The Doors: The Singles Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		0.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

The Doors: The Singles Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 11, 2017

It can often be a fun pastime to look at Billboard data and chart (no pun intended) the trajectory of various music careers. Joel Whitburn’s fantastic Billboard volumes aggregating chart data have been a regular part of my library for decades, and it was a wonderful coincidence when I noticed he was based in the same tiny town in Wisconsin that my wife had grown up in. In fact, when I went back there to get married, one of the first phone calls I made was to Whitburn’s office, where it turned out many of his (small) staff had gone to school with either my wife or her brothers, making them perhaps more amenable to my suggestion that I come right over and see where “the magic” happened. I got a fantastic tour of the place, including of a vault that holds some vinyl treasures of Joel’s, but the best part was being able to complete certain gaps in my Whitburn book collection. One of the things that becomes evident in parsing the Billboard charts is how serendipitous and fleeting rock and roll fame can be, with many (maybe even most) acts managing a few chart hits before being carted off to the figurative bargain bin. It’s perhaps instructive to recall, then, that even a band as epochal as The Doors only managed to chart eight Top 40 hits, along with a handful of other songs that made the Top 100 if not the very apex of the chart. That’s certainly more than many (maybe even most) bands manage to do over the course of their careers, but somehow it seems inadequate when attempting to come to terms with the impact The Doors had during their heyday, an impact which arguably has only increased in the years after Jim Morrison’s untimely death. That said, while not everything charted, The Doors released a lot of singles between 1967 and 1983 (some obviously in the post-Morrison period), and Elektra and Rhino have gathered them all on a 2 CD set which also includes an appealing quadrophonic mix on Blu-ray of the 1973 compilation The Best of the Doors, an album which was originally released in the then trendy quadrophonic format.

While most Blu-ray aficionados will be getting this for the audio Blu-ray included, the bulk of this package is actually the 2 CDs offering all of the band's singles. Those CDs contain the following songs:

CD 1

• 1. Break on Through (To the Other Side)
• 2. End of the Night
• 3. Light My Fire
• 4. The Crystal Ship
• 5. People Are Strange
• 6. Unhappy Girl
• 7. Love Me Two Times
• 8. Moonlight Drive
• 9. The Unknown Soldier
• 10. We Could Be So Good Together
• 11. Hello, I Love You
• 12. Love Street
• 13. Touch Me
• 14. Wild Child
• 15. Wishful Sinful
• 16. Who Scared You
• 17. Tell All the People
• 18. Easy Ride
• 19. Runnin' Blue
• 20. Do It
• 21. You Make Me Real
• 22. Roadhouse Blues
• 23. Love Her Madly
• 24. (You Need Meat) Don't Go No Further
• 25. Riders on the Storm
• 26. Changeling

Disc Two

• 1. Tightrope Ride
• 2. Variety is the Spice of Life
• 3. Ships w/Sails
• 4. In the Eye of the Sun
• 5. Get Up and Dance
• 6. Treetrunk
• 7. The Mosquito
• 8. It Slipped My Mind
• 9. The Piano Bird
• 10. Good Rockin'
• 11. Roadhouse Blues (Live)
• 12. Albinoni: Adagio
• 13. Gloria (Live)
Bonus Tracks:

• 14. Moonlight Drive (Live)
• 15. Hello, I Love You (Mono Radio Version)
• 16. Touch Me (Mono Radio Version)
• 17. Wishful Sinful (Mono Radio Version)
• 18. Tell All the People (Mono Radio Version)

The Audio Blu-ray Disc offers all of the tracks from 1973's The Best of the Doors:

• 1. Who Do You Love
• 2. Soul Kitchen
• 3. Hello, I Love You
• 4. People Are Strange
• 5. Riders on the Storm
• 6. Touch Me
• 7. Love Her Madly
• 8. Love Me Two Times
• 9. Take It As It Comes
• 10. Moonlight Drive
• 11. Light My Fire

The Doors: The Singles Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

There's no video to speak of on the Blu-ray disc, other than a static menu featuring a photo of Jim Morrison and a track listing. It's actually not even necessary to have a monitor displaying anything to listen to the audio Blu-ray, since you can navigate everything with your remote once the disc is playing.

The Doors: The Singles Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The audio Blu-ray disc has an excellent sounding DTS-HD Master Audio 4.0 track, one which preserves the occasionally gimmicky sounding but rather nicely immersive quadrophonic mix of the original album. The release didn't come with any supporting documentation, and while some of the "fine print" inside the packaging says that original producer and engineer Bruce Botnick "remastered" this release, I don't have the original album to compare actual channelization, which I assume is more or less identical to the original release (if I'm wrong in this assumption and someone can point me to authoritative data, I'll happily update the review). There's an appealing spaciousness to the album, with elements like the iconic organ of Ray Manzarek on "Light My Fire" receiving arguably better separation in the quad rendering than in traditional stereo or even mono versions. Jim's voice, alternately growling or crooning, is front and center in the mix and always smartly prioritized, even when some of the instrumental backing is going for baroque (sorry). Fidelity is first rate across the board, offering clear renderings of Robby Krieger's guitars and John Densmore's drums. Clarity is exceptional throughout all the tracks on the audio Blu-ray, offering an arguably more visceral listening experience for some of the band's best known tunes.

The Doors: The Singles Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

For Blu-ray consumers, my hunch is the CDs listed above will be the "supplements", while CD lovers may feel it's the audio Blu-ray disc that counts as a "bonus feature". I'm defaulting to the Blu-ray consumer side of things and am offering a score above that is for the included CDs. I do wish that Rhino had included some kind of booklet along with this release, perhaps reproducing picture sleeves and the like.

The Doors: The Singles Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Doors' impact continues to be felt decades after their main chart heyday and similarly decades after the death of what was arguably their most iconic member. This new compilation from Rhino might have offered a bit more lossless audio than it does, but the quad rendering of The Best of the Doors is a really interesting listening experience, one that recasts several of the songs in slightly different surround configurations that may intrigue some longtime fans. Audio is superb throughout the release, though I personally wish Rhino had include some supporting documentation in the form of retrospective essays. Recommended.