What's up with hating on the Doors?

in rock, from JD, the doors, stooges, they all not that great but then that's not the point. The q is: what is there at the end once you combine x vocals with y band?

I think Echo & the Bunnymen were MUCH better that The Cure BTW Norman this is heresy

Ned back me up here

i'm not a cynic at all, alex, why do you think i am

i love it when people try to "disprove" my point about influence by saying that someone sounds like someone else and probably listened to him a lot: YES I KNOW THAT!! SO WHAT!! WHAT HAVE YOU ACTUALLY SAID JOHN? OF WHAT CONSEQUENCE OR INTEREST IS THAT? The reason "influence" does not exist is that EVERYONE stops right at the point where you have to say the interesting thing: viz WHY IT IS EVEN SLIGHTLY RELEVANT THAT YOU JUST MENTIONED THAT?? if there is a point ever being made with "influence" talk, why is it never reached?

T|-|3 C|_|R3 |\|3\/3R \/\/R0T3 THE KILLING MOON though, did they? Eh? EH? ARGUE W/THAT!!!!!

influence may be a dud as a 'critical strategy' but that will not tell us whether it exists or not.

it does not have to: i did

but that may not make it right. It makes it wrong.

julio are you drunk as well? that makes no sense...

if there is a point ever being made with "influence" talk, why is it never reached?

Evidently only because you say so, Mark, which isn't sporting: Ian McC's vocal style never comes into being without a model, any more than trigonometry can avoid the influence of triangles

well, I'm tired and writing shit again and not thinking straight (which i mostly nevah do). you guys carry on...are you drunk then mark?

I'll put a stop to this.

so why not say MODEL then? i haf no problem with that: it's potentially interesting and precise, not vague and meaningless => what is the precise concrete point you aim to make with yr model talk? model also of course (quite correctly) switches the agency to mccullough, where it belongs: mccullough is after all making the decisions

i shall draw a veil of the trig-triangle sentence, since it introduces a NEW and hitherto UNRECOGNISED usage of influence which will merely add to our griefs...

haha i am not drunk julio, unless you count the intoxication of familiar perversity

Absolutely Mark but you & I have been over this before: it's comparable to Hegel & his master/slave dynamic stuff: i.e. the latter term wields all the geniune power because the former is nothing without him. For you the word "influence" seems only capable of bearing one usage, namely that of a power dynamic in which the influence holds a conscious sway over the influenced. But if you're that into semantics, consider the etymology: the flow of a river influences the movement of its tributaries, yet only poets & the insane attribute (attribute ?) o no!) any conscious agency therein -- but be that as it may, the influence is visibly there

by which I mean that the semantic difficulty seems a personal issue -- Ian McC models his delivery on Morrison's, Morrison influences McC -- the glass is half-empty, the glass is half-full

well yes john if "for me" means exactly the thing i am fighting: i wish it were true that these two usages were even EQUAL in the critical whatever (half vs half), but they are not. the one i object to is everywhere; the one that actually leads to thinking about why someone decides to listen to someone else, or to sound like someone else, is almost never followed up... this is why i object to it, it's shutting a door you're pretending to open, rendering passive something that only has interest at all when it's active

the ppl an artist influences are the ones who go on to do nothing but listen passively; the ones who go on to do things themselves are the ones s/he NO LONGER influences

the position of the stars = time for bed

Well then for the record let me state that

1) when I talk about influence I am talking about what an artist does with his/her models -- how he/she puts them into play, NOT describing some situation in which say Ian Curtis flexes his scrawny muscles FROM THE GRAVE

2) when I am describing somebody who has elected to model themselves after another and not done something interesting with it I tend to use the word "damage" and urge others to do likewise and

3) there is a need for more vodka around here, who's with me

and good-night to you sir as for me well it's early yet out here in the humid flyover

I went through the big classic rock faze in jr high and of course loved the Doors. The records sounded neat to me. Howevah, I never paid the lyrics much attention. Then, some time after this faze passed, I picked up (one of?) Jim's poetry book(s?) on a whim and made the mistake of actually reading some of it. Then I went back and took a serious listen to their records (er, the lyrics) and had a good laugh.

I do not hate the Doors.

I do not exactly love them either.

I am not ashamed to say that I once loved them.

Plus: Had the Doors never happened, Kyle MacLachlan would've never been able to play Ray Manzarek in a funny movie like The Doors.

I'll take the vodka, but I'm out here. *cries*

Norman this is heresy...Ned back me up here

I am much more of a Cure fan than an Echo fan, to be sure -- whereas I scrounged Napster and the like for every last Cure rarity I could find, I just let the Echo box set do that for me, see. And I'm much more prone to putting on Faith than Heaven Up Here etc. -- but I fully sympathize with where Norman is coming from. My good friend Karen feels the same way; Echo were one of 'her' bands when growing up in the eighties, though I'd have to ask her to delineate the full reasons why she has said preference (then again, she might find the thread and do that for me!).

Suffice to say that Echo have their own particular brilliance I will not deny. But Bob and company are on a higher plane for me. :-)

Oddly enough, while I was mentioning to Julio that part of my aversion to the Doors was most likely association in my mind with the meatheads who would yell "FAGGOT" out of moving cars, I just got back from the hardware/home improvement store--surely the refuge of the macho tough guys of today--and what were they playing but The Cure? The Cure: the next gen Doors?

sort of like andy I liked the doors when younger. all I ever did was hear them on the radio and on the two-disc best of, though. I don't listen to them any more but if they come on the radio or something I always like to hear it.

I don't know if it's been mentioned much in this (long now!) thread, but it seems to me like a lot of the things people hate about the Doors are painfully similar to all kinds of rock-n-roll romanticism and sexuality and druggy hedonism.

from scores of much-loved and -praised records, I mean

sean- very funny! see, never judge a band by its fans.

I agree with Mark@pitchfork - I was a huge Doors fan before high school. Now I love bands like The Seeds and The 13th Floor Elevators, and I sometimes ask myself why I don't like The Doors - after all, the keyboard playing etc on some Doors songs is very similar to some Seeds songs. I guess it boils down to that they're just garage bands, and if you hype them up to this ridiculous extent where they can practically buy and sell people, it becomes distasteful and puts you off the band.

Which means I also agree with Josh and a few other people on this thread.

dead fuckign duck

As a vocalist and lyricist Morrison doesn't really do it for me, but I think the Doors musically had a neat sound. I think that's because I have a certain affection for all of the keyboard-using bands of the 60s.

I think Oliver Stone has done more to perpetuate Doors hate than any real Doors detractor ever has. Just thinking about that movie annoys me.

Mark - I can't nail it down now why I thought you were cynic last night. It's probably just your way of dissing certain singers which irritates me slightly.

Maryann is OTM concerning Oliver Stone's film. It is probably the worst movie I ever saw. One of the very few ones where I walked out in the middle with a group of ten people. What a load of stinking pretentious bullshit. The drug experience in the desert was the biggest rubbish I have seen in my life. A film made by somebody who has absolutely no clue of drug experiences and rockn' roll. Pathetic. Hollow commercial crap. And the actor playing Jim Morrison was as convincing as if Brad Pitt would impersonate Ian Curtis. Or Claudia Schiffer playing Patti Smith. Falser than false.

Sorry Nicole, I obviously meant you not Maryann.

Bah.

You people didn't go into The Doors w/ the right attitude. Yes it's awful but I found it very funny.

I've always thought the movie, in all its glorious awfulness, was the perfect representation of the Doors. Oliver Stone was the best person to make it, because Oliver Stone is the one of the few people left who actually takes Jim Morrison seriously as some kind of poet/philosopher. It's full of stinking pretentious bullshit because Jimbo was full of stinking pretentious bullshit--Stone isn't putting words in his mouth, he actually said all that shit about Indians and shamans. But for a little while, before the plot is lost altogether, there's something potentially transformative and real there... just like the Doors.

ha! I liked the movie too and wasn't even really aware it was rubbish at the time I saw it, which was not coincidentally the same time that I was a teenager who liked the doors.

I liked the movie. It was a really good laugh. You'd be crazy to take Morrison seriously as some sort of prophet.

The soundtrack helped as well.

It's too long to sit through all that, even though all the Indian shaman bits and Jim's nonsense are funny.

Plus it has Meg Ryan, and anything with Meg Ryan in it is pure evil.

Even Kyle McLachlan can't save it, and he is the king of movies people think are rub but are secretly brilliant (Showgirls, Dune, etc.).

Oh yes and I forgot to add that if you've seen Wayne's World II you've seen all the best parts -- and that in itself should be a sad commentary on the vomtastic-ness of the Doors movie.

ha what happened in wayne's world ii anyway? I saw it in the theater and all I remember is being in the desert and an indian.

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.