Classic Cd Review: The Doors: BOOT YER BUTT!

The guitarist from The Doors, Robbie Krieger, compiled a collection of his favorite bootleg Doors recordings back in 2003 that was released through Bright Midnight Records(a division of Rhino) that is a little hard to find these days, but a fascinating compilation of rarer performances. And although longtime Doors recording engineer, Bruce Botnick did his best to clean up the sound on these recordings, the result is still far below normal studio quality. But, still this a great compilation of some rare recordings for true fans only here.

Included are the earliest known live recordings of The Doors from the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco back on March 4, 1967 and the rare early live performance at the Danbury High School Auditorium back on October 11, 1967. The album follows through up to 1970 with upcoming songs from the L.A. WOMAN album, with the songs "Love Her Madly" and "L.A. Woman". Surprisingly, "The W.A.S.P.(Texas Radio & The Big Beat", from the same album was performed live as early as 1968, yet didn't appear until this 1971 album release.

Robbie Krieger includes some interesting liner notes about each performance, something that is sorely missing from the Amazon music download version of this album. Further, with the music compression of digital song downloads, the quality is even worse. Enjoying this album on true cd form is the only way to go here, although the rarity of the album makes the much lower priced Amazon music download seem tempting.

The Bottom Line: Casual fans of The Doors might want to avoid this expensive and fairly hard to find collectible four disc box set like the plague. But a true fan of The Doors won't want to live without this. +++(Three Stars, Good. A little bit rare. Expect to pay a good price on Ebay for a copy).