The Doors issued only one live album during their too-brief career, but more than half a century later, no one can complain about a shortage of concert material by the group. Fans can now choose from around three dozen live albums, among them multi-location compilations such as In Concert and complete shows from cities such as Boston, San Francisco, and Stockholm. Other compendiums, including The Doors Box Set and the 50th anniversary edition of Waiting for the Sun, feature still more live material.
The latest addition to the Doors’ concert discography, Unbound and Dangerous, comes almost entirely from shows performed between January and May 1970 in Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh—the same Roadhouse Blues Tour that yielded 1970’s Absolutely Live. (The only exception is “Soul Kitchen,” which is from a 1969 gig at Hollywood’s Aquarius Theatre.) The album is available on CD and vinyl and from digital platforms, and audiophiles can opt for a Blu-ray edition that features Dolby Atmos, quad, and hi-res stereo mixes.
Sequenced to approximate what you would have heard at a single concert, the program begins with an announcer’s introduction of the band and ends with a spoken track called “Thank You and Goodnight.” In between are 14 numbers selected by Robby Krieger and John Densmore, the Doors’ surviving members, and mixed by Bruce Botnick, who engineered the quartet’s studio recordings.
Songs culled from the Doors’ eponymous 1967 debut LP, most in high-energy expanded versions, account for slightly more than half the set’s playing time. These include the self-penned “Break on Through (To the Other Side),” “Soul Kitchen,” “Light My Fire,” and “The End,” plus the band’s rendition of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Back Door Man” and Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s “Alabama Song (Whisky Bar).” Strange Days, the group’s 1967 sophomore album, provides its incendiary “When the Music’s Over,” and 1968’s Waiting for the Sun is the source of “Five to One.”
Curiously, since the set comes from a tour designed to promote 1970’s Morrison Hotel, the album includes only one number from that album, a fiery “Roadhouse Blues.” Filling out the program are “Bring Out Your Dead,” a 23-second Jim Morrison chant; a menacing cover of John Hooker’s “Crawling King Snake,” a song that also features on the Doors’ Live at the Matrix; and three selections that also show up on In Concert: the well-delivered “Build Me a Woman”; “Dead Cars, Dead Rats,” a forgettable riff that leads into and seems derived from “Break on Through”; and “Petition the Lord with Prayer,” a 46-second Jim Morrison outburst that shows up in slightly altered form at the beginning of 1969’s “The Soft Parade.”
If you own a bunch of the group’s other concert albums, you might want to think twice before adding another to the pile, as you probably already possess good live versions of most of the tracks on Unbound and Dangerous. That said, this is a mostly excellent set. The audio quality is commendable, the program includes some of the Doors’ best songs, and the album title is a good fit for the intense performance by Morrison and his bandmates.
Folkie Mike Berman Is ‘In the Woods’
In the Woods, Mike Berman’s third full-length album, is a keeper, thanks to his deftly written lyrics and intimate baritone, as well as a complementary band that features cello and fingerpicked and slide guitar. The singer occasionally ventures into folk/rock territory, such as on “Get Me ’cross the River,” but most of this emotionally charged set consists of moody, gently delivered pop/folk.
The California-based Berman, whose songs on this album focus on love relationships and nature, references the great outdoors in the record’s title and the names of five of its 11 songs. Standout tracks include “Tell It to the River,” “Hospital for the Brokenhearted,” and “Hold Back the Sea,” which finds the artist describing a 10-year-old making castles in the sand and proclaiming, “There’s no holding back the sea / The works we build are washed away, we can’t stop the waves, you and me.”
Perhaps the best track is the enigmatic but affecting album opener, the strings-spiced “Honey That Was Me,” in which the protagonist tells his lover, “It was me in the woods keeping watch through the night…all those things you love and fear hiding in the trees…all that time it wasn’t what you thought…honey that was me.”
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Jeff Burger’s website, byjeffburger.com, contains more than four decades’ worth of music reviews and commentary. His books include Dylan on Dylan: Interviews and Encounters, Lennon on Lennon: Conversations with John Lennon, Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen: Interviews and Encounters, and Springsteen on Springsteen: Interviews, Speeches, and Encounters.