Customer Reviews

Essential Rarities

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This disc is, of course, a sort of 'greatest hits' for the 1997 box set. As we all know, The Doors have about as many collections out as The Who and Gary Numan, making this non-essential.

The box set was not all it could have been, but it was nice to finally get. I would suggest buying the box at less than full price. The box is four discs, but essentially it's three, because the band had the gaul to actually release a 'band favorites' disc of material from the studio album, essentially including a greatest hits of stuff we already have. This is par for course, though.

The Doors are a great American rock band, however their release practices and sonic trickery on many releases is very frustrating for fans.

There are some very good tracks here, but be aware of some of the details.

Hello To The Cities is a brief intro by Morrison taken from a concert opening. That leads right into Break On Through from the 1970 Isle of Wight performance, one of the Doors' last. The track is definitely doctored compared to the soundboard-bootlegs that have been floating around. Infuriatingly, there are also guitar overdubs on the track by Krieger(!) Why he felt the need to doctor his own performance 20-odd years later is beyond me.

The trickery does not end there, of course. It's nice to have Who Scared You on CD, but why have they cut out an entire verse?

Then there's Someday Soon, a never released song only performed twice. The version here is from Seattle, 1970, which has been on every other Doors bootleg for decades. Of course, they butcher the beginning of the song, overdubbing crowd noise. A bootleg box set that appeared in 1998 actually included the other and better performance of this song, recorded for Absolutely Live.

The Soft Parade is, of course, the version we already own from The Soft Parade video. Thanks, guys!

There are some neat gems on here, though. The Hyacinth House is a demo done at Krieger's home, I believe, with someone on bongos. Always nice to hear the development of a song.

Queen of the Highway is a jazzy, alternate take on the Morrison Hotel track, and it's one of the best tracks here.

Orange County Suite is The Doors returning to the studio to lay down tracks around a recording of Morrison on piano, a good ballad, though it depends on how you feel about this kind of thing, sort of like the Beatles did a few years earlier.

Overall, the disc might be worthwhile if you're a more casual fan. But diehards will want the box, which was a bit of a disappointment, but at least you'll get everything rather than just a slice. Also, be aware that many of the live tracks on the box and on this disc are not even single takes from one concert, but rather spliced-together tracks in an effort to produce the 'perfect live' version, sort of defeating the purpose of a live album.

Such shameless practices continue to taint Doors releases, though they have made some amends by releasing previously 'lost' concerts through Bright Midnight Records on their website.

It's not immediately obvious what audience this CD is aimed at. It condenses the 1997 Doors Box Set down to one CD. The hard-core Doors fans will already own the Box Set. Casual listeneres will most likely not be interested in any of this. "Casual" listeners would be advised to buy the Doors' studio albums before this, anyway. Upon owning all the studio albums, however, they would cease to be merely "casual" listeners. So, I guess if you're a big Doors fan, but you're on a budget and cannot afford the box set, then Essential Rarities would be a good choice.

The choices for inclusion here are pretty good. It's good stuff overall. A mix of live tracks, early demos and unreleased songs. The live versions of "Break On Through", "The Soft Parade" and "The End" are the most worthwile. Also, as a boon for collectors, this CD contains a previously unreleased song that was not on the Doors Box Set, "Woman Is A Devil", a fine 12-bar blues song, which I happen to like a lot.

The Doors Box Set itself is uneven (featuring a completely wasted fourth disc), but it has a lot of good material that will be of interest to big fans of The Doors. If you buy Essential Rarities, you're missing the live CD, Live In New York, and several other worthwile tracks. This however, is a good condensing of the box set, so if you can't spend big bucks for the box, this is a much cheaper alternative.

My friends, this is a great compilation of rare and often candid Doors songs.

For those of you familiar with The Doors, you may find that some of the stuff found here can be found on bootlegs, but the sound quality here is much, MUCH better. Believe me, I've got the uncut Rock Is Dead bootleg, and ``the woman is a devil" is barely audible on THAT. Here it is all skillfully re-mastered, in all it's 24 bit glory, by original Doors tech Bruce Botnick. So buy this before leaping into the realm of bad bootlegs. This will whet your appetite.

For those who are mildly acquainted with the Doors, i.e. you saw the movie, i.e. you like ``Light my Fire", i.e. there's a movie! This here is a good album to cut your teeth on. It has many popular Doors songs such as a fantastic rendition of Break on Through from the Isle of Wight Concert('70), a rockin'-er version of Hello, I Love You and the oft-claimed best version of The End ever caught on tape!

Other tracks, including Hyacinth House, Queen of the Highway, I Will Never Be Untrue,et cetera..showcase The Doors very eclectic musical tastes, ranging from alternative-rock(yes thats John Densmore on the bongos!) to jazz inflected grooves to mellow blues, respectively. This is true music! It's freedom music, music for the road! Dig the words and let the music transport you....but always... keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel!

"Bring out your dead" cries Jim, a caller through the streets of Paris during the Black Plague. It is as if we are visited by the ghost of Jim in this collection. I can rarely listen to the studio albums, having listened to them for 40 years, and the live albums, though exciting, seem dated. This disk is as if it was found on Jim's grave in Pere LaChasse. These tracks, rejected during his life, are now his freshest expression.

Although the sound quality could have been better on some of the demo cuts, it is still intresting to hear morrison as a young and more timid vocalist. Before the band became big, like hearing somewhat of an evolution of tracks such as Moonlight Drive and Hello, I love you. A real highlight is the demo of Hyacinth House, it really displays morrison's vocal and songwriting abilities. robbie really stands out and plays well on roadhouse blues and break on through.

I didn't want to buy the full box set because it is rather expensive, so I picked up this single disc of "essential rarities" from the box set. There is some really cool stuff on here...the version of "The End" is great, and the demos are all all very intersting to hear. However, I have a couple complaints. First, there are absolutely zero liner notes! It would have been nice to have some insight into these tracks. Surely, some extensive liner notes were done for the box set, maybe a little sampling of that would have been nice. Second, the first song (Hello to the Cities) is not a song at all, but a 10 second long track with Jim Morrison saying hello to people in different cities. What a joke - to make it look like there are 15 tracks on the disc! Finally, the sound quality on a couple of the demos is rather poor. Now, I understand these are just demos, but I think it is worth noting the sound quality to someone who is considering buying this. As a Doors fan, I am happy to ad this to my collection, but it is far from a perfect cd.

Listening to it now. So when that box set comes out, with a disc of rarities, here's one instance where waiting matters. Thank you for releasing this extra bit for fans who already have all the other albums. I wouldn't have bought the box set just for it, but sell it separately, and I'm more than game. It's all great... the closest thing I'll get to a "new" Doors album (unless the band gets some real "balls" and records new material with Ian, which would be a real kick!). These gems are well worth it...

Since the Doors had such a short career, it seems that everything ever recorded has been put on the market - repeatedly. The publisher is trying to milk this cow to death.

Essential Rarities contains a collection of live songs by the Doors, some of which are in fact actually rare in that they were not performed/recorded often but they HAVE be released before. This is a subset of the 97 Box Set, which is a collection of previously released pieces, which ...

I found Break On Through, Roadhouse Blues, I will Never be Untrue and The End to be VERY good. The rest, I could take or leave. They all have value though for the hardcore fan who wants to hear the Doors in various 'live' or 'demo' settings. In some cases, that may be the only value. If you just want these tracks and not buy the Boxed Set, it is cheaper to buy this CD.

Essential Rarities, that unexceptional disc of Doors outtakes that started out as a bonus disc on a 1997 box set, consists of one really good studio performance (which provides a sharp contrast to the rest of the material here), some mostly good live performances, particularly of Doors classics, and several rather forgettable demos. The studio masterpiece is, of course, "Who Scared You," which was inexplicably left off The Soft Parade in favor of such lesser songs as "Do It" and "Running Blue". Highlights of the live performances include a very good version of "The End," a fine rendition of "Break on Through," and a rather lounge-lizard-style take of "Queen of the Highway". Most of the demos are (as singer Jim Morrison so aptly puts it) works in progress; they simply show that Morrison's fabulous lyrics alone aren't enough to carry the material without the band's special brand of studio polish. Probably the most interesting of these "early versions" is "Hyacinth House," a fine performance which features bongos and a genuine "beatnik poet" feel. In short, an interesting disc, but far from essential, as the only truly essential works in the Doors canon are the six glorious studio albums, all of which feature far superior versions of the tunes offered here.

For those who do not have the four-CD Doors box set, "Essential Rarities" is a fine alternative. With the exception of "Who Scared You?" (which should have been included on "The Soft Parade" album), all the tracks are previously unreleased. Admittedly, Jim Morrison's lyrics sometimes evolved into Bad Poetry, yet The Doors were a tight band. Had Morrison lived, the quartet would have been a blues powerhouse - evident in masterful concert renditions of "Roadhouse Blues" and "Break On Through." The group's 1969 live performance of "The Soft Parade" far surpasses the studio track, while "Orange County Suite" conveys a haunting, melancholy tone. Unlike "The Beatles Anthology," there are no revisionist remixes in this long-overdue collection. If you enjoy "Essential Rarities," you may want to purchase The Doors' excellent box set, which has even more unearthed gems.