The Doors - Absolutely 1970

My first Doors post. I mentioned last post that I would be slowly posting constructions that I had laying around but this one is brand new. I was checking out this post over at Albums I Wish Existed which featured an expanded version of The Soft Parade by The Doors. Side two of the album featured songs recorded on tour that were never recorded in the studio or at least never released on an album proper. 

 

According to the post's notes the '69-'70 tour was recorded in it's entirety on multitrack tape with the intention of releasing a live album consisting of all new material similar to Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsies album. The label insisted on including some hits resulting in the album Absolutely Live with a mix of new and old material but it got me thinking what if...

 

Tracklist

Side One
01 Build Me a Woman
02 Someday Soon
03 Close To You
04 Universal Mind
05 Love Hides
06 I Will Never Be Untrue

07 Dead Cats Dead Rats

Side Two
01 Who Do You Love
02 Away In India
03 Petition The Lord With Prayer
04 Celebration of the Lizard

Lions in the Street
Wake Up
A Little Game
The Hill Dwellers
Not To Touch The Earth
Names Of The Kingdom
The Palace Of Exile

Reality Notes

I loaded the original album into my editor and removed the old material while replacing it with those songs from side two of the expanded Soft Parade album. Shuffled things around and tweaked some  edits and the result was a decent album of all unique songs that could sit nicely with the rest of the studio albums. But as I listened I kept getting distracted by the crowd noise.

I've been watching my fellow bloggers posting edits that removed or separated elements using a program called MVSEP with interesting results. The Doors post at AIWE included some and one of these was a live track from which he removed the crowd noise (Someday Soon, included here) so I decided to give it a try. (Side note, PJ if you're reading I vote for keeping the outro sax on Touch Me. It just doesn't sound right without it)

At first I was a bit disappointed. I went to the website hoping to find a downloadable app that I could install on my computer (I don't do anything on my phone except calls, text and one stupid game) but instead saw that it was one of those sites where you upload your file and it would give you a new set of files to download. I've been using computers longer than some of my readers are old and I an so tired of making accounts and handing over an email address. I decided to test it unregistered and uploaded a guitar/vocal demo from a friend to se if it could separate the two elements but I gave up after waiting several hours and still not getting close to the front of the line.

A couple of days later I gave in and created an account. I ran the entire Absolutely Live album through and loaded the results into my editor and was pleasantly surprised. While not 100% perfect the few traces of crowd noise left was on the front or back ends of some tracks and were easily edited out. I recreated all of the edits I did on my first attempt, reshuffled a few things and even created a short collage from bits that were cut out from the removed songs to tack on in front of Petition The Lord With Prayer which leads directly into Celebration of the Lizard. 

 

I kept Celebration of the Lizard as a single track but listed the sections in the tracklist. My copy had these sections as separate tracks and when I loaded it into my editor I found micro gaps between them that I had to edit out to make the listening experience smooth and uninterrupted so I thought it best to keep it as one track. The piece is meant to be listened to as one anyway so why split it up? I'm assuming the release date to be the same as the original. Enjoy!

 

For the cover I used a more contemporary photo from the Isle of Wight concert adding the logo, title and hype sticker. Jim Morrison was a little miffed at the label for using an older picture for the original album because he had recently changed his image by growing a beard and wearing less leather to tone down his earlier rock god image. I dropped the Live portion of the original title feeling it was no longer needed as this now sounds like it was recorded in the studio or at least in a theater with no audience.