Oct 12

The Doors

Raise your hand if you don’t like The Doors.

Now, smack yourself with that same hand.

What the fuck?  Who does not like The Doors?

I mean, aside from Chris Wage and, apparently, Knuck. 

How can this be?  Were you dropped on your heads as small children?

I just don’t understand.

27 thoughts on “The Doors”

  1. Amanda hates the Doors even more than I do. I will at least politely hum along to "Light My Fire".The thing you have to understand about the Doors is that they are basically a giant slap in the face to musicianship in general. The Doors, by and large, were completely terrible musicians. Terrible. And they were wrapped up in a neat little bow in the form of a guy who couldn’t even sing to save his life, either.Now, I appreciate the Doors as icons of a cultural movement and for their kitsch value. I appreciate Jim Morrison as a fantastically entertaining character. I can even admit that they had some fun hits. But objectively speaking, as a rock band, the Doors just weren’t really that good.

  2. When the Doors started out, they were a stupid band doing stupid songs. (I’m using "stupid" in the Chuck Eddy sense here, i.e. "not self-reflective".) They were pretty good then–I’m not saying they were the Zombies or something, but they were fun. But then they (I’m using "they" in the sense of "Jim Morrison" here) started to think they were smart. Listening to a stupid band think they’re being smart is not fun. So from that point on, they sucked. QED

  4. "The thing you have to understand about the Doors is that they are basically a giant slap in the face to musicianship in general. The Doors, by and large, were completely terrible musicians. Terrible. And they were wrapped up in a neat little bow in the form of a guy who couldn’t even sing to save his life, either."That’s a much better definition of what I mean by "stupid" in the Chuck Eddy sense than I was able to express myself.

  5. I went through a big Doors phase in the tenth grade. I even tried to appreciate the "poetry" of Jim Morrison.Today, I don’t own anything of theirs on CD.

  6. So if I like some of the Doors stuff (Light my Fire; People are Strange; the way Coppolla used "The End" in Apocalypse Now) but not the Doors in general, do I slap myself or not? Maybe just a tickle….

  7. I’d listen to a greatest hits CD, but there is no way I’d be an archivist. Though, one of my favorite lines in rock is the following;"Well… I woke up this morning, and I had… myself… a beer."

  8. Something about the Doors and that Ray Manzarek’s feller’s keyboard playing makes me cock my head like my dog does when she’s trying to understand what I’m saying to her. As in "say whuuuut?"

  9. <i>I went through a big Doors phase in the tenth grade. I even tried to appreciate the "poetry" of Jim Morrison.</i>Oh dear God, I had the same formative experience as Sarcastro! My life is either null and void or complete.

  15. Like Sarcastro, I went through a Doors phase in high school. I think my ears must have been broken then. There are a couple of songs I will still listen to if they come on the radio, but it’s nothing I will buy or seek out.

  17. I don’t think they suck. I disagree with those who criticize their musicianship and envy their success.But, I wore those records out back in Olden Times. It’s the same deal with Zeppelin and some of the other bands that people get obsessive about in high school. If you are like me, you played that stuff over and over until the tape melted in the player.Now, if you hear one of the songs by chance, it is a pleasant trip down memory lane. The real losers are the ones who are listening to the same shit from high school and never wanted to hear anything else.You will see them at the next REO Speedwagon/Styx/Motley Crue/Aerosmith/Journey/KISS show at Starwood.

  18. I only own The Doors on vinyl. That’s right vinyl. I made tape copies for myself later on, but they really need to be heard with all the hiss and clutter of vinyl. I got Morrison Hotel for my 5th birthday, my parents had no idea who they were. Doors music is just not HD, CD friendly.I enjoy them as a period sound. They take me back to that time and give everything a 70’s feel. I would say that I listened to them in high school, but I was going through a pseudo-goth Cure phase at that time. I did re-discover them in college and Roadhouse Blues is in the iPod on the Morning Drive playlist.I did the Paris cemetary pilgrimage when I was over there and it just seemed sad and tacky. I wonder if Kurt Cobain’s grave has turned out the same.

  19. I don’t envy their success. They got successful when they were still a fun, stupid band. That was great. But what the success did to their heads and their music was sad.

  20. Enjoying music is about personal opinion, and my personal opinion is that the Doors sucked. And the reason I feel that way is the whole "shaman poet laureat of his generation" crap about Jim Morrison. He forced inflections where the words didn’t fit his sing/song rhyme scheme ("take A long holiday") And he forced stupid metaphors to fit his rhyme scheme. I mean, c’mon, have you ever seen a toad squirm? They hop.I accept and appreciate their place in music history. Even if I think they sucked.But not as bad as RUSH!

  21. Count me as basically pro-Doors. Overrated? Probably, expecially Jim. But for Ray & Robbie I have much love. No, they weren’t virtuosos, but they were innovators — very few innovators are virutosos & vice versa.They merged the blues & psychedelia in a manner no one else had done, laying the groundwork for people like Bowie and Pink Floyd.That said, I met Ray at an event about 10 years ago where he was pimping some new piano-and-poetry thing he was doing, and he sorta come off as a bit of an asshole.

  27. Late to the debate, as usual.I spent too many days and nights riding around stoned in a buddy’s 1977 Pontiac Grand Safari station wagon listening to the "Light My Fire" on a tape deck that had lost the right channel. Think about that…that’s five minutes of Ray Manzarek’s droning keyboards in the foreground while Robby Krieger’s l-o-o-o-ng guitar solo could only barely be heard in the crossover between channels.Warped for life. I vote "no."

Comments are closed.