Review of Doors, The: Live at the Hollywood Bowl

Introduction

The Doors only complete concert ever filmed at the Hollywood Bowl during the fourth of July weekend in 1968 to a standing room only crowd. This once thought lost concert was captured by 4 cameramen and recorded on 16 track audio.

Its amazing how far the live concert has come. Compared to today’s multi-million pound audio/visual extravaganza’s this seems very tame and dare I say it a little boring. Even as a fan of the doors I was struggling to get through the concert and found it much better to turn the Tv off, or have it as background and just listen to the Dvd as I would a normal Cd. The band although in fine musical form are very static and even Jim remains very staid, rarely moving and dancing around in his famous Indian dance.
Sure Jim has a couple of moments to himself but its not exactly the Jim Morrison that “Oliver Stone” portrayed. The doors are suitably dark though which is good news, and even today the music still remains powerful and intense. If you fancy a look at when bands were real bands then this DVD maybe for you.

Video

Well it has to be said, the picture on this disc is pretty bad. Apart from being very dark, due to the conditions it was filmed in its also blurry and very grainy. Its not the encoding that’s the problem its just that this is a 32 year old live recording and obviously you have all the technical problems of actually filming in such a dark place and the restrictions on what you can film. The cameramen also tend to excessively zoom around the place trying to live things up a bit, but it only causes distraction and blurs the picture as they struggle to keep focus.
Its fairly free from dust and scratches but it really shows its age in the grain department.

Audio

Audio fares a little better though. The disc contains a stereo Dolby digital 2.0 track and does the job well. Apparently recorded on 16 track audio and mixed for the first time using digital technology this disc delivers a pleasant (if not overly exciting) concert experience. The audio is well handled and clean, although nothing particularly exciting and is exactly what you would expect from a live recording of this age. Basically a fine live recording with no nasty clicks or hisses its just a shame that they couldn’t do a 5.1 remix.

Features

No extras I’m afraid. This seems a bit stingy considering all the info and interesting facts about the doors and Jim Morrison available. Come on Universal, the concerts only on for an hour what about filling all that free space. Those Naughty boys and girls from Universal didn’t even add the lyrics as subtitles.

Conclusion

Well a fairly average disc then which is a real shame. Its not Universals fault about the picture quality but come on an hours concert on DVD without any additional info or extras, that’s just plain b.a.d bad.
If Universal filled the disc with supplement material or sold it at a budget price then this disc may have been worth buying, but as it stands its not really worth the extra cost over the basic Cd version. Maybe doors fans will like this disc but being a bit of a doors fan myself I just feel disappointed that companies are still releasing overpriced DVDs with no extras, to try and cash in on the loyal fan base. Shame.