My Day Of Hanging With The Lizard King, Part One

Dan Gibson | May 6, 2008 1:15 am
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In case you forgot, the last time I filled in here at Idolator, I caused a bit of drama with my contention that the Doors are the worst band in pop music history. A whopping 134 comments worth of trouble, in fact. I try to be an openminded guy, despite what some of you seem to believe about my cognitive abilities, so I’m giving Jim and his pals another chance today and listening to nothing but Doors albums. After all,if the Doors can nearly sell as many albums worldwide as Boney M, there must be something I’m missing. How’s it going, you might ask?

Eh, OK. I’m midway through Waiting For The Sun at the moment, and the experience hasn’t been quite the aural horrorfest that I would have imagined. But I’m still having a hard time understanding the overall appeal for anyone without a nostalgic attachment to the Whiskey-A-Go-Go. The band does have a decent touch when they can keep the track lengths down to tidy singles, although the appeal of Jim’s habit of repeating the song title over and over with various inflections wears off very, very quickly over the course of these early albums. I think I might feel better about the whole thing if tracks like “Horse Latitudes” showed the band with some sense of humor, instead of some bizarro ‘shroom fueled poetic bravado, but it’s not the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, I suppose.

I’ll give you people this much: “Moonlight Drive” is a pretty good song.

The Doors might edge ahead of the Eagles in my book by the end of the day, but there’s still Morrison Hotel to go, so anything’s possible.

Earlier: You Know Who Really Sucks? The Doors You Know Who Doesn’t Suck That Much? The Doors.