Around about the time of the Stone Roses/Happy Mondays hysteria and love of all things Mancunian there was a revival of the psychedelic sounds of the late 60s, up here in Scotland at least.
Everybody was raiding their parents and hippy uncle's record collections for things by The Byrds, Hendrix, Love and especially The Doors. There was quite a cult like worship of Jim Morrison going on which would be further stoked up by the biopic released in 1990. I blame this film for the spread of the wearing of ridiculous leather trousers by fashion victims and progressive house fans alike in the early 90s.
To be honest I was never that impressed with The Doors, one of the hippies had lent me a couple of albums a few years before which included an American Prayer, the posthumous album where recordings of Morrison reading his rather crap poetry was put to music by the surviving members of the band (and to think Malcolm MacLaren was criticised for flogging a dead horse). I had been reliably informed that this album was really brilliant but to me it was a load of self indulgent toss. One of the other albums was the double Best Of job, I quite liked Touch Me and Back Door Man but stuff like The End and When The Music's Over, nope not for me same feelings I had when I listened to The American Prayer.
So one night I was at an indie dance night sometime in either 89 or 90 and I heard this track which was as funky as fuck and sounded really familiar but couldn't place it and then about half way through the music all but stops and the singer talks about Indians dying on the highway and I realised that it was The Doors but this band had never had this kind of effect on me, I think it was the combination of stimulants and atmosphere but this was the perfect tune for that moment.
This is when I'm suppose to say that everything fell into place and I realised how essential the Doors are in the history of rock music; sorry still think that most of it is self indulgent pish but I do, however play Peace Frog quite frequently, enough for me to go out and buy Morrison Hotel on vinyl about a decade or so ago.
The Doors - Peace Frog
4 comments:
If you like a funky door, check out this album...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Circle_%28The_Doors_album%29
This used to get played round here too. It's the clipped wahwah guitar isnt it. Think the Doors said it all in Break On Through- after that they were just repeating themselves. Kind of like the heavy blues of LA Woman, but some of their stuff is just silly.
You are quite right - load of self-indujgent old tosh. Although I do like their 1st album, it's quite exciting in parts, but I bought Waiting For The Sun on a recommendation a few years back, and it's pretty poor. As for the rest? nonsense. Just bought a 5cd Aretha Franklin set, for £15, her first 5 for Atlantic. This is absolutely superb. Fantastic'. And I'm only on track 2 of the first CD!
I have similar feelings about The Doors - 'Break On Through', 'Light My Fire' yes; all that 'poetry' tosh, no. I wonder if anyone likes everything they did? Probably a confused 14 year old girl in Ohio, bless her. What a right royal pain in the derriere Morrison must have been to work with/live with/go for a pizza with.
Word verif (brilliantly) = 'arasholo'
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