LEGACY: THE ABSOLUTE BEST

The best of The Doors? Absolutely!

The Doors are one of the most interesting, original bands of all time, with an all-too-short musically legacy due to the untimely passing of Mr. Mojo Risin', aka Jim Morrison. And because of this shortening of The Doors output there is a limited amount for anyone to compile. With that in mind, this is a huge Doors compilation, sactioned by The Doors.

"Legacy" is full of all of The Doors essential tracks, remastered and laid out in chronological order. This compilation is a must for anyone breaking into The Doors music without the need or means to go all out to get the full Doors discography up front. To my mind the pièce de résistance - the thing takes this compilation far beyond "The Best Of The Doors" compilation from 1985 - is the inclusion of the very trippy, often challenging 'Celebration Of The Lizard', a previously unissued 17-minute opus. ('Celebration Of The Lizard' did appear as a live number on a few live albums before appearing on "Legacy"

I will go out on a limb here and make this statement: "Legacy: The Absolute Best" is a masterful compilation, worthy of essential status simply for the inclusion on 'Celebration Of The Lizard', along with the other Doors greats. 5 out of 5 for me!

The Doors being in Proto-Prog bothered me a bit when they were added. I didn't see them in the same light as The Beatles, Jefferson Airplane or Touch as a clear cut addition. Don't get me wrong I love the first three albums a lot in fact their first maybe one of the top 5 in Rock all time. I grew up on them. I always felt these guys were heavy on the blues with a really dark element thrown in and I don't hear the Doors being represented in the prog bands that came after however you could make a case for some of the music off the first three that could be an example of Proto-Prog.

Songs like The End and When the Music's Over come to mind very quickly but I really think it is in things like Spanish Caravan and Not to Touch the Earth that it really comes to the front. The way Robby Krieger and Ray Manzarek play off each other in these songs is very unique and John Densmore is a very fine drummer. Some of the Doors music is rooted in the time of Psychedelia but that shouldn't take away from some very creative songwriting.

This collection is very well remastered with a great booklet and done in complete chronological order. Disk 1 has all the representatives of what you would be looking for on a Proto Prog cd and contains all of the songs I mentioned above. Disk 2 starts with the 4th album the Soft Parade which the package leaves off the best self titled song. There is an interesting previously unreleased track called the Celebration of the Lizard which is the poem that is in the cover of Waiting for the Sun and includes the aforementioned Not to Touch the Earth. It is an interesting premise but unless you like to hear Morrison reciting the poem over some really heavy psychedelia for 8 of the 17 minutes then it really doesn't work.

Still if you are new to the band this CD would be a good way to go without having to buy several albums. I won't call it essential but it is good and I can think of a lot of worse things. 3.5 stars rounded down to 3.