Three words: Love. Her. Madly. I'd have mixed it more muscularly, but HUM-babe ! -----Original Message----- From: audities-owner@smoe.org [mailto:audities-owner@smoe.org] On Behalf Of Jim Kosmicki Sent: Friday, April 27, 2007 11:11 AM To: audities@smoe.org; audities@smoe.org Subject: I'll stand up for the Doors 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.