The Doors Boxset & Booklet 1997

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The box set was a great idea but as usual a bunch of crooked pillocks were in charge of it......
So much could have been done...
The NY disc could have been an actual live gig instead of AL 2 and the amount of out-takes that we actually know they had back then shows what a rip off the whole sorry enterprise was.
They could have listened to the version of Who Scared You and realised this was the short version. Useless clowns.

Band Favourites was a total fucking disgrace.....only a real hard core (God I hate this term) Doors fan would fork out for the box set so it would be fair to assume they had ALL the albums so to rip fans off with ANOTHER FUCKING best of disc was criminal in my view...
But since then we have seen so many Doors PLC rip offs that this one becomes rather quaint.....
Nice booklet and nice to see good quality versions of what we have on bootleg but still as long as visionless tossers run things at Doors Central we are always gonna get screwed...

Another thing that pissed me off was they claimed it was a special edition and would only be released in a limited number......only to release it at half the price as two double CDs a few months later....

The Doors Box Set
Released: October, 1997
US: Gold
Billboard peak: # 65





DISC 1: WITHOUT A SAFETY NET:




1. Five To One - (live)
2. Queen Of The Highway - (alternate take)
3. Hyacinth House - (demo)
4. My Eyes Have Seen You - (demo)
5. Who Scared You
6. Black Train Song - (live)
7. End Of The Night - (demo)
8. Whiskey, Mystics And Men
9. I Will Never Be Untrue - (live)
10. Moonlight Drive - (demo)
11. Moonlight Drive
12. Rock Is Dead
13. Albinoni's Adagio In G Minor

DISC 2: LIVE IN NEW YORK:




1. Roadhouse Blues
2. Ship Of Fools
3. Peace Frog
4. Blue Sunday
5. Celebration Of The Lizard, The
6. Gloria
7. Crawling King Snake
8. Money
9. Poontang Blues / Build Me A Woman / Sunday Trucker
10. The End

DISC 3: THE FUTURE AIN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE:




1. Hello To The Cities - (live)
2. Break On Through - (live)
3. Rock Me - (live, with Albert King)
4. Money - (live, with Albert King)
5. Someday Soon - (live)
6. Go Insane - (demo)
7. Mental Floss - (live)
8. Summer's Almost Gone - (demo)
9. Adolph Hitler - (live)
10. Hello, I Love You - (demo)
11. Crystal Ship, The - (live)
12. I Can't See Your Face In My Mind - (live)
13. Soft Parade, The - (live)
14. Tightrope Ride
15. Orange County Suite

DISC 4: BAND FAVORITES:




1. Light My Fire
2. Peace Frog
3. Wishful Sinful
4. Take It As It Comes
5. L.A. Woman
6. I Can't See Your Face In My Mind
7. Land Ho!
8. Yes, The River Knows
9. Shaman's Blues
10. You're Lost Little Girl
11. Love Me Two Times
12. When The Music's Over
13. Unknown Soldier, The
14. Wild Child
15. Riders On The Storm

[jym]

I never understood the band favorites, I got it for Christmas the year it came out & was so disappointed with that 4th cd. New fans don't buy the boxed sets only hardcore dyed in the wool fans do.

[pantydropper]

I already had most of what was on the box set and whatever i didn't have i just downloaded.

Black Train from Philly and QOTH jazzy is all that's worth something.

I'm kind of curious on how the booklet is but this was a slap in the face to a hardcore fan as far as a release is concerned.

[ensenada]

well i got the box sets in 1999 or 2000 or something like that. it was the time i was becoming more serious about being a doors fan, so i didnt have any of the material really before then. I love the box sets but agree with you stu about the band faves disc. although atleast it does show us what their faves are for those interested and there is a low down as to why those songs are their faves, which i found reasonably interesting..so i spose not completely useless.
I love the other discs though, yes the jazzy version of QOTH is great, but i love the jazzy versions of the spy and the hyacinth house (they are on the box sets arnt they?). When i first listened to the box sets i was chuffed as it had all that wealth of doors stuff that I was perviously unaware off and brought me closer to realising what the real jim morrison was all about. ;D

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The Spy wasn't on the Box mate........The Doors have never released it sadly....too late now as its dead easy to download....
The band listed thier faves in the booklet and explained why they were....that did not mean we had to have them on a disc.....just a rip off plain and simple...
The set had a lot going for it true but other bands do a damn sight better job on this sort of thing than The Doors. Ours are always more expensive and always poorly thought out...box sets DVD video......
Its sadly the money symbols flash in thier eyes before they ever give any consideration to the fans......

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

KingG said:

I already had most of what was on the box set and whatever i didn't have i just downloaded.

Black Train from Philly and QOTH jazzy is all that's worth something.

I'm kind of curious on how the booklet is but this was a slap in the face to a hardcore fan as far as a release is concerned.

The booklet is pretty good a coupla nice articles and a reasonable look at each song on the discs...some excellent photos and a nice dedication to Paul Rotchchild on the last page...he had recently died....
But as you say pretty much a way to relieve us Doors fans of the heavy wallet load in our pockets....
but then whats new there with this lot?

[ensenada]

I think the box sets are much more worthy for s to part with our cash compared to the boot yer butt cd for example, when everybody allready has the boots! ;D

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Ensenada said:

I think the box sets are much more worthy for s to part with our cash compared to the boot yer butt cd for example, when everybody allready has the boots! ;D

Boot Yer Butt was a bloody criminal offence for me...£100 in HMV last easter in London....I would not give you 10p for it...

[pantydropper]

TheWallsScreamedPoetry said:

Boot Yer Butt was a bloody criminal offence for me...£100 in HMV last easter in London....I would not give you 10p for it...

I used to think i got ripped off on BYB too but i realized that only 5000 were issued and im one of the lucky ones that has it. In 10 years ask yourself if you're happy you have it.
The content (while I had already) is good so i still don't mind listening to it once in a while, especially disc 4.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

KingG said:

I used to think i got ripped off on BYB too but i realized that only 5000 were issued and im one of the lucky ones that has it. In 10 years ask yourself if you're happy you have it.
The content (while I had already) is good so i still don't mind listening to it once in a while, especially disc 4.

I never had any problem with the content King G. For me it was always about price. $80 odd dollars US was bad enough for you guys but here it was more than twice that. It started at £80 and as I said i saw it for 100 in Oxford Street HMV.
The quality issue was one thing but the price was a disgrace. The Box set was well overpriced here in the UK compared to similar releases by other excellent artists (Free 4CD box with rare live and studio stuff was half what was charged for The Doors box) as was the Cube. Both of these were also said to be one off special editions but were released in other formats after a short period. The Doors PLC are devious beyond belief when it comes to screwing the fans.
BYB may well have been a Godsend for those unable to get hold of bootlegs but by Christ they had to pay for the privilidge....

[danceonfire]

I think the boxed set is well worth the money. It has some great songs in it that aren't available anywhere else. My favorites are Whiskey, Mystics and Men, Orange County Suite, Adagio, there are more, but I can't think of them now. I agree, it isn't for anyone that isn't familiar with The Doors.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

REVIEW: Doors, The Doors Box Set (Elektra)
Besides being two riveting, incredibly creative bands, The Doors and X were truly reflective of the ups and downs of Los Angeles rock culture in their own respective eras. Both very eloquently reflected the beauty and the cost of being amongst those in a mythological wonderland who, as Doors singer Jim Morrison once described "live more freely and powerfully than anywhere else, but it's also where old people come to die. Kids know both and we express both." Two bands: one suffering from the overexposure of classic rock nostalgia; the other, underexposed with a cultish following. The existence of its parts taken for granted because of good living or...for actually still being alive!


The buzz on The Doors Box Set began with the supposed spotlight song: the remaining Doors augmentation of a buried Morrison vocal and piano track, "Orange County Suite". At first observance, this and the mostly outtake-filled box set looks like a exact ripoff of the Beatles' Anthology series and its centerpieces "Free As A Bird" and "Real Love". In reality though, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore beat Natalie Cole and the fab three to the playing-with-the-dead-man punch; and quite tastefully at that. For "Orange County Suite" comes from the same final Jim Morrison poetry and songs session (December 8, 1970) that sparked the Doors to create 1978's An American Prayer . The album, presaging the second wave of the band's popularity was, in more than the surviving member's defense, a carrying-out of one of the wishes the Lizard King wasn't able to fulfill at the time of his death in Paris in 1971: a full-fledged document of his spoken poetry, with sparse instrumentation. "Orange County Suite" fails to live up to the quality of Prayer solely because the song is pretty much already a completed song. Morrison's surprisingly competent piano self-accompaniment is really all the tune needs as one can hear Jimbo try to nail down the lyric melody and the lyric in his creative process. Krieger's bluesy noodling, Manzarek's line-echoing electric piano and Densmore's jazzy brushes make it sound downright 1971 LA loungey as opposed to the starkness of the haunting work-in-progress.

"Orange County Suite" is part of the two discs of outtakes and unreleased live performances, a third disc consists of live performances culled from three nights at New York's Felt Forum in 1970 (which would stand up well as its own release). The fourth and final disc is a rather unnecessary collection of 15 'hits' picked by the remaining members. Box Set 's contents alone don't scream out 'exploitation' as much as 'for fans' only'. Being a fan, it does intrigue me a bit.

Things open up with "Five To One", the only 'complete' song from the notorious 3/3/69 Miami concert where Morrison was convicted of profanity and indecent exposure. With a head full of performances from Julian Beck's revolutionary interactive Living Theater and several hours of airline drinks, Jimbo's latest influences resulted in him calling the audience "a bunch of fucking idiots' and 'slaves' and encouraging them to 'GRAB YOUR FUCKING FRIEND AND LOVE HIM' and later on, probably not whipping his willy out for all to see, despite working the crowd up to a fine frenzy.

Despite the auspicious beginning, the outtakes are a bit revealing. The demo version of "Queen Of The Highway" reminds us of a jazz sensibility matched only by the Doors' love of traditional blues. Sounding more Vince Guaraldi than anything that was the rock revival of "Queen's" original home, Morrison Hotel , this version, along with the inclusion of Waiting For The Sun 's "Yes, The River Knows" on the 'hits' disc, shows that the band had a love and understanding of trad jazz that may have seemed to run contrary to a harder image. Also included here and sprinkled throughout the two outtake discs is the first Doors' demo from World Pacific studios, 1965. "My Eyes Have Seen You", "Summer's Almost Gone", "Moonlight Drive" "Hello, I Love You" and "Go Insane" (from "The Celebration Of The Lizard") made up the tape. What one discovers from this is that producer Paul Rothchild was the studio savior of the Doors. He gave the songs atmosphere that supported Morrison's poems in a way that the demo's poor arrangements couldn't have accomplished. The demo also reveals that Morrison's vocals sounded more like Val Kilmer at one point than Kilmer vice versa in The Doors film.

There are also plenty of overblown blues workouts that fill the unreleased material. Two of the more inspiring ones is the in-studio workout, "Rock Is Dead" and "Black Train Song" from the Spectrum in Philadelphia 1970. Although "Rock Is Dead" is perhaps the most guilty of overextension (almost 17 minutes at that!), you can hear the beautifully brutal drive of a rocker that had the potential to be another "Roadhouse Blues" had things been a bit more trite and the lyrics more realized. "Black Train Song" ponders the classic "Mystery Train" and traces the history of rock and roll right up to that particular night in Philly.

The Live In New York disc shows the band in prime form during the post-Miami period; a time when the uncertainty of the future and the end being always near probably filled those involved with more dread than it did excitement. From the opening Morrison Hotel power trio of "Roadhouse Blues", "Ship Of Fools" and "Peace Frog/Blue Sunday", Morrison's playfulness and the band's expansive response was a joy to hear and probably witness. The only drawback here is "The End", not for its lack of beauty but because the blues growl that drinking and smoking had reduced Morrison's voice to, at that point, just didn't do justice to the song's atmosphere. This is something particularly heartbreaking on the outtakes discs. Made up of a good amount of 1969/1970 material, what's left of his voice on much of this stuff, when compared to, say, the live prime Lizard King-era takes on "The Crystal Ship" and "I Can't See Your Face In My Mind" leaves a bit to be desired. Hear the way "The Crystal Ship" magically appears from the endless night of 1967 via lo-fi tape as it follows ragged, hoary versions of "Break On Through" from the Isle Of Wight 1970 and the r&b classic turned blues romp, "Money" and you'll see what I mean.

The 'Band Favorites' disc points to a few hidden treasures that a fan of the 'greatest hits' may not have paid attention to, such as "Wishful Sinful", "I Can't See Your Face In My Mind", "Yes, The River Knows" and "Wild Child". Besides that, I think Krieger put "Light My Fire" on there to make sure everyone knows he wrote the song. That's about all I could figure as to why the disc exists here. The Doors Box Set (Jeez! With all of Jimbo's great poetry, you think the group could've come up with a better title!) would have best been a finely edited, one disc set succinct enough to grab new fans. Perhaps what Manzarek, Krieger and Densmore should really work on for the fans is refurbishing the Feast Of Friends documentary and, if it was finished, Highway, the 1969 Morrison-produced/directed film. Now let's address a band that could actually use some more exploitation.
Patrick Carmosino
WestNetInc: Westchester County, New York.

[ensenada]

TheWallsScreamedPoetry said:

The Spy wasn't on the Box mate........The Doors have never released it sadly....too late now as its dead easy to download....
The band listed thier faves in the booklet and explained why they were....that did not mean we had to have them on a disc.....just a rip off plain and simple...
The set had a lot going for it true but other bands do a damn sight better job on this sort of thing than The Doors. Ours are always more expensive and always poorly thought out...box sets DVD video......
Its sadly the money symbols flash in thier eyes before they ever give any consideration to the fans......

so where the hell have i got the jazzy version of the spy? hmm sure its the box set!

[ensenada]

i dont know if anyone listens to oasis, wouldnt blame you if you ddnt. but there is a song that begins just like orange county sweet, i think its dont cry your eyes out..or something like that.
i love orange county suite, part from the lines I'm mad and bad lol

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The Doors Box Set

The Doors are the world's longest running mystery train; a quirky ensemble that, 30 years after their first album, continues to influence and, in some cases, demoralize each passing generation. Since their demise in 1971, when singer Jim Morrison supposedly took a bath in a Paris bungalow and never got out to towel himself off, the Doors come knocking every couple of years with compilations, videos, movies, live recordings, books and anything else the surviving members can dig up to keep the name alive and the bank account overflowing. It was inevitable that they would release a box set.

Fortunately for the legion of listeners who buy everything and still wonder when they'll get it right, THE DOORS BOX SET could be the best thing the band has done since they broke up. Spread out over 4 discs, the set follows a distinguishing pattern that utilizes themes and motifs, standardized elements that the L.A. quartet incorporated into much of their music.

The first disc, entitled Without A Safety Net, opens with the infamous, historical and harsh-sounding rendition of "Five To One," performed in Miami in 1969. It was at this show, during this song that Jim Morrison spouted off a number of obscenities and unpopular beliefs before allegedly unzipping his pants and exposing himself. He was later charged for indecent exposure, dragged through court, and let off with a fine and a slap on the wrist. This incident also cost the Doors a fortune in lost revenues as their tour was canceled, and their overall popularity diminished.

From the chaos of Miami, we move onto a beautiful and jazzy version of "Queen of The Highway." The CD continues in this manner, swinging back and forth, offering up alternate versions, demos and unreleased tidbits. The two versions of "Moonlight Drive" -- the first song Morrison sang to Ray Manzarek on the sands of Venice Beach -- are especially fascinating as the original demo does not include guitarist Robbie Krieger. Listening to the two, one can't help but feel the power that Krieger's fine slide work lent to the tune. The disc ends with Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni's "Adagio in G Minor," a favorite piece of Morrison's put together with the Doors by Bruce Botnick's (co-producer of the box set, and engineer of all the Doors original recordings) father.

Disc Two -- Live In New York -- is a complete performance from Madison Square Garden. This may well be the best live recording the Doors have ever released. Far superior to ABSOLUTELY LIVE or ALIVE SHE CRIED, the disc opens with a rocking "Roadhouse Blues" as well as some unconventional readings of "Ship of Fools," "Peace Frog," and the ever-allegorical and Morrisonian "The Celebration of The Lizard." It isn't until an explosive interpretation of "The End" that the listener realizes that Morrison might have been completely sober during this show. Ever in a drunken stupor, he had those brief moments of lucidity.

The third disc --The Future Ain't What It Used To Be -- is a collection of miscellaneous live recordings, television appearances and demos, highlighted by "Orange County Suite." With Morrison on vocals and piano, this ode to his common-law wife, Pamela, was recently completed in the studio by Krieger, Manzarek and John Densmore. Other oddities on this disc include "Go Insane," "Mental Floss" and "Adolph Hitler," a short Morrison rant. Exceptional to this disc are the live versions of "The Crystal Ship," one of the Doors' most beautiful songs, and "The Soft Parade," reportedly the only live rendering on tape.

Band Favorites is the fourth disc. This is where most of the hits are, hand-picked by Krieger, Manzarek and Densmore. Naturally, "Light My Fire," L.A. Woman," "Love Me Two Times" and "Riders On The Storm" made the cut. Manzarek seemed to chose some of the more obscure gems like "Yes, The River Knows" and "You're Lost Little Girl." One could only guess (and fear) what Morrison would have chosen.

THE DOORS BOX SET includes an informational booklet, with comments on every song by each of the surviving band members. There's also a wonderful essay by novelist Tom Robbins as well as a piece written by Doors producer, the late Paul Rothchild, who was in the middle of putting the set together when he passed on. In a triumph of good taste, this set is dedicated to him.

Shawn Perry © Copyright 1997 Vintage Rock




Riders On an Eternal Storm
EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW by Music Editor, MIKE GEE

As a teen in the late '60s growing up amid the greatest musical explosion of all time, it was possible to overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the creative flaring. There were s many great groups, so many great songwriters, some many great guitarists, keyboardists, singers, bassists and drummers. Music was a psychedelic spiral, a cartwheel of incandescent hues that seemed to know no limit to its strange days and impossible hues.

Amid all this there was The Doors: a band blessed with revolutionary zeal and a musical manifesto that walked the fine line between pure creative ecstacy and indulgence perhaps more successfully than many of their contemporaries.

The Doors were the rock on which the revolution of those hazy, crazy days most passionately sat. While the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jimi Hendrix, Crosby Still Nash & Young, Moby Grape, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Tim Buckley, and a host of others rewrote the history of music, turned cartwheels across the floors, spun gold and silver in a shimmering haze of electricity and stoned freedom, The Doors evoked the core flare of rock at its most outraged, evoked the spirit of the legendary MC5, redefined the Five's notion of "kick out the jams, motherfuckers".

And in Jim Morrison, they had a modern day 'God', a genius and a the most human of human beings. Self-destructive, drug and booze addicted at times, ceaselessly at war with himself as much as he was with society, Morrison stands in history as the quintessential rock poet, the essential romantic, the rider on the storm of his own anthem.

A few years back I had the greatest of pleasures in sitting down with The Doors legendary keyboard player, Ray Manzarek, and their longtime friend and biographer, Danny Sugarman.

Manzarek remains to this day not a man who lives in the past but a man who brings the past to the present and the future. And he remembers Jim not as the extraordinarily thoughtless, angry, troubled soul that was portrayed in The Doors movie - a film both he and Sugarman discount for its wild inaccuracies and Hollywood depiction of Morrison and the events that surrounded the band - but as an oft gentle roaming soul in search of the truth.

Not that either deny Morrison had his down side. And neither deny his self-destructive capability. But both also stress that Morrison was a supremely gentle being for long periods of time, well read and versed with an endlessly inquiring mind.

He was also one of the greatest songwriters rock will ever see; a songwriter as capable of capturing the gut sense of the social change that ebbed and flowed around the band and across the world as he was of embodying senses way beyond the normal, of slipping between the worlds, drifting through the subconscious and unconscious ether, stepping into unreality and returning to lay it all bare to anybody whow anted to listen.

There so many - and there still are. Each year The Doors back catalogue sells and sells. In 1995 it was estimated that The Doors sold more than 1.5 million copies of their albums - an extraordinary tribute to an extraordinary band.

Now comes the greatest tribute of all - The Doors Box Set, a four disc collection containing four and a half hours of music - including three hours of previously unreleased material - that spans the band's entire career, including several songs from the band's first demo recorded in 1965 and the entire last recorded performance at the Isle Of Wight Festival in 1970.

And there will be a new song, a love song the Lizard King, Jim Morrison, originally wrote and recorded for his wife, Pamela Courson. The unfinished song, "Orange County Suite", features Morrison on piano and vocals and the three surviving Doors - Manzarek, John densmore and Robbie Kreiger, have reunited to finish it off.

The set also includes a 60-page booklet containing rare and unpublished photos as well as a track-by-track commentary by John Densmore, Robbie Kreiger and Ray Manzarek.

THE iZINE is literally overwhelmed to present this introduction to The Doors Box Set. So come on baby take us a chance with us and enter the world of The Doors. Download the bites to four of the tracks from the collection and check out the new pictures - including a photo of Jim and Pamela - we consider one of the greatest rock photos ever taken.

And once you've looked and listened do the right thing - go out and order a copy - and celebrate The Doors.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The Doors Boxset

Year Of Release: 1997
Record rating = 9
Overall rating = 13

Fourth Disc Spoils All!
Best song: unidentifiable due to the Box Set Syndrome.

The Doors get the boxset treatment - and as is the case with most boxsets, this one is pestered with the "let's-please-everybody" curse of mixing rarities with non-rarities. Although in this particular case, the curse is even more obvious and dumber: instead of interspersing the tracks, the compilers simply packed all the rarities onto three discs and then added a fourth one called "The Band's Favourites", which, apparently, serves no other purpose than, well, indicating the band's favourites. Now you all know which songs Ray Manzarek, Robbie Krieger, and John Densmore are most proud of; thank Heaven Jim Morrison never sent them word from the underworld, because we'd probably have to have 'Horse Latitudes' or something on there. As it is, you do have 'Shaman's Blues' but do not have 'People Are Strange', so it can't even function as a proper "best-of" collection. Stupid.
BUT! The other three discs, lovingly "unboxed" by Russian pirates and presented to yours truly without forcing him to buy "Bands Favourites" (yeah, I'm positively sure they're all remixed, remastered, cleaned out, decompressed, filtered, strained, sterilized, decontaminated, and hydromassaged beyond all human expectations, but I'm not Mr Sound Quality, I've been raised on listening to rusty 8-track audience quality Motorhead boots, don't you mess around with me), anyway, the other three discs rule. Now keep in mind that a couple years after that boxset, Elektra also released Essential Rarities, a 1-CD collection of arguably the "best" of these outtakes, which I had heard and reviewed before I'd gotten around to the entire boxset, so if I make what seems like "glaring omissions" of obvious highlights in this review, it's because you can find me slobbering all over them one screen/several paragraphs of text below. Keep that in mind and if you're a potential buyer and a review-loving masochist, don't forget to read the next review when you're through this one.
Anyway, there are two CDs here subtitled The Future Ain't What It Used To Be and Without A Safety Net, collecting studio demos and outtakes and assorted live performances, and a third CD entitled Live In New York that's supposed to be a complete or near-complete show recorded in Madison Square Garden sometime in 1970, but, in fact, there have been rumours that it's actually been collaged from several NYC performances... bad, bad cheaters. Never mind that. The show is terrific anyway. The first four songs are most of the first side of Morrison Hotel, with 'Peace Frog' as a particular highlight as you don't get to hear the Doors doing their funky schtick onstage too much outside of here. Then there's 'Lizard' again, all of its seventeen or so minutes; a powerhouse rendition of Van Morrison's 'Gloria' that should by no means be played in the presence of sweet young innocent children (well, okay, I played it in the presence of my child, but fortunately his English isn't good enough to quite grasp the meaning of the phrase "why don't you wrap your lips around my cock", not yet, at least); an okay performance of the never-more-than-simply-okay-itself 'Crawling King Snake'; a fun bluesy romp through 'Money (That's What I Want)', the best thing about which is that Jim introduces it saying 'now we're gonna play the national anthem... so everybody please stand up, show some respect... pretend you're at a football game'; and another blues that starts as 'Poontang Blues', then transforms into 'Build Me A Woman' and ends as 'Sunday Trucker (Motherfucker)'. Whaddaya know, the boxset ain't exactly obscenity free, to put it midly, and will severely disappoint those who thought that Jim Morrison never used the word "fuck" on his studio records because he was not aware of its existence. Oh, and there's also a big big big big big 'The End', but read about it in the Essential Rarities review.
As for the rest of this stuff, well, you don't really know where to begin... Maybe begin with mentioning the bunch of obscure 1965 demos recorded by the band when they still had no guitar player and Morrison didn't yet much care for his image? Isn't it fun to hear 'Moonlight Drive', 'Hello I Love You', and 'Summer's Almost Gone' recorded at a time when The Doors were just a bunch of naive idealists hoping to match the poetic skills of one of them with the musical skills of another one, get laid, and earn a million bucks? With not an ounce of the world-known dark tension and creepy sexual overtones? Presented as mere pop songs with hooks - although, to be frank, 'Moonlight Drive' was pretty far out with its imagery for 1965 even without the dark tension? Or when 'Go Insane' was actually an attempt at a song instead of a cartoonish, but still somewhat ghostly, poetry reading inserted into the middle of 'Celebration Of The Lizard'? Hey, these demos might have more historical importance than anything else, but I still get much more enjoyment out of them than, say, out of your average Beatles demo as captured on some Anthology or other - go figure.
The Safety Net disc could be a bit questionable in that much of it is dedicated to lengthy blues imporvisations, 'Black Train Song' and 'Rock Is Dead', the first of these centered around a performance of 'Mystery Train' and the second much more rambling and chaotic but for some reason also going into 'Mystery Train' at one point. I know, I know, this stuff is supposed to suck, and the Doors weren't all that hot when it came to blues improvisation (Robbie sure could lay on a classy guitar solo in the studio, but he rarely sounded so sharp and precise onstage), but there's still a lot of the quintessential Doors enchantment in both, and 'Rock Is Dead' is just about totally unpredictable, with Jim being able to interrupt the band at any moment just to go into some silly on-the-spot monolog, and then to steer them into something completely different. Besides, at the very least it's important to hear these pieces just once, as necessary elements of the jig-saw puzzle that was the Doors. Of course, me being more sympathetic towards Jim Morrison than, say, Robert Plant, I'm naturally cutting him more flack than the lion-maned guy, so you be warned. If the whole Jim thango ain't right up your whango, better steer clear.
Other highlights that were not included onto Essential Rarities include: a low-quality live rendition of 'Five To One' taken right from the very unlucky day in Miami where Jim (nearly?) exposed his manhood, the one that ends with the famous 'I'm talking about love... love.... love.... grab your f-f-f-f-f-f-fuckin' neighbour and love 'im!' (you also get to hear him yelling 'you're just a bunch of idiots!' at the crowd); the band's classy 1968 recording of Albinoni's Adagio, which was supposed to go on Waiting For The Sun, if I remember correctly, as sort of a conclusion to 'Celebration Of The Lizard', but got dumped together with the main part of the 'Celebration'; and early live recordings of 'The Crystal Ship' and 'I Can't See Your Face In My Mind', from an epoch where Jim was still restrained and the band cared more about quality than epatage.
There are some boring moments on the boxset, for sure, and then there's the case of the stupid fourth disc, but overall, there ain't a single truly disposable track on here, which places the boxset among the very best ones I own - such as the Hendrix boxset or the Genesis Archives. And there won't be anything better either! Rock! Is! DEAD!

George Starostin from Only Solitaire.com

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The Doors: The Doors Box Set

4-CD grab-bag of rarities, outtakes, live recordings and fave tracks selected by the surviving Doors


PREMATURE ROCK deaths are old hat now. The highway is strewn with martyrs - bloated or gangling, gormless or tormented, they’re all the same these days. Back in ’71, snuffing it was still a bold career move for a pop star. And in the case of Jim Morrison, definitely a smart one.

Little did Jimbo know just how assiduously the Morrison myth would be worked by the Doors PR machine - how he would become 'the' poster-deity for beat poetics and black leather. To the gloomy teenagers who mooch about Pere Lachaise, he is rock’s very own James Dean.

Would he have scoffed at this? Probably. He was refreshingly unsentimental about "the rock revolution", as at least one of Box Set’s unreleased outtakes, 'Rock Is Dead', makes loud and clear. But like James Dean he had an insatiable need to be taken more seriously than most pop stars deserve to be. Fortunately for him, Ray Manzarek and Danny Sugerman and Oliver Stone have been on hand to do just that.

Here, then, is the latest Doors product from the Morrison Myth Preservation Society, complete with fawning reminiscences of Jim’s genius - and even of the “substantial member” that he was alleged to have flashed at the infamous Miami show of March ’69. Nowhere in Box Set’s booklet will you find any mention of Morrison the embarrassment, the drunken bum, the schizoid slob. Instead you’re treated to pages of drool about Jim the Shaman, Jim “the Human Theatricon”, even (apropos an acoustic home demo of Hyacinth House) Jim the Tragic Youth.

The four CDs make for a motley assortment of tracks. 1 and 3 boast the various curios and rarities, while 2 is a more or less complete 1970 show from Madison Square Garden. CD 4, rather cheekily, is a selection of “band favourites” (five apiece). The rarities veer from rambling live recordings - the frankly tedious 'Black Train Song' from Philly in 1970, versions of 'Money' and 'Rock Me, Baby' with Albert King sittin’ in during a Vancouver show from the same year - to Morrison Hotel outtakes and the Free As A Bird-style exhumation 'Orange County Suite'.

The only real revelation comes with the primitive demos recorded in the fall of 1965 at the World Pacific Studios: early versions of Doors staples on which the band sound like any one of a hundred vaguely spaced-out Californian garage bands of the time. With the signature plastic-Gothic tones of Manzarek’s Vox Continental organ not yet in place, the band is barely recognisable as The Doors; indeed, the dominant instrument, if anything, is the harmonica played by Manzarek’s bro Jim. 'End Of The Night' is almost campy, and 'Hello, I Love You' is a good deal closer to its obvious prototype, The Kinks’ 'All Day And All Of The Night'. 'Moonlight Drive' and 'Summer’s Almost Gone' are strangely limp, while 'Go Insane' is pure psycho bubblegum, as brash and dopey as The Kingsmen. Listening to these tracks one begins to understand why The Doors were turned down by almost every record company in Los Angeles.

Cut to 1967, to versions of 'Crystal Ship' and 'Can’t See Your Face In My Mind' from an oft-bootlegged gig at San Francisco’s Matrix club, and you quickly remember why The Doors were great. For maybe a year they were 'the' band for the times, soundtracking the strange and violent days between the Human Be-In and the inhuman freak-out at Altamont. They caught the sense of dread and menace that hung in the air like gunsmoke, and they did it with hypnotic cool. Only when Morrison became more self-consciously exhibitionistic did the music start to unravel.

For all Manzarek’s and John Densmore’s rhetoric about The Doors being “shamanic” and “Dionysian”, there was something oddly stiff about their playing - at least when you compare it, say, with the Stones during the same period. Perhaps because of the band’s jazz and classical roots, and/or because they eschewed the use of a bass guitarist, there was little real swing or drive to their live sound. Couple that with Morrison’s Lizard King-at-the-Living Theater posturings and the in-concert material on Box Set quickly outstays its welcome. An unmercifully long 'Celebration Of The Lizard' from the Madison Square Garden soon has one flipping forward to 'Gloria' and 'Crawling King Snake'. By now, moreover, Morrison’s voice has evolved from the “psychedelic Sinatra” croon of 'Light My Fire' to the maddened, phlegmy yowl that anticipates Iggy on Metallic K.O. and Nick Cave on Drunk On The Pope’s Blood.

True, Morrison pulled himself together for the admirably gritty L.A. Woman, whose standout tracks ('Riders On The Storm' and 'L.A. Woman' itself) are among the fourth CD’s “band favourites”. Once again one feels the tussle between the downward pull of debauchery and the Blakean urge to break on through, or what novelist Tom Robbins - in a 1967 review reprinted in the booklet - called “an electrifying combination of an angel in grace and a dog in heat”. But it was too late, and the black-hole lure of oblivion proved too strong.

“This is no Oliver Stone movie, or reverential memorabilia trip,” claims Box Set’s A&R consultant Bruce Harris. Well, it isn’t and it is. It’s still in thrall to a revisionist idea of a Jim Morrison who never existed, and it fails to acknowledge the severe musical deterioration in The Doors’ music between 1968 and 1970. But intermittently it revives that heady time when a beatnik wannabe transformed himself into an apocalyptic messiah. The music’s over, and we still haven’t turned out the lights.

Barney Hoskyns, Mojo, December 1997

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Vox December 1997

[eks74014]

epic review from RECORD COLLECTOR magazine, end 1997.

[eks74014]

review by MAX BELL for UNCUT magazine, end 1997.