Weird Scenes Inside The Hollywood Bowl

Weird Scenes Inside The Hollywood Bowl, released in 1988 on the Oedipus label, catalog number JRRJ-70468, is a US-pressed black vinyl LP capturing the band's July 5, 1968 Hollywood Bowl concert. This is the original black vinyl pressing, distinct from the later white vinyl edition pressed in Germany in 1996. The cover itself carries the text "The unreleased performances july 5, 1968," though the performances were by 1988 far from unreleased in any practical sense. This is an unauthorized release, not a Doors or Elektra Records product.

The front cover is immediately recognizable to anyone familiar with the band's visual catalog. A tight, color close-up head shot of Jim Morrison dominates nearly the entire face of the sleeve, his dark curly hair framing an intense, direct gaze. The skin tones are warm, the background fading into a soft blueish-white blur. In the upper left, the band name appears in the familiar stylized interlocking "The Doors" logotype rendered in yellow-green, giving the cover a period-appropriate psychedelic feel. Running vertically along the right edge of the front cover, the full title "Weird Scenes Inside The Hollywood Bowl" is printed in alternating red and yellow text, oriented so you read it with the sleeve rotated, a layout choice that is both distinctive and slightly awkward.

The rear cover is a stark, high-contrast black and white band photograph set against a solid black background. All four members, Morrison, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, and John Densmore, are posed together in a tight cluster. Morrison stands shirtless to the right, his expression cool and detached. Krieger is at upper left, Densmore lower left crouching, and Manzarek with his characteristic round wire-framed glasses in the foreground. The large "The Doors" logotype is repeated on both the left and right sides of the rear panel in a ghosted silver-grey treatment that blends into the black background. Track listings for both sides appear in the upper corners: Side One to the left, Side Two to the right. The lower left carries the text "Audiophile Pressing" and "Digitally Mastered," with the subsidiary line "Analog Recording Digitally Transferred and Mastered." The catalog number JRRJ-70648 is printed below that block, and the Oedipus logo, a small illustrated figure, appears in the lower right alongside the standard "All Rights Reserved" disclaimer.

The disc label itself is a clean cream-white field with black printing. The Oedipus name and its illustrated logo, depicting a crouching, curly-haired classical figure, sit at the top. "SIDE ONE" appears at the lower left, the matrix suffix JRRJ-70468-A at the lower right. The track titles are center-printed below the spindle hole in a straightforward serif font. The label design is simple and unfussy, typical of unauthorized pressings from this era that attempted a veneer of legitimacy through clean layout and "audiophile" marketing language.

The content here draws directly from the July 5, 1968 Hollywood Bowl concert, the same source material behind the official Live At The Hollywood Bowl LP and the various other pressings of that concert that have circulated over the decades. The six tracks spread across both sides give you "When The Music's Over," "Whiskey Bar (Alabama Song)," a medley of "Backdoor Man" into "Five To One" on Side One, then "Moonlight Drive," "Horse Latitudes," and "The End" on Side Two. These are the same performances documented on the official video release, Live At The Hollywood Bowl, and the audio has been in authorized circulation long enough that the "unreleased" claim on the cover is largely a marketing fiction by 1988 standards. The claim of audiophile pressing and digital mastering is undercut by the unauthorized nature of the release; the source quality is decent given the vintage concert recording, but this is not a pressing that audiophiles would reach for first. Discogs currently shows 154 collectors holding this pressing and 25 with it on their want list, numbers that reflect moderate collector interest rather than genuine scarcity. For comparison, the German white vinyl pressing from 1996 occupies a separate collecting niche entirely.

For the serious Doors collector, this US black vinyl Oedipus pressing of JRRJ-70468 is worth having primarily as a document of the unauthorized LP market of the late 1980s, and to distinguish it on the shelf from the later white vinyl variant. The audio content is widely available through official channels, including the properly licensed Live At The Hollywood Bowl releases. The packaging is competently produced for what it is, with genuinely appealing cover photography, but there is no musical content here that requires hunting this specific pressing down. Completists and those focused on the unauthorized release segment of Doors collecting are the natural audience.