What's up with hating on the Doors?

nicole is coyly arguing that the WW-shaman has a way prettier arse than the Doors-shaman

josh agrees

All you people blinded by Oliver Stone's totally misguiding film please go and see "The Doors - Live at the Hollywood Bowl", a documentary of a live concert. There is a magic in the delivery of Morrison who dances in a strange almost autistic way there. The only one who danced in a similar totally detached way I know was Ian Curtis later on who was influenced a lot by Morrison. He must have been on acid or something at that concert. And there is power and a sincerity in his performance few other bands ever conveyed. I think Morrison believed in what he sang and said, he wasn't acting. If you want theatrical band performances you have to wait up until glam rock and art rock. For Alice Cooper, Kiss, Queen, T.Rex, Genesis and the likes. Normally not my cup of tea btw. Of course Morrison was full of bullshit but what do you expect of a twenty something rock star from LA? Does anyone know why Danny Sugarman's Jim Morrison biography "No one here gets out alive" which I enjoyed a lot seems to be unavailable in the bookshops now?

yeah morrison didn't give a shit if anyone thought he was an asshole. He just went out and said what he wanted to say and damn anybody who thinks he was wrong.

But i like the movie. I don't care if Oliver stone gave the wrong impression/whatever.

Last year in Paris I went by Pere Lachaise and stopped at the grave for a friend who wanted a picture. The great thing about it wasn't the crowd of admirers or the busts or whatever, but the security guard -- some middle-aged guy in a windbreaker with an air of, "Eh, stupid Americans. Where are my Gaulois cigarettes?" My kind of guy!

While perusing a copy of the Rolling Stone Record Guide that came out in 1983, I was shocked to see how much RS dispised and disrespected Morrison and his band.
Since then, of course, the band has been "critically reassessed" and now they speak of them in glowing terms.
I wonder if RS will do the same after The Shaggs movie comes out.
(Scary side note: If Tom Cruise drops the ball, and Oliver Stone does the Shaggs movie instead, how much do you want to bet that the movie "reveals" their dad was actually a CIA front and the album is filled with coded messages.)

While perusing a copy of the Rolling Stone Record Guide that came out in 1983, I was shocked to see how much RS dispised and disrespected Morrison and his band.

Actually, that doesn't surprise me in the least. Historically speaking, RS has been notorious for carrying on ridiculous turf grudges: overrating SF bands while poo-pooing L.A. bands like the Beach Boys, and the like.

Oh, dopey dur-hey. I thought you were talking about the magazine, not the guide. That's different. The Doors entry was done by Dave Marsh, right? (He also gives X a big fat spanking for being too "bohemian," I believe.)

I really don't need to go further than 'ride the snake / to the lake' for a reason to think Jim's a twat. Amercian poet my arse. But more than that; fucking doors fans have written fucking doors lyrics on OSCAR WILDE'S GRAVE. What more reason do you need to want to erase Jim from history?

So what if fans wrote lyrics on his grave? Please explain.

oscar wilde and jim morrison are different ppl, julio

apologies to all the doors fans who consider that a cynical diss

mark- what you mean is 'Wilde does not influence Jim'.

But really, maybe some doors fans saw similarities not only artistically but intheir life (both were kinda tragic though i don't know).

The point is Andrew is again using the 'fans suck therefore band/band member does' argument, which in this case doesn't hold.

haha so "influence does not exist" when it comes to fans eh julio? yet another mysterious dimension toi this extraordinary magical-mystical concept, which is used to mean whatever its users want it to mean completely at random

Dave Marsh on Gang of Four: "Funk for people who wouldn't be caught dead with a Rick James album in their library."

I'm surprised Smiths fans haven't scribbled the lyrics to "Cemetry Gates" all over Oscar's tombstone.

''haha so "influence does not exist" when it comes to fans eh julio?''

Are you feeling better now? I don't think so. Have some tea and go to bed, take some rest and you might feel better.

I say this is because it's a completely diff argument. Andrew says that fans scribbled stuff on wilde's grave and therefore it is PROOF that the doors (the band) suck. I say this is not so as the audience hasn't nothing to do w/music a band makes.

Influence was mentioned again because of this line:

''oscar wilde and jim morrison are different ppl, julio''

which was yr influence thing all over: x is diff to y therefore x cannot be influenced by y blah blah. I haf always disagreed with this and have said so on numerous occasions.

which is used to mean whatever its users want it to mean completely at random

"Hast seen the White Whale?"

john last night you agreed with me: admittedly you were drunk

julio if you cannot spot the significant logical flaw in yr argument IN THAT LAST POST then it is no particular bother to me that i have not persuaded you => the word is a mumbojumbo because you can mean it to mean whatever you want, whenever you want to, exactly as you just did; it explains nothing because it is routinely cited to explain everything or anything or whatever, all switched about and chaotic

the idea abt difft people bears no relationship to anything i have ever said

"from hell's heart i stab at thee"

Why hate the Doors?

1) Door’s tribute album called “Darken My Fire”. Contributing artists = The Mission, Alien Sex Fiend, Spahn Ranch, Nosferatu, and Eating Crows. Therefore, the Doors = Goth.

2) Rick Wakeman has nothing on Mr Mazy Manzarek.

3) Morrison every inch the self-important young UCLA student’s notion of a poetic type.

4) His lyrics = doggerel. Crystal ships, snakes, reptile kingdoms, snakes, ancient lakes, low-slung girls, snakes = the boring vocabulary of the tattoo parlor glorified.

5) LA Woman: “lucky little lady”; Backdoor Man: “little girls”; Alabama Song: “next little girl”.

6) Who dies in a bath? (Bataille?)

7) Most laughable is his relocation to Paris in some poetic earnest, “chocolate box comprehension” of the European scene.

no i cannot see the flaw in my arg. I did think the diff ppl on that post i mentioned was to do w/influence but i was wrong.

''the word is a mumbojumbo because you can mean it to mean whatever you want, whenever you want to, exactly as you just did; it explains nothing because it is routinely cited to explain everything or anything or whatever, all switched about and chaotic''

No. When i use the word 'influence' it means that a certain artist has a certain relationship w/antoher in the way they sound. because artist x sounds like y then, it could be argued, that y could have been influenced by x. THAT IS ALL. you are the one talking mumbojumbo.

I mean how can you use 'influence' in any other way when talking abt the way music from one time might be realted to another.

just takin' the piss Mark S, no malice nor retraction of my agreement-with-you intended

in other words the only power music has to "make" other music sound like it?

julio claims: doors fans are called "doors fans" because doors music has no influence over them and they celebrate their doors fandom — for example by scrawling all over the gravestones of the other poets in pere lachaise — because they have no relationship with the thing they are celebrating

if influence exists, if morrison has power over his listeners, then how they behave is his responsibility

because you are afraid of talking about the nature of this power (except very casually and uncritically when it comes to "marketing") — and because alex in mainhatten is for example afraid of talking about the LIMITS of this power (he thinks it is cynical) — i don't accept that influence is a word with genuine meaning to you, it's just a cover for a bit of intellectual slippage to avoid thinking about something inconvenient, to avoid saying the stuff that might actually be interesting about why [x] sounds like [y]... it's a shorthand, yes, and it's basically a shorthand for "i entirely accept the underyling worldview of the people who write press releases for REM"

john is right that i am probably now over-attuned to it: but hey, it's my whale

"it was the rachel, searching for her lost children" = time for bed

Can I ask you Mark: it always seems that since you orchestrate, well rather this is your bugbear, these convos on discussion. You never push it yrself past that cusp, pass that liminal stage betw. easy slip-shod waying of saying x sounds like y - you never push it past yrself, explore this idea more fully of this power. I think its your responsibility. Talk to yourself. Please.

Not entirely clear there.

Basically: you have intellectual capacity to drive home the debate to place you say it never goes - why don't you do it?

i am frightened of what we will find there: perhaps it is beyond our capacity to process?

(haha david did you not yet read those TWO MASSIVE DOCUMENTS i emailed you?)

''in other words the only power music has to "make" other music sound like it?''

Music MIGHT be related from another era/time. Little sounds like, say, cecil taylor but maybe he was looking at what Monk was doing as a starting point to SOMETHING ELSE and then maybe M.SHIPP or FRED VAN HOVE used some of taylor's ideas to something OF THEIR OWN.

''doors fans are called "doors fans" because doors music has no influence over them and they celebrate their doors fandom — for example by scrawling all over the gravestones of the other poets in pere lachaise — because they have no relationship with the thing they are celebrating

if influence exists, if morrison has power over his listeners, then how they behave is his responsibility''

I am not saying there isn't a relationship. What i'm saying is that the relationship isn't on a musical level. When a band starts they have no fans, the music comes from them.

''i don't accept that influence is a word with genuine meaning to you, it's just a cover for a bit of intellectual slippage to avoid thinking about something inconvenient, to avoid saying the stuff that might actually be interesting about why [x] sounds like [y]... it's a shorthand, yes, and it's basically a shorthand for "i entirely accept the underyling worldview of the people who write press releases for REM" ''

I agree that influence may stop you saying things as a critic but that does not mean it means nothing ot that it just doesn't exist. I like your alternative to the 'i' word but influence exists. you are probably a bit mad abt it because it's over-used but there you go.

I don't know abt the worldview of ppl who write press releases for REM but i take it to mean that it is narrow and whatever but you don't know me so don't judge because i happen to disagree with you on a MINOR point.

my intranet is fuckarooed right now which means i can't download the documents. i will get a chance to read them eventually. though i am frightened as to what I may find in them. (What is 'noise'? I.e. I've been to busy on 'noise' lately. Not more reading material, surely? You wrote an essay on Skronk?)

fuck it howie that is a good question/challenge

luckily i am ill today and do not have to respond immediately

''Basically: you have intellectual capacity to drive home the debate to place you say it never goes - why don't you do it?''

well i'd like him to go there.

''i am frightened of what we will find there: perhaps it is beyond our capacity to process?''

just a silly excuse then.

I don't know if it is a silly old excuse. It's kinda like, err, Bersani (fuck, give me a shovel) on relationality. Current social structure based on heterosexual hegemonic relationality. For complete social revolution, a full [technical] revolution then relationality would have to be switched to being predicated on some notion of "gayness". Now, whoa there boy. Fuck. Fuck. FUCK! Now, if mark s does what he does an' it comes out the mix looking all ugly like Gluttony in a Grinder - then his silly old excuse suddenly becomes the truth that saved us all. That is, some truths have to be mortgaged.

dougie howser = otm.

''Now, if mark s does what he does an' it comes out the mix looking all ugly like Gluttony in a Grinder''

yr above post started to become clearer to me after this line.

David- I'm back in england on friday. I will set up that MSN account so that we can chat (if you are still up for that of course).

Thing is: i agree w/some of what mark says but not all is correct to me.

i do not know enough abt logic, only inorganic chemistry.

No, I have decided I don't like you. Buzz off! ;)

My real hotmail address, obv, is howied41@hotmail.com No apropostrophy.

noise = the piece i meant to put up today except i was ill in bed and read h.p.lovecraft instead (haha "the shunned house" = hpl's rewrite of mrjames's "an episode of cathedral history", yet STYLISTICALLY hpl owes mrj nothing)

julio i wasn't getting at you, i only said REM because they are the kind of group where press releases always talk abt "influence" as if it's obvious what's going and why: but it isn't

relationship is a MUCH better word: "stefan jaworzyn has a relationship with derek bailey..." and the reason for that is that you can't anyway separate the musical dimension from the emotional or symbolic or "political" or __________ or __________... Relationship is a better word because it is SO general that you are forced to the next stage (which is to try and describe it, and how it works, and how it fails). 'Influence" sounds particular but then turns out to be vague and general, except when you push the generality (eg are fans "influenced"?) it fails to be general enough. It enforces a built-in assumption abt how music works, which is (i think) a dull assumption even if true, and (i also think) rarely very helpfully true.

"relationality" is an even better word, cuz then it sounds like i am saying SJ and DB have some bersani-style leather thing going...

the "frightened" line was a joke (sort of) (it wd be more obviously a joke if i actually DID GO THERE obv)

Oh bouy, I think I'm going to leave my inbox alone ferawhile...

'''Influence" sounds particular but then turns out to be vague and general, except when you push the generality (eg are fans "influenced"?) it fails to be general enough. It enforces a built-in assumption abt how music works, which is (i think) a dull assumption even if true, and (i also think) rarely very helpfully true.''

The example above i can see it a bit better. I like the use of 'relationship'.

i suppose whenever i see the 'i' word I'll just have to see if it leads anywhere or not. I think the paragraph above tells me a bit more than all your other 'rants'.

my work is done here

Not only do I luv the Doors but i love the very DOORS-INFLUENCED Mazzy Star! However I hate the DOORS-INFLUENCED Echo & The Bunnymen! Hee hee hee! It's monday, slither downthe greasy drainpipe, so far so good no one saw you, you will be like a DREEEEEEEEEEM tonite

I'm surprised Smiths fans haven't scribbled the lyrics to "Cemetry Gates" all over Oscar's tombstone.

they have, the bedwetting goons.

Julio,I don't believe I was using the 'fans suck therefore the band sucks' arugment. I was the using the 'jim's lyrics are grade six crap and bad grade six crap at that, and anyone that desecrates the grave of oscar wilde with such shite is a prize idiot' argument. This is why the post refered only to Jim and his lyrics, not to the Doors. Jim wrote some of the worst lyrical crap I have ever heard. It's lionised by the rock world as POETRY. Ever seen that poster? I think he's one of the most over-rated people in rock ever, Pardon me if that offends anyone, but I really have heard Jim's crap enough this lifetime.

for the record, I quite like the music when Jim shuts up. It's pity he ever said anything.

morrisey lyrics too?

how bloody depressing.

"It's lionised by the rock world as POETRY": erm, no, it isn't = it has been laughed by the nondoors-fan rockworld at for as long as i can remember (ie at least back to the mid-70s)

''I was the using the 'jim's lyrics are grade six crap and bad grade six crap at that, and anyone that desecrates the grave of oscar wilde with such shite is a prize idiot' argument. This is why the post refered only to Jim and his lyrics, not to the Doors. Jim wrote some of the worst lyrical crap I have ever heard. It's lionised by the rock world as POETRY. Ever seen that poster?''

I do not register lyrics in my brane when i listen to recs but the bits i have registered are quite funny (maybe hearing the doors as comedy recs, as sens was jokingly telling me, might be the way forward).

Capt beefheart is the only rock poet i've heard (but is is rock anyway?).

The concept of rock poetry is inherently flawed. There is no such thing, and nor should there be.

His lyrics = doggerel. Crystal ships, snakes, reptile kingdoms, snakes, ancient lakes, low-slung girls, snakes = the boring vocabulary of the tattoo parlor glorified

I agree that when Morrison starts talking about snakes and lakes my interest level drops precipitously; however, to proceed from that point to a claim that Morrison never wrote anything but crap lyrics is unjustified. Some of his songs are very direct, emotional, and - dare I say? - subtle statements. "Soul Kitchen", for example, is a succinct and deeply felt evocation of a particular state of mind, and I think anyone who has felt that way can relate to it. Plus it has some great lines: "The cars crawl past all stuffed with eyes" or "Your fingers weave quick minarets / Speak in secret alphabets / I light another cigarette / Learn to forget". No doggerel there.

whoever mentioned the herky-jerky clockwork-type anti-fluidity of the playing was totally on-point - it's what gave Jim's weird sex crap legitimacy - if he was just some drunk poet on stage he'd get booed off and bottles chucked at him - actually this probably happened, but because there was this band of tinkering craftsmen hewing precisely jagged chunks from the blues-log while Jim heaved around doing what he did, the crowd's vitriol (there from the beginning) was probably more explicitly from jealousy and fear than what Jim alone would have been seen as i.e. "what a sad fuck"

Jim Morrison is influenced by Courtney Love, obviously

on the 180 tip, if no Jim, then ver Doors would have just been a more awkward version of the Butterfield Blues Band

I think that what people usually mean when they say that "X influenced Y" is that "Y imitated X". That is perhaps a clearer way of stating the relationship, and it leaves agency in the hands of Y, where it belongs. It also leads directly to the inevitable question, "In what way did Y imitate X?" So it opens up discussion, rather than closing it down.

'ride the snake/to the lake' 'this is the end/ my friend' The shitness of this far outways any half decent things jim may have come up with. The poster i refer to is the one with 'An American Poet' written on it.

And I'm really sorry, but I find even the better lyrics you quote trite as all get-out. Nor do I find them bouyed up by the music. They may well be funny to some, but do consider they were truly meant to be taken seriously. If you are sniggering fine, but please admit that you're indulging in some ironic interpretation that admits the inate pretension of Jim's writing. Jim himself while he was alive definetely claimed to be a poet.Therefore it's quite reasonable to believe him and analyse his lyrics as poetry. And I reckon it's absolutley shithouse poetry.