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| From | "Larry O Dean" <larryodean@poetrycenter.org> |
| Subject | Re: I'll stand up for the Doors |
| Date | Fri, 27 Apr 2007 09:51:04 -0600 |
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This is a well-reasoned and impassioned reasoning for the Doors. I second
it, and would add, for what it's worth, that considering the era in which
they were popular, they were an anti-hippie band with a much darker agenda,
kind of like a West Coast Velvet Underground. That alone sets that apart
from 99% of their contemporaries.
Jim Kosmicki writes:
> I've often felt that people let their hatred/revulsion of Morrison
> fanatics cloud their experience of the actual music. The sound of the
> Doors is good -- they were very strong musicians, and the timber and
> sound of Morrison's voice fit the overall sound of the band incredibly
> well. Were many of the lyrics pretentious wanna-be poetry? Yes. But
> that's not just Morrison -- many rock lyricists give in to poetic
> pretentiousness. And Morrison's lyrics are not nearly as pretentious as
> they are claimed to be. His CULT tend to be overly pretentious -- he was
> an adequate poet at best, but then again, he wasn't a poet -- he was a
> singer in a rock'n'roll band. But don't mix up his cult with him or his
> band.
>
> Maybe it's that The Doors were the 60's band that hit me at my "oh my
> god music can matter" stage that Stewart and others have been
> discussing. But I don't think it's just that. I read the diatribes
> against The Doors, and I recognize much of what people complain about,
> but then I listen to the music again, and it doesn't matter. It works
> for me. I have the two post-Morrison Doors albums, and the musicianship
> is still solid. It's clearly the same band, but without the "sound" of
> Morrison's voice, it's also not complete.
>
> I've begun listening to more non-English language music, and have come
> to the conclusion that lyrics are secondary to my listening pleasure.
> (note that I said MY listening pleasure, not yours). The words are
> composed of sounds, and the combination of those sounds make the vocals
> another instrument in the overall mix of the band. Yes, there are
> occasions when I pay attention to the lyrics and what they are saying,
> but I've also found that that's almost always with artists who have very
> simple instrumentation behind them, as if to not distract the ear from
> the higher level meaning behind the sounds of the words. (I hope this
> makes sense).
>
> Getting back to the Doors -- Morrison's voice and the sounds of his
> lyrics fit the band's music so well. What the lyrics were saying doesn't
> really mean much to my enjoyment of the music.
>
>
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