The Doors - Live At The Aquarius Theater: The Second Performance (2001, 1969)
Rhino Handmade, RHM2-7907

Tracks
1. Concert Introduction And Tuning
2. Jim's Introduction
3. Back Door Man
4. Break On Through (To The Other Side)
5. When The Music's Over
6. Tuning
7. You Make Me Real
8. Tuning
9. Universal Mind
10. The Crowd Humbly Requests
11. Mystery Train/Crossroads
12. The Crowd Again Requests
13. Little Red Rooster
14. Tuning
15. Gloria
16. Tuning
17. Touch Me
18. The Crystal Ship
Disc: 2
1. Tuning
2. Light My Fire
3. The Crowd Requests Their Favorites
4. The Celebration Of The Lizard
5. A Request Of The Management
6. Soul Kitchen
7. Jim Introduces Ray
8. Close To You
9. A Conversation With The Crowd
10. Peace Frog (Instrumental)
11. Blue Sunday
12. Five To One
13. The Crowd Again Requests Their Favorites
14. Jim Introduces The Movie
15. Rock Me Baby

This is the third of these titles recorded at the Aquarius Theatre in Hollywood, California. A 33-track 2-CD set of the complete show mixed and mastered from the original multitracks stored in The Doors archive and presented unedited and in its entirety just as you would have heard it if you were sitting front row center.

An Excerpt From Danny Sugerman's Notes:
It is my opinion that on a good night Morrison was the rock ‘n’ roll equivalent of the brilliant and crazed Russian ballet dancer, Nijinsky. He was literally possessed by a force he could somehow tap into once the band started playing and the spotlight hit him. Words like "mesmerizing," "hypnotic," "horrifying," "ecstatic," and "otherworldly" all apply here.

And it was reputation, and of course the hit singles, several of which are contained here, that inevitably led to the bigger auditoriums. Bill Graham once told the band "You can't share shit in those barns" in an attempt to keep them at the smaller-sized Fillmore. But with Jim giving each performance everything he had, and because the demand for tickets was so high, it simply made more sense to do what so many other bands had done, and that was to graduate from the Fillmore Auditoriums to larger halls and play one show instead of six.

Live albums had become a big money maker about this period and rather than force out their upcoming studio material, The Doors consented to Elektra Records' request to record the band in concert. It seemed a natural, The Doors, one of the best concert performers of their era, captured on tape.

An Excerpt From Danny Sugerman's Notes:
If you like The Doors now, and never saw them live, I'm here to tell you about the word on the street back in the late 1960s. It was "If you think their albums are good, you've got to see these guys live." The same integrity they captured so well as recording artists was always present, except that in concert, you never knew what Jim Morrison was going to do. The Doors were performance rock like no one ever before or since. Morrison's charisma and power came pouring off the stage, entranced, like the rest of us by the Doors music. Morrison appeared possessed, or, it was even whispered, insane... Everyone in the audience believed The Doors nailed it at The Aquarius. No more concert recordings would be necessary. But upon listening to the playbacks producer Paul Rothchild thought they could do better. Cautiously, more concert dates were booked to be recorded. These additional concerts, preserved on one-inch 8-track master tapes, will all be released in their entirety on Bright Midnight Records. Because The Aquarius Theatre started the process, Bright Midnight picks up here.


Bright Midnight Archives
This is the real thing, as The Doors played it, without intrusive overdubs or fixes. While technical glitches remain, and the tape sound is sometimes primitive, the performance quality and historical significance make Bright Midnight Archives releases essential in any Doors collection. Most Bright Midnight Archives releases are neither individually numbered nor limited editions.