Over the years, the sound quality of Doors bootlegs has ranged from good and excellent to terrible. One Doors bootleg that you can't go wrong with is Palace of Exile, which contains a soundboard recording of their performance at the Isle of Wight festival in England on August 3, 1970. It's safe to assume that Megaphone, the bootleg label that put this CD out in the 1990s, had a master tape to work with -- for the sound quality is as superb as the Doors' set, which boasts inspired performances of "Break on Through" and "When the Music's Over" as well as "Ship of Fools," "Roadhouse Blues," and "The End." The psychedelic rockers' appreciation of post-bop jazz is illustrated by a 13-minute performance of "Light My Fire"; when keyboardist Ray Manzarek and guitarist Robby Krieger take extended solos, their improvisations differ considerably from what you'll hear on the hit studio version of 1967. Krieger, in fact, quotes "My Favorite Things" and alludes to John Coltrane's 1960 interpretation of the Rodgers & Hammerstein show tune. Captivating from start to finish, Palace of Exile is a bootleg that Doors fans should make a point of searching for.
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