Strange Days The Doors

• 1Strange Days03:09
• 2You're Lost Little Girl03:05
• 3Love Me Two Times03:15
• 4Unhappy Girl01:57
• 5Horse Latitude01:34
• 6Moonlight Drive03:05
• 7People Are Strange02:11
• 8My Eyes Have Seen You02:31
• 9I Can't See Your Face In My Mind03:24
• 10When The Music's Over11:02
• Total Runtime35:13

Info for Strange Days

Strange Days, first out in October '67, went to #3 and introduced the Doors classics "People Are Strange," "Love Me Two Times" and "Strange Days."

"The Doors are an amazing group. Each of them are highly competent and talented musicians, yet music is only secondary to what they are doing. They are violently anti-commercial in their stance and their approach, and yet the finished product is highly commercial. And it would also appear that vocalist Jim Morrison is making a direct appeal to the pubescent market, but upon closer examination, it turns out that he is not.

As musicians, the Doors are very good. Their excellence of musicianship, however, is not seen as individuals, because they do nothing really new or different as soloists. Their excellence is together as a group — the total effect they achieve. The group is original and highly evocative.

Many of the chord progressions and figures are easily recognizable from their first album. Except for the addition of an occasional bass, the instrumentation is nearly identical to the previous LP. Through very logical development, they have improved their original methods and techniques with more effective instrumentation (a variety of keyboard sounds, a lot of slide guitar, and strongly musical electronic bridges). They have not attempted to make any big changes in direction or music (like so many groups mistakenly feel obligated to), but have refined and enriched their previous efforts. Consequently their new album has all the power and energy of the first LP, but is more subtle, more intricate and much more effective.

On a track like "Unhappy Girl," the various instrumental pieces and the vocal combine perfectly. The effect is overwhelming. "I Can't See Your Face in My Mind" is the only disappointing song on the record; it's mild without justification.

"My Eyes Have Seen You," "Strange Days," and "Love Me Two Times," all have the same commercial potential of "Light My Fire." They are heavy, evocative and climactic pieces.

As was strongly hinted in their first album, the Doors conceive their efforts primarily in terms of drama rather than in terms of music. The music is not meant to be particularly virtuoso or experimental. It is played to be dramatically meaningful. Before they formed as a group, the Doors were, individually, students at the UCLA drama school.

It was a unique qualification. Beginning with long hair and patterns of dress, rock and roll has become increasingly visual. Jimi Hendrix and the Who seem practically primitive next to the Doors. Rock and roll has become theatre.

Many people don't care to see Jim Morrison making it with his microphone in the manner of Mick Jagger nor do they especially want to watch him writhing on the floor. If they don't, then they suggest he is selling out to commercialism, has an old-fashioned concept of rock and roll or something. However, what's actually taking place on stage, and what Morrison is doing, is about 3000-years old fashioned and very contemporary in approach.

Music is very sensual and it is particularly obvious in rock and roll. Morrison is just not making any bones about it. He's just doing what comes naturally.

One must think of the Doors in a theatrical rather than a musical way. Their whole album, individual songs and especially the final track are constructed in the five parts of tragedy. Like Greek drama, you know when the music's over because there is catharsis. And, as the Doors suggest in their closing song, "When the Music's Over," you "turn out the light." (Rolling Stone)

Jim Morrison, vocals
Robby Krieger, guitars
Ray Manzarek, organ & piano
John Densmore, drums

Guests:
Douglas Lubahn, bass

Produced by Paul A. Rothchild
Mastered by Bruce Botnick & The Doors
Engineered at Sunset Recorders, Hollywood

Digitally remastered.

Rolling Stone "500 Greatest Album of All Time" #409

With an intoxicating, genre-blending sound, provocative and uncompromising songs, and the mesmerizing power of singer Jim Morrison's poetry and presence, The Doors had a transformative impact not only on popular music but on popular culture.

The Doors' arrival on the rock scene in 1967 marked not only the start of a string of hit singles and albums that would become stone classics, but also of something much bigger - a new and deeper relationship between creators and audience. Refusing to be mere entertainers, the Los Angeles quartet relentlessly challenged, confronted and inspired their fans, leaping headfirst into the heart of darkness while other bands warbled about peace and love. Though they've had scores of imitators, there's never been another band quite like them. And 40 years after their debut album, The Doors' music and legacy are more influential than ever before.

Morrison's mystical command of the frontman role may be the iconic heart of The Doors, but the group's extraordinary power would hardly have been possible without the virtuosic keyboard tapestries of Ray Manzarek, the gritty, expressive fretwork of guitarist Robby Krieger and the supple, dynamically rich grooves of drummer John Densmore. From baroque art-rock to jazz-infused pop to gutbucket blues, the band's instrumental triad could navigate any musical territory with aplomb - and all three contributed mightily as songwriters.

The group was born when Morrison and Manzarek - who'd met at UCLA's film school - met again, unexpectedly, on the beach in Venice, CA, during the summer of 1965. Though he'd never intended to be a singer, Morrison was invited to join Manzarek's group Rick and the Ravens on the strength of his poetry. Krieger and Densmore, who’d played together in the band Psychedelic Rangers, were recruited soon thereafter; though several bassists auditioned of the new collective, none could furnish the bottom end as effectively as Manzarek's left hand. Taking their name from Aldous Huxley's psychotropic monograph The Doors of Perception, the band signed to Elektra Records following a now-legendary gig at the Whisky-a-Go-Go on the Sunset Strip.

Their eponymous first album, released in January 1967, kicked off with "Break on Through (to the Other Side)" and also featured the chart smash "Light My Fire", the scorching "Back Door Man" and the visionary masterpiece "The End". The Doors arrived fully formed, capable of rocking the pop charts and the avant-garde with one staggering disc. Before '67 was over, they'd issued the ambitious follow-up Strange Days, with such gems as "Love Me Two Times", "People Are Strange" and "When the Music's Over".

Next came 1968's Waiting for the Sun, boasting "Hello, I Love You", "Love Street" and "Five to One". Over the next few years they minded over new territory on such albums as 1969's The Soft Parade (featuring "Touch Me" and "Tell All the People"), 1970's Morrison Hotel (which includes "Roadhouse Blues", "Peace Frog" and "Queen of the Highway") and 1971's L.A. Woman (boasting "Rider's on the Storm", "Love Her Madly" and the title track).

They released six studio albums in all, as well as a live album and a compilation, before Morrison's death in 1971. their electrifying achievements in the studio and onstage were unmatched in the annals of rock; and though Morrison's death meant the end of an era, Manzarek, Krieger and Densmore collaborated on two more original Doors albums, Other Voices and Full Circle, and a set of tracks they composed to accompany Morrison's 1969 recording of his poetry, released in 1978 as An American Prayer. They also pursued individual music projects, books, theatrical productions and other enterprises - and remain restlessly creative to this day.

In the decades since the Doors' heyday, the foursome has loomed ever larger in the pantheon of rock - and they remain a touchstone of insurrectionary culture for writers, activists, visual artists and other creative communities. Their songs, featured in an ever-increasing number of films, TV shows, video games and remixes, always sound uncannily contemporary. No matter how the musical and cultural tides turn, The Doors will always be ready to help a new wave of listeners break on through to the other side. (Source: jam inc.)

This album contains no booklet.