The Good: Excellent vocals, Innovative guitar sounds, Nice philosophies
The Bad: Lyrically unimpressive
The Basics: Perhaps I'm missing something, but in the end The Best Of The Doors (and the group) is a repetitive sounding, lyrically handicapped grouping that is redeemed only by tapping into something primal.
My story about The Doors begins back in the early 70's and it's not truly my story. My father was at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute in New York State working with the ROTC when The Doors came to the campus for a concert. My father was assigned to keep Jim Morrison protected and out of harm's way. Jim Morrison shoved my father into a wall and mingled with his fans rather than have a security entourage. Those, I suppose, were the days. It's not a story my father tells often, but it's one of the few stories he has about anyone in the music world outside the folk genre.
The Best Of The Doors is a two disc set that seems unlikely to have entered my personal collection, given the brief, unmemorable (save to my father) friction between my family and the lead singer of this group and yet I find it now upon my shelf. Go figure. This two disc collection is basically the essential collection of The Doors' music. Beginning with "Light My Fire" and ending with "The End," this is all of the songs that people who have heard The Doors in the movies and television and from their parents' collections know. So, there won't be any talk in this review about how groundbreaking The Doors were in their time.
The music of the doors is dominated by the keyboards, Jim Morrison's voice and the drums with guitars around for support. The impressive thing about the music is that considering how little the keyboards are used these days, this music sounds pretty audacious now. Ray Manzarek keeps the movement of such songs as "Hello, I Love You," going with his use of the keyboards.
The problem with this approach to a band, where the music is dominated primarily by one instrument and voice is that it does not leave a lot of room for variety. As a result, a lot of the songs in this collection sound disturbingly alike. "People Are Strange" and "Queen Of The Highway" are a good distance away from each other on the first disc, yet when one begins I can never tell which of the two it is. Similarly, "When The Music's Over" sounds a lot like "The Unknown Soldier." In fact, the only song that sounds completely different from every other track is the acoustic, Morrison-less "No Me Moleste Mosquito."
Furthermore, Jim Morrison is presented on this album as a strange fractured poet. Half of the songs on the album are impressive poems or full stories. "The WASP (Texas Radio)," for example is a song that could not be made on mainstream radio today. It tells a complete vision of a distinctive place and time and puts the listener right there. Similarly, "The Crystal Ship" is a very whole story and a clear example of Morrison's poetic abilities. Unfortunately, songs like that comprise less than half the tracks on this set.
The other half of the songs are horribly repetitive, usually just saying the same two or four lines over and over again with minor stanzas in between. Take the classic psychedelic song "Break On Through," the title in that is repeated 14 times in less than two minutes thirty seconds! That's almost as bad as the current hit "The Way You Move!" The problematic aspect of this is that "Break On Through" is not the only song like that, nor is that the most extreme example. Song after song, strangely usually the popular, well-known ones like "Light My Fire" and "Hello, I Love You," is like that. Perhaps this is why this music is supposed to be listened to when you're stoned; maybe then it's not so dull. As a rather sober individual, after one listen through of the discs I found myself quite bored with the sound of the Doors and I severely doubted the genius of Jim Morrison. It seems when he wrote great poetry, he was really on. And when he hit a rut, he just stayed in there and repeated it over and over and over and over again.
While there are a great deal of poetic songs with stories to them, much of this two disc set is thematically stuck on love. Love and sex, with the occasional pacifist anthem thrown in. There's a lot of songs with love in them ("Hello, I Love You," "Love Me Two Times," "Love Her Madly" - which sounds quite a bit like "Riders on the Storm" -, "Love Street," and "Wintertime Love"), but few or none that are actually about love. That is to say Morrison sings about love using the word "love" a lot without ever truly defining what his vision of love is. Take "Love Her Madly;" Morrison sings "All your love is gone / So sing a lonely song . . . " but never quite gets around to telling us why this person was special outside of citing her face.
Outside the complaint about usually having little depth and being repetitive, Morrison's lyrics are generally fun to listen to. In fact, The Doors seem to make due with the unimpressive lyrics and combines it with music that makes it less dull. The result is a group that has a sound that, while repetitive, tends to tap into the primal side. Take "Soul Kitchen," its lyrics are complimented by upbeat guitar picks and hypnotic keyboards and a very regular marching beat on the drums, making this an impossible to deny sound that energizes the listener.
Another nice thing about the two disc set is that the second disc, in addition to having eighteen tracks, has some nice bonus video footage that plays well on the computer. This set is ideal for people wanting to get the most out of their Doors experience when they aren't certain this band is something they want or know. It illustrates the range, or lack thereof, in the lyrics and sound and still provides an experience that taps into something primal and instinctive within us. Still, it's nothing to get shoved into a wall over.
The best track is "Wishful Sinful" or "No Me Moleste Mosquito" and the weak point is obsessively repetitive "Waiting For The Sun," which is probably trying to illustrate waiting, but man is it dull.
For other artists who are contemporaries of The Doors, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Heathen - David Bowie
It Ain't Easy: Essential Recordings - Wilson Pickett
River Deep, Mountain High: The Very Best Of Ike & Tina Turner
4.5/10
For other music reviews, please be sure to visit my index page by clicking here!
© 2011, 2004 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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