OTHER VOICES / FULL CIRCLE

After a lot of years of being out of print in the U.S (since the mid-seventies), and apart from being available for some years only in Germany in the LP and cassette formats in the eighties-nineties, "Other Voices"(1971) and "Full Circle"(1972), the two albums that the remaining members of THE DOORS recorded after JIM MORRISON died, finally were re-issued worldwide in 2015. Both albums were re-issued as individual LPs (with their original cover designs, and with the cover design of "Full Circle" also including again the zoetrope which was only included in the first edition of the LP), and also in this 2 CD set which includes both albums plus a track called "Treetrunk" as a bonus track which originally was released as the B-Side of the "Get Up and Dance" single in the U.K. All this happened in September 4, 2015.

As I have both albums in the LP format, I didn't buy them again in the LP format. Instead, I waited to see the 2 CD set in the record shops of my city to buy it. It really took several weeks to this to happen, because the LPs were imported to be sold in the first place, taking advantage of the "new fad" to release some old albums and new albums of a lot of bands in the LP format, and also maybe to give to the old fans of the band the chance to buy them first with the original cover designs at more individual expensive prices than the 2 CD set, and later to also give to them the chance to buy them in this 2 CD set, if they wanted to do it. A marketing plan, I think. I knew that the 2 CD set was going to be released simultaneously because I follow the band's official page in Facebook. Anyway, the band announced there the release of the LPs first. It wasn't until me and other persons asked them the same day if they also were going to release the 2 CD set. So, their answer had to be "yes", too.

So, I bought the 2 CD set. I really expected a better packaging, because the cover design for this 2 CD set only has the front covers of both albums as "miniatures" in the front cover of the booklet, and nothing more. But the booklet has very good liner notes written by David Fricke (a writer from the "Rolling Stone" magazine) which are very long and informative about the recording of both albums, with quotes from John Densmore, Robbie Krieger, the late Ray Manzarek, the former Elektra Records boss Jac Holzman and others. The rest of the booklet gives information about the titles of the songs from both albums, but not detailed notes (track by track, as in the LPs original covers) about the guest musicians who played and recorded with the band in these albums. Anyway, at last the booklet gives detailed information about who really wrote the songs for "Other Voices", a thing which only happened in the first edition of the LP which had an inner sleeve with the lyrics, and this also happened in the labels of the LP of that first edition. In the original gatefold cover of the LP all the songs were credited to the three members (Krieger, Densmore, Manzarek) and this also happened in later editions of the LP, with the songs being also credited to the three members in the labels of the LP in later editions.

So, I think that the simultaneous release of the individual LPs and the 2 CD set had a marketing plan: "you can have both albums with their original cover designs in the LP format, but if you want, you can also have them on a 2 CD set, but without the original cover designs, but with very long and informative liner notes and better sound... plus a bonus track". I think that some old fans really wanted to have the albums in both formats, so they bought them.

Now, about the sound of the 2 CD set: both albums were remastered for the first time for CD releases by Bruce Botnick, who worked with the band as recording engineer for most of their albums (and also as co- producer with the band for their "L.A. Woman" and "Other Voices" albums). He really did a very good job. I previously had the chance to listen to a bootleg version of both albums on one CD which was released in Russia in 1999. I think that the sources of both albums for that one CD version were LP copies, so the sound was not very good and also the channels were inverted in comparison to the original LPs. With this official 2 CD set one finally has the chance to listen to very clear sound from both albums , and also to an official CD release of the previously very rare song called "Treetrunk", a song which previously one only could listen to from very used singles copies in youtube. I think that the band really wasted a lot of time to release both albums officially on CD because there also were other bootleg CD versions available which some old fans obviously bought. Now, all these bootleg versions are really of not importance anymore. It really took to the band a lot of years to finally release them on CD, and this even happened after Ray Manzarek's death in 2013.It seems that even the members of the band underrated both albums all this time. But I really like both albums, as I wrote in my individual reviews for both LPs here in Prog Archives some years ago. (You can read them if you want: "Other Voices" is in www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=105657, and "Full Circle"is in www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=105670 . My review for the "Get Up and Dance"/ "Treetrunk" single is in www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=244744 ).