Generally, I’m not much of a fan of greatest hits compilations. I see little value in stripping songs from the context of their albums.
But when you’re dealing with a catalogue as varied and inconsistent as The Doors’, a bird’s eye view can be a valuable thing. Continue reading
Psych-rock pioneers though they may be, The Doors are largely maligned in music snob circles.
And none of their albums are more maligned than 1969’s The Soft Parade.
Even as a Doors fan, I have passed up every copy of this record I have ever seen. But Monday morning, a friend of mine handed me a stack of records, with this among them.
For being psychedelic mainstays, the Doors are tragically unhip among certain musical circles.
A lot of that has to do with “Hello, I Love You,” a hokey, clumsy pop single released by a band that just the year earlier released two classic albums in the psychedelic canon. It has always been my least favorite Doors single (well…excepting their cover of Backdoor Man).
The Doors never returned to the jammy, poetic, psychedelic jazz rock of their first two albums, which is a true shame (this is said with complete ignorance to their post-Morrison catalogue).
While it was touted as a comeback for the Doors after a couple less-than-impressive albums, Morrison Hotel never strays too far from heavy blues rock, lingering in their trademark low-key, jazzy drone jams only briefly for Blue Sunday and the debut-outtake Indian Summer. The end result is an record that is nowhere near as interesting as their far superior first two. I’m not sure how much longer this has on my shelf.
When a debut album is as lauded and as scattered as The Doors’, there’s usually a couple of misfires before they find their niche and release another great record. The Doors not only managed to release a sophomore record that overshadowed its predecessor, but they did so within the same calendar year. And to tell the truth, Strange Days has always been my favorite Doors record.
For whatever reason, the Doors have a pretty soiled reputation among music aficionados. I do not understand this. Maybe it has something to do with the late Jim Morrison, a charismatic, controversy-stricken frontman obsessed with drugs, obscenity, and Greek literature who was the only (really) good looking member of the band, who’s death at 27 (which now at 25 I realize is even younger than I thought) exalted him to the same heights as Jimi Hendrix, Robert Johnson, and Janis Joplin. His face has been put on t-shirts and posters and (in more than one case) blankets with the heading “American Poet,” which is a difficult case to make in the face of people like Walt Whitman, e. e. cummings, Alan Ginsberg, and even fellow musician Bob Dylan (the fact that these t-shirts are worn by teenagers who have never read a poem outside of English class only exacerbates the resentment).