Bright Midnight: Live In America
- by Greg Kot
There’s something for everybody on these new Doors collections: Those looking for more reasons to crow about how insufferable Jim Morrison could be will find plenty of ammunition in the concerts documented on The Bright Midnight Sampler and The Doors Live in Detroit.
And those who consider Morrison a poet and provocateur who slipped the Incense and Peppermints generation a strychnine cocktail will be similarly bolstered in their beliefs, particularly by No One Here Gets Out Alive, a fawning Doors documentary originally broadcast in 1979 and now finally released as a four-CD set.
The three Bright Midnight releases, available through the Doors’ Web site (thedoors.com), and Stoned Immaculate, a tribute album with an all-star cast including Creed, Stone Temple Pilots and Aerosmith, continue the long-running expansion of the Doors franchise. For a group that managed only six studio albums while Morrison was alive, the Doors never seem to run out of product. Nor does the public’s fascination with Morrison show any signs of abating nearly thirty years after the singer’s death. These latest releases, flawed though they are, tell us why.
