THE DOORS

The debut from the legendary LA proto-proggers, The Doors is better than I'd remembered; in the past I thought of it as two good songs plus half an hour of filler.

It seems like, in those pre-Sgt. Pepper days, albums would often be front-loaded with the most accessible songs. The Doors more or less follows this pattern, and Side One, containing "Break on Through (To the Other Side)" and "Light My Fire," is definitely the stronger half. Among the album cuts on The Doors that weren't issued as singles, "Soul Kitchen" and "Crystal Ship" are the most notable, and "Alabama Song" is also pretty good. All three are also on the first side.

I've never been a fan of the ballyhooed "The End," the Side-Two centerpiece (which is nonetheless situated exactly as its title implies). It reminds me of a contemporary Pink Floyd jam, a semi-anti-formal art-house piece. But it's sung much better than a Floyd song, and even on The Wall, Pink Floyd's lyrics never so fully integrated the self-serious and the puerile. For decades I've heard it taken as an article of faith that Doors singer and lyricist Jim Morrison was a criminally under-appreciated and under-understood True Poet. But let's say he was a better than-average pop lyricist and leave it at that.

So in short, one side of The Doors is much stronger than the other, although on balance it's a good album.