Far from one of my favorites, and not one I listen to very often. It suffers (greatly) from what I've discussed in other threads, and that is the curse of the surround mixer (in this case, original producer/engineer Bruce Botnick) taking it upon himself to "restore" missing elements from the original multitracks. (Another obnoxious example is the drum track on Fleetwood Mac's "Never Going Back Again.")
In the case of "L.A. Woman," Botnick has added a few "yelps" (for lack of a better term) from Morrison in "Cars Hiss By My Window," along with an additional verse. A fuzzed-out guitar intro to the title track is also restored. While these things are certainly interesting curios, my ultimate feeling is that a surround mix should, in the end, try to replicate the "feel" of the original stereo release, while still taking advantage of the surround soundstage as much as possible. If it's a question of restoring, say, a song that was originally left off an album for one reason or another, I'm not as upset. (Adding "Silver Springs" to "Rumours" was a good idea, in my mind - although they put it in an entirely inappropriate slot, and shuffled another song to the end in doing so!) But I found the added "bonus" snippets on "L.A. Woman" to be distracting, and it's kept me from listening to it very often. I wouldn't be opposed to these "alternate" mixes being included as, say, bonus tracks. But the album itself should be as close to the original intent as possible. (Botnick similarly ruined the most recent CD remastering of the group's debut by reinstating the "she get high" line in "Break On Through," and Morrison's f-bomb tirade in "The End." Again, these would have worked better as seperate bonus tracks; but included with the album proper, it's distracting beyond belief.)
Likewise, Botnick's surround mix reveals the limitations of the original, limited technology under which the album was recorded. Having only 8 tracks to work with, he's forced to resort to surround "tricks" to keep things interesting (witness the "bouncing" drum track in "Love Her Madly"). This doesn't bode well for the group's earlier releases (the first two of which were done on 4-track - not much you can comfortably or interestingly do with that, when it comes to creating surround mixes). Granted, the quad mixes of the group's material that exists already (on a quad-only "best of" album released in the seventies) aren't awful... but they're far from anything you'd want to use to impress your friends with. (My recollection of the mixes for the early material were that Morrison's vocals were front and center, with the two tracks used for the instrumentation spread DIAGONALLY across the rear/left and front/right speakers, with the forth overdub track placed somewhere else.)
At any rate... great album, musically. But not the most spectacular example of surround mixing, in my opinion...
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