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This 1995 CD has got a nice cover showing a couple of Morrison photos taken by Joel Brodsky, one picture of the band during their ICA Gallery interview in London, and one taken by Michelle Campbell of Jim's grave (previously published in Dylan Jones' horrible Dark Star book). What else? Oh yes, the songs: Another Matrix release. We all have those songs already!

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Another release of the Matrix concerts, but this time in better quality than the first bootleg LP version Moonlight Drive - The Scream Of The Butterfly. The Swingin' Pigs used the new "Nonoise" computer based digital noise reduction system. This drastically reduces all unwanted noises on older recordings but cuts off the high frequencies. It's true: no surface noise, and the soundquality is a lot better than on all other Matrix bootlegs, with the exception of the 4 CD Box The Complete Matrix Club Tapes (Kiss The Stone KTS BX 009), which I prefer to the Swingin' Pig release because of better quality and a couple of extra songs. This - in fact - is a big minus for The Matrix Tapes: each song is just once on them, which means songs they played twice during different sets were omitted. There were two pressings of this box - the first came in a double CD box, the second got released in a slim box carrying a white tray. The second pressing was sold as a cheap mid-price box and got widely distributed.

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This CD is a MUST for everyone who is interested in The Doors. I really do not know how I could live without a recording of this session, which I consider as the very missing link between Waiting For The Sun, The Soft Parade and Morrison Hotel. You know there was the bootleg LP Rock Is Dead (Tangie Town Records) and there was the bootleg Orange County Suite (Document Records DR 019), which were absolutely fantastic at the time of their release, but now there is Missing Links. Unfortunately the soundquality is not as good as the latter ones, but Missing Links contains the COMPLETE Rock Is Dead session, and one will be wondering how perfectly Paul Rothchild cut the session down to what became the well-known Rock Is Dead (and Orange County Suite) bootleg, and how all the cut-outs sound like. He even put parts of the session together, which were not intended being put together (but they fit!). If you own one of the previous bootlegs, it's like a puzzle finding out what was cut out. A very new experience, even for me. Finally released after about two years of waiting for it I still get a thrill listening to Queen Of The Magazines (I still don't know who wrote the song; it sounds a bit like Love In Vain by Robert Johnson, to which Jim Morrison improvises some of his own lyrics; to tell you the truth: I got tears in my eyes when I first heard it a couple of years ago and it is still very very touching me). Robert Johnson's Me And The Devil Blues (with some spontaneous Morrison improvisations) still is a perfect moody blues song. Jim's rap about his parents at the beginning of the session gets a totally new meaning compared to what was published on previous bootlegs. I wonder why the bootlegger didn't cut out the short break in (what he called) Rock Is Dead #2 (if you put this disc on tape for your car stereo try to cut the break off, it's easy!). There is another break in Rock Me Baby, which would have been easy to cut off the disc, but -unfortunately- it's on your CD as well. On the Missing Links version I have the disc index stops after track 10, so my CD player doesn't count track 11-14, but you shouldn't worry: It seems the bootlegger just forgot to put a disc memory on the following tracks, so track 10 really is track 10-14. On the first preview tape I got of this session (which never came out on bootleg) there were no breaks at all, and there was some additional poetry, but no Whiskey, Mystics And Men #1. I enjoy the liner notes for this CD, they even mention what Jim told Jerry Hopkins during the well known interview for Rolling Stone about this session: "We needed another song for The Soft Parade. We were racking our brains trying to think what song. We were in the studio and so we started throwing out all those old songs. Blues trips. Rock Classics. Finally we just started playing and we played for about an hour, and we went through the whole history of rock music - starting with blues, going through rock and roll, surf music, latin, the whole thing. I call it `Rock Is Dead'. I doubt if anybody'll ever hear it." Jim was wrong. Rock Is Dead was one of the hottest bootlegs in town (once a discjockey from L.A. told his audience), but now there is Missing Links, even hotter. Well written linernotes, by the way. One of the hottest bootleg CDs in town ever! Absolutely recommended.

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This CD is a remake of the 1994 Missing Links CD and it looks exactly the same but has got 3 bonus tracks which are not mentioned on the cover or on the CD (track 15-17). To distinguish both versions check the CD: this new version has got the OSA sign while the 1994 version without bonus tracks has got GEMA on the CD. The soundquality is exactly the same. For review, please check The Doors Quarterly #30.

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Needless to say, that everybody who owns a copy of Missing Links does not need this Italian disc. The sound is worse, and the Italians even copied the liner notes from Missing Links (they just erased the words Missing Links and also the name of the guy who wrote the notes, some Philippe Auguste). So this is a copy of a bootleg. Nice New York '68 photo of Jim on the cover, though.

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If you own the box The Complete Matrix Club Tapes (KTS BX 009) you should be aware that this mid-price CD is a copy of disc #2 from the box. Fine cover, fine quality. Limited to 200 copies only.

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Most of the songs on this CD were taken from the bootleg LP Someday Soon (Do It Records) released in 1989 in Germany, which was a great album at the time. When I got More Missing Links I first thought this CD was made by a Doors fan, but then the track Let It Bleed told me it wasn't. No Doors fan would call Do It from the album The Soft Parade "Let It Bleed". When the hell does this nonsense stop? Some tracks on More Missing Links are rare, such as the acetate and the Rick And The Ravens singles, but those songs will be in better quality (not that many crackles!) on the Italian box Stages. So this CD, which was definitely not made by the people who did the original Missing Links (Memorial Records Memorec 403), is nothing but a mediocre compilation and not worth the money. The disc was made in Japan and - astonishingly - got distributed from Holland.

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The CD looks like a star on Hollywood Boulevard, and it is gold plated. Hmmm. Although it was the first gold plated Doors bootleg CD, all the material on it had been heard before in much better quality, and the people from Missing In Action are as silly as the Aulica guys. Songs are mislabelled, songs are cut drastically, fade-ins, fade-outs, as usual. Definitely not an essential bootleg, not at all. Tasteful design, though. The booklet shows an unpublished colour photo from the Roundhouse, London, 1968. But the whole thing is no must for any collector.

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The cover of this CD doesn't give you any dates or venues, so this list is pretty useful. It doesn't even mention Eddie Vedder's name as the singer for the Doors at their Hall Of Fame concert. The quality is OK, the '93 stuff even is in stereo, and forget the rest of it, which has been published many times before. There are a few Doors bootlegs featuring this special performance, but I prefer one of the countless Pearl Jam boots like Eddie Sings The Doors and all this crap. This CD was one of the first presented in a clear box (the tray was made of clear plastic), really fashionable. At least that was something new. Short comment on the performance: the group sounds like a second-hand tribute band.

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No wonder the great compilation The Last Farewell would be copied soon. As this is another Oil Well mid-price CD, limited to 200 copies only, you might well lay your hands on it if you don't own the original.

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This Japanese disc (distributed from Holland) was copied from Missing Links (Memorial Records, Memorec 403), but this time featuring bonus tracks which everybody already knows. If you own Missing Links, you certainly do not need this one.