"Actor: Robby Krieger"

• When You're Strange | DVD | (30/08/2010) from £20.00   |  Saving you £-2.01 (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  A look at the late '60s and early '70s rock band The Doors including rare exclusive footage.

• When You're Strange | Blu Ray | (30/08/2010) from £13.48   |  Saving you £9.51 (41.40%)   |  RRP £22.99

  A look at the late '60s and early '70s rock band The Doors including rare exclusive footage.

• The Doors Live At The Hollywood Bowl | DVD | (04/09/2000) from £10.78   |  Saving you £9.21 (85.44%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Watching The Doors Live at the Hollywood Bowl is a sobering experience, for the viewer must confront the painful truth that popular music, to judge by its increasingly infantile and banal state, will never see their like again. Either that, or admit The Doors were an irrelevant footnote in the history of pop--an idle thought that a few minutes of this extraordinary concert will dispel. Fortunately for posterity, this July 5, 1968 performance was captured by four cameras and recorded in 16-track audio, and has now been digitally remixed for DVD. The result is a crisp picture and generally excellent stereo sound that is far better than most archive footage of this band. On stage Jim Morrison has the aura of an intense performance artist, whose dark, smoky voice forms only a part of his complex persona; guitarist Robby Krieger, keyboard player Ray Manzarek and drummer John Densmore complement Morrison's free-associative outpourings with improvisational jazz-inspired interjections. They make music like no other band before or since: who else could segue effortlessly from Kurt Weill's "Alabama Song" to Willie Dixon's "Back Door Man"? And just when they're in danger of becoming too pretentious, Morrison bursts any lurking self-importance with a wry smile, a jokey aside or even a belch. But the seriousness remains, at least implicitly, throughout as Morrison's edgy lyrics--from "When the Music's Over" to "The Unknown Soldier" and "The End"--constantly hint at disturbing social undercurrents outside the concert arena. Is it fanciful to imagine that in the minds of his audience the ghosts of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement are hovering just out of view? Such thoughts are what make The Doors so unique: their music invites questions, positively dares the audience to ask them; that's why they remain so endlessly fascinating well over three decades later. And that's why this concert performance will find a home with any and every fan of the band. "The time to hesitate is through". --Mark Walker

• The Doors - Live In Europe 1968 | DVD | (06/12/1999) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  For Doors completists only, this shapeless gathering of rare film clips of the band performing in Europe is hampered by the same old, frustrating problems with attempting to convey, through lousy camera work, the band's power as a live act. The packaging tells us the Doors swept through London, Stockholm, Frankfurt and Amsterdam during a 1968 tour documented here, but there is no way to appreciate that save for a random clip or two of Jim Morrison milling about outside concert venues, talking with fans. Otherwise, we see the same sort of obfuscating on-stage close-ups of Morrison you can see in any footage of a Doors gig, stumbling around, crooning and reciting poetry to minimalist accompaniment by Ray Manzarek on keyboards, John Densmore on drums and Robby Krieger on guitar. Unless one can see, in the mind's eye, what the band is up to from the point of view of a kid in the 30th row, there is no way to really get the hypnotic, Dionysian effect for which the Doors were justifiably famous. Thus, for anyone who can imagine such a thing, or take it on faith, there is good reason to enjoy performances of "Spanish Caravan", "Five to One" and two versions of "Light My Fire". There is even a relic of pre-MTV, pop promotion: a silly-looking performance of "Hello, I Love You" shot before a baffled crowd on a London street. --Tom KeoghSong list: 1. Light My Fire 2. Love Me Two Times 3. Back Door Man 4. Spanish Caravan 5. Hello, I Love You 6. When the Music's Over 7. Unknown Soldier 8. Light My Fire (II) 9. Five to One 10. Alabama Song