doors, the (1967) - the doors: elektra records 1970 reissue, EKS-74007

By the time I entered High School music was in a very weird place because there was so much diversity.  It was a rare time when disco and hard rock and soft rock and stadium rock and bubblegum rock and punk rock and funk rock all lived side by side: Billy Joel, the Bee Gees, Rush, Journey, Jackson Browne, Donna Summer, Led Zeppelin, The Clash, Pink Floyd, Earth Wind & Fire, Blondie, Fleetwood Mack, the Doobie Brothers, Neil Diamond, ELO, the Who, the Stones, P-Funk, Bruce Springsteen, and more were all incredibly popular, and it wasn't at all strange to hear something from each of them during the course of a day.

But even though it was more than five years after Jim Morrison ended up getting the Marat treatment, the Doors continued to be wildly popular at my school.  Moreso than the Beatles and moreso than many of the (then) current bands. In reality it wasn’t all that surprising.  The recent release of Apocalypse Now helped reinject the Doors music into mainstream pop culture, and both KMET and KLOS (the local rock stations) had the Doors on regular rotation – in fact KLOS even offered their iconic rainbow stickers with the band’s name:

And, of course, there was that whole SoCal connection, too.  The Doors were one of those bands that really could only have been forged in the crucible of the cultural upheaval of the late 60’s amidst the fertile swirl that was Los Angeles. In a very real sense, the band had LA in their DNA which kept them locally relevant and important throughout a decade after they had stopped being a band. The Doors were ours just like the Beatles belonged to Liverpool or Buddy Holly belonged to Texas.

Now, while everyone acknowledges the importance of the San Francisco scene on music in the late 60's, it seems as if what was happening 350 miles down the coast gets ignored.  But consider the time and the place and the acts that were born there: Frank Zappa, The Beach Boys, the Mamas and the Papas, Sly and the Family Stone, Buffalo Springfield, and others.  What you begin to see is that the music from LA was developing along a different path than in the Bay Area.  The LA scene was more about bringing experimentation and diversity – using surf sounds along with some jazz and funk, with a lot of blues, psychadelic and folk mixed in.  The result was music that tended to defy easy categorization but was really a strong reflection of a local culture blending hippies, squares, gurus, freaks, and dropouts.

So when Jim Morrison met Ray Manzarek on Venice Beach and explained that he was taking notes at a rock n roll concert going on in his head, it made the sort of perfect sense in exactly the same way it wouldn't if they had met in, say, the Bronx.  And only in that wild, open, and uninhibited land of Los Angeles in the late 60’s could The Doors release what might well be among the most potent debut albums in history.

Side 1: Break On Through Soul Kitchen The Crystal Ship Twentieth Century Fox Alabama Song (Whisky Bar) Light My Fire
Side 2: Back Door Man I Looked At You End Of The Night Take It As It Comes The End

Look at that song list.  It’s almost a greatest hits collection. And from the opening organ riff for Break On Through, you just know you’re in for an incredibly groovy ride.

One of the things that comes immediately clear on listening is that even though the Doors were a blues-influenced band, they also had a serious Booker T & the MGs thing going on, with that whole Memphis Soul vibe created by Stax Records.  And that bluesly-soul sound is clear on Break On Through, Soul Kitchen, and their cover of Howlin’ Wolf’s Back Door Man.

But it would be a huge oversimplification to just call The Doors a blues bad, or The Doors a blues album.  There’s much more than that, from the playfully bizarre Alabama Song to the lusty Light My Fire, to the Gotterdammerung of their epic The End.

One thing that isn’t an oversimplification, though, is recognizing the Doors as a band very well suited as a soundtrack for someone looking to take some time to mellow out. Although true of all the songs on this album, both Light My Fire and The End, with their extended musical interludes, are seemingly composed expressly for burning a jay and letting some time pass.  Fire in particular is perfect for this, and if you time it right you can start your time-warp just as Manzarek’s organ escorts you down a rabbit hole into a lush maze, and just when you think you might get lost Krieger’s smooth classical Spanish-tinged guitar comes along to guide you out.

And through it all are the silky, hypnotic vocals. Morrison’s voice has the same sort of syrupy allure as the finest crooners of the 50’s, but with a touch of malice and familiarity with mind-altering experiences that makes it dangerous.  The closest description would be Tony Bennett singing while on a mushroom trip.

The Doors as both band and album is definitely of a time and place, but also transcends time or place.  It's as heavy an album today as it was released even if it is clearly something that belongs in a past era.

Up next: Prog gets a vasectomy

don't tell a soul (1989) - the replacements: sire records, 1-25831

The post-punk world of rock was a very weird place.  New wave, new romantic, electronica, hair metal, and goth all flourished in the wake of the musical freedom left in the residue of the punk revolution.

College indie rock was another format that had its moment in the sun.  Typified by bands like REM, the Lemonheads, the Plimsouls, Dinosaur Jr, and Dramarama, this was a weird amalgam of what could be only called folk-punk.  It had the raw honesty of punk, but it was almost always framed in this soft, fuzzy cocoon of non-threatening music.

A lot of this college-indie rock was little more than brooding navel-gazing stuff focused on the angst of the post-boomers coming into adulthood.  It wasn’t emo, though it certainly did help launch such saccharine bands like Goo Goo Dolls and Radiohead, and it wasn’t really punk, though it did express the sort of disillusionment that would feature so prominently in grunge.   At best indie rock was a fantastic blend of musical skill and astute social commentary. At worst it was a mess of aimless self-indulgence. Basically the musical equivalent of a buffer in chemistry, maintaining a neutral pH of “Meh”.

The Replacements was one of the few indie bands  that showed just how good the post-punk scene could be, peaking with their 1987 album, Pleased to Meet Me.  The success of that album inspired them to break out of the confines of the indie niche and so they tried for mainstream appeal with Don’t Tell A Soul.

Side 1: Talent Show Back to Back We’ll Inherit the Earth Achin’ to Be They’re Blind
Side 2: Anywhere Better Than Here Asking Me Lies I’ll Be You I Won’t Rock N Roll Ghost Darlin’ One

I haven’t listened to this album since the early 90’s, so putting it on the table was a bit like stepping into the wayback machine.  From the opening few notes of Talent Show, the songs were all familiar too me, but not distinctly memorable.  In fact, listening to this album was very much like having a prolonged and somewhat irritating attack of déjà vu, in that I had this strong sense I had heard it and enjoyed it sometime in the past, but I couldn’t actually remember doing so.

By the time I was near the end of side 1 I began to more fully realize why, and after the second song on side 2 it was clear.  This album is a perfect reflection of an aimless and sullen 25 year old unsure of where their life is going and unwilling to actually take any action or responsibility.  There is a level of maturity in the music, but the lyrics in particular are almost completely void of experience and understanding needed to properly place it into any real context.  Just like the generation from which it came and to whom it’s directed, Don’t Tell A Soul drips with the affected ennui and nihilism so common among young adults who still have the residue of the certainty and arrogant ignorance of their adolescence, and who are more than willing to wallow in artificial trauma while deluding themselves that it's a form of expressing a genuine pain (rather than pure narcissistic indulgence).  It’s a perfect reflection of the bored, uninspired, self-pity of Gen X circa 1989,   exemplified in the half-sung, half-mumbled chorus of We’ll Inherit the Earth:

We’ll inherit the earth / but we don’t want it
Laid our claim at birth / but we deny it

Wow.  Is that pathetic or what.

When I was 25 this album seemed deep and insightful.  Today it seems like the silly whinging of an annoying millennial.  I guess that means they really aren't any worse than we were.

Up next: All Hail the Lizard King!

ain't love grand (1985) - x: elektra records, 60430

Despite whether you believe Punk originated in the garbage-strewn streets of New York or the garbage-strewn streets of London, it’s hard to argue (and I’ve made this point before) that punk was nurtured and allowed to fully mature in the garbage-strewn streets of LA.

In much the same way that British Invasion bands like the Stones, Cream, the Who, and the Beatles got their inspiration from American blues, R&B, and country music, American bands like Black Flag, The Germs, Fear, Circle Jerks, Black Randy, The Weirdos, The Angry Samoans, The Plugz, 45 Grave, and more had their creative juices primed by British music.

Except for X. They were 100% rooted in ‘Murrican music of Appalachia and the South East.

X was a band that was branded as punk out of convenience, because of where and when they emerged.  Pretty much any band starting in LA in the very late 70’s or early 80’s was thought of as a de facto punk band, unless it was very clear they weren’t.  Besides, when they started, there was very little about X to suggest they weren’t a punk band.  Exene had funny hair.  Their songs were short and very fast.  They lyrics involved cursing and were subversive.  The band members had sardonic pseudonyms.  And they were intentionally un-glamorous.

So, even though X was part of the explosion of SoCal punk, they were always somehow a bit different.  While they definitely had punk sensibilities, they never really fit the restrictions of that label.  For instance, where most U.S. punk bands emulated the snarling, violent, confrontationally belligerent sound of the Sex Pistols, X tended to find their muse within domestic borders.   Their music had the delicate twangy guitar of rockabilly rather than a full-volume chainsaw roar.  Their lyrics tended to be less superficially belligerent and more nuanced in their defiance and subversion. And their singing tended to actually harmonize John Doe’s baritone with Exene’s atonal whine, rather than the usual punk style of unmelodic screams.

Side 1: Burning House of Love Love Shack My Soul Cries Your Name My Goodness Around My Heart
Side 2: What's Wrong With Me All Or Nothing Watch The Sun Go Down I'll Stand Up For You Little Honey Supercharged

By the time they released Ain’t Love Grand! the chasm between rockabilly and punk had grown to the point where calling X punk was getting more and more difficult to justify.  Sure, there are some punk moments on the album with e What’s Wrong With Me and Burning House of Love, but then there are some decidedly un-punk moments too. For example. My Goodness recalls Big Mama Thornton, while Watch the Sun Go Down sounds like something leftover from Springsteen’s early years, complete with Clarence Clemons-like sax.

More than that, the album strikes a much more introspective stance rather than one of anger and frustration.  Around My Heart, Love Shack, and My Soul Cries Your Name tend to examine the emotional ringer of life, in the same way that Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn songs do.

And this shift into a more rockabilly/blues style actually resulted in even better musicianship, as truly American music was the perfect fit for X.  Billy Zoom and DJ Bonebreak are not simply punk musicians – these dudes have some serious chops. They’d be right in place ripping things in a honky tonk or on stage with the likes of Clapton. And John Doe could easily play with Johnny Cash, Roger McGuinn, or T Bone Burnett.

In the end, Ain’t Love Grand! is a good listen, but shows the beginning of an inevitable decline in ganas for X.  In the X canon it rates along Hey Zeus as their less substantial albums, but that would still rate it as extraordinary for many other bands.

Up next: Proto-Emo Indie Rock

diamond dogs (1975) - bowie: rca records, CPL1-0576

“… and in the death, as the last few corpses lay rotting on the slimy thoroughfare …”

With those words David Bowie opens his album exploring a very bleak, post-apocalyptic dystopian future in which humanity tries to eke out a survival in a landscape populated with mutants and paranoia.

Now, in any context that’s some pretty heavy dope.  But as subject matter for an album, it’s quite ballsy.  Of course, if there was ever a time in which the Gotterdammerung of the end of the world could be subject matter for a rock album, it was the 70’s.  Consider that while the 70’s got a lot of things very wrong (leisure suits, soft jazz, etc) the one thing it not only got right, but got righter than any other decade before or since was post-apocalyptic dystopian paranoia.  The books and movies of the 70’s were filled with the fait accompli of the world ending in a massive firestorm of H-bombs leaving a wasteland of desolation.

Good times.

So, Bowie deciding to make an album drawing heavily on both 70’s apocalyptic paranoia and Orwellian dystopia?  Yeah, baby!

Side 1: Future Legend Diamond Dogs Sweet Thing Candidate Sweet Thing (Reprise) Rebel Rebel
Side 2: Rock n Roll With Me We Are The Dead 1984 Big Brother The Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family

Diamond Dogs is very bleak in both lyric and sound.  The music is very raw and occasionally desperate, and features passages considerably adulterated with electronic elements.  Not in the sort of minimalist electronic ambience of his Eno years, but more in a gnarly savage way.  Which fits perfectly, because the world of Diamond Dogs is gnarly and savage, filled with dangerous scavengers called Diamond Dogs:

Crawling down the alley on your hands and knee
I'm sure you're not protected, for it's plain to see
The Diamond Dogs are poachers and they hide behind trees
Hunt you to the ground they will, mannequins with kill appeal

Even more good times.

Beyond that, Bowie again shows that he retains an almost cellular understanding of the jaded disaffection, selfish nihilism, and bloody-minded need for rebellion of adolescence, and in the process he seems to have quite accurately predicted the coming punk movement – at least in terms of the youthful agita and cynicism of Rebel Rebel:

You've got your mother in a whirl / She's not sure if you're a boy or a girl
Hey babe, your hair's alright / Hey babe, let's go out tonight

Just as Diamond Dogs tells of civilization in transition, it also tells of Bowie in transition.  DD
marked the last of Bowie’s “glam” albums, on the way to a more artistically experimental phase.  And the result is an album that not only draws the curtain on Bowie’s glamness, but also served notice that glam itself was beginning to end.

I hadn’t listened to DD start-to-finish for a while, so when listening this time I was surprised at how much memory came flooding back.  Sure, it helped that it was in the evening and I had already settled in with a drink, but nonetheless the experience was pretty cool.  Diamond Dogs is absolutely a time-capsule in the sense that even though the music and themes and certain lyrics are quite dated and quaint by today’s standards, it was one of those situations where the music served as the portal by which I could go back to being 14 and confused and sullen and pessimistic, and when music was a reflection of overall paranoia and uncertainty of the time.

And that was cool.

Up next: The beginning of the end for the last true American Rock-n-Roll band

caress of steel (1975) - rush: mercury records, SRM-1-1046

Pretty much everyone I know is a Rush fan whether they want to admit it or not - and for some reason many folks tend to think admitting it is kind of like admitting one is an alcoholic or something.  Whatever.  The point is, all those closet Rush fans seem to limit their attention to the Moving Pictures album (well, maybe that and 2112), and don't really pay much attention to the rest of Rush's catalog.

I can understand that, I suppose.  After all, Tom Sawyer is one of those songs that really did transcend radio back in the day, and set a mark of popularity and appeal that is virtually impossible to duplicate.

But Rush wasn't born with that one song.  In fact, Moving Pictures was the band's eighth album, so there is a lot of material preceding it.  And while none of it may be quite as iconic or appealing as Tom Sawyer, there is a lot of good stuff, well worth a listen.

For example, Caress of Steel.

Side 1: Bastille Day I Think I'm Going Bald Lakeside Park The Necromancer Into the Darkness Under the Shadow Return of the Prince
Side 2 The Fountain of Lamneth In the Valley Didacts and Narpets No One at the Bridge Panacea Bacchus Plateau The Fountain

Caress of Steel is Rush's third album, and it marks the change from a pure hard rock into the more experimental style that defined their classic years.  In fact, Caress is such a transitional album, one can actually hear the evolution as the tracks move from their early Zeppelin-influenced heavy blues of Bastille Day to the adventurous metal-prog sound of The Fountain of Lamneth - complete with the proggy trappings of needlessly pretentious lyrics, mythic references and names, extended length (a full album side), and the sub-titled various movements within the song.

Caress isn't exactly a concept album in the sense of a common thread running through all of the songs, though it does have concepts within it.  Clearly the 20 minute Fountain of Lamneth is one cohesive song telling one cohesive story about some poor slob searching the world for a legendary fountain, and is (from what I can tell) an allegory about living life the right way and trying to find a higher meaning.

But regardless of whether the lyrics are pompous or insightful or silly or deep, the real appeal of this album is how it so clearly marks the development of Rush from heavy to experimental.  Even better is how, in retrospect, the album makes for an incredible listen when you have an hour or so to fill and want to get into a bit of thoughtful entertainment. Somewhere between the lyrics and the music this album provided the first real glimpse of the promise of Rush actually having something greater behind the veil, as opposed to bands like Styx or Chicago, which really didn't.

Up next: Orwell goes to the Dogs