About the Artist:  The Doors are noted as being one of the most over-released artists of all time along with so many of their other contemporaries such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.  MORE COMING!

Polar Blair's Thoughts on the Artist:  This group is the essence of 1960s cool.  What you see is what you get.  They didn't have gimmicks and they didn't try to water down their act to make themselves "wholesome" and "marketable" for corporate America.  They didn't have dolls made of themselves or make a corny movie.  Almost all the songs that appeared on their records were those that they wrote themselves, and Jim Morrison came out singing like a lion!  Some of their lyrics were straight out there, and some of them were real obscure poetry, but it was all about the music.  And it was the music that sold The Doors, as well as the look of Jim Morrison and his "f*** you and yours!" defiance.  They were the perfect thing us "good guys" needed at a time in American history when it was dangerous to be young.

Personnel:

John Densmore- drums.
Robby Kreiger- guitar.
Ray Manzarak- keyboards.
Jim Morrison- lead vocals.

Discography: Album:

The Doors (1967)-  If you want an album that's "basic Doors" or "Doors for beginners" this is the one to get.  It paints a picture of what the band was really all about.  They would later go on to do different and even better music, but this is the template.  A must-have.

Songs:

1. "Break on Through (to the Other Side)" -- This is still one of my very favorite Doors songs.  It's super-popular and so common, but I still love it.  When something's good, it's good forever.
   
2. "Soul Kitchen" -- Another great Doors song.
   
3. "The Crystal Ship" -- I'm just not into this song.  Too much of a downer.
   
4. "Twentieth Century Fox" -- I love this song.  It's along the same lines of their later hit "Hello, I Love You".  It should be more popular than it is.  Very commercially appealing I'd think.  But you rarely see it on compilations.
   
5. "Alabama Song (Whisky Bar)" -- The title's cool.  But nothing musically really grabs you.
   
6. "Light my Fire" -- Another one of their super-popular hits that I still really love.  It has a very broad appeal.
   
7. "Back Door Man" -- Yeah, baby!  This is probably my favorite song on the whole LP.  It really digs and pulls you in.
   
8. "I Looked at You" -- This is a happy psychedelic tune.  I really enjoy it.  It's different for a Doors tune and purely listenable.  This could've done well as a single, too, were it given a chance.
   
9. "End of the Night" -- This song sounds a lot like their later song "When the Music's Over".  Between the two, "When the Music's Over" is better because it's much longer and the arrangement is more elaborate, but this would be great to attach to the beginning of said song and make it an extended version.  I wonder if they ever played these two songs together at any concert?  If you know, please CONTACT ME.
   
10. "Take it as it Comes" -- Another great Doors song.
    
11. "The End" -- This is a cool song.  Especially for the fact that it's long.  And I do like it a lot.  But I can't listen to it all the time like I can most of their other songs.  It can be kind of depressing if you're not ready for it.

Strange Days (1967)

Waiting for the Sun (1968)-  A so-so album.  You've got to love it for its parts.  This was the band's first #1 album.  It surprises me, because a lot of it is hard to digest; too much nervous-sounding stuff.  In addition to that, the vast majority of these songs are not well known to a lot of people.  "Hello, I Love You" is a huge hit, and deservedly so.  "Love Street" is another fairly popular song, although not one of their most famous.  "The Unknown Soldier" is a hit among serious Doors fans like myself, but not a song you commonly hear on radio.  All the others are not very common in compilations.

Songs:

1. "Hello, I Love You" -- This song is played heavily on radio even today, but I still love it.  It's still one of my favorite Doors songs.
   
2. "Love Street" -- This song?  S'okay.  It's good, but not one of my top favorites.  And it's been on so many different "best of" compilations and things.
   
3. "Not to Touch the Earth"
4. "Summer's Almost Gone" -- This is a good song, but too somber to listen to all the time.
   
5. "Wintertime Love"
6. "The Unknown Soldier" -- I like this song a lot.  Especially for a protest song.  It really puts things in perspective; what war does to people.
7. "Spanish Caravan"
8. "My Wild Love" -- I like this song quite a bit.  It's one of my favorites.  Certainly interesting, and different from other Doors songs.  For better or worse, I love the Doors constant experimentation.
9. "We Could be so Good Together" --  This is just a great song!
10. "Yes, the River Knows" -- I feel about this the same way I do "Summer's Almost Gone".
11. "Five to One" -- My favorite on the album!  It sounds a bit like their later hit "Wild Child".

The Soft Parade (1969)-  I LOVE THIS ALBUM!!!  It's outstanding.  Amazingly enough, "Touch Me" is the most famous song from this album, and that one stinks.  Most all other tracks are probably the best work that the band ever did.  I hope I don't sound harsh about the "Touch Me" song.  Robbie Krieger wrote that one, and I really dig him and respect him as a guitarist/songwriter, but that one was not my cup of tea and frankly not a Doors-type song.

    When this album came out, the band got a bit of heat from critics and some fans for adding brass and strings.  This was new for the Doors at this point.  Up until this time they were just a small combo.  Now I'd be upset, too, if the brass and strings changed the whole scope of their music.  But it didn't.  It was just seasoning.  The songs on this album are still Doors songs.  I've always liked it that they experimented and tried out new things.

Songs:

1. "Tell All The People" -- I really love this song.  It's a happy song and starts the album out on a positive note.  Very easy to take.
   
2. "Touch Me" -- Yowch!
   
3. "Shaman's Blues" -- This is a great song, too.  Typical Doors music.  No real surprises.
   
4. "Do It" -- This album is noted for having a lot of the happier-sounding material, which was rare for the Doors.  This is a great feel-good song, but still very much a Doors tune.
   
5. "Easy Ride" -- They got a bit of that hillbilly thang goin' on here.  It's fun.  Wish they would have done a lot more songs like this.
   
6. "Wild Child" -- This song rocks!  It's fairly well-known among serious Doors fans and one of my top-favorite Doors tunes.  As a matter of fact, all the good ones on this album could be top-favorites.
   
7. "Runnin' Blue" -- Another hillbilly thang, but in a moodier Doors vein.
   
8. "Wishful Sinful" -- I'm sorry, I guess I just don't like this one.   You see this on a lot of compilations and it's just over-rated.
   
9. "The Soft Parade" -- The first 3 minutes of this 9 minute song stink.  But after the initial junk, it really gets into something cool!  It's an album highlight and a great way to close it.  I love the conga as played by Reinol Andino.  It adds a lot and he's quite good at it.

Morrison Hotel (1970)

Absolutely Live (1970)
[live album]

L.A. Woman (1971)-  This is one of my favorite Doors albums.  The last with Jim Morrison.

Other Voices (1971)

Full Circle (1972)

An American Prayer (1978)
[Jim Morrison spoken poetry recordings with new Doors music provided as background]

Alive, She Cried (1983)-  Jim Morrison era live recordings.  A really great album.  Worth purchasing.  This is really just a continuation of what The Doors were doing with "Absolutely Live" in 1970.  They wanted to create a "perfect" Doors concert on vinyl.  This means that they occasionally spliced separate performances of the same song together from different concerts.  In 1991, both of these live albums were released together as "In Concert" which also included three other live tracks.  I really love the choice of material on this album.  A few songs are done that everyone is familiar with, but the other tunes are lesser-known Doors songs.  And if you're like me, you WANT to hear the stuff that you don't know as well.  This is an awesome live album.  Get this by any means necessary!

Songs:

1. "Gloria" -- This is a long and very raunchy version of the mainstream hit penned by Van Morrison and made popular by The Shadows of Knight.  Jim's humorous take on the lyrics and the extended groove really make this an honorable cover version.  I love it.
   
2. "Light My Fire" -- I LOVE THIS ONE!  I like this one even better than the studio version.  It's ten minutes long, for one thing, but it's just great music like the one you know, but with more added.
   
3. "You Make Me Real" -- This is a great song.  A lighter song.
   
4. "Texas Radio & the Big Beat" -- What the h*** is this about?  Why would they put this on an album like it is?  It's nothing like the L.A. Woman studio version, which I really love.  It's much, much slower, and just a little minute-plus snippet.  It's kind of throw-away, as much as I hate to say it.
   
5. "Love me Two Times" -- Just an incredible live version of the Doors classic!
   
6. "Little Red Rooster" -- This is easily the best version I've ever heard of "Little Red Rooster".  Really knocks me out!  John Sebastian on harmonica, and he's great at it.  Robby Krieger really digs into that guitar.  And Jim's voice is just perfect for this song.
   
7. "Moonlight Drive (Including Horse Latitudes)" -- This is another one of those songs that's better than the studio version.  It's longer and has more interesting music in it.  The tune "Horse Latitudes" is worked into this song in the form of a spoken poem by Jim Morrison.

Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1987)
[Jim Morrison era live recordings]

In Concert (1991)
[this live album included all tracks from "Absolutely Live" and "Alive, She Cried" with three additional tracks: one from "Live at the Hollywood Bowl", one from "An American Prayer", and one previously unreleased.]

Live in Detroit (2001)
[Jim Morrison era live recordings]

Live in Hollywood (2002)
[Jim Morrison era live recordings]

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