Though
"You Were on My Mind"
was one of the first and best big folk-rock hits,
We Five
's reputation as early folk-rock pioneers has suffered from the abundance of weak and ill-suited pop material on the spotty two LPs recorded by the original lineup. It's no exaggeration to hail the 22-track
There Stands the Door
as a major rehabilitation of the group's legacy. That's due both to the wise selection of their best and most folk-rock-oriented material, and to the inclusion of eight previously unissued cuts (and one non-LP A-side) that do much to fill out a fairer portrait of the group's strengths. Instead of sounding like a wildly erratic outfit prone to interpreting too many pop standards and show tunes, this cherry-picked anthology shows them more as a highly worthwhile, if a little lightweight, early folk-rock group who helped innovate the male-female harmonies characteristic of early San Francisco folk-rock in particular. The CD focuses both on the group's best original material (often penned by
John Stewart
's brother
Mike Stewart
) and their most appropriate choices of folky songs to cover, including several compositions by
and an obscure tune (the previously unissued
"What'cha Gonna Do"
) co-written by
Bob Gibson
,
Shel Silverstein
, and
Fred Neil
. All but a couple of the tracks were recorded prior to the first lineup's dissolution in spring 1967, and
Beverly Bivens
' vocals in particular anticipate aspects of the San Francisco folk-rock singing heard in early
Jefferson Airplane
recordings, particularly on the 1966 single
"You Let a Love Burn Out."
From the same year, the non-LP single
"There Stands the Door"
hints at some more musically and lyrically adventurous directions that went unexplored, even if its adventurousness is fairly mild compared to that of the
Airplane
. True,
remains the best track they ever did by some distance. But much more than their original LPs,
stands as their true best-of, and if its concentration on folk-rock gives a somewhat incomplete document of their eclectic repertoire, it does indisputably focus on the best of that repertoire. Note that a couple of the unissued tracks (judiciously placed at the end of the CD) are actually taken from recordings they made for Coke commercials; while they're hardly emblematic of the group at their best, they certainly are rare and thus to be welcomed by hardcore collectors. A more significant bonus is
Alec Palao
's extensive annotation, in which first-hand interviews with surviving bandmembers do much to flesh out the history of this ill-documented group. ~ Richie Unterberger