Originally released in 1972 in the aftermath of Jim Morrison’s death, Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine is a best-of plus a pair of B-sides. Reissued on CD, it remains a good survey of a band that packed a lot of music into a few short years. Weird Scenes includes some but not all peak moments as well as a few failures. At their best, The Doors were both in and beyond their era, psychedelic yet too sophisticated for any pigeonhole. The urgency of Morrison’s poetry and delivery would have meant less without the Baroque elaborations of keyboardist Ray Manzarek.
