Album Of The Day #81: THE COMPLETE STUDIO RECORDINGS - The Doors

Title: The Complete Studio Recordings

Artist: The Doors

Label: Elektra

Year: 1999

Recorded and Originally Released: 1967-1970

Songs:

The Doors: Break on Through (To the Other Side)/Soul Kitchen/The Crystal Ship/Twentieth Century Fox/Alabama Song (Whisky Bar) (Bertolt Brecht & Kurt Weill)/Light My Fire/Back Door Man [Willie Dixon]/I Looked at You/End of the Night/Take It as It Comes/The End
Strange Days: Strange Days/You're Lost Little Girl/Love Me Two Times/Unhappy Girl/ Horse Latitudes/Moonlight Drive/People Are Strange/My Eyes Have Seen You/I Can't See Your Face in My Mind/When the Music's Over
Waiting For The Sun: Hello, I Love You/Love Street/Not To Touch The Earth/Summer's Almost Gone/Wintertime Love/The Unknown Soldier/Spanish Caravan/My Wild Love/We Could Be So Good Together/Yes, The River Knows/Five to One
The Soft Parade: Tell All the People [Robby Krieger]/Touch Me [Robbie Krieger]/Shaman's Blues [Jim Morrison]/Do It [Jim Morrison & Robbie Krieger]/Easy Ride [Jim Morrison]/Wild Child [Jim Morrison]/Runnin' Blue [Robby Krieger]/Wishful Sinful [Robby Krieger]/The Soft Parade [Jim Morrison]
Morrison Hotel: Roadhouse Blues/Waiting for the Sun/You Make Me Real/Peace Frog /Blue Sunday/Ship of Fools/Land Ho! [Jim Morrison & Robbie Krieger]/The Spy/Queen of the Highway/Indian Summer [Jim Morrison & Robbie Krieger]/Maggie M'Gill
L.A. Woman: The Changeling/Love Her Madly/Been Down So Long/Cars Hiss by My Window/L.A. Woman/L'America/Hyacinth House/Crawlin' King Snake [Tony Hollins, Bernard Besman & John Lee Hooker)]/The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)/Riders on the Storm
Essential Rarities: Hello to the Cities/Break on Through (To The Other Side)/Roadhouse Blues/Hyacinth House/Who Scared You/Whiskey, Mystics & Men/I Will Never Be Untrue/Moonlight Drive/Queen of the Highway/Someday Soon/Hello, I Love You/Orange County Suite/The Soft Parade/The End/Woman Is a Devil

Written by: The Doors, except where noted

Produced by: Paul A. Rothchild

L.A. Woman Produced by: The Doors & Bruce Botnick

Essential Rarities Produced by: The Doors & Bruce Botnick, original recordings produced by Paul Rothchild

Thoughts: I love the Doors albums, particularly Morrison Hotel. There's not a bad spot on that LP!

Anyway, this is the first packaging of the albums in a "Complete Recordings" box set and is now completely obsolete by Perception, which features both CD & DVD-Audio versions of the albums, plus better bonus tracks than what is on the Essential Rarities disc. Unfortunately, I'm not made of money, so I'm stuck with this set. Nevertheless, the albums sound incredibly good. The Essential Rarities disc is pretty cool, but it doesn't include any real rarities. The set is actually not the complete Doors recordings. It misses a few B-Sides, plus Other Voices and Full Circle. Depending on your opinions of those two LPs, that might be a good thing. Even if this was billed as the Elektra recordings to dodge those two LPs, it wouldn't work because they were actually released on Elektra. They aren't that bad, so go find them on some blog or something. (Don't actually pay money for them, though.)

About The Artwork: The box has a great, crisp picture of The Doors on the front and the back of the box has a complete listing of the LPs' tracks. The book is pretty nice with lyrics and liner notes, although they are pretty annoying. Whoever wrote them wasn't very objective!

Each disc is packed in a cardboard replica of the LP covers. The cool thing is they include the liners and even the gate folds! Plus, L.A. Woman has the cool "see-through" picture intact.

Rating: Although it is completely obsolete, in 1999, this was a pretty cool set. I'll give it a clean 10/10, even though it is missing a few loose tracks.