Boot Yer Butt

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Without doubt the stupidest title ever thought up for a record as Robby boots the butts of the bootleggers by mimicking thier piss poorest 70s efforts with a 4 CD box set of some of the best and worst bootlegs available.
With a crap package and a price that even the greediest bootlegger would not even have contemplated this dire effort is one of the more succesful BMR efforts....plans now afoot for BYB 2 ....'Gawd help us guvnor'



BOOTLEGGER’S CHAT (0:25)
ANNOUNCER INTRO (0:09)
MOONLIGHT DRIVE (7:00)
BACK DOOR MAN (5:33)
BREAK ON THROUGH (5:55)
LIGHT MY FIRE (8:38)
PEOPLE ARE STRANGE (2:30)
ALABAMA SONG (WHISKEY BAR) (3:30)
CLOSE TO YOU (2:39)
I’M A MAN (7:01)
LOVE ME TWO TIMES (3:16)
SOUL KITCHEN (7:38)
THE WASP (TEXAS RADIO & THE BIG BEAT)/HELLO, I LOVE YOU (3:45)
MONEY (3:19)
WHEN THE MUSIC’S OVER (14:58)
NEVER BEFORE IN PUBLIC (0:13)
WILD CHILD (2:44)
NNA HAVE A REAL GOOD TIME (RAP) (0:15)
SPANISH CARAVAN (2:59)
FIVE TO ONE (5:18)
THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER (4:44)
VINCE TREANOR’S ANNOUNCEMENT (0:37)
BREAK ON THROUGH (5:38)
LITTLE RED ROOSTER (6:55)
WILD CHILD (2:56])
LOVE ME TWO TIMES (12:10)
TOUCH ME (3:43)
CELEBRATION OF THE LIZARD (13:53)
THE SOFT PARADE (7:40)
TELL ALL THE PEOPLE (3:24)
WHO SCARED YOU? (4:25)
DOES ANYONE HAVE A CIGARETTE? (RAP) (0:54)
BACK DOOR MAN (8:35)
FIVE TO ONE (5:37)
FORGET THIS IS THE SQUARE GARDEN (RAP) (0:51)
HITLER POEM (1:00)
I’M TALKIN’ ABOUT HAVING A GOOD TIME (RAP) (1:47)
NO LIMITS, NO LAWS (RAP) (1:15)
THE CRYSTAL SHIP (2:52)
CAROL (1:45)
ROCK ME (6:24)
THE SPY (5:31)
IS THERE ANY LEFT (RAP) (0:56)
BLUE SUNDAY (2:00)
PETITION THE LORD WITH PRAYER/MAGGIE M’GILL (8:20)
WILL THE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN (1:34)
ROADHOUSE BLUES (5:03)
PEACE FROG (3:39)
MYSTERY TRAIN (13:48)
LIGHT MY FIRE (20:59)
LOVE HER MADLY (10:20)
SHIP OF FOOLS (8:30)
THE CHANGELING (5:07])
L.A. WOMAN (16:06)
THE END (17:01)
ANNOUNCER OUTRO (1:27)


In the early 2000s Doors guitarist Robby Krieger began work on a boxed set consisting entirely of outstanding Doors bootleg recordings. Spanning 1967-1970 and covering 25 venues in five countries, this 56-track, four-disc collection from Bright Midnight Records is the result.

Boot Yer Butt is available as a limited edition of 5,000 copies.

Some of the selections were performed live on only one or two occasions. Some are unique for the explosive audience reactions they elicited. Others are the stuff of legend. Here are just a few of the tracks as described in the Boot Yer Butt liner notes by Greg Parulis and compilation co-producer Mike Sims:

"Back Door Man," Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco, CA, March 4, 1967
"These are the earliest known live recordings of The Doors…. This performance of 'Back Door Man' is one of only a few recordings that capture Jim playing harmonica."

"People Are Strange," Danbury High School Auditorium, Danbury, CT, October 11, 1967
"There are only a few live recordings of 'People Are Strange.' This performance was recorded through the PA system by one of the school's faculty members. The young audience could barely stay in their seats for this show…"

"I'm A Man," Winterland Arena, San Francisco, CA, December 26, 1967
"The Doors are thought to have played 'I'm A Man' on only one other occasion, but this is the only known recording of them playing it."

"I'm talkin' about having a good time" rap, Dinner Key Auditorium, Miami, FL, March 1, 1969
"This concert put rock 'n' roll and the First Amendment on trial."

With hours of live music and some of the most myth-making monologues in rock, this unique set is an essential part of any Doors collection. Each of the 26 live dates features written commentary by Greg Parulis, Mike Sims, and Robby Krieger. While the original tapes obtained for Boot Yer Butt come from a variety of sources, Doors producer/engineer Bruce Botnick has mastered the audio for all 56 tracks, ensuring the best possible sound quality and consistency.

Rhino Handmade.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The Doors: Boot Yer Butt! 2003 Rhino Handmade

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Here’s a Rock-A-Rama record review of mine that ran in the May 1976 issue of CREEM:

THE DOORS – Moonlight Drive / Recorded Live At The Matrix 1967 (Trademark Of Quality bootleg) :: What we have here are twelve tunes from their Waiting For The Sun period. Good sound quality and I guess that I should be happy with this, but I’m not ‘cause it reminds me too painfully that Jim Morrison was the best goddamned rock vocalist that ever lived and I can’t help but wonder what he’d be doing today, if…<br>
Sentimental of me, I know. But he’d only been gone for less than five years at that point so cut me some slack, willya? Besides, now that it’s been thirty-three years and counting, if Yo! Jimbo were around today, he’d probably be knocked for six that Ray, Robbie, and John have been shamelessly flogging every bottom of the barrel scrap of tape with his voice on it for the past three decades.

So you don’t have to be a scammin’ Shaman to know where this review is headed right? Well guess again because of all the Doors dross that’s been dumped on us ever since 13 and Weird Scenes Inside The Goldmine first pried opened the floodgates, this four disc pseudo bootleg box set is far and away the most interesting of the entire grave-robbin’ lot.

According to CREEM art director Greg Allen—who also did Dubble Bubble duty as the designer of this primo Pud package—the 56 mono tracks that comprise this wet wad were actually lifted from Robbie Krieger’s own collection of Doors bootlegs.

Content-wise, you get to hear dozens of performances that would have been lost forever, had fans not taken primitive tape recorders to these shows. And considering that the compact cassette tape recorder didn’t show up in North America until around 1968, you can just imagine how raw ‘n’ ragged these covert audience recordings sound. As befitting the surreptitious source material, you can put your head an inch away from the speaker and every muffled track will sound as if you’re actually hearing the Doors live on stage while you’re sitting on the toilet at the back of the club.

And if you strain hard enough, you can ‘hear’ such seldom heard live audio rarities as “Will The Circle Be Unbroken,” “The Celebration Of The Lizard,” “The Soft Parade,” “People Are Strange,” “The Changeling,” “Love Her Madly,” a sixteen minute version of “L.A. Woman,” a seventeen minute version of “The End,” a twenty minute version of “Light My Fire.” and an alternate version of everybody’s favorite party track from The Doors Box Set, “Adolph Hitler.”<br>
But the undisputed heavyweight high point of Boot Yer Butt! appears on side three, which excerpts the absolute most bozo drunken moment in the entire history of the Doors. Fortuitously recorded by an audience member on March 1st 1969 at the Dinner Key Auditorium just prior to the infamous onstage “Miami Incident,” this is Der Jimbo at his most heinously stewed—and it’s well worth printing here in its entirety:

Jim Morrison: Hey, I’m not talkin’ about no reva-loo-shun. I’m not talkin’ about no demonstray-shun. I’m not talkin’ about gettin’ out in the streets. I’m talkin’ about havin’ some fun. I’m talkin’ about dancin’. I’m talkin’ about love your neighbor. Till it hurts. I’m talkin’ about grab your friend. I’m talkin’ about love. I’m talkin’ about some love. I’m talkin’ about some love. I’m talkin’ about love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love. Grab your…fuckin’ friend and love ‘em! Come on! (bellowing low like a wounded moose) Yeaaaaahhhhhh! (the band begins to play “Touch Me” and Morrison starts to sing) Touch me, babe. Can’t you see, I am not afraid. (the band continues to play but Morrison stops) Hey, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Hey, wait a minute, this is all fucked up! No, wait a minute, wait a minute. (the band continues to play) Wait a minute, you blew it, you blew it, you blew it! Now come on! (the band continues to play) Wait a minute, wait a minute! (screaming at the top of his lungs) I’M NOT GONNA GO ON! WAIT A MINUTE! I’M NOT GONNA TAKE THIS SHIT! I’M COPPIN’ OUT! NOW WAIT A MINUTE! (pauses) BULLSHIT!!! (the audience laughs, the band continues to play)

On second thought, ‘the best goddamned rock vocalist that ever lived’ is Jerry Vale.

by Jeffrey Morgan
Creem Magazine—July 2004

[jym]

does it seem Robby may have some anal fetish, the Butts Band, Boot yer Butt, I see a pattern.

[wtd]

Yes it has some interesting stuff on the CD. But way overpriced and sounds like crap. They said Bruce Botnik made sound better? Doesn't say much for him. They should have given it to a computer sound engineer who could have done whole lot more to make it sound better. I know they have people out there who can take crappy recordings and improve them greatly. I guess Robby just didn't give a shit. Put it out there. Door's fans will buy it anyway. He knows with greedy Ray, we aren't probably going to get much out of BMA now that Danny's gone. So it will sell anyway.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Boot Yer Butt

Despite the bald-faced references to bootlegs in the title, this is a totally legit four-CD box set release of live 1967-1970 Doors from numerous shows, all of it previously unissued. À la Frank Zappa before them, the surviving Doors here took an opportunity to beat the bootleggers at their own game, releasing material that's circulated on various unavailable live tapes, though putting it in better packaging and (of course) getting a piece of the retail action themselves. All that should be good news for Doors fans, and it kinda is, but the clichéd warning "for fans only" applies doubly or triply so to this particular package. For the sound quality here really is of bootleg standard, and not good bootleg standard. Virtually all of it sounds like it came from hissy audience tapes, and the best remastering technology in the world can't make it sound much better than it does on actual under-the-counter boots. Only hardcore devotees are going to want to spring for the set, and even hardcore devotees are going to find it tough to play for repeated pleasure.

All that noted, for the very serious fan-verging-on-scholar, this does offer a lot of unusual live performances, the excerpts spanning the very first known live recordings of the band (on March 4, 1967, at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco) to their second to last show with Jim Morrison (on December 11, 1970, in Dallas). Along the way, you get quite a number of songs that don't surface in many live versions on Doors bootlegs, like "Wild Child," "Spanish Caravan," "Who Scared You?," "Blue Sunday," "People Are Strange," and (from the 1970 Dallas concert) several songs from the then yet to be released L.A. Woman album. There is also a bunch of covers the Doors never put on their albums, including "Little Red Rooster," "I'm a Man," "Money," "Carol," "Rock Me," "Mystery Train," and "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," though truth to tell these are generally pretty dire. There are also some pretty offbeat arrangements of more familiar standards, like a "Break on Through" from 1968 with Ray Manzarek subbing for an indisposed Jim Morrison on lead vocals, and a 20-minute "Light My Fire" from 1970 in which Morrison briefly intersperses bits from "Fever" and the Doors' own "Love Hides" in the instrumental break (which also features brief quotes from "My Favorite Things" and "Eleanor Rigby" in Robbie Krieger's guitar solo). And finally, there are some between-song raps as well, including a couple excerpts of such from the infamous March 1969 concert in Miami that eventually dragged Morrison through the courts on charges of lewd public behavior.

Nevertheless, it's often a challenge to cut through the sonic fog to appreciate the tracks to their fullest, though the performances are largely good to excellent. Morrison's vocals in particular often suffer from hollow faintness in the mix, and though two or three times the fidelity improves to verge on decent (the August 1968 "Wild Child," the September 1969 "The Crystal Ship"), those prove to be false alarms, the quality immediately slipping back into cardboard sludge. That's too bad: even if the sound quality was 80-90 percent of official release standard, it would be an extremely enjoyable survey of live Doors. Even on the 1970 Dallas show -- from an era usually portrayed as a juncture when the band and Morrison were struggling to keep the ship afloat (or, more properly, the other bandmembers were struggling to keep Morrison afloat) -- they sound vital, running through "Love Her Madly," "The Changeling," and "L.A. Woman" with real intensity, in arrangements differing slightly but notably from the familiar studio versions. Also, considering how much better-sounding stuff exists on isolated bootlegs like those of their March 1967 shows at the Matrix in San Francisco and their June 1970 concert in Seattle, the selection seems to be quirkily perverse, as if some of the better-sounding boots were deliberately avoided. At least it's augmented by decent liner notes featuring comments by Krieger on many of the tracks, and doesn't skimp on quantity at all, adding up to five hours of music. Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide

THE DOORS
Boot Yer Butt (Rhino Handmade)
The remaining Doors have been milking their legacy like crazy of late. The Bright Midnight series of live recordings has given fans some really good quality live material previously available in only bootleg form, or previously unreleased in any form. But, with this release I think they're really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Over 4 CDs of material, we are "treated" to a plethora of live stuff from concerts between 1967-70, all culled from audience tapes. I think some of this sounds like it was even taken off of vinyl boots because you can actually hear surface noise on some cuts. Even though this is supposedly cleaned up and remastered, only the most hardened Doors fan would be able to get through all this. I'm a big Doors fan, and I had a hard time getting through some of this. I mean, the sound quality is barely passable on most stuff, and on some is so horrendous it sounds like it was recorded outside the place where the Doors were playing. CD 3 and CD 4 seem to have the better quality recordings, but that's not saying much. On CD 4 at a Dec. 1970 concert previewing material for the "L.A. Woman" album, Morrison sounds like he's on Mandrax or something, slurring words and coming in on wrong beats and generally being, well, pretty awful. Even though the liner notes and Robbie Krieger's comments claim these are loose, "work-in-progress" versions, they sound more like "our singer is way too messed-up to be singing" recordings. For something with such a high price tag (it seems to retail anywhere between $70-80), there is bare bones packaging - oh, they're trying to emulate a real bootleg, har har - and all the CDs have the exact same picture on the cover! There are some gems here to be found amongst the complete crap for sure, but wading through it is pretty tough. Caveat Emptor!

Alan Wright from Cosmik Debris

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

My 2004 Fanzine review.

The Doors: Boot Yer Butt

The culmination of a project very dear to Robby's heart...making lots of money for Robby...at last makes its much vaunted appearance via that most inept of all outlets….Rhino.
It’s not easy to review this release on the basis of the ‘music’ as the ugly spectre of the price of this 4CD box set rears its head once again and we once more move into Doors PLC greed territory.

After completing the arduous task of getting hold of a bunch of bootlegs from his hoarder mates and then the gruelling selection process of a few of the most worthwhile tracks Robby gave them to Bruce Botnick to tart up we are left with basically a box of tracks easily available on the Internet or via Record Fairs but with the added selling point of being more than twice the price.
Apparently Robby wrote the sleeve notes himself which if true justify the more than £20 a disc for a bunch of 30 year old bootlegs recorded on old tin boxes that are pretty easy to get on a stall on Camden Market for a tenner…..

So what music do we get that makes any of this even worth commenting on...actually some pretty good concerts spanning 1967 to 1970….although why BMR did not just release the whole gigs and add the few snippets that do not make up whole concerts as an extra to thank the fans for their support over the years is beyond me….Oh I forgot ...it’s because they are greedy bastards!!!

Anyhooo!!! We get most of the last ever (as far as we know) real Doors gig with an obviously drunken Morrison premiering ‘LA Woman’ and ‘Love Her Madly’ which is of course excellent and a selection of cool moments from 1967 and 1968 which is as far as I am concerned the best Doors period for their stage work. 1967s Danbury High School, Continental Ballroom, Avalon and Winterland concerts all are fine examples of the Doors at their best and the Houston gig from 1968 one of the most unusual and poetic Doors gig ever archived by the bootleggers…..pity ‘Back Door Man’ from that gig is not part of the set.

#Moments from the best boots available are chronologically presented and a large segment of Honolulu as well as sections of Long Beach, Varsity Stadium, Dinner Key and the Madison Square Garden gig from 1969 which featured an orchestra all make an appearance…..
No some of the music is pretty cool to say the least but as a fan I am surely entitled to ask what exactly is the point of this £80+ 4 CD Box set?

Would it not have served BMR better to release these gigs as individual concerts of exceptional quality with supporting booklets and rare photos.
Kerry Humprheys sells these gigs every day on his DCM site for a few bucks...so apart from a bit of studio tarting up and a less than fancy box the price seems a tad over the top to me…..
I have pretty good copies of these gigs on disc….not best quality & with gaps every now and then true….but why as a Doors fan should I pay this outrageous price for what I already own ...at half this I would be seriously tempted as it’s basically a decent Doors release but since BMR reneged on all it’s early principals and became a money making scam I sort of lost my early faith in an originally wonderful idea…...Legacy….Box/Cube….promises never realised and everything Doors always so bloody expensive so I became inured to the Krieger/Manzarek show and no longer really trust or care about what I hear from Doors PLC….

So much still hoarded by Robby’s pals we will never hear and with BMR re-evaluating itself into the Manzarek retirement fund it saddens me that so many opportunities have been missed in favour of their latest best of rip off or this less than pointless trawl though Doors fans bootleg collection.

However one must look on the bright side….
I am sure the booklet has a never before seen picture of Jim eating a grape in 1967 and when this package gets re-released as a dodecahedron in 2006 it will probably have a rare track of Morrison doing an acapella version of LA Woman sitting on Robby’s toilet whilst pissed as a fart on tequila...I look forward to it.

Scorpywag rating: Music 7/10….Robby’s money making scheme 0/10
Another wonderful idea to empty our wallets AP.