THE DOORS
Boot Yer Butt (Rhino Handmade)
Reviewed by Alan Wright

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The remaining Doors have been milking their legacy like crazy of late. The Bright Midnight series of live recordings has given fans some really good quality live material previously available in only bootleg form, or previously unreleased in any form. But, with this release I think they're really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Over 4 CDs of material, we are "treated" to a plethora of live stuff from concerts between 1967-70, all culled from audience tapes. I think some of this sounds like it was even taken off of vinyl boots because you can actually hear surface noise on some cuts. Even though this is supposedly cleaned up and remastered, only the most hardened Doors fan would be able to get through all this. I'm a big Doors fan, and I had a hard time getting through some of this. I mean, the sound quality is barely passable on most stuff, and on some is so horrendous it sounds like it was recorded outside the place where the Doors were playing. CD 3 and CD 4 seem to have the better quality recordings, but that's not saying much. On CD 4 at a Dec. 1970 concert previewing material for the "L.A. Woman" album, Morrison sounds like he's on Mandrax or something, slurring words and coming in on wrong beats and generally being, well, pretty awful. Even though the liner notes and Robbie Krieger's comments claim these are loose, "work-in-progress" versions, they sound more like "our singer is way too messed-up to be singing" recordings. For something with such a high price tag (it seems to retail anywhere between $70-80), there is bare bones packaging - oh, they're trying to emulate a real bootleg, har har - and all the CDs have the exact same picture on the cover! There are some gems here to be found amongst the complete crap for sure, but wading through it is pretty tough. Caveat Emptor!

© 2004 - Alan Wright