Doors Release Proves They’re Not All Hidden Treasures

While going through the Simon & Garfunkel archives looking for unreleased material to include with S&G; reissues, Art Garfunkel noted recently that “there’s a reason they’re called outtakes.”

Not everything in musicians’ or record company vaults is hidden gold, and just because some fans will devour every scrap of recorded music from their favorite artists doesn’t make those scraps a full meal.

The Doors’ faithful will face that issue with “The Bright Midnight Sampler,” a new collection of 14 archival live performances offered exclusively through the group’s official Web site, https://www.thedoors.com.

Eric Clapton or Steve Winwood fans, however, should be happier with the reissue of Blind Faith’s 1969 album, now available in a deluxe, expanded two-CD edition.

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** The Doors, “The Bright Midnight Sampler,” Bright Midnight. The seminal L.A. band’s career has been exhaustively documented by now. Elektra Records issued the four-CD boxed set “The Doors” in 1997 covering all the group’s hits plus lots of alternate takes and live material. Then in 1999 the label put out all six of the quartet’s original studio albums plus highlights from the earlier boxed set in a seven-CD set.

You’d think, then, that a collection of concert recordings from the Doors’ own archives would consist only of superlative live performances.

Think again.

Part of the problem is that the Doors’ legend has more to do with singer Jim Morrison’s charisma as a performer than with the band’s proficiency as a musical unit. Minus whatever in-person dynamics he added, these renditions often leave you thinking, “I guess you had to be there.”

Morrison can be credited for infusing rock with an erotic edge, taking Mick Jagger’s bad-boy image a step further with more sexually explicit behavior dressed up in a neo-Romantic tortured-poet persona.

But his literary musings don’t hold up well as time goes by. Need proof? Listen to “Love Hides,” which pops up in the middle of an extended medley that starts with “Back Door Man” and ends with “Five to One”: “Love comes when you least expect it / Love comes to those who seek it / Love hides inside the rainbow / Love is everything.”

Mostly, though, the recordings are curiously devoid of the spark that distinguishes classic live albums. There’s no fire, ironically, in their run-through of their career-making hit “Light My Fire,” while “Touch Me” and “Break on Through (to the Other Side)” start energetically enough but quickly run out of steam.

The few inspired instrumental flights come from guitarist Robby Krieger. Ray Manzarek sounds too busy handling both keyboard bass and organ duties to come up with anything more than rudimentary and repetitive solos, which often undercut any momentum.

Morrison himself often sounds zoned out rather than fully involved in his vocals. The best numbers are those most strongly rooted in the blues, for which Morrison’s growling, sensual singing was ideally suited: Willie Dixon’s “Back Door Man” and the Doors’ own “Roadhouse Blues.”

Even those, however, won’t supplant the studio versions.

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*** Blind Faith, “Blind Faith,” Polydor. The word “supergroup” was pretty much coined for this collaboration of guitarist Eric Clapton and drummer Ginger Baker, both fresh out of Cream, and Traffic singer-songwriter Steve Winwood.

Clapton is said to have been enchanted at the time by the Band’s 1968 album “Music From Big Pink,” and you can hear it in the one song he wrote for this project, “Presence of the Lord,” which has a Band-like gravity and soulfulness, with a dash of Cream-like psychedelia tossed into his solo break.

Blind Faith went on a single tour of England and the U.S. after rushing to complete the album in about four months, and then disbanded after business pressures seemed to overwhelm the musicians’ artistic impulses.

This reissue starts with the six tracks that made up the original 1969 LP. The first CD is augmented with five other studio tracks, including a funkier take on Winwood’s standout song “Can’t Find My Way Home” and the nearly 16-minute “Acoustic Jam,” a jazz-funk exercise that let Winwood stretch out on piano while Clapton riffed at length on acoustic guitar.

Two versions of Sam Myers’ blues shuffle “Sleeping in the Ground” allow Clapton to delve into the music that first inspired him, but Winwood is more effective as a white soul singer than as a bluesman.

The second CD comprises four lengthy instrumental jams, most of which are skeletal tunes elevated by Clapton’s guitar work. Too bad one of them isn’t the rendition of “Hey Joe” mentioned in the notes, since Clapton’s take on a tune so closely associated with Jimi Hendrix represents an irresistible nugget for rock-guitar aficionados.

Blind Faith didn’t exist long enough to develop the empathetic musicianship Clapton so admired in the Band. The considerable skills of Clapton, Winwood, Baker and bassist Rick Grech, however, are frequently more successful at lighting the kind of musical fire the Doors should have ignited.

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent). The albums are already released unless otherwise noted.