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 Post subject: The Doors - A Journey with the Lizard King
PostPosted: Mon August 09, 2021 11:37 am 
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As promised, I am starting my first artist journey in a long while, The Doors. I am sure as always there will be surprises along the way. Again this is a band I know the hits, a couple of the albums, and a band I started listening straight through without discussing but then stopped when distracted by other listening. The focus will be studio but some live recordings are bound to find their way in…


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 Post subject: Re: The Doors - A Journey with the Lizard King
PostPosted: Mon August 09, 2021 12:01 pm 
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liebzz wrote:
As promised, I am starting my first artist journey in a long while, The Doors. I am sure as always there will be surprises along the way. Again this is a band I know the hits, a couple of the albums, and a band I started listening straight through without discussing but then stopped when distracted by other listening. The focus will be studio but some live recordings are bound to find their way in…

:thumbsup:

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 Post subject: Re: The Doors - A Journey with the Lizard King
PostPosted: Mon August 09, 2021 12:06 pm 
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Live at London Fog 1966

For my first surprise, we start at the way beginning. This is a recording of a partial show before the release of their debut album. The band is as rough as the recording here: raw, passionate, and full of potential. Relying primarily on blues covers, rearranged so that the keys are really leading the way with Jim Morrison’s vocals, each provides a fascinating take on some classics. Rock Me Baby, Baby Please Don’t Go, I’m Your Hoochie Coochie Man, and Lucile are all full of energy and power, while the 2 originals, Strange Days and You Make Me Real are solid foundations of the band to come. Maybe not an epic performance, it much like listening to early shows from any band, it’s more about finding spaces you get to eventually listen to them fill in. A solid start.


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 Post subject: Re: The Doors - A Journey with the Lizard King
PostPosted: Mon August 09, 2021 2:23 pm 
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The Doors

We start off with one of the great debut albums - this particularly unsurprising since the Doors sort of arrive at the start of the golden era of album making (juxtaposed to singles being the dominant format). The album is cohesive and shows the band at its best right out of the gates. I mean, what’s a more spectacular arrival than the first song off the first album being Break On Through, a song that sits among the most classic of classic rock songs!?

The true value here though is listening past that. Soul Kitchen seems right down the center of the Doors sound, where the keys and vocals hold the focus of the song and everything else serves to flush the song out. I quite enjoyed the duo of Twentieth Century Fox and Alabama Song, where we see them playing loose and not taking themselves too seriously. In thinking about Light My Fire, a song I have anecdotally found divisive amongst peers, I fall on the side of enjoying this, both in Jim’s delivery but more in the extended breakdown, where you finally get a polished sense of the band chemistry (as opposed to The End, where the band sounds raw and energized in an unforced manner). Back Door Man is another highlight of pure Doorsiness (new term). As I began to note above, the strongest track for me had to be The End, which yes is sort of rambling, but it accomplishes this in a good way and certainly a way that isn’t contrived. Their messes on this album really become more inspired than cloying, and demonstrate some good risk taking - they sound like a live band figuring it out as they go along. That would be right in my wheelhouse.


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 Post subject: Re: The Doors - A Journey with the Lizard King
PostPosted: Mon August 09, 2021 9:36 pm 
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Live at the Matrix 3/7/67

This is another partial set, reconfigured to track in the same order as the songs appear on the album. It could be the audience nature of the recording or just where they were on that particular night, but the band and Morrison are particularly raw and energized here. Break On Through feels on the verge of collapse when a solid extended breakdown pulls them all back in. The jam on Light My Fire is on point and could have gone on another 20 minutes just in how expertly Krieger and Manzarek are interweaving their instruments. The End feels like the breaking point but just manages to hold it together. Mostly, there’s not a single song here of the 7 or so that feels reigned in or half assed…they’re pushing the limits of these songs and delivering exciting performances. If only it was the whole show and in sequence to really get the sense of this event.


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 Post subject: Re: The Doors - A Journey with the Lizard King
PostPosted: Tue August 10, 2021 11:48 am 
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Strange Days

On this second album, and faced with the impossible task of following their first album, the Doors took a bunch of songs they wrote around the same time, but recording them a few months later. There’s not much lost in the quality of the songs, which are still great, but notably they seem more adventurous in their recording. Here they kick in a bunch of additional instruments to flesh the songs out, and lean much more into psychedelia. Even the most straight forward of songs pushes in some off kilter way. Love Me Two Times rumbles along like a typical Doors song, but there’s something to it that keeps it interesting. If there’s a strain that holds this album together, the songs feel unified in their status as misfits. Sometimes that weirdness gets a little too weird, but in total, this pushes the conversation forward to great places, like the funky and quirky blues of Moonlight Drive, the easy to digest solitude of People Are Strange, and the epic finale When the Music’s Over. Impressive that they continued to stretch rather than simply deliver more of the same.


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 Post subject: Re: The Doors - A Journey with the Lizard King
PostPosted: Tue August 10, 2021 3:44 pm 
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The five big songs off Strange Days are great the others super forgettable.


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 Post subject: Re: The Doors - A Journey with the Lizard King
PostPosted: Tue August 10, 2021 4:10 pm 
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Waiting for the Sun

On this third release, it seems the Doors or or less had their regression to a mostly mediocre effort. Whereas in Strange Days the off kilter arrangements and lyrics pull you into a world of outcasts and tossed around tracks, in Waiting for the Sun those experiments feel as if they work in the opposite direction, alienating the listener because the point of it all doesn’t seem as immediate or evident. Instead, the songs that deliver the goods are the more straight forward ones, like Love Street, We Could Be So Good Together, and Five to One. Sure, there’s interesting stuff happening in places, like the duo of The Unknown Soldier and Spanish Caravan, but suffice it to say that on this one I mostly don’t get it. The one hit song that sits on this one, Hello I Love You, is pretty good too though.


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 Post subject: Re: The Doors - A Journey with the Lizard King
PostPosted: Tue August 10, 2021 11:12 pm 
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I think the first two albums are pretty stellar. Waiting For The Sun may not be as strong but it still has some essential Doors songs. Listening to the album again makes me think that Spanish Caravan could be the inspiration for Black Sabbath songs such as Planet Caravan, Solitude, or Laguna Sunrise. Those first three albums were done in 18 months.

Looking forward to the rest of the album reviews.

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 Post subject: Re: The Doors - A Journey with the Lizard King
PostPosted: Tue August 10, 2021 11:22 pm 
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whats going on here
looks like a lot of drugs

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 Post subject: Re: The Doors - A Journey with the Lizard King
PostPosted: Tue August 10, 2021 11:32 pm 
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Sometimes Five To One is my favorite Doors song.


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 Post subject: Re: The Doors - A Journey with the Lizard King
PostPosted: Tue August 10, 2021 11:37 pm 
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surfndestroy wrote:
Those first three albums were done in 18 months.

This really says a lot, there was so much creative fervor pent up that they hit the ground running and didn't really lose steam until outside influence came in to play. I believe Waiting for the Sun was the album where Rothchild really started putting his foot down as perfectionist-producer and Morrison combated that with drinking heavily.

Celebration of the Lizard would fit here chronologically.

surfndestroy wrote:
Looking forward to the rest of the album reviews.

This really has me queuing up the Perception box set real soon.

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 Post subject: Re: The Doors - A Journey with the Lizard King
PostPosted: Tue August 10, 2021 11:43 pm 
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liebzz wrote:
Live at the Matrix 3/7/67
Damn, you made me pull this out to give a listen. It's good. I get the feeling that they didn't quite realize how good they could be yet. Their debut album had only been released two months prior and Light My Fire was not a single nor hit yet.

As leibzz mentioned, the interplay during Light My Fire is first class. The way the instruments interact with each other, they just seemed ahead of the game. They were able to add a type of suspense to quiet sections of songs that is pretty cool.

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 Post subject: Re: The Doors - A Journey with the Lizard King
PostPosted: Tue August 10, 2021 11:46 pm 
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oasisfan35 wrote:
Celebration of the Lizard would fit here chronologically.
I have that song as a 17 minute 'an experiment/work in progress' on my cd of Waiting For The Sun.

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 Post subject: Re: The Doors - A Journey with the Lizard King
PostPosted: Wed August 11, 2021 11:44 am 
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Live at the Bowl ‘68

This is the first jump into a live set that’s at least I believe a complete set (there’s Live at the Hollywood Bowl which I believe is highlights from the same show). Really, it’s incredible that there are such massive peaks and low valleys in their sets. When the band is kicking in high gear, they are awesome. But the line between genius and belligerent is apparent very fine for them. So combined with moments of brilliance, which is at any point they are taking on a conceptualized song, amazing…but then you get about 5-6 minutes or Jim Morrison rambling in what sounds like an acid trip combined with far too much whisky and beer. Moonlight Drive, Spanish Caravan, and especially Back Door Man are great here. The End has its moments in either direction.

This show does feel a bit like this great band is being tortured by Morrison, and boundless talent getting in his and his bands own way.


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 Post subject: Re: The Doors - A Journey with the Lizard King
PostPosted: Wed August 11, 2021 12:06 pm 
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Not even remotely familiar with their live stuff. When/to what extent does bass guitar show up on stage? Did they have a live bassist for Morrison Hotel and LA Woman?


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 Post subject: Re: The Doors - A Journey with the Lizard King
PostPosted: Wed August 11, 2021 12:14 pm 
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At least here, the bass guitar if it’s there is unremarkable.


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 Post subject: Re: The Doors - A Journey with the Lizard King
PostPosted: Wed August 11, 2021 12:25 pm 
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I think they used Elvis’s bassist on some later studio stuff.


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 Post subject: Re: The Doors - A Journey with the Lizard King
PostPosted: Wed August 11, 2021 5:16 pm 
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The Soft Parade

The Doors with string and horns!! Okay, so that’s the actual maximum amount of excitement you’ll get from me on this album, which for me was a collection of mediocre songs that they seem to try to pump up with additional instrumentation. From the alternate takes I heard of a few songs without the strings and horns, they just went the wrong direction there. Still, we have some gems in Touch Me, the crazy and unexpected Runnin’ Blue, an okay Wishful Sinful, and the mostly masterful The Soft Parade. Also, bonus track Who Scared You is quite good. The rest I barely remember because I think the instruments and sounds were buried in the more is more approach to this album. I know this will change but so far for me this has been a slow and steady slide from the mountaintop of a debut to now the fourth straight album that’s a little less than the one before it.


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 Post subject: Re: The Doors - A Journey with the Lizard King
PostPosted: Wed August 11, 2021 6:28 pm 
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liebzz wrote:
The Soft Parade

The Doors with string and horns!! Okay, so that’s the actual maximum amount of excitement you’ll get from me on this album, which for me was a collection of mediocre songs that they seem to try to pump up with additional instrumentation. From the alternate takes I heard of a few songs without the strings and horns, they just went the wrong direction there. Still, we have some gems in Touch Me, the crazy and unexpected Runnin’ Blue, an okay Wishful Sinful, and the mostly masterful The Soft Parade. Also, bonus track Who Scared You is quite good. The rest I barely remember because I think the instruments and sounds were buried in the more is more approach to this album. I know this will change but so far for me this has been a slow and steady slide from the mountaintop of a debut to now the fourth straight album that’s a little less than the one before it.

Great take. It was like they were going for a Burt Bacharach thing or something with the production. Adult contemporary before adult contemporary existed.

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