Perfectly Normal Scenes Outside the Gold Mine

Album: The Doors, The Doors, 1967 (cassette reissue)

Acquired: I must have bought this at the Little Creek Navy Exchange sometime in the summer of 1986.

Best Track: "Twentieth Century Fox"

Lasting Memory: What memories? I've found my way to far too many next whiskey bars to have any memories.

That preceding sentence is exactly half true and exactly half false. Which segues smoothly into my observation that The Doors were exactly half the best bar band in the world and exactly half the worst psychadelic band in the world. Who, upon hearing Jim and Ray and John and Robbie invite them to break on through the backdoor, man, and sleep all night in their soul kitchen with a twentieth-century fox, could resist?

One the other hand, who, after sailing the crystal ship all the way to the end, wouldn't be tempted to tell the boys to sober up and get back to their day jobs lighting fires at the end of the night so they could cook up more chicken than any man ever seen?

Nobody, that's who. Certainly X couldn't.

I'll have more to say about The Doors' personal and cultural legacy come Wednesday, when I do a post on the band's first greatest hits compilation. Expect diamond-sharp bits of music criticism like "nice use of church organ." For now, I'll just say that whatever Morrison was hoping to evoke when mumbling about "weird scenes inside the gold mine" in the bridge on "The End" is exactly what 90% of The Doors' discography doesn't deliver. That's a good thing.

Up Next: The Doors, Greatest Hits, 1980

P.S. Thanks for your patience. Last week, I had to write a f'ton of articles and rewrite another slew of them. I figure I cranked out somewhere close to 25,000 words last week. Posts will resume, obviously, but they'll be short until I caatch my rhetorical breath. And just so you know, a metric f'ton is about 1.24 standard f'tons. (DAMN! I thought I had coined a term for the new millennium right there. Alas, no.)