Unbiased reviews of new vinyl releases, audiophile reissues, and more

Monday, July 23, 2012

The Doors: S/T, Strange Days -- Analogue Productions 45 RPM 200 Gram Vinyl




















Analogue Productions has finally released the first two titles of their long-anticipated 45 RPM vinyl remasterings of the Doors core catalog. And the wait appears to have been worth it, with one title sounding excellent, the other likely definitive.

The Music
 I can still remember the very day I bought my first album from the Doors--New Year's Eve, December 31, 1980. In the midst of Doors fever, fueled in large part by the Jim Morrison biography No One Here Gets Out Alive, Elektra issued Greatest Hits, which provided me and thousands of other junior high and high school kids with their first real taste of the band. In the thirty or so years since, their catalog has been re-packaged and re-worked again and again, including the recent Rhino 180 gram vinyl boxset of the core albums. So, when Chad Kassem opened Quality Record Pressings and thereafter announced that his label, Analogue Productions would be reissuing the Doors catalog on 45 RPM 200 gram vinyl, audiophiles were understandably skeptical about the prospect of buying the catalog "yet again."