Music : The Doors: Remastered & Expanded

Rating: - Breaking Through To The Otherside Indeed
I have to say, I first heard this album, and it was ok. I'd already heard Strange Days, and it was really good, so I was kinda let down. BUT, I played it again, it got better, and again, even better. now I cant get enough of this album. 9 truly excellent songs, with only 2 ok songs. I'm always singing to myself songs from this album, they are really memorable. and they wont get old. this album is brilliant, a great place to start for a new doors fan, if you get Absolutely Live, its full of songs from this album; Backdoor Man, The Alabama Song, Soul Kitchen & Break On Through. and they're all really good live, a good studio band, and a fantastic live act. 5 stars for a reason.

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Rating: - The Doors Let Loose
In January 1967, a band was let loose on the world from their base in California, mixing Psychedelia with Jazz; Blues with Poetry, onto a record buying public who must have heard nothing like it before. The band was of course The Doors, and their catapult was their self titled debut album, a thrilling record brought to you by the good people at Elektra Records. Nothing sums up the brilliance of this debut more then the three opening tracks, three songs which sum The Doors' whole career up perfectly.

The opener, Break on Through (To The Other Side), is more like a manifesto or a call to arms then your typical single that would make more commercial sense to be your debut opening track. What it is instead is Jim Morrison screaming to us to change our ways and take a different view on things. It really is a belting song and screams out, HEY LOOK AT US!!

Track two, Soul Kitchen, would in later years come to be called your typical sleazy Doors' song, with Morrison being romantic as ever, with Krieger and Manzarek providing the dirty bluesy backdrop throughout.

Track three, The Crystal Ship, is gorgeously poetic and beautifully structured, demonstrating that The Doors had several strings to their bow that would make them a lot more then a one album wonder.

The next highlight for me is track five, a song I have loved since being a kid. Thanks to my mum letting me listen to such songs, The Alabama Song has probably gone some way in making me the man I am today, a song about the lust for whiskey and women didn't do me any harm and certainly went someway in creating Jim Morrison the Legend, and the next few tracks didn't do much harm to that Legend either.

Light My Fire is just fantastic, and my words really wont be able to do this song justice so I will not bother, Back Door Man, is yet again another insight into Morrison's character, but the rest of band it must be said are crucial in making these songs what they are, and what they are is Psychedelic, Bluesy, Jazzy and more thrillingly, absolute filth. That's probably where I should end this review, but what of The End the song?

Well The End is 11 minutes of dramatised story telling, slightly pretentious, slightly strange, but after the previous 10 tracks on the record, you're kind of ready for it.

The Doors by The Doors is one of the best debuts ever released, I am not just saying that, it really is, if you haven't got it, buy it, its shockingly cheap so well worth a look and is an excellent place to start your Doors' adventure.

Enjoy

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Rating: - Shakers or fakers?
Pete Townshend didn't get it, nor did David Crosby. The Doors though were a street-cred namecheck for every indie outfit in the early 1980s, something which only seemed to cease with the Hollywood biog-movie. I was hooked when I first heard a compilation of their songs, but it became apparent after hearing several tracks that Jim Morrison was a limited vocalist. So was he a great poet and visionary or a mere bluffer? Whatever the answer, there's no doubting that The Doors' debut album contains some great tracks. Crosby dubbed them the 'the band who didn't swing.' Presumably, he never heard the swagger of 'Soul Kitchen.' He surely did hear 'Light My Fire,' the full six-minute version of which is breathtaking and an obvious template for The Stranglers' impressive cover of 'Walk On By.'

Ray Manzarek's Gothic organ style is a perfect foil for Morrison's mysterious lyrics. The eerie 'The Crystal Ship,' complete with resonating bass pedals, is a spine-tingler. Covers of material as diverse as Brecht/Weil and Willie Dixon reveal the band's daring and both 'Alabama Song' and 'Back Door Man' are very good. Unfortunately, the lengthy 'The End' is a bit too much for me. For all Morrison's sense of drama, the whole thing is just too flat and overlong. Even so, 'The Doors' gives a clear indication why the band were so successful.

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Rating: - Speak in secret alphabets
The western world in the grip of flower power and hippies...Californian bands sang of peace and love and a golden future... out of LA came the Doors, named after Aldous Huxley breathing sex and death and the bright midnight echoing William Blake and Louis Ferdinand Celine`s `journey to the end of the night` and Weill and Brecht`s `Threepenny Opera` and bluesman Willie Dixon`s `back door man`...`the men don`t know but the little girls understand`... and `light my fire` became a nightclub cabaret standard but in the Doors original a six minute call to lust and then `The End` ....my only friend, my beautiful friend...`The End` was used in the opening minutes of Coppola`s `Apocalypse Now`...dreaming in the Vietnam quagmire, listening to Forces radio as the Doors urged them to break on through to the other side .. Jim Morrison met the end four years later in Paris aged 27 and was buried in Pere Lachaise cemetery alongside Balzac, Moliere, Piaf, Wilde, Delacroix, Proust, Chopin....so they say..........

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Rating: - Nice work!
I love The Doors, and this is a great piece of work from this amazing band. Many have said this is their best album, but I'd say Strange Days is their best album. But this is also a very good album. If you want to buy this album, make sure you get Strange Days as well. You won't regret it.