THE BEST OF THE DOORS

My late father had a Quadraphonic audio system which sounded very well, so he purchased a lot of Quadraphonic LPs and open-reel tapes. He bought this compilation in mid 1975.

It was until after my father`s death that we played this album again. Some years before his death he bought two stereo amplifiers to replace the very good old Quadraphonic amplifier that didn`t work anymore. So, we installed both amplifiers and listened again to these Quadraphonic mixes, which sound good, somewhat different to the original stereo mixes. Sometimes I think that it wasn`t very easy to do Quadraphonic mixes of some songs, like the songs taken from their first album, recorded with a piano bass in most songs instead of a bass guitar. But the best mixes are from the songs taken from the "Strange Days" and "L.A. Woman" albums, particularly "Riders on the Storm", "Moonlight Drive" and "Love Her Madly". "Touch Me" from "The Soft Parade" album also sounds very well. The album also includes "Who Do You Love" from the "Absolutely Live" album.

It also has some songs which were not hit singles ("Take It as It Comes" and "Soul Kitchen", for example). So, this is not really a "greatest hits" compilation. I don`t know how the songs were chosen for this compilation, but they sound good.

This is a very decent effort in terms of compilations so there is not much more to add than that. Songs like 'Who Do You Love' , ' Love Me Two Times' and ' Light My Fire' stand out as the best of the bunch. The production is OK and the mood depicted warrants some praise at least but I cannot lie and say go out and buy this as the studio efforts are way much better and do not smack of commercialism as do many compilations like this one , these days and in retrospect.

A worthy summary

This "Best of" collection was an early but useful summary of the Morrison era, and was in fact my first experience of the music of the Doors. While originally released as a quadrophonic recording, my LP is the more prosaic stereo compilation of 1976.

The set opens rather strangely with a live cover version of Bo Diddely's oft covered "Who do you love" from the "Absolutely live" album. While it is good to have a comparatively rare track on the album, placing right up front on the album was brave, if rather odd move.

Thereafter, we have a cross section of tracks from all the Morrison era studio albums. "The soft parade" is wisely given little space, with only "Touch me" selected for inclusion, while "Strange days" provides no less than three tracks. Each side closes with a Doors classic, "Riders on the storm" and "Light my fire" representing obvious inclusions on any Doors compilation.

The rest of the tracks offer a decent selection from the band's work, on a largely superficial level. For obvious reasons, long tracks such as "The end" and "When the music's over" are omitted, eight of the eleven tracks here being around the three minute mark.

There have of course been more comprehensive Doors compilations over the years, but for a first attempt this is a worthy effort.