For such a humorless lot,
they sure were funny, those Doors:
Let’s, for example, be the first
band in rock to feature an organ.
Let’s write the most iconic organ
riff, as iconic perhaps as the guitar
riff in “You Really Got Me” or
“Satisfaction,” and we’ll feature
that organ riff in our most
successful hit song from our debut.
Let’s be the first rock band
(or one of the first, at least)
not to have a bass player.
We’ll just cover that with
the lowest octave from the organ.
Let’s invent the droning jam
and the spoken word over rock.
Let’s have a hit song in a 2/4,
cabaret-style, you know, the
kind of thing you’d hear at
a circus, and Jim will sing about
whiskey. Let’s get Jim to be
really sexy, sing without a shirt
on, and write incomprehensible
lyrics that pass (almost) as poems.
He’ll be unhinged most of the time,
almost like the punk rockers
who will come after us.
He’ll die young, the same age
as Jimi and Janis and that guy
Kurt from the future. Our debut
album will be the only record
that Michael Jarmer has in his
collection, but he will have been
listening to us with some
fascination and morbid curiosity
for most of his life. He buys our
debut album as a fancy reissue
from Rhino, because he feels a kind
of obligation to have something
from The Doors in his collection.
He chooses the debut because
the songs there are the most
recognizable ones, huge hits right
out of 67’s rock and roll gate.
He will understand that in the
pantheon of rock bands from this era,
we stand as giants in America,
humorless and funny.
Notes on the vinyl edition: The Doors, Rhino Records reissue, 2024, originally Electra Records, 1967, black heavy-weight vinyl.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric. This one, for example, takes on a little point of view experiment. That’s kind of poetic.
michael jarmer 