The Doors/Canada 1969

By the beginning of 1969, The Doors were gaining a status as one of America’s leading bands, and in the midst of all this, they were so strong that they even held their first rock concert at Madison Square Garden in 1969. The Miami incident in March put a damper on this climax. It was a scandal that gave birth to an urban legend that Jim Morrison had taken off his clothes and masturbated on stage. As can be seen from the surviving photos, no matter how outrageous Morrison was, there was no way he would have gotten naked, and he had simply performed a stage performance to provoke the audience as he had done up until then, but this developed into what can now be called a forerunner of the flame wars. The “bashing of The Doors” caused the group’s popularity to decline. The Doors’ pace of activity dropped sharply as a result, but they resumed concerts in June. In July, recordings for the future live album “Absolutely Live” were held at the Aquarius Theater, and the two shows there were later officially released in full (although they are now out of print). As you can see from their performance there, The Doors were trying to shift their musicality to a blues band. Due to the aforementioned issues, The Doors missed out on appearing at Woodstock in the summer, but instead received an offer to perform at a festival to be held in Toronto in September. That was the Rock and Roll Revival Festival. As you can imagine from the name, it was an event that brought together artists from the 1950s such as Chuck Berry and Little Richard, but since it was difficult to attract an audience with just them, The Doors were offered the festival by John Lennon. Yes, the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival is an event that is well known for John’s live album “LIVE PEACE IN TORONTO”. The Doors were the final act here. Unlike John and the artists from the 1950s who are blessed with official live albums and videos, The Doors’ stage that closed the event has not been released in any form. In the live video “SWEET TORONTO” that contains John’s stage, we can only see a moment of Ray Manzarek getting out of the limousine after barely arriving at the venue, Varsity Stadium. Fortunately, there has been a long history of audience recordings with extremely good sound quality on this day. Although this is a mono recording, the sound image is extremely on, which is an amazing quality. It is so close that it seems to have been recorded from the front row of the stadium. Of course, these are items that have been released in the past, but they were either gene-dropped sound sources from the cassette trade era, or recorded from a low-gene master, but the troubles I will mention later were left unattended and turned into CDs, so they tended to have some problems. Nevertheless, the items were released because of the good sound quality. The sound source of this performance, which has been circulating for some time under the pretense of being a first-generation performance, had two problems when it was copied from the master. The first was that immediately after Morrison screamed at the beginning of the opening “When The Music’s Over”, a sound unrelated to the Doors was transcribed into the left channel. The other was a dropout that occurred during Robbie Krieger’s guitar solo in “Five To One”. Both of the previously released items were completely ignored, and the versions currently available on YouTube have been pseudo-stereoized to make them less noticeable. They have been completely adjusted in this release. The final touch was added to the audience recording, which has excellent sound quality. This alone is a release worthy of being the definitive version, and of course the pitch has been adjusted. And at the official Aquarius Theater, the Doors showed their inclination towards blues, but here, since it is a festival stage, there is a parade of their representative songs. As for the masterpiece “The Crystal Ship,” it captures the precious scene that was only played on this day in 1969 with such vivid closeness. It is surprising that you can clearly hear Morrison’s breathing in quiet tunes such as this song and “The End.” In addition, “The End” was not played on the popular best-selling title “DALLAS 1968,” so it is even more attractive that you can enjoy it with this powerful sound pressure. From the 1969 Doors-like, heavy atmosphere of “When The Music’s Over” to the breathtaking finale of “The End,” this is a recording of the famous 1969 recordings in the best condition, which will have you listening to the masterpieces one after the other in no time. If you listen to John’s “LIVE PEACE IN TORONTO” before this, you will be able to simulate the end of the event that day. And yet, in between “Back Door Man,” Morrison starts singing a prototype of the new song “Roadhouse Blues,” which has not yet been recorded, showing the Doors’ aggressive attitude that goes beyond a simple festival-oriented greatest hits show. Varsity Stadium, Toronto, Canada 13th September 1969 TRULY PERFECT SOUND★Super high quality sound. The sound is so close! (56:01) 1. When The Music’s Over 2. Break On Through 3. Back Door Man 4. The Crystal Ship 5. Wake Up! 6. Light My Fire 7. The End Jim Morrison – vocals Ray Manzarek – keyboards Robby Krieger – guitar John Densmore – drums