Its amazing how much stuff that man wrote. He wrote a book called I am the blues, and it is a really interesting read.
I have to weigh in on the “Doors are pretentious crap” side of things. No one can deny that true art takes risks; having said that, the scarcity of true art is testimony to the fact that most people taking risks…fail. So, the question is whether the Doors succeeded or not. IMHO, they failed - Morrison had the swagger, but not the content. They played decent music - Ray and Robbie are fine musicians, but who cares when the criteria is whether they deserve to be considered in the pantheon of legends? When I think of the risks the Beatles, Hendrix, the Who, just to name a few - and the extent to which those artists not only succeeded, but changed the way we consider music, the Doors aren’t in the same ballpark. The are a combination of art-house claptrap and blues-based simplicity, but they didn’t produce the art of legends…IMHO.
That all being said, if someone gets pleasure from them, more power to that - ultimately, that’s all that matters. I look for my pleasure elsewhere.
Vox, Vox, Vox. Sorry, I always get them backwards. That, and I like saying Moog.
I’ll tell you what, why not sit yourself down with a Lovin’ Spoonful album, then put on the Doors, and tell me which one is the average band?
Then, skip forward a decade or so, put on The Fixx, then listen to the Doors, and tell me which one is the average band.
Then, skip ahead another decade, listen to Mudhoney, then listen to the doors, and tell me which one is the average band.
And then put on whatever it is that is new and cool, and ask yourself, “what will this sound like in thirty years?”
Moog made synths, not organs. Ray used primarily Vox organs, with a rhodes piano bass(a little short version of the rhodes electric piano). **
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Vox, Vox, Vox. Sorry, I always get them backwards. That, and I like saying Moog. **
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My friends used to pronounce it wrong just to irritate me. For those who arent familiar, name is pronounced moge. It used to be the way you could tell someone was a keyboard player…Of course now, most keyboard players have never touched a moog. I remember when they sold them at radio shack, and had Elton John hawking the thing. Bob moog had primarily been making theramins, but it looks like he is bringing back the minimoog…
Funk?
Let me look at that again.
FUNK?
Still seems strange.
Tell you what…I’ve got the CD changer fixed and rarin’ to go. You bring that ‘funk’ Doors song and I’ll hit it with some James Brown or some early 70s soul and we’ll see who gets butts shaking on the dance floor.
Hey, if your gonna compare funk, you gotta have George Clinton.
I don’t really see any similarities between the two bands other than the drug use. One can barely compare Jim and Jerry at all. I’m not a huge Dead fan, but I can’t deny the vast amount of talent they possessed. Same goes for the Doors.
I’m going to get reamed for this, I’ll wager, but it always struck me that the ‘best’ Doors stuff was either blues or ‘funk-like’-- i.e., a bunch of white boys finally do music for white kids similar to that which has been done by black musicians for years (thus making an old, well-developed style accessible and acceptible to white culture in general, in a sort of youth culture rebellion sort of way) and all of a sudden they’re brilliant.
The more syntho- psychedellic stuff was a bit more original, though. But “Love you Madly”? Who cares?
Don’t diss the doors!
I will love them forever simply for the memories of sitting around Dan’s Lakewood Cafe in Dallas (it’s in a scary-ass part of town, dirty as all hell, and so good, open all night) and listening to “Riders On The Storm” play on the jukebox on in to the wee hours. Everyone always played that song there, and it just fit.
If you’re at Dan’s at 2 AM there’s a damn good chance that you believe Jim when he says
Ohh, man. That’s such a trip to remember.
LC
But explain yourself, please. You say it’s a good song, yet the definitive recording is poorly executed? How could they have done better? Put in more notes? More intricate guitar runs? Keyboard riffs a al Emerson Lake & Palmer? If they’d done that, it would have been a different song.
I wasn’t comparing the two bands musically. Rather, I feel the two groups share the dubious distinction of having produced mediocre work given that they had a fair amount of talent to work with.
This thread helps illustrate one of my favorite sayings as good as anything I’ve ever seen.
“There’s no accounting for taste.”
Put me down in The Doors are awesome category. If you can’t see that, well, you must not like The Doors.
I can relate since there’s plenty of music people like that I think is 100% garbage, so there you go, I guess.
Noted.
On a coincidental note…I took about eighty high school kids to see The Outsiders today. This particular production used a great deal of music to express mood and Break On Through by the doors was used during the Rumble scene. It was quite effective.
Sorry I missed this before the party, or I might have put on “Peace Frog”. Don’t get me wrong, they are certainly not George Clinton in that regard, but they could do it, and do it well if they wanted to.