The Doors - Speak In Secret Alphabets: The Complete Recordings

Long story short, these are the complete Doors recordings in order of performance or release date
. 
01 - Studio Master Takes (mostly 40th Anniversary remixes with unique non-LP/single songs added by recording date [if known, if not, best-educated guess])

02 - Studio Alternates (alternate unique studio versions not included in parts 1,3,4,5 or 6 by recording date [if known, if not, best-educated guess])

03 - Spoken Word (studio recorded or filmed poetry recordings, but also
has a demo or two)

04 - Singles (original mixes by release date)

05 - Stereo LP Masters (original mixes by release date)

06 - Mono LP Masters (original mixes by release date)

07 - TV Appearances (unique recordings that aren't lipsynced or live concerts by recording (preferred) or air date)

08 - Live Multitrack (professionally recorded concerts by recording date)

09 - Live Soundboard (live inhouse concert recordings by recording date. Could be amateurs with multiple mikes and a mixing board [like The Matrix])

10 - Boot Yer Butt Deluxe (an addendum with the complete bootlegs of those included on BYB, in the best versions I could obtain, set by recording date)In all, there are ten parts with (little or) no repetition. All parts are interchangeable and can fit together in any combination you choose. I hope this will be the final word on the Doors' recordings. I will add to this if more recordings become available. Personally, I like parts one and seven combined!

My good friend Kwai Chang has agreed to write an overview of sorts about this collection. Thank you Kwai, thank you JCC, and thank you to the kind folks at Mild Equator for their help.

Kwai Chang - Okay, let's cut through the tinsel here. Is there ANY way to write about The Doors that will make somebody appreciate what kind of privilege this collection really represents? Let's throw this suggested narrative down the well and see if anything splashes! I wrote this to get readers interested in a story that tells itself completely through music. This story has never been as thorough and entertaining as it is here. Please don't think I can even begin to tell the story of The Doors. All I am trying to do is get you to play ANY part of it. As you know, everything is connected. This will connect with that and versa vice. And, if it bears any resemblance to the fairy tale that Los Angeles has always been, rest assured that it won't have ANYTHING to do with Hollywood production hyperbole. Tear up your S.A.G. cards and fire your agent. This story doesn't use 8"X10" promo shots. It is fully organic and when the music is over, the last slice of The West will have found its real identity and, in that, its true function. That this happened at all falls upon the shoulders of the highest-ranking bohemian ever to hitch-hike 'that-a-way'. Hopefully, this collection will realign the Jim Morrison mystique in a new way that gives him some overdue respect. Should we find that he actually is part clown...then at least we know that the tale was indeed reflective...especially to those who were THERE when it began.

West...the final frontier: This is the journey of the last modern Ubermensch to emerge from a culture in need of ideas. In need of vision. His five-year mission--to believe in possibility and to go where history has tried to go but could not. To boldly go where culture might never have gone otherwise. To play this drama out on the last sliver of playing field that the world had not yet ruined with tradition and gun-powder...oh, James Tiberius! When a rear admiral goes home at the end of the day...is he really brave enough to stand up to his wife? Even when the prime directive is to set examples...to be a role model that the offspring could believe in...Jim must have been witness to some very upper-middle-class hypocrisy. When the search for verification leads to the Library Of Congress and a heavy lean is placed upon Friedrich Neitzsche then the rear admiral becomes a mockery of those highest hopes he had for his children. He might have even envisioned a family tradition branching out into military limbs of a lineage belonging to a new chain of command.

Jim Morrison might as well have seen himself as the last William The Conqueror...Lewis And Clark...Ponce De Leon...as he set out from Tallahassee to find enrollment at the film school at the University Of California, Los Angeles--EVEN if he really was THEM! We don't really know the particulars of his journey Westward, but we DO KNOW what he was wearing. The recruitment film short that he starred in at FSU found Jim wearing the two-tone V-neck sweater that would grace so many of his early Doors photographs. It was pre-leather and it suited the segue that was about to commence. It seems ironic that a Beach Boys existence, identity, mentality had already befallen the promised sand of the Golden State...but, then we could argue that Murry Wilson was actually a non-military edition of George Stephen Morrison. But, Southern California clearly needed a real mascot whose representation wasn't dressed up in any stereotypical self-parody of patriarchal guidance. And what it got was already very anti-hero...dressed in clothes from the other side of the mirror. MOST groups take decades to accomplish what The Doors achieved in a blur of five(6) years. They are the only group to ever make me wish I was born a few years earlier than 1960. The Doors were unsuspecting champions who never ever expected the victories that would lay before them. They also didn't deserve the harshness that would befall them by the time it was over. We cannot overstate the brevity of the timing involved here...in addition to location, location, location. This collection puts the group into a perspective that is prismatic and allows for refraction of very simple events that would double-helix into the complicated role that Southern California would assume as their direct result. The West is the best! Get here and we'll do the rest. So, let us start with the sun rising on a casual metropolis that was about to realize the Truth about the striped Beach Boys shirts and how much California Girls don't even go to the beach! Corny ends where reflection begins. Los Angeles needed to BE the last vestige of American Freedom...the only missing component was a persona to demonstrate that it already WAS. World Conquest was about to become finalized and when it was over, L.A. would be the world's trendsetting example...forever hence.

The Gateway Arch? Since 1967, that's the freeway interchange in Los Angeles where the 101 meets the 110, the 10, the 5...and is the REAL line where East ends and the West begins. It is where the movie changes from B&W to full color! To think that it really started in Florida(perhaps the most frustrated of the 49 other states) at least makes sense. First of all, the weather is almost as nice as Southern California...but, overtly sub-tropical. That means humidity...never-ending UNEXPECTED rain...giant insects/reptiles...a long way to California. If being born on a military installation could ever mean indoctrination for anyone...perhaps it meant that for James Douglas Morrison. His long wait for Destiny to call him West was over and there was nothing in the way except 2,250 miles of rich Smalltown, U.S.A. subculture(individual indigenous lifestyles). This is the timing that EVERYONE was waiting for, and Jim Morrison didn't even know it. It doesn't matter what the calendar said. There's a little vagabond in everyone...especially in a military ascent to higher rank. So, until now, this had been a family matter with liberal amounts of Kerouac and Nietzsche. What else could a poor boy do already without rank as the son of a Rear-Admiral in the United States Navy? Now, the vagabond element would be self-realized and the need for parents would evolve itself into nothing. So, without dissecting motivation or wondering what the scenery might have revealed...James Douglas Morrison headed West in January of 1964. Musical influence is secondary at this point. Los Angeles was in dire need of a symbol to represent its own frustrated predicament...and, he was finally...'en route'.

Did Jim ever actually hear Rick And The Ravens? Now, there's a predicament. The group was already a honky-tonk version of the Beach Boys and within that parameter, we can hear a basic foundation on which The Doors would build their trademark identity. But, Rick And The Ravens bore no resemblance to it. A few You Make Me Real piano signatures and more hand-claps than drums or guitar. Thankfully, the main Raven(Ray Manzarek) will be redeemed by all of his hard work in The Doors' precursor band. It was the only way to start this. Ray should be commended on his ability to remain confident. He really was the perfect springboard from which Jim Morrison could launch himself. It was going to take time for Jim to catch up to Ray...but it would be an incredible transformation. But, in 1965 when The Doors went to World Pacific Studios to record some proper demos, that transformation had not yet transpired. The six demo tracks confirm little more than the group was still searching for its own trademarks. Somebody is honking on the harmonica with a confidence that is beyond that of the vocalist. And the Rick And The Ravens' honky-tonk beat seems to have slowed to a gallop as if to give the double-track vocals room to develop a texture of its own. That strategy is not realized here even though Morrison seems to have a desired direction for his vocal style. It just hasn't matured enough to be distinctive.

So, it seems odd that the Ford Motor Company wanted the group to provide the musical landscape for a 25-minute employee training film(Love Thy Customer). Without knowing the logistics that resulted in this production...it is clearly worth acknowledging that The Doors as we know them have found plenty of signature definition within the accompaniment of 'Thy Customer'. The best part is that it is a fresh and new sound that has NOT been heard before. Both Robbie Krieger and John Densmore command their unique respective presences in the musical discourse. What we hear is the real arrival of The Doors...Los Angeles' own rock band. The corny piped-in muzak sounds that open the film are in direct contrast to this new sound and the effect is unmistakable. The social reasons for this might even be related but, it is pure speculation. It is worth mentioning that concurrently, a strange chemical compound was being touted as everything from a religious sacrament to a possible cure for alcoholism...to an artistic enhancer...to mind-manifesting...to mind-bending. The substance was LSD-25 and whatever its actual value or danger...it is important to this story. It was also completely legal at this point in the chronology. That it seemed to go hand in hand with The Doors' reverse vortex arrival on the scene is just the best timing ever to befall a huge musical void and the social dysfunction that was Southern California culture, as well. In the film, Love Thy Customer, we can hear (the first?) real psychedelic musical vision happening organically. Perhaps Ford Motor Company was hip to the sounds because of a clearly new objective strategy in employment efficiency. We just don't know. So, the idea that the L.A. street scene had things to offer is not so far fetched. Was it a new way of thinking? Was there real tangible newness to be found in the seemingly legitimate voice of Youth?

Well, when we understand the mechanics of star-making machinery, it seems impossible that ANYTHING could be the product of counter-culture, especially when riding the pretense of righteousness and fueled by perfect timing. And yet, that is exactly what we are witnessing here. By May 1966, The Doors were still playing The London Fog...what were the expectations of Paul Rothchild or Jac Holzman or whomever Elektra Records sent to check their potential? We know that The London Fog release of a few years ago, is absolute proof, that The Doors had become a real band. Each member was in full display of their respective chops and that those chops were beyond the typical ambition of all other local acts. Each of the band members were adept in their style and the interplay shared between them was a language all its own. Remember, too, that the music industry was already in the habit of providing The Wrecking Crew template to all things of commercial potential. So, with The Doors...how sweet was the sound heard by scouting label recruiters? The resultant debut album that Paul Rothchild was able to produce at the end of 1966 was absolutely brilliant on nearly every level. Released in January 1967, this is the effort that would propel the group, the music, the genre, the locality, the group unit, and individualism into the highest prominence ever known to Los Angeles. That the first single, Break On Through(To The Other Side), fizzled as the group's first time out...it was still the most perfect selection to usher in the group and the album to the scene. It also defined the absolute objective that The Doors never fully verbalized...but, which the music, was undeniably about. This was an album that proclaimed its own virtues as it was basically a themed affair. That theme being the mystery and hopeful influence that can exist in the psychedelic dynamic...and, ANY other paradigm related to music.

The music was unique unto itself...it defied any hopes of comparison to all that came before it. It made no use of simple sappy romance...instead honing the Freudian lyrics to a cutting edge made of non-ambiguity. Straight for the heart, this scope was of a consistent aim on any prey to fall into its cross-hairs. All lyrics are specifically lethal in a very living way. The sound of the instruments are all reactionary to the message of the words. This debut could have been titled The Chain Of Command, I Read Too Much, Libido On The Sunset Strip...or a million other relevant inferences to the subject matter within. But, it was called The Doors and on that angle, the group became Los Angeles' own local pride. If the music industry was really in the habit if inventing/cultivating pop music mythology out of any band on its 'way up', what must it have thought of Jim, Ray, Robbie, and John? They were a complete item requiring no fabrication on any level. They were their own creators and had held on long enough to get corporate attention. They wrote their own songs...played their own music...and, were competent enough to set up the equipment and do it LIVE in any venue. Let us reiterate: THIS WAS NOT THE NORM in the Los Angeles radio culture. Now, the only thing missing would be national acceptance and this was accomplished with the second single release.

Light My Fire was released as a single on April 24, 1967. Recorded eight months earlier, and whittled down from the album's 7:06 to just under 3:00...the timing was again perfect. By the time the single caught fire on the airwaves, enough album sales had occurred to ensure its, and the group's, longevity. The best part was that the song was the last song on side one of the album. This allowed for a saturation level of consumer listening to the first half of the album. The rest of the defining victory was nailed down via live appearances for most of 1967. This might have been the end of the mega-flash as touring is hard work. To hear the group's performance at The Matrix club in San Francisco gives no hint about what they had already accomplished or what greatness still lay before them. Amazingly, the group spent most of their off time at Sunset Sound Recorders from May-August. This in itself is not spectacular...however, the result would dovetail to cement The Doors' role as the pride of Los Angeles...and the best rock and roll act ever to get national airplay in the United States. The worst fate ever to fall upon musical acts is to debut yourself with a masterpiece...tour de force...something so good-- NOTHING will beat it! Sound like anyone we know? In Los Angeles, The Doors might not have noticed all of this critical theory about timing. They were pretty busy in 1967. But, they had some huge shoes to fill. They only had one album. However great it was, they might have already conceded to an inability to better it. Throughout the history of popular music, there have been many masterpiece debuts. But the rarest commodity is a BETTER sophomore effort. And in September of 1967,

L.A.'s very own rock band, The Doors...cinched immortality with the release of Strange Days. A vanguard offering that was the logical progression of the debut album that was only 36 minutes long. And yet, it was the perfect complement of the first LP and in so doing defines the psychedelic music genre in a very final way. There would be many releases through the '60s and early '70s by other groups...all using the road paved by The Doors. But, the Westward Expansion was over. The real estate didn't allow for it and neither did the genre, the industry protocol, and the Southern California lifestyle/culture. ALL roads would lead back to Venice the same way that ALL things British led back to Liverpool. In The Doors, Los Angeles indeed found a fitting mascot to represent the state of The Golden State. From this moment forward, all musical real estate would be occupied by hints of yore...and all that would be offered as new was really something already done...regardless of the refurbishing that preceded it. The Doors were the real thing. They were so good that nowhere but Los Angeles could have provided them the fertile substrate to realize all that they have given to us. The remainder of their career is anti-climactic. Despite the greatness of their future releases, they would most effectively symbolize the exhale of the year 1967. Certainly, there is the story of how Morrison was ready to throw in the towel after the first album. And, rightly so! If Los Angeles is anything...it is EASILY bored. That hasn't always been the case, but in the life of the last real anti-hero ever to call it home, it was simply a situation where everything has already been said.

Time to move outward towards bigger ripples. What else is there? We should have gotten the arty Doors on their 3rd LP. The Celebration Of The Lizard was Jim's next point of focus...and yet, Paul Rothchild was still the producer and industry protocol had finally gained a firm grasp of all things Doors! Instead of arty, we got political and we got leftovers. We even got stuff that was sub-par. These are the obstacles to face when you have released a debut masterpiece and an even better follow-up. The music was indeed over and it would take three more LPs to turn out the lights.

The FINAL redemption was when Paul Rothchild was bored by the early versions of what became the L.A. Woman LP. The band would go on to produce that final effort without him...while he was coddling Janis Joplin's Pearl album. Well, at least we know who wasn't an L.A. Woman. The Doors' last album was recorded at the downstairs rehearsal space of 8512 Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood. That was the hub of the group's existence as it was their official designated OFFICE(upstairs) and the only address ever given by Morrison as a California Resident. The building was at the intersection of La Cienega...also the location of the Alta Cienega Hotel(Northwest corner) where Jim often stayed. Further up the street, at the top of La Cienega is the Whiskey A Go-Go(at Sunset Blvd). All of the locations within a five-mile radius of the 'Workshop'. The L.A. Woman album brought the group to a logical finish line musically. It was a return to the Blues that had been their staple back in the beginning when they wanted to be as big as Love. When they weren't yet good enough for the Whiskey A Go-Go. When poetry was just a pastime and NOT yet a paradigm.

This collection by BlankFrank gives the entire story of the greatest band ever to come from the U.S.A.! You can finally realize how important The Doors were, how important Los Angeles became...and how important creative archiving always will be!
Any questions???
KC

Part One: Studio Master Takes 1 Yandex

Part One: Studio Master Takes 2 Yandex

Part Two: Studio Alternates  Yandex

Part Three: Spoken Word  Yandex

Part Four: Singles Yandex

Part Five: Stereo LP Masters  Yandex

Part Six: Mono LP Masters  Yandex

Part Seven: TV/Radio Appearances  Yandex

Part Eight: Live Multi-track 1 (68-69)  Yandex

Part Eight: Live Multi-track 2 (1-4 1970) Yandex

Part Eight: Live Multi-track 3 (5-8 1970)  Yandex

Part Nine: Live Soundboard  Yandex

Part One: Studio Master Takes 1  Zippy

Part One: Studio Master Takes 2  Zippy

Part Two: Studio Alternates 1  Zippy

Part Two: Studio Alternates 2  Zippy

Part Three: Spoken Word  Zippy

Part Four: Singles  Zippy

Part Five: Stereo LP Masters 1  Zippy

Part Five: Stereo LP Masters 2  Zippy

Part Five: Stereo LP Masters 3  Zippy

Part Six: Mono LP Masters  Zippy

Part Seven: TV/Radio Appearances  Zippy