Jeff Jampol: Doors working on Hollywood Bowl 1968 restoration

CD cover art and tracklisting on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0090SVDO0

I wonder how they restored the previously unreleased tracks? Were they able to fix the original vocal tracks or did they pull the vocals from other studio / live sources etc and fly them in?

 

Blu-Ray link on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Live-at-Bowl-68-Blu-ray/dp/B0090O07RS

 

16mm is 4:3 aspect ratio, correct? So I wonder if they will present this full frame on Blu-Ray or crop out some of the visual information to expand it to full frame 16:9...

 

$13.99 is a good price for the Blu-ray. I pre-ordered it along with the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour a few days ago. I'm also interested in the vinyl, but hope the price comes down a little bit.

Do you know to what extent the damage was on the vocal tracks? How many songs were affected? Was Jim's vocals not picked up completely on those songs, or were they filled with distortion/drop-outs?

 

I wonder when they will release a trailer for this.

 

My guess is that the original vocals were not damaged or missing - it was probably more of Rothchild's passion for editing and desire to create a "perfect" track.

 

I too think they exagerated the damage on the vocal track. They only fixed songs they had on the 1970 AL multitracks.

 

Here's a teaser from the new video release: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z5zH_wKPCk

 

Like

 

Some are reporting that "Hello I Love You" in the teaser trailer is lifted from the studio vocal track.

 

Does anyone know if the audio in this youtube clip of Hello I Love You is really from the Bowl? Or is it from something else? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwbWhPlEsvU

 

It's not much to go by, but sure sounds like the studio version to me. I could be wrong. That said, the Light My Fire vocal is definitely different then the previous version.

 

How about the Isle of Wight? How much of that film still exists and who has it?

 

I went to an early NoNoise demo around 1990-1991 in San Francisco, and one of the things they showed us was a "before and after" test on Jim Morrison's vocals from the Hollywood Bowl concert. The difference was pretty astonishing, but they told us (at that time) it took about three months of work to remove all the hum, noise, and clicks from 30 minutes of material, or whatever it was.

Nowadays, this is pretty trivial, and they could probably do it in a week or two. But my guess is that they played a lot of different live tapes and used whatever performances fit the mouths, and edited the material as best they could. Shooting concerts on film was really, really hard in this era.

 

.

 

It sounds like the original vocal audio then, is more or less complete, but marred by the hum, noise, and clicks?

 

Didn't Ray claim on the LD/DVD commentary track for the Bowl show that Jim wasn't even recorded on the spots they replaced from 1970 multitracks?

 

No, it sounded like a clean vocal. The original vocal was marred by hum, noise, and clicks. NoNoise got all that out (all separate processes).

We only heard a 30-second test, so I have no idea what was used for the final show.

I have no idea. If cameras weren't rolling or sound wasn't rolling on specific numbers, then my guess is that anything you see or hear came from somewhere else.

I've worked on many, many, many concerts where all kinds of shots are "stolen" from other performances, even to the point where they came back months later and shot some new pickups. In a lot of cases, they'll shoot a rehearsal with the cameras very close, then shoot a couple of live performances from a greater distance (to avoid putting the cameras between the performer and audience), and the final edit is a combination of all of these. So there is a degree of "trickery" with all of these shows.

 

This release could likely show that Botnick and Ray fibbed a bit when they explained their rational for some audio tricks used on the VHS/LD/DVD. At the very least technological upgrades mean more stuff is original.

The Doors did some wonky modern overdubbing on a bunch of live releases from the mid 80's to mid 90's. It's all out of print now and in retrospect a mistake. The band audio for HILY sounds really good, so tape was rolling and hum/hiss don't appear to be a major issue.

Ray does tell a story that a bunch of the footage was sound sync'ed because of him tapping his white shoes onstage to the drum beat.

I've seen some clips on "live" DVDs where some songs have minimal proper camera coverage and only 20 seconds per song show the intended performance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqGOAdnlf4k
After about a minute they just start throwing in random clips and hope few notice. Hendrix Monterey Purple Haze.

 

They do sound similar but the differences are there. We'll just have to wait and see. Hell, I am thrilled to have the full show pretty soon. If they flew in a studio vocal and if it works, so be it . A vocal is better than no vocal at all.

 

They stuck it through some filters like echo/distortion to match with with the rest of the performance. Plus quick camera cuts are always a giveaway.

The vocal performance does exist on a decent audience tape. Not sure how the audience tape with the multitracks band overdubbed would sound or if that would be preferable or something they could have added as a bonus. I do know they turned down the audience recording master tape when it was offered to them for FREE.

 

Thanks! for sharing.

 

Hearing that Light My Fire vocal I guess clears up the mystery of the mic issues. Rothchild just wanted something "better".

 

They did match the sound and judging from the little to be heard in that teaser, it works well.

I've heard parts of the audience tape but nto all of it...I'm excited for this release....cd and dvd for me.

 

I agree. Assuming that the original Hello, I Love You live vocal is in fact damaged/not usable, I don't have a problem with them flying in the studio vocal. At least we get the footage and the original instrumental track, which is better than nothing at all. As far as I know, no other multitrack live version of Hello, I Love You exists, so they didn't have any other options.