The Doors Collection

"The Doors Collection" is the best audio/visual source about the band available. It is a stunning, exciting collection of the best of The Doors on film. It is the best Doors DVD out there and a must for big fans, rockers and anyone barely aquainted with the music who wants to know more. All the three segments are excellent documents of The Doors and their hypnotic music and the dynamic persona of Jim Morrison. It is clear from what you see here that he was poet, rock star, artist and genius. The first segment, "Dance On Fire" has some great material. There is the music video for "Break On Through" which is stylish and has aged well, in fact, I saw it air on MTV a few nights ago. There is also the neat video for "People Are Strange" and the legendary performance of "Light My Fire" at the Ed Sullivan Show. The video for "The Crystal Ship" is dreamy, romantic and hypnotic, with a real feel for the song which showcases some of Morrison's best poetry. The performance of "Love Me Two Times" for Danish television is especially entertaining and cool, with Jim all in leather reciting some poetry before breaking into one of their best blues tunes. The video for "Moonlight Drive" is interesting with Jim sporting some black shades and Robby Krieger doing some dreamy slide guitar. The "Roadhouse Blues" footage is especially fun with shots of some wild concert moments and Jim doing a Dionysian dance as images flash by. The second segment, "Live At The Hollywood Boal" is a nice document of The Doors in concert. They performance some of their best songs like "Backdoor Man," "Light My Fire" and "Whiskey Bar." The best performances are those of "When The Music's Over" which is epic and "The End" which is hypnotic. The final segment, "The Soft Parade" is an interesting look at The Doors as the end was coming closer. The beginning features a montage cut to "The Changeling" and shows Morrison and the band in a "superstar" tone. The interview they give is fascinating, especially when Jim predicts advancements in musical technology with incredible precision. The performance of "The Soft Parade" is better than the album version while footage of the band recording "Wild Child" is fun and interesting, not least because it's a great song. The bonus features in the DVD are also great. The commentary by the band members is funny and fascinating with lots of cool facts. Robby Krieger's new version of "The End" rocks while Ray Manzarek's student films are interesting to watch. The memorabilia section is especially fun and interesting, they even show ticket buts. John Densmore's one-man play is really silly and frankly, boring and uninteresting. It's annoying to hear him sing the songs because frankly, he can't sing. All in all, "The Doors Collection" is the best Doors visual collection. It's exhilarating, fascinating, visually alluring and filled with great music and poetry. It shows how there are certain things as timeless music and artists. Though The Doors music and lyrics are kept alive and well by newer bands (Creed, STP, The Cult), nothing beats the originals. The Doors were the first rock band to mix music with poetry and explored dark realms and set in motion things in rock n' roll that we are still living through. This DVD is a great document of how they did that.

The Doors Collection features 3 seperate programs originally released on VHS along with a multitude of special features as well as audio commentary from Ray Manzarek, Robbie Krieger, and John Densmore from the late 90's. The DVD runs about 3 hrs and also has an option for subtitles in English, French, and Spanish.The main body of this DVD contains Dance on Fire(1985), Live at the Hollywood Bowl(1987), and The Soft Parade(1991). Dance on Fire runs about 62 mins and features a collection of MTV-style music videos of various Doors songs. Live at the Hollywood Bowl is a complete concert that was recorded in 1968 and runs about 56 mins. The Soft Parade features plenty of personal footage of The Doors along with their wives/girlfriends and fans. This program runs 54 mins.The special features include a Memorabilia segment where a Doors fanatic describes various rarities. There is a Henry Diltz Photos segment where various Doors photos are shown along with comments from the photographer. John Densmore: Riders on the Storm has John doing a monologue about Morrison and playing some drums. Robby Kreiger: The End is Robby doing a guitar solo of The End. Evergreen and Induction are two student films of Ray Manzarek from UCLA around 1965.Song list from each program. Dance on Fire(Break on Thru, Light My Fire, People are Strange, Wild Child, La Woman, Unknown Soldier, Roadhouse Blues, Love Me Two Times, Horse Latitudes, Moonlight Drive, Crystal Ship), Doors at Hollywood Bowl(When the Music's Over, Alabama Song, Back Door Man, 5 to 1, Moonlight Drive, Celebration of the Lizard, Spanish Caravan, Wake Up, Light my Fire, The End, Unknown Soldier), The Soft Parade(The Changeling, Wishful Sinful, Wild Child, Build Me a Woman, Unknown Soldier, Soft Parade, Hello I Love You).Tremendous DVD collection encompassing a large body of work for this legendary band. I particularly enjoyed the surviving band member's little anecdotes and memories. After watching the entire program, it's nice to go back latter and just relax and listen to the 3 remaining members "shoot the breeze" about the past. I strongly recommend this DVD for all fans of The Doors as well as 60's era rock.

At around age 6 Light my Fire was on the radio station I listened to and at that stage of my life this was just some goofy love song, so I preferred The Monkees, which caused great embarrassment later as you might imagine. But that first impression stuck with me so I didn't re-examine them until much later in life when I also had to get past my dislike of what I long considered "mellow rock." But I did and bought the Essential Doors collection, listened to it maybe twice, and it's been on the shelf ever since. Had I started here, with this DVD things would have been much clearer. So now I'm reading a book on the band, and getting into the video that there is an amazing amount of and it's easier to understand Morrison. I guess the main thing for me was instead of just being a stoner that stumbled around everywhere he was using this outlet as the only one available for a poet. That makes him more interesting to me at least and adds meaning to the output.

Absolute must have for any Doors fan. I had the Dance on Fire videos in VHS from 1988 when I was in the Marines, and over the years completely forgot about how awesome they were until I came across this collection. This DVD is all you will need.