The Critical Reader might be surprised to learn the absence wasn't due to any notion of commerciality, though there have been times when The Doors and a bit too commercial for you Hughesy have been conjoined in conversation.
Actually, they're not.
But commercial success meant albums by the quartet were never going to find their way into the two-dollar bins at Woolworths in Flinders Street. They were the source of most of Hughesy's album purchases until 1972. At that point, I might have had the financial wherewithal to fund extensive purchases, but there was a lot to catch up on.
By that time Jim Morrison had been dead for a year, the post-Morrison albums had slipped by largely unnoticed and familiarity with the catalogue meant the Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine collection covered most of the obvious bases.
But we're plugging gaps at the moment, and at $69.99 The Complete Studio Albums looked to be rather good buying. Eight albums at around $8.50 a throw ain't too shabby.
And, on a preliminary listen what's there ain't too shabby either, with most of it holding up fairly well forty-odd years later. Other Voices and Full Circle sound a bit better than I recall, and the rest of the catalogue gives a chance to revisit some old favourites that have been absent from my playlists for far too long.
And before we dig too far into what amounts to a selection of Rear Views rather than Reviews of previously unfamiliar material, there are a couple of points that probably need to be made before we work up a potted biography.