Strange Days

I bought this specifically for Moonlight Drive which was not included on my 2 Disc Doors Greatest Hits compilation (a crime!) While I can appreciate Horse Latitudes (Song #5) as intense method acting of poetry, I can't listen to it for pleasure. The Doors did have a lot of guts though and they believed in what they were doing. As far as the technical audio quality on this Elektra/Rhino/DMC release with 2007 copyright, its quite good! i.e. especially for what looks at first glance to be a "plain jane" commercial Red-book audio CD release costing $7.99. Very clear sound, yet the upper midrange has none of that digital harshness I normally associate with CDs. Lots of air, soundstage and ambience. No "Loudness Wars" here. (i.e. this disc is very well mastered, it does NOT have it's dynamic range severely compressed). Quite refreshing in that regard. I believe that "People Are Strange" and "Love Me Two Times" from this disc sound way clearer than the same songs from my 2 CD Doors compilation (purchased probably 15 years earlier).THE BONUS STUFF: As a bonus you get Take 3 of People Are Strange and also Love Me Two Times. The People bonus track has a long studio banter and a bunch of false starts, not a complete song. It's interesting to hear the creative process but most won't want to hear that repeatedly. On the other hand the Take 3 of Love Me Two Times is a full song. It's pretty darn close to the final cut we all know and love. I prefer the final version of LMTT though, I think the vocals are recorded better but the bonus take is no slouch.BOOKLET, PACKAGING & OVERALL QUALITY EXPERIENCE: The 20 pages (back to back) booklet is very well done. It contains cool/interesting photos, lyrics to all songs, and background on the album recording sessions. Some good stories in there. There's a cool sepia toned photo of the band underneath where the disc is seated. You can tell that that a lot of loving care was lavished on this CD release. Comments on page 2 of the CD booklet from Ray Manzarek imply this audio is taken from the original master tape. I believe it, it sounds so good. I love the sound of the snare on this album, the overall ambience. The original engineer (Bruce Botnick) did this "40th Anniversary Mix". It's not just a cash cow or an afterthought. It's a labor of love. I admire the heck out of Ray and Co. for seeing to it that the band's legacy is preserved this way.In short ---> You are getting a lot for $8.00, this is a good deal. A quality experience. I can recommend it.The disc I purchased has a UPC of 081227999841.P.S. For those who remember the Doors "13" vinyl LP back in the day, that was my first wider exposure to their catalog. I loved the sequencing of the songs on that compilation.UPDATE 2-10-2018: I guess this album has gone up in price $2.00 since I wrote my original review.

In late 1967, as Summer's light faded, The Doors released "Strange Days", one of my 2 favorite Doors albums. Good title, because the Eden of that Summer was mutating into something quite different. Liberation had taken a dark, even morbid, turn. To show us the way, The Doors gave us this sophisticated strobe light of dimmed hues. You could see, but not too clearly, and the truth is that you probably wouldn't want to...The nightmare starts from the word "GO". At the end of the title song, Jim warns "...we run from the day to a strange night of stone." Then we meet a "little girl" who is lost, even though the singer tries to reassure her, "I think that you know what to do." Another "Unhappy Girl" is so caught up in her web that she might miss her "chance to swim in mystery." "Horse Latitudes", a shouted poem with very weird background effects, is violently intense in its description of a tragedy, and it melts right into "Moonlight Drive", which sounds appealing until at the end we find that we are going to "...drown tonight/Goin' down, down, down." In "People Are Strange" we hear that "...faces look ugly when you're alone." The singer eyes a tantalizing woman in "My Eyes Have Seen You", or does he really? The vision presented by the lyrics is rather nebulous. The title of "I Can't See Your Face In My Mind" sums up the confused sadness in the song. Finally, we discover that all of this may be transitory in "When The Music's Over", a brilliant song-poem of several sections that as a whole is devastating. The lyric "WE WANT THE WORLD AND WE WANT IT NOW" is a call to revolutionary action and points the way to The Doors' next masterpiece, "Waiting For The Sun".(I didn't discuss "Love Me Two Times" above, because it is the only unadulterated "fun" song on the album. But, now that you mention it, who wouldn't be up for that?)The dark lyrics are supported by some of the best music The Doors ever made, though certainly not the hardest rock, for the most part. I imagine that some will say that the album is too polished, too produced, but those are not bad words in my book. (And my verdict on the remixed sound is the same as in my review of "Waiting For The Sun" - excellent.) The song "Strange Days" is simultaneously eerie and rocking, as "People Are Strange" is eerie and hypnotic. "Love Me Two Times" rocks like Hell. "You're Lost Little Girl", "Unhappy Girl", "My Eyes Have Seen You" and "I Can't See Your Face" are somewhat quieter, with good understated keyboards and guitar. Robby's background guitar alternates from jangly folk-rock to bluesy to more traditional rock. Ray's keyboards continue the carnival sound that is the trademark of the early Doors. "Moonlight Drive" has delicious sliding guitar licks, appropriately seductive; and "When The Music's Over" is just, well, dramatic and apocalyptic, with killer feedback. With this album and "Waiting For The Sun", you can expand your mind to whatever degree you desire.The bonus tracks: I like to hear studio chatter, so the first one is interesting to me. The other bonus, another take of "Love Me Two Times", is not significantly different from the finished track - maybe a little bouncier, a little less hard rock.