Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Do The Doors Suck?

Alright so I got a rise out of one of my more loyal readers the other day when I said that the Doors suck.  No, I said the Doors "fucking suck."  Well, this is a matter of taste, I suppose, but I decided to figure out exactly what it was that has made me feel this way for my entire adult life and some of my adolescent life as well.


First off, that fucking organ.  Knock that shit off, man.  So irritating.  It literally has ruined every single song I have ever tried to listen to by the Doors.  Secondly, Jim Morrison just comes across as a hack who wrote a bunch of stuff while fucked up beyond recognition on what ever was the drug de jour.  When you're in high school, you try to find something that has meaning, something that has substance in a musical world full of fake bullshit.  Kids gravitate towards stuff that was written long ago and has a lot of safe, well-documented positive popular opinion.  So you either listen to the Doors, Led Zeppelin, or the Beatles. All three acts are innovators in their own rights.  High school kids latch on to one or two or three of these bands and wear their Jim Morrison shirts to school because it makes them look cool because, well, drugs are cool.  You get beat up wearing a Justin Bieber shirt.  You probably don't get beat up wearing a Jim Morrison shit. The dude was a fuck up.  By the way, I am writing this listening to the Doors, and I must say this organ is so unbelievably goddamn distracting...



The thing that most people may be unaware of is that he didn't write many of the Doors hit songs.  Many people would be surprised to find out that many of their favorite Doors songs were written by Robbie Krieger.  In fact, Krieger wrote Light My Fire, which was their only #1 hit.  You can't give all the credit for the great song writing of the Doors without mentioning Robbie Krieger.  But that just doesn't happen.  Morrison gets the album cover, Morrison gets his face on the t-shirt.




If you were able to take inspiration from the poetry of Jim Morrison, I'm very proud of ya.  Just know that when he wrote it, he probably had no clue what he was saying, due to the quantity and quality of drugs and alcohol in his system.  I know a lot of great stuff was written by people who were fucked up on drugs, but just for the sake of argument here, this dude was exceptional in the fact that it wasn't good.  Know what I mean?


Perhaps if Jim Morrison had lived he could have dispelled the bad poet bullshit he is saddled with to this day, like say "wasn't I a tool bag back then?"  But he died, and he is forever remembered for that.  He died and is a legend, a martyr for rock and roll, and is forever put on the same pedestal as Joplin, Hendrix and Cobain for the same reasons.  The music of the Doors isn't terrible.  It's not.  But it's the goddamned organ, and if you get away from the hits, it's just boring and doesn't really do anything.  Songs like Hello, I Love You are great.  Riders of the Storm can suck my balls.  Break on Through can suck my balls.  Light My Fire would be alright if they turned down that GODDAMNED organ.  


To answer the question posed in the title of this blog post, do the Doors suck?  My answer is...not entirely.  There is a lot of stuff out there that truly does suck (soulja boy) and I would choose the Doors over those shitty artists in a heartbeat.  I respect the swagger of Jim Morrison, all the while wishing people didn't worship the ground he walked on just because he wrote things that made people feel cooler for having tried to interpret and then died before he could do anything uncool.  Maybe I'm just missing something here, but every time I've listened to the Doors, I want to stab my ears out with a number two pencil.  Sorry, that's just the way I feel.  I shouldn't have to apologize, but I'm sure you could tear apart my favorite bands a lot easier than I can do to the Doors but I don't want you to go there.  I know I am in the minority on this subject, but I know I'm not alone in feeling this way either.  But I'm leaving this topic right here at this moment.  I will accept responses but I might not reply.


Have a good day.  

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