After all of these Halloween posts I’ve been posting I was at a loss at what to write about on Halloween night. I looked at a bunch of places that inspire these posts before remembering this documentary about The Doors. I’m not sure if I’m part of a counterculture or if I share genes with a select group, but I belong to the people who are always in the mood for a good Doors documentary. This is a good one.

Here’s the only doc I’m aware of made since the passing of Ray Manzarek in 2013. The Doors have always been a controversial band, and the freshest possible look back at the group affords an important window as opinions about Morrison, his band mates, and their music continue to skew from “pretentious charade” to “transcendent poetic ritualized rock.”

It’s all true, folks.

Here’s The Doors: From the Outside…

Stay Awake!

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more Music posts.

50 years ago, in Venice Beach, California over a long summer stretching into fall and winter and a new year, Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek take the first steps to put together a new band that would fuse electric blues, classical music, jazz and Spanish flamenco guitar music to poetic lyrics that recalled the writings of the Beat Generation, Arthur Rimbaud and William Blake. Celebrating half a century of The Doors, here’s a great American Masters documentary from PBS.

Here’s The Doors: When You’re Strange…

Stay Awake!

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more Music posts

While on tour in 1968, The Doors took it upon themselves to create their own documentary of their life as a band. At first glance it sounds like a good idea — Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek met as film students at USC, and The Doors’ photographer, Paul Ferrara, was deployed as cameraman, crew chief and editor. Feast of Friends was a freewheeling project from its inception — Morrison is quoted saying “It’s a fictional documentary. I can’t say too much about it because we’re not really making it. It’s just kind of making itself.”

Unfortunately, the film was never released. Jim’s arrest in Miami put the production on permanent hiatus and Morrison subsequently made use of the production crew on his experimental film, HWY. However, Eagle Rock Entertainment has just announced that they will be releasing the movie on DVD, Blu-Ray and digital formats on November 11 — just in time for a Thanksgiving feast with your friends and The Doors.

If the trailer is any indication, the restored and remastered film looks and sounds amazing compared to the pirate bootlegs of the film that have been duped to death for decades. Have a look yourself…

Here is the trailer for the new release…

And here is the bootleg version of the film. Watch this one as a primer for the beauty that I hope we’ll get with this restored gem…

Stay Awake!

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more Cinema posts.

Sad news tonight for rock fans: The Doors’ keyboard player Ray Manzarek died on Monday after a long battle with bile duct cancer. Manzarek brought jazz influences to The Doors’ brand of dark, poetic rock and held down most of the bass duties on stage and in the studio – playing a keyboard bass with his left hand and an organ or electric piano with his right. Manzarek had a jovial, engaging persona, but was also known for his controversial and obstinate relations with his surviving bandmates and the band’s music. In this Los Angeles Times article, Doors drummer John Densmore remembers his friend:

“There was no keyboard player on the planet more appropriate to support Jim Morrison’s words,” Densmore said through a spokeswoman. “Ray, I felt totally in sync with you musically. It was like we were of one mind, holding down the foundation for Robby and Jim to float on top of. I will miss my musical brother.”

For me Ray was an invaluable contributor to a band that I consider to be America’s greatest. The Doors were massively popular, but their influence was outrageously deep. It’s no exaggeration to say “No Doors, no punk rock.” Their songs are among the most original and moving of those of their peers, and are now considered to be timeless classics. Their live shows – inspired and infuriating – were the stuff of legend.

Smooth sailing, Ray. One more passenger on the Crystal Ship.

A thousand girls, a thousand thrills
A million ways to spend your time
When we get back
I’ll drop a line

Stay Awake!