The Doors
Strange Days

This vintage Gold Label pressing has the kind of Tubey Magical Midrange that modern records can barely BEGIN to reproduce. Folks, that sound is gone and it sure isn't showing signs of coming back. If you love hearing INTO a recording, actually being able to "see" the performers, and feeling as if you are sitting in the studio with the band, this is the record for you. It's what vintage all analog recordings are known for -- this sound.

If you exclusively play modern repressings of vintage recordings, I can say without fear of contradiction that you have never heard this kind of sound on vinyl. Old records have it -- not often, and certainly not always -- but maybe one out of a hundred new records do, and those are some pretty long odds.

What The Best Sides Of Strange Days Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1967
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is, of course, the only way to hear all of the above.

Who Knew The First Two Doors Albums Were So Well Recorded?

Strange Days and L.A. Woman are the two Doors albums that rarely sound good on vinyl. You rarely see top quality Hot Stamper copies of either on the site, simply because most pressings leave a lot to be desired, and they sure don't come cheap these days -- not in audiophile playing condition anyway.

Few audiophiles (and practically no member of the general public) have any idea how well recorded these albums are because most pressings do such a poor job of getting the energy of the master tape in their grooves.

Most early pressings are opaque, flat, thin, veiled, compressed and lifeless. They sound exactly the way so many old rock records sound: like an old rock record. The Butterfly and Small Red E labels are so contemptibly thin and harsh they are not worth the vinyl they're pressed on. When Elektra sought to reissue these Doors records in the 70s they obviously had no interest in preserving on vinyl the superb quality of the sound of the original tapes.

The Gold CDs Hoffman mastered for DCC are wonderful, by far the best I have heard The Doors in digital. The early CDs from the 80s are of course a joke, as flat and thin sounding as the reissued LPs. There's a lot of crap out there, folks. If you want to find good sound for The Doors albums, you clearly have your work cut out for you.

Size and Space

One of the qualities that we don't talk about on the site nearly enough is the SIZE of the record's presentation. Some copies of the album just sound small -- they don't extend all the way to the outside edges of the speakers, and they don't seem to take up all the space from the floor to the ceiling. In addition, the sound can often be recessed, with a lack of presence and immediacy in the center.

Other copies -- my notes for these copies often read "BIG and BOLD" -- create a huge soundfield, with the music positively jumping out of the speakers. They're not brighter, they're not more aggressive, they're not hyped-up in any way, they're just bigger and clearer.

We often have to go back and downgrade the copies that we were initially impressed with in light of such a standout pressing. Who knew the recording could be that huge, spacious and three dimensional? We sure didn't, not until we played the copy that had those qualities, and that copy might have been number 8 or 9 in the rotation.

Think about it: if you had only seven copies, you might not have ever gotten to hear a copy that sounded that open and clear. And how many even dedicated audiophiles would have more than one of two clean vintage pressings with which to do a shootout? These kinds of records are expensive and hard to come by in good shape. Believe us, we know whereof we speak when it comes to getting hold of vintage pressings of Classic Rock albums.

One further point needs to be made: most of the time these very special pressings just plain rock harder. When you hear a copy do what this copy can, it's an entirely different - and dare I say unforgettable -- listening experience.

Vinyl Condition

Mint Minus Minus and maybe a bit better is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)

Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of later pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful originals.

If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.

Side One

• Strange Days
• You're Lost Little Girl
• Love Me Two Times
• Unhappy Girl
• Horse Latitudes
• Moonlight Drive

Side Two

• People Are Strange
• My Eyes Have Seen You
• I Can't See Your Face in My Mind
• When the Music's Over

AMG Review

... overall it's a very successful continuation of the themes of their classic album. Besides the hit "Strange Days," highlights included the funky "Moonlight Drive," the eerie "You're Lost Little Girl," and the jerkily rhythmic "Love Me Two Times," which gave the band a small chart single.

Slant Review

... if The Beatles had Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club and The Beach Boys had Pet Sounds, then The Doors' answer was Strange Days. The liner notes of the 40th-anniversary edition of the album detail how, in a pre-online-leak world, engineer Bruce Botnick snagged an early copy of Sgt. Pepper's and played it for The Doors, inspiring the band, along with producer Paul Rothchild, to invent new methods of studio recording. This experimentation can be heard in the very first notes of the title track, as Ray Manzarek's spacey keyboards set the tone for Morrison's eerie, distorted warning, "Strange days have found us." It's the perfect introduction to a perfectly strange album.

— Sal Cinquemani

Rolling Stone (courtesy of Wikipedia)

Rolling Stone Magazine opined that the album "has all the power and energy of the first LP, but is more subtle, more intricate and much more effective" and argued that the "whole album, individual songs and especially the final track are constructed in the five parts of tragedy. Like Greek drama, you know when the music's over because there is catharsis."