The Soft Parade (limited edition)

THE SOFT PARADE: 50TH ANNIVERSARY DELUXE EDITION is a 3-CD / 1-LP set that includes the original studio album – plus the non-LP B-side “Who Scared You” – in newly remastered form, courtesy of Bruce Botnick, the band’s longtime mixer and engineer. That’s on the first disc. The second disc, however, features five “Doors Only” versions of songs from the album – “Tell All The People,” “Touch Me,” “Wishful Sinful,” “Runnin’ Blue,” and “Who Scared You” – which have been shorn of their brass and strings, and there are additional versions of three of those tracks – “Touch Me,” “Wishful Sinful,” and “Runnin’ Blue” – which also have new guitar parts courtesy of none other than Robby Krieger. That second disc also offers three tracks rescued from studio rehearsal tapes, each of which includes new bass work from Robert DeLeo of Stone Temple Pilots, who teamed with Krieger and John Densmore to perform at the 2016 Ray Manzarek tribute concert. The third disc features additional studio outtakes, including the much-bootlegged, hour-long jam, “Rock Is Dead,” which appears here in its entire, surviving form for the first time ever. Oh, and the LP is a 180-gram vinyl version of the original album. But you probably figured that.

If you’re a super-duper Doors fan, you’ll want to hurry over to Rhino.com, however, because it’s only there that you can secure the limited-edition (as in only 500 copies) version which also includes a hand-numbered 36x18 lithograph of the interior vinyl gatefold artwork of the album.