THE DOORS ARE OPEN

Black and white film containing some songs played by THE DOORS at Roundhouse, London, in September 1968 (from the band's only European tour) alternating with interviews and chronicles of that year. These reports are intended to show social and political background of the era, though the choice of events can give you the idea that THE DOORS entertained some lucky ones while the rest of the world was set on world war fire - no Summer of Love, only youth demonstrations, clashes with police, statements of politics and Vietnam war episodes. Sometimes these scenes inserted between songs and sometimes, definitely for worse, in the middle of the songs.

The sound is awful and multichannel mix on DVD does not make it better. But despite this THE DOORS magic is here, you can see how strong they were live and feel Jim's charisma and 'togetherness' of the band, it was a good concert. According to Stephen Davis' book ''Jim Morrison. Life, Death, Legend'', it was a killer show and Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Cream and Traffic were among the audience. The Doors played 17 songs (audio version circulates on bootlegs), Granada TV filmed every song, but only 7 were included in the film. Probably the entire video version exists in archives and will be published someday.

Again, according to Stephen Davis, Jim Morrison watched Granada's documentary in October 1968 and said later ''that he didn't think much of the film, but that the British filmmakers had made the best they had to work with''.

Most of these songs' versions can be found on ''Live in Europe 1968'' video. Unfortunately only few band's concerts were filmed professionally. And Roundhouse show was filmed by Granada TV professionally, I have no idea why the sound is so poor.

If you want well-recorded live video of THE DOORS better get ''Soundstage Performances'' and any DVD containing ''Live at the Hollywood Bowl'' show. But if you want more, ''The Doors Are Open'' deserves your attention.