ORIGINALLY POSTED ON STRAIGHT.COM, DEC. 13, 2006
By Steve Newton
Anyone put off by surviving Doors members Robbie Krieger and Ray Manzarek’s attempts to cash in on the band’s legacy by scooping up Jim Morrison look-alike Ian Astbury for last year’s Doors of the 21st Century tour can take solace in this extravagant package.
Perception features all six original Doors albums on six remastered CDs, with a total of 24 rare and previously unreleased bonus tracks tacked on. And for fancy-pants home-theatre types, each album is also provided in DVD-audio format with 5.1 Surround Sound, plus a couple of video clips thrown in for good measure.
For those who enjoy reading while they listen, there are new liner notes for each album, penned by the likes of insightful Rolling Stone scribe David Fricke and original Doors engineer Bruce Botnick. And after you’ve learned all there is to know about the Lizard King and his cronies, you can peek through that little peephole on the front of the box and crank a plastic wheel to view wee promo shots of the guys.
Or you can just smoke a doob and blow your mind staring at the optical illusion just below the peephole.
Charismatic as he was, in his mind-altered state Jim Morrison could be mighty flaky, and that cosmic aspect comes through on bonus tracks like the 17-minute “Celebration of the Lizard (An Experiment/Work in Progress)”. If you’re just looking to score the band’s best tunes—ones like “L.A. Woman”, “People Are Strange”, and “Break On Through (to the Other Side)”—you may want to skip this pricey package (which is selling for $155 on Amazon.ca) and pick up The Best of the Doors, a two-disc collection from 2000.
It’ll take up a lot less space in your house, and you’ll have saved enough cash to buy an acoustic guitar to strum along on.
Reblogged this on Pamela Courson Inspirations .