The Doors “Greatest Hits” 1980. Today, February 12th, would have been Doors’ co-founder and keyboardist Ray Manzarek’s 80th birthday (b. 1939, d. 2013). Greatest Hits came out well after the demise of The Doors, of course; it was released not long after the film Apocalypse Now (its soundtrack included “The End” which does not appear on this comp LP) and both served to reinvigorate The Doors’ catalog. It was probably around that time that The Doors entered my consciousness (the first song I distinctly remember is “Hello, I Love You” which The Doors kinda ripped off from The Kinks) since I was born less than month after Jim Morrison died. Greatest Hits really does have most of The Doors best and most popular tracks (missing though is one of my faves, “Peace Frog” which is a bummer but fortunately it does not have “Land Ho” which I can’t stand). Besides “Hello, I Love You,” Side A of Greatest Hits includes “Light My Fire” – so epic and the perfect showcase for Manzarek’s psych keys, “People Are Strange” (which I was obsessed with in the later 80′s as a result of Echo and Bunnymen’s version for The Lost Boys) and “Riders on the Storm.” Side B has “Break on Through,” “Roadhouse Blues” (I have bemoaned Morrison’s poetry in the past but the line “I woke this morning and I got myself a beer” is perfection), “Not To Touch the Earth” (this is one track that I don’t know that well), “Touch Me” (which I’m not overly fond of) and “L.A. Woman” (that song will always remind me of playing endless games of pool during college when I really should have been studying – I think it was on repeat on the student union jukebox because it’s a rocker that clocks in at just under 8 minutes making it a bargain for poor college kids).