for the fourteen track VHS recording of the same show. This new release takes the show to 66 minutes / twenty tracks but there are a couple of caveats that need to be noted. First is that listing twenty tracks is somewhat deceiving as some of these tracks are spoken word/poetry interludes within a song ("Horse Latitudes", "A Little Game", "The Hill Dweller") and other tracks are just song snippets: "The End (Segue") is a nice intro to "The End" but certainly not a stand-alone track, "Light My Fire (Reprise)" is just a few brushed keyboard notes as the band moves into "The Unknown Soldier" and "The Wasp (Texas Radio and The Big Beat)" never gets past Morrison's spoken word intro before going into "Hello I Love You". Lastly, audio purists may cringe that Morrison's vocals on "When The Music's Over", "The Wasp (Texas Radio And The Big Beat)" and "Hello I Love You" weren't recorded due to technical difficulties so vocals have been cut in from the Absolutely Live recordings.

On a positive note - the band sounds in top form and the recording is crystal clear. The 'sonic brilliance' immediately caught my ear and the separation between the individual instruments and vocals allows you to clearly hear every note and every nuance. Each of the band members have their moment to shine and Morrison, for the most part, stays on point and delivers spot-on vocals without heading into any of the ragged, free-form rants that made some the band's other live albums (Live in Pittsburgh 1970 comes immediately to mind) sound like complete train wrecks. This isn't a 'by the books' recording though as the band adds some great improvisations and flourishes to the songs. Morrison apparently took LSD before going on which seemed to kick in toward the end of the set and he seems to have some fun with "Unknown Solider" and god only knows if he truly confused a grasshopper and a moth during the free-form section of "The End".

(Note: this are old YouTube video which, given their age, have to be from the original release of "Live at the Hollywood Bowl". This new release is supposed to look infinitely better.)




Getting back on point to my opening question - this album offers something different to Doors' fans so it doesn't look like a "cash grab" rehash. Most of the recent Doors archival material has been from the band's 1970 tour and I couldn't find any shows in the band's Wikipedia discography that were from 1968. Lastly, the sound quality is amazing...if the LA Woman reissue sounded this good, I might have written a different review.

Links:
The Doors

The Doors - "L.A. Woman" 40th Anniversary Edition CD Review (Rhino)

This album is heavy as f*ck and will melt your face off!

I always wanted to write a review that says absolutely nothing about the music on the disc (trying Googling “heavy as f*ck” or “melt your face off” and see how many times these phrases have been used in CD reviews). Most reviews that I’ve read of The Doors’ 40th Anniversary edition of L.A. Woman use most of their inches talking about the disc’s original release in 1971. With this disc having now been out 41 years, is there anyone out there who doesn’t already know that this was the last Doors album with Jim Morrison, ‘Mr. Mojo Rising’ was an anagram of Morrison’s name, etc, etc.? As most deluxe editions are targeted at the collector/completest, I think the real question is whether the bonus disc offers anything new or interesting.

Unfortunately, I found the bonus disc pretty much a ‘snoozer’. The first seven tracks are alternate studio takes of tracks from L.A. Woman. The musical arrangement on most of these tracks is noticeably different from the final studio versions but the differences really aren’t radical so there is nothing to get excited about. The two ‘major’ differences among these alternate versions are that “The WASP” ends with an instrumental breakdown and the band goofs around with a short cowboy/campfire song prior to starting into ‘Take 9’ of “Riders on the Storm”. The two ‘new’ bonus tracks – “She Smells So Nice” and “Rock Me” – are part of an extended blues-based jam that is interesting but unessential. “She Smells So Nice” sounds like it was cut out of a longer jam and "Rock Me (Baby)" is a studio run-through of the Muddy Waters' staple. Unfortunately, Morrison sounds like he isn't always singing in the mic and, which he does, his vocals are overloaded on both songs. For anyone who is curious, there are better recordings of “Rock Me Baby” on a number of the official Doors live recordings.



Bottom line is that this looks like a ‘cash grab’ as the two bonus tracks from the previous Rhino reissue – “Orange County Suite” and “(You Need Meat) Don’t Go No Further” have been dropped from this release and both iTunes (“L.A. Woman (Take 1)” and “Crawling King Snake (Run Through and Studio Chatter)”) and Amazon (“Love Her Madly (Take 1)” and “The Changeling (Take 9)”) are offering bonus tracks with digital copies of this release. I can’t reminisce about 1971 but this bonus track nonsense reminds me of when LPs were the dominant format in the mid-80’s and the record companies would release a single bonus track on the CD edition and a different bonus track on the cassette edition. This marketing approach had limited success then so I don’t know why the record companies think it should work now.

Links:
The Doors

David Rogue is Playing The Bitter End Tonight (Dec. 12th)

I got turned on to David Rogue through one of the MPFrees in the NY Post. David is a singer/songwriter who cites his influences as Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen. David plays stripped down rock with sort of a country flair and, as you would expect with these sorts of influences, his music has sort of an edge. David just released his debut CD, The Arrival, in September.

David is playing tonight at The Bitter End with Studio E, The Embracers and SIUGeneris and tickets are $10.

Links:
David Rogue's MySpace Profile

The Doors (Riders on the Storm) @ Nokia Theatre, May 18, 2007

Did anyone get the email last week from Ticketmaster offering $5.00 tickets ($.75 ticket price + service fees) for Friday's Riders on the Storm concert at Nokia Theatre. They must have sold absolutely no tickets. If I hadn't moved on Thursday and still have an apartment full of unpacked boxes, I would have checked out the show for that cheap a ticket price.












The Weight caught the show and has posted a review. It sounds like new lead singer Brett Scallions is having some trouble filling Morrison's shoes.

He paraded, growled, and warbled his way through The Doors catalog like a contestant on Rock Star Supernova. It unfortunately just wasn't happening.