Random Record Revisit [2 for 1]:
Waiting For the Sun – The Doors [1968]
The Soft Parade – The Doors [1969]
Reading the
Wikipedia entry on pianist George Winston upon learning of his passing lead me
back to Tracey’s hard drive to review his The Night Divides the Day: The
Music Of the Doors. [Meh.] But that quick review has led me to revisit my lowest
ranked of the Doors catalog.
I like the first
two Doors records as much as anyone else. Does that mean I like my Doors a
little weird? Maybe. Anything wrong with that? No. I love L.A. Woman. Morrison
Hotel is good. But the middle records of the Jim Morrison Doors catalog
suffer terrible unevenness.
[For the record,
these are the original mixes, I don’t even want to get into remixes of the
Doors catalog for the 40th anniversary box set.]
Starting with Waiting
for the Sun: no one can deny Hello, I Love You. Representative of
the typical Doors song? No. But damn it’s catchy! Love Street might also
not be a typical Doors song but this lilting little ballad is one of my
favorites. A touch of the weirdness returns in the spooky, paranoid Not To
Touch the Earth, which every true Doors fan knows was one section of the
epic Celebration Of the Lizard suite. The poem is printed on the inner
side of the fold over sleeve. Summer’s Almost Gone sounds [sonically]
like it was recorded during the Strange Days sessions. The slide work by
guitarist Robbie Krieger is awesome. Wintertime Love feels like the
Doors plagiarizing their own take of Alabama Song [Whiskey Bar] from the
first album. The Unknown Soldier is okay. It’s one of the few songs in
the Doors catalog that hasn’t aged well. Spanish Caravan is definitely not
a typical Doors song. Great flamenco playing by Robbie Krieger at the opening half
– the electric second half feels forced and unnecessary to me. According to
Wikipedia, My Wild Love is one of Robbie Krieger’s least favorite songs.
Chanting and handclaps? No, thank you. We Could Be So Good Together
again feels like a rip of Alabama Song. [Maybe it’s something with the
time signature?] Yes, the River Knows is a harmless bit of nothing. Here
is some really pretty interplay between Krieger and keyboardist Ray Manzerek here.
And then there’s Five To One. This insistent driving marching beat under
some of the more dated lyrics of The Revolution threatened by events of 1968…
well, that never happened did it?
Overall, I just
find that the good songs don’t carry enough over the bad ones and I still rate
this as a slightly below average album [that’s 3.0 starts on my 5 star system
on Rate Your Music. Average being 3.5]
The Soft Parade
limps right out of the gate with the middle of the road schlock of Tell All the
People. Could this have inspired Over At the Frankenstein Place from
The Rocky Horror Picture Show? Touch Me is alright despite the
strings and horns all over the place. Shaman’s Blues is one of the few
highlights of this record just the four Doors riding this ¾ riff around. Do
It and Easy Ride follow – these are two of the worst songs in the
Doors catalog. Wild Child leads off the B side. This has been one of my
favorites since I first heard it on the Doors tapes made for my back in high
school. Great riffing by Robbie at the start and great slide at the back end. My
winner in the category Worst Doors Song, Runnin’ Blue is next. Senseless
jazz horns followed by a country hoe down? Ugh. Wishful, Sinful feels like
a follow up to Love Street. Here the use of orchestration feels tasteful and
natural where it feels forced and helping to cover up flaws on other tracks. The
lengthy, multi-sectioned title track ends the record. If one likes this, they
might say “it’s a fractured mosaic.” If one is not a fan, they might call it
piecemeal and “a bunch of shit crammed together trying to make something work.”
I prefer “fractured mosaic.”
Where the bad songs
of Waiting For the Sun are merely uninteresting and forgettable, the lowlights
on The Soft Parade leave a depressingly bad taste in my mouth. Neither
of these records will likely find their way onto my playlist in their entirety again.
