When UCLA film student student Nettie Peña borrowed a reel-to-reel recorder from the high school where her father worked to record her friends’ new group, The Doors—then the “house band” at a small Sunset Strip nightclub—really more of a scuzzy, beer-stained redneck bar than the name might imply called London Fog—she probably had very little idea that she’d one day contribute their earliest known live recordings to rock ‘n’ roll history, but that’s what happened one night in May of 1966.

Released to coincide with the group’s 50th anniversary, the new London Fog 1966 box set from Rhino is—clearly—something that’s targeted to the most serious Doors fanboys. And there are a lot of ‘em, obviously. The deluxe (and it should be noted quite clever) packaging is designed to look like a run-of-the-mill cardboard storage box, the type that you might store under your bed, or in a closet, and then forget about for fifty years. A time capsule, in other words, and this set lives up to that conceit complete with well done facsimile reproductions of that night’s set list written by Robby Krieger’s hand, Peña’s excellent photographs of the baby-faced Doors printed as ever-so-slightly yellowing 8” by 10” B&W glossies, and even a flyer for a UCLA film school midnight screening of Peña’s student film “Call It Collage ‘66” which had a soundtrack by the Doors. (Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek were Nettie Peña’s fellow students at UCLA.) The music is pressed on a 10” record that looks a bit like an acetate test pressing in a brown sleeve and on a CD.
 

 
Now I don’t tend to be someone taken in by tsotchkes that come in box sets—but this one, I must say, is kinda neat. I’m not even that big of a Doors fan, but a big Doors fan would definitely eat this shit up. And again, that’s the person this limited edition (just 18,000 copies) is targeted at, a big Doors fan who wants to hear the earliest known recording of the legendary Doors.

They do seven songs, blues covers such as B.B. King’s “Rock Me” and Muddy Waters’ “I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man.” They do Little Richard’s “Lucille” (an odd choice). There’s an embryonic “You Make Me Real” (later recorded for their second album Strange Days) and a pretty fully-formed version of “Strange Days” which is probably the short set’s highlight. This set is for the hardcore fan who will frankly forgive the generic garage band blues numbers for a chance to hear The Doors picking the lock on the door to something much more divine, working their way from cover band to magicians.

Buy London Fog 1966