The Doors: Classic or Dud?

No, but I did read a really excellent breakdown in rolling stone a couple years ago of J.Morrison's final day/hours/death throes. Morbid, but great and probably searchable through internets.

Watching "When You're Strange" right now. LOL @ ripping off the opening of the Beatles Anthology, complete with pseudo "A Day in the Life" strings climax.

I thought it was silly at first, but I think Johnny Depp's narration is pretty fitting, probably because of that. Every moment in the Doors' career is expressed as if it was the coolest fact in the world and should blow your mind, man.

"They bought a billboard on the Sunset Strip."
(dramatic pause)
"No one had ever done this before."

anyone able to recommend a good book on the doors/morrison?

the Greil Marcus book is good and short ... a-and there's a chapter on Inherent Vice and "L.A. Woman"

"follow the music" the oral history/autobio of jac holtzman of electra records has a lot of great doors stuff in it

man late period doors live albums are INSANE

in a good way? don't think i've heard any late shows -- what are your reccs.

yeah in a great/hilarious/amazing way...in particular i'd recommend "Live in Detroit" because it's one entire show

they start up with roadhouse blues, then morrison stops the show and go "HEEELLO DETROIT" and everyone cheers...but then he says "How you doing Salt Lake? Hello Minneapolis!" and then spend like a minute and a half saying hello to every city he can think of to the crowd's bemusement

also getting to hear krieger go off the chain is pretty awesome, most underrated guitarist ever

cool, i'll check it out! & yeah krieger is a pretty rad player when he gets the chance.

lol this is pretty good. dead cats! dead rats! hard to know whether the rest of the band would be amused or distressed at morrison's antics. seems like at this point they're pretty good at just rollin' with it.

and you are right about krieger killing it here.

Yeah, the live albums from 1970 that Rhino's been releasing lately are pretty hilarious/great. There's a New York one that's got two full shows on it, spread out over four CDs, and at points it's like Morrison is prefiguring Andrew "Dice" Clay's The Day the Laughter Died.

actually had no idea the doors had been putting out so many vintage live shows. don't want them all or anything, but am into hearing a few... i wish more bands of their ilk would take the "beat the boots" approach, though maybe the doors have a unique, die-hard audience that makes it worthwhile for everyone involved, a la the Dead.

Yeah, there's five or six live sets on Rhino's Doors page.

otm on the dice clay thing...these are great, like half weird proto andy kaufman anti-comedy part a great band tearing it the fuck up

L.A. Woman (40th Anniversary Edition) was released this week:

The L.A. WOMAN 40th anniversary edition (Rhino 2-CD) features a never-before-heard song, She Smells So Nice, which captures the band--organist RAY MANZAREK, guitarist ROBBY KRIEGER, drummer JOHN DENSMORE and late singer JIM MORRISON--joyfully barreling through a full-throttle original before segueing into the blues standard Rock Me. As the song closes, Morrison can be heard chanting, Mr. Mojo Risin --an anagram of his name that was made famous during the bridge of L.A. Woman. The track was recently discovered by producer Bruce Botnick while reviewing the L.A. WOMAN session tapes.

lol "She Smells So Nice," sounds like a lost classic.

She Smells Sanctuary

well done

That is funny, a couple of months ago, I started reading No One Here Gets Out Alive, which I haven't looked at since college! I've been wanting to curl up with something old-fashioned this winter....of course, it sits on my table unfinished.

hot!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bvHS7FAubs

the 'my woman get high' stuff around 4:15 is a bit much tho

hey guys

i'm working on a theory that the doors literally invented punk and prog, check back for more later!

they definitely invented prunk.

ray manzarek tried to get a band going with iggy, didn't he? exhibit A!

We Got the Neutron Bomb's first chapter is on the Doors

i'm working on a theory that the doors literally invented punk and prog, check back for more later!

― the 500 gats of bartholomew thuggins (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, January 26, 2012 12:02 PM (8 minutes ago)

the bbc rock documentary made this case iirc. the doors introduced ideas of 'darkness' and 'artiness' into pop-rock

it is sorta interesting -- what was the general perception of the Doors in the 70s, before the Cult of Morrison thing took over? i guess greil marcus could probably tell me. greil? are you there, greil?

Are you there Greil? It's me, Tyler

lol
i guess lester bangs wrote a takedown of the doors

would read

Oh no no no, he (rightly) celebrated Jim as the Bozo King! (xp)

This stupid annoying article by stupid annoying Stuart Maconie annoyed me over lunch today.

I like the Chiffons, or Chic, Whigfield's "Saturday Night" AND the Doors, so shove it up yer arse, Maconie

Do you mean critical reception, or how they were perceived by the masses? People didn't pay as much attention to critics back then. If you were a "rock and roller", you listened to the Doors.

People didn't pay as much attention to critics back then

I think they paid more. In the UK anyway.

well, yeah, were they a "cool" band that people listened to in the 70s, or were they sorta seen as a 60s phenomenon? just don't know what their "legacy" was perceived to be before jim became one of the big rock n roll ghosts.

The Doors were history! Be there or be square! Doors were way cool in the early 70s and lots of "normal" folk listened to them! I was a wee one and I liked stuff like "Break on Through"! If you heard the shit was on the rock radio back then, you'd embrace the Doors too. Like bad stoner rock with five minute guitar solos.

Like bad stoner rock with five minute guitar solos

wait is this referring to the Doors or not

huh? krieger's far from a showoff imo

Wow you're so literate. I really said that. Sorry you don't find the seventies interesting.

but basically:

i saw this interview with johnnny ramone and i thought it was interesting when the interviewer asked him about bands he liked, he said the Doors were the only good american band of the 1960s, said he worshiped them..

i know iggy idolized the doors too, so Johnny + Iggy = the founders of punk to me...

the doors had that darkness and artiness and also a real confrontational vibe that seems to prefigure punk in a lot of ways

at the same time, i can't imagine, for instance, the full on organ workout version of light my fire, with its jazz/classical aspirations, couldn't have been a major influence on the first-gen prog dudes like rick wakeman, ELP, yes etc

so the doors basically invented everything

There was a lot of "acid rock" in the sixties and The Doors were more traditional rock and roll. People responded to that. Like Johnny Ramone and his Monkees albums.

As for "stoner rock" I meant that this was the type of music on rock radio in the seventies. The Doors were definitely not this style.

Sorry you don't find the seventies interesting.

was an honest question

the 70s are my favorite decade of music fwiw

Pretty sure Patti Smith dribbled on abt them too and *cough* *cough* the Stranglers

They were "cool" until the Jimbo industry started up, when was that? Early 80s?

There was a lot of "acid rock" in the sixties and The Doors were more traditional rock and roll.

yeah I dunno they seem of a piece with plenty of the SF acid rock scene - the obsession with aping the blues/black "authenticity", inserting extended "jazz solos" and improvisations into super-long tracks, the lyrical pomposity. I mean Jefferson Airplane did that shit too ya know?

xp

Doors never seemed like hippies though

LA vs. SF

true - Jim's image was darker/more sinister in general, and the other dudes were like nerds

xp