THE DOORS

Sometimes, when someone who had very much potential die at an early age, they tend to get a certain degree of reaised attention. Attention they might not otherwise have gotten.

For some reason, many seem to think Jim Morrison is god. Many of these seem to base it around the movie by Oliver Stone (of which keyboardist Ray Manzarek sais "if you half a brain you might think that that movie is the true story"), others have a smoewhat more realistic aproach to his legend, but they both have in common that i am neither. I won't dig into whether Jim Morrison was or wasn't god, i will just say that for me, The Doors is not about Jim Morrison. I think that There are far better singers, both blues and otherwise, and that the so called poetry does not get me at all. Yeah, it fits the music, but in no way is he even in the same league as Bob Dylan, Peter Hammill or any of the big ones. No, the Doors for me is about the music around Jim Morrisson. The Doors were at their absolute best when they just went with being a slightly psychedelic jazz band, such as on "Light my fire" or "The end". Both of those songs are the absolute masterpieces on this album, even if many of the shorter songs are of an extremely high caliber as well, and feature just the right amount of improvisation from each member of the band.

Sound quality is notoriously horrendous, but at the same time, this gives a hollow and mysterious sound, which fits perfectly into the ambience of the music.

But really, the only reason, despite my less than fanatic apreciation of Jim Morrison, that i do not award the full five stars to this undoubtedly classic album, full of great organ solo, guitar improvisation and dark ambience, is that i am totally allergic to the "Alabama Song" I hated it the first time i heard it, and it han't grown on me. Many people like it though, but in my eyes there is a straight line, stylistically, running through all the songs on the album, a line which gets completely mashed up by "Alabama song" and, although to a lesser extent "Back door man".

Anyway, i won't even bother recommending this to anyone, it is an album to just have to have heard, regardless of what music you like, so.. buy it and get it over with, there is a great chance you'll love it. I know i do in my own special way.