What's up with hating on the Doors?

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.

("imitated" is fine by me) (if anyone cares)

"Ride the snake/ to the lake" isn't all that much more annoying than the crap Beck or Stephen Merrit come up with

I imagine if as manners twerps are going on about beck thirty+ years later i will be equally annoyed, yes.

i meant 'as many twerps' sod it, too much wine.

I ain't got nothing to say to all you haters.

I really wish I could find my copy of Jim Morrison's poetry book (mint, unread) that I purchased c.1975. It's probably worth a lot now.

This influence debate I don't really understand. The word covers conscious imitation certainly, but also unconscious regurgitation. I don't see what's difficult about acknowledging that aspect of the creative process.

I think David has summed up my feelings on the influence debate pee uh ruh sicely!

Now, if you want outright theft of the Morrison vocal schtick, why not check out The Tea Party? As much as that guy claims that he's not trying to channel Morrison, I will never ever believe him.

if it covers both those things, then it basically it covers UP exactly the division within the idea that makes the idea worth thinking about at all: it refuses to distinguish between things the artist chose to do and things the artist had chosen for him

it's obfuscation pretending to be clarification

i've got this really great word, it covers hot and cold: it's "spong"

"so what temperature is the baby's bathwater, mark s?"
"it's spong!"
"you didn't even check!"
"that's what's so great, i no longer have to!!"

"Each year, five and twenty past two, I'm peculiarly partial to a drop of traditional spongbake. Purchase -- or hire -- 32 ripe spongs, wheel them home, and shoot them. Then simply bake them, and eat them - - once. The end."

So Mark is that it? - you would prefer it if there were two different words rather than the vague catch-all. Another thing - people have difficulty with comprehending that something can sound very similar to something else without there being any connection. No confusion about a '60s library track sounding like orchestral drum & bass because it was created *30 years earlier*. But if two things exist in the same time it is often assumed that artist A must have listened to artist B then imitated (consciously or unconsciously). In fact both could come to similar conclusions through having the same perspectives and conceptual frameworks (and tools of course) because they're humans existing at the same time and in the same culture. But if artist A is more well-known/critically acclaimed, artist B will be assumed to have been 'influenced'.

pretty much, david

I think it is possible to be influenced in matters of process and method. Of course, this has no bearing whatever on the final product, but if somebody uses fortune-cookies or the I Ching in the studio because they got the idea from Eno or insist on playing gtr with a violin bow just because Jimmy Page did it then it's up to the artist to admit it or not. Then again artists always lie about (or can't remember) their micro-processes thus would-be emulators usually are chasing a mirage. I think Mark S is possibly a bit idealistic - years and years of 'active listening' perhaps blinds one to precisely how lazy, derivative and willing to copy stuff wholesale most artists are - which of course points to another nail in the coffin of 'influence' - most bands are so desperate to get noticed that anytime somebody hangs an 'influence' on them they hold on to the reference for dear life and proudly trumpet it to all and sundry (e.g., A&R guy - "You guys sound a bit like Korn" [thinks nervously "That's the one the kids are into now right?"] 15-yr-old gtrist hears "You are going to be as big as Korn!" So maybe next time they're in rehearsal they downtune the guitars and the singer's subsequent performances are subconsciously tinged with this promise of being the next poster-child for bedroom-poster poster children, and next time you see them, they sound an awful lot like Korn, but of course now they claim to have "listened to them back in the day before they got all famous. Gee whillikers, WE BOTH GREW UP ON THE SAME RHCP AND FAITH NO MORE RECORDS!") Of course this type of thing has nothing to do with 'influence' as it is used in crit discourse but then what is it? (Believe it or not, I'm still overrating the analytical skills and intellectual powers of most musicians - if you ask the entertainment at your local dive "Why do you use a Fender Jaguar" they'll usually say "Dunno, Kurt Cobain had one so it's good enough for me", and whether or not that counts as 'influence', it definitely alters the sound and look and thus whole package - if the guitarist knows this then they're being contrived and if they don't then they're just stupid. But are the UNDER THE 'I' WORD?

dave q is right, but there's also sometimes less than that at work: when I started writing pop songs for myself, I just had a guitar and my voice, and yet you could hear shades of The Church and The Cure in what I was doing despite no intention at all to do so. Those two bands quite clearly had an influence on the way I composed my own music--or, if you want to be more precise about it, the band's songs themselves did. Did I imitate them? No, because it wasn't quite so clear cut, it didn't really sound like either in any great way. I think this idea that you have, mark, that "influence" means that Robert Smith has to come put me into a headlock and force me to right that way is ignoring one of the definitions of the word "influence". I don't think it's obfuscation at all. I think the word is often used lazily, though.

grrr i (a) just recovered from flu and (b) discovered magical elves corrupted my hard drive so i am even more hostile to "influenza" at the moment: haha two x re-initialisation in six weeks, if it's not voodoo i don't know what it is

Sean and mark FITE!

the elves are no more but i am not allowed to use OPERA for a while

mark is still my hero despite this disagreement, so there will be no FITE here, my friend.

Hold on, I just realised that the second half of what I last wrote is stupid. (Of COURSE they're 'under the I word' - but that's like saying 'they play instruments' right?)

Jim Morrison was a drunken, stoned buffoon. The Doors were the Limp Bizkit of the 60's. Pathetic, attention starved singers w/ no voice or talent backed by competent, but lazy, boring bands. Give me White Light/White Heat. Give me Raw Power. Anything, but the Doors.