The Doors Special: Without A Safety Net

The Doors Special: Without A Safety Net is a three-disc radio broadcast package issued by Westwood One Co. under catalog number 97-43, released for the week of October 20, 1997, in the US. This is a syndicated radio show production, not a commercial retail release, pressed specifically to promote and celebrate the arrival of The Doors Box Set. The set was distributed directly to radio stations and includes cue sheets and scripted commercial breaks, making it a professional broadcast package rather than anything intended for the consumer market.

The photo provided shows Disc 1 of 3 from this set, and it tells you immediately what you are dealing with. The disc is a standard silver pressed CD with a black label. At the top, The Doors is printed in bold red type. Below that, on the left side, the text reads Week of October 20, 1997, and on the right it identifies this as Disc 1 of 3, Show # 97-43. Centered near the bottom is the program title, "Without a Safety Net", rendered in red italic text and enclosed in quotation marks. The Westwood One logo appears at the bottom center of the disc, a small but recognizable mark that identifies the syndication company responsible for producing and distributing this kind of broadcast programming throughout the 1990s. The overall design is functional and utilitarian, as expected from a radio station copy: no elaborate artwork, no photography of the band, no decorative elements beyond the typography. The label is clean and legible. There is standard fine-print text running around the outer ring of the disc dealing with reproduction rights and broadcast restrictions, which is typical for Westwood One productions of this era. The cue sheets that accompany the discs are a significant part of the package for collectors. These are the working documents radio producers used to time segments, identify tracks, and slot in advertisements. They add genuine documentary value to the set, giving a window into how syndicated rock programming was assembled and broadcast in the late 1990s. If your copy came without the cue sheets, it is meaningfully incomplete from a collector standpoint. The physical discs themselves, assuming proper station storage, tend to survive in decent shape since they were handled in professional broadcast environments rather than by casual listeners.

The track selection across the three discs is substantial and covers a wide range of the catalog. Disc One opens with When The Music's Over, runs through People Are Strange, Five To One, LA Woman, moves into live and alternate material including Gloria and Backdoor Man, and closes with Riders On The Storm and selections from The Soft Parade. Disc Two covers the heavier end of the catalog, with Roadhouse Blues, Who Scared You, The Crystal Ship, The Unknown Soldier, and Go Insane, among others. The inclusion of Who Scared You alongside Roadhouse Blues is notable and aligns with the B-side pairing that collectors will recognize from the original single release. If you want to cross-reference that pairing, Love Her Madly / You Need Meat is another good example of the era's single configurations tracked on this site. Disc Three rounds out with deeper cuts including Orange County Suite, Bird Of Prey, and closes with the full-length The End. The programming is clearly designed to showcase the breadth of the box set it was promoting, drawing from studio albums, live recordings, and rarities. For comparison with other curated collections of this era, The Best Of The Doors covers the hits side of things, while this broadcast skews toward the deeper catalog material that the box set was specifically celebrated for surfacing. Westwood One radio specials from this period are not easy to locate complete with all three discs and cue sheets intact. They were distributed to stations, used once or a few times, and then often discarded or lost. Finding a full set with cue sheets and commercials material in good condition is genuinely uncommon, which places this above the typical surplus promo in terms of collector interest. For those researching other Doors live and archival releases from this general period.

This is a legitimate radio broadcast package with real collector appeal, particularly for those focused on Doors promotional and broadcast ephemera from the 1990s. The complete three-disc set with cue sheets is uncommon in the secondary market. It is not a substitute for The Doors Box Set it was produced to promote, but as a self-contained broadcast artifact documenting how that release was marketed to radio audiences, it holds its own place in a serious collection. Incomplete copies without cue sheets are worth considerably less.