Idolator

Oh, fuck that nonsense. The Doors are one of the most important (and engaging) bands in rock history. They laid the groundwork for so much, and helped establish the genre as appropriate vehicle for sating one's metaphysical and sexual urges.

I can't stomach this anti-Doors revsionism. But, like Arcade Fire's faux-earnestness (and Vampire Weekend's yacht-pop), this too, shall pass.

Mike Nelson of MST3K fame had a hilarious rant against the Doors as part of an essay on the general suckiness of Val Kilmer (and who can blame him). I forget the exact line, but among things he said something about how Morrison's singing any of his songs is in the end indistinguishable from his dad (or my dad or yours or anyone's) singing along to said song in the shower while he soaps up his beefy arms. I have never been able to hear them quite the same way again, and I am grateful.

@TheContrarian: the genre as appropriate vehicle for sating one's metaphysical and sexual urges

As opposed to the inappropriate vehicles?

PS: those clips rule.

The sainted name of CCR belongs nowhere near the goddamn Eagles.

ZOMG ELITISTS

Don't forget that time Snoop used "Riders on the Storm." Actually, yeah, forget that.

I think the Doors were okay, but I certainly don't understand why they get so much more Love than, well, Love. Or The Deep's "Psychedelic Moods" - pure gold.

@Ned Raggett: Yeah, like VW and AF. I consider those two bands wholly inappropriate vehicles.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll be vision questing in the desert.

Idolator isn't exactly the place people look to for reliable taste in music, is it?

The Doors are a bunch of boring, preening assholes. They were like the Third Eye Blind of their day: a self-obsessed but completely banal asshole who lives to fuck groupies and talk about himself and his shitty backing band. Thank you for this.

@TheContrarian: Good god, are VW and AF genres now?

@Ned Raggett: That movie still ranks as the worst I have ever sat through.

@Nicolars: A friend of mine was an extra. Should have received hazardous duty pay. (It is also further proof that Kyle MacLachlan's agents at the time were out of their minds -- that, The Flintstones and Showgirls within the space of five years, and all after Twin Peaks!)

Thank you for this article. The Doors (well more specifically, Jim Morrison) are the most overrated band/man in rock history.

The simple melodies. The trite rhyming. Just cause he was good looking and died young does not make him some sort of rock god.

@Ned Raggett: Nope, their just two examples of exceedingly dull and utterly sexless music.

I wish more musicians would get a head full of acid and contemplate the Cosmic Lingham.

they're

@TheContrarian: Getting back to the original point which you skipped over, then, what makes a 'genre' inappropriate for your metaphysical and sexual urges?

On second thought, don't answer that.

I think with the doors it's a question of hype and reputation vs. the actual music. I think the Eagles wrote some catchy songs, but OMG one of the best-selling American bands of all time? Uh...

As for CCR?!? What? CCR rips. Are you kidding me?

@TheContrarian: and lingam...

@Ned Raggett: I have no such urges. They were purged long ago in a strange ritual that I'm not at liberty to divulge.

But if I had to nominate a genre, it might as well be mid-to-late-aughts "indie" rock.

@AquaLung: How do you define reliable taste in music? Just curious.

As a member of the Idolator team I feel as if I should pitch in a post about which historically beloved band I hate. First thing that comes to mind is Guns 'N Roses, but that seems like too easy of a target. Plus I think Maura would fire me. Can't be the Eagles because I love them. Hmmm...

As for The Doors, they're a great big "meh" in my book.

@queensissy: My keyboard is sticky with ambrosial discharge.

OK, I'll stop now before I mistype (or mischaracterize) anything or anybody else.

WOAH, I just went back and read the Madonna article referenced in the top.

If we're taking nominations for the '08 Idolator awards, I'd like to appoint johnstar35 as Supreme Douchetard.

Dan,
Your hate for the doors is fucking retarded. Thanks.

Maybe they aren't the worst but they sure are the most annoying. They had the talent of the All Sports Band but the pretentiousness of dude from Coldplay. And Manzarek is a talking ho for any docu-anything that mildly pertains to the 60s or drugs. The only analogy I can make is if somehow the drummer from the Alarm made a second career that was just talking about the Alarm.

OK, hands up, who amongst us Doors-haters really loved the hell out of their music when we were fifteen? I'll step forward first.

And another justification for the Doors' existence: "Light My Fire" -- as covered by Al Green.

I could not have been a bigger fan of The Doors when I was high school. That's because I was an idiot.

Think of Paris Hilton with a penis, a bucket of LSD, and a composition book. That's Jim Morrison.

He was a parody of the counterculture and exploited the Free Love movement and hijacked what could have been genuine empowerment of the new generation and drove it straight down the neverending road to mindless sex and cartoonish drug use - a road on which we are still stalled forty years later.

"Ride the snake to the lake"? Seriously? No, I mean it. Seriously?

The only thing that Jim Morrison has going for him is eternal job security, because there's a new crop of kids entering high school every year whom, despite the advances in science and technology, are just as stupid as I was.

@natepatrin: I still like "Riders on the Storm", but the rest of their catalogue is some ponderous crap.

some time in the 80's there was an LA Times (I think) article/poll on the best all-time LA band. the doors won.

And if Idolator and its supporters are going to remain the relevant, sharp, reigning kings and queens of all things deserving of the snark, let us be reminded that somebody here just compared The Doors to Third Eye Blind.

Wars have been started for less...

Wait, wait, wait.. this thread started arguments? Cannot be intent.

@AquaLung: I don't know about you, but I come here for news about Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers.

@GotanOrange: Hating awful bands is retarded? Explain.

To be fair, without Jim Morrison, there would have been no Iggy Pop or Rock Journalism as we know it. Remember, Morrison was the subject of two landmark pieces in the history of Rock Journalism. Danny Field's first peice on Morrison in 16 magazine in 1967 proved that "serious" rock journalism could work in a teen fan mag (Thanks to Gloria Stavers' visionary editorship). While Salli Stevenson's piece in Crawdaddy that same year proved that ponderous think-peices on the lives of rock stars could pull in huge readerships and helping transition the mag from a small zine to a mass-market contender.

The way I look at, being into the Doors is like a rite of passage for a certain kind of precocious teenage boy. Right in there between reading The Lord of the Rings and learning how to make a bong out of a soda can. Slightly cheesy and embarassing in retrospect, but something that you can still remember fondly...

And while I fall into the "meh" category, I do enjoy the jam on LA woman, and have always liked the line "woke up this morning and got myself a beer/the future is uncertain and the end is always near," though I don't think one really needs an excuse to start drinking first thing.

Oh dear me. Sorry to inform. The Doors were the coolest band to hate in 2002.

Hating them now is just, awkward, and a touch embarrassing.

I feel sorry for you, your colleagues, and anyone who reads this post.

@HONEYBFLY: In as much as both bands are awful, and fronted by jackasses, I can see the comparison working.

it's not hating everything. it's picking things to hate in an attempt to sound cool, but missing by a mile.

An argument can be made for hating the Doors and their often-juvenile "poetry."

But CCR? No. You are absolutely wrong.

@NotPop: I'd like to think standing up against truly miserable musical acts is classic. People can still like the Beatles because they were great, hence I can hate the Doors for taking a giant crap on musical history.

@drjimmy11: I don't hate CCR, I just wanted to make people were aware I had already heard their music. I merely dislike CCR's catalog.

@Hott_Riot: "what could have been genuine empowerment of the new generation"

Naive much? If he hadn't done it, someone else would have. Don't believe me? Go to a rave sometime. You're not the only one who looks wistfully back at a time when people believed in something.

@Dan Gibson:QUESTION: If you had a time machine, would you remove them from history?

Also, Ray Manzarek produced some of my favorite X songs... so there's that, too...

@NotPop: How many uses do I get from this time machine? Let's put it this way, I wouldn't waste any of my first five trips on the Doors. Music isn't that important to me, to be frank.

but yeah, to paraphrase several people above:

loving the Doors/thinking Morisson was a "poet" is very 7th grade.
Hating the Doors is very 11th grade.

grown-ups realize they were kind of silly but had some good songs, then get on with their lives.

@Clevertrousers: Robby Krieger could probably do a good job washing my car, but that wouldn't make the Doors more interesting, musically.

As a reformed Doors lover, I'm kind of with you - Morrison is a looker but his lyrics were always poor and his "poetry" was egregious to say the least. But to be fair, the Doors are undoubtedly better than most of the crap folks listen to these days (I'd comment on your own tastes Dan but I can only find posts about things you dislike). Let's just say that one Ray Manzarek's organ solo did more for music than Jiggaman's pioneering of Corporate Rap ever will.

@Dan Gibson: Drjimmy just nailed it by saying you're "picking things to hate in an attempt to sound cool, but missing by a mile."

You probably have a shrine to the lizard king set up in your bedroom, upon which you spray your 'ambrosial discharge' (thanks contrarian) while listening to an endless loop of the crystal ship.

@Clevertrousers: Nail on head.

@NotPop: Seriously, hating on The Doors is as pointless and obvious and hating on Madonna. Sure they were cheesy and pretentious, but they were also weirdly necessary. Kind of like rock had to get something out of its system before it could move on... Maybe that's my weird ersatz-Marxist reading of the Doors' place in the evolution of rock, but it just seems silly to hate on them. I still crack a smile when I hear stuff from their first two records, even though I know what godawful doggrel it is. And what's wrong with a little pretension and bad poetry in rock? Shit, you can pretty much draw a direct line from "Light My Fire" to "Sweet Child O Mine" - and what's wrong with that?

@NotPop: Oh dear me. Sorry to inform. The Doors were the coolest band to hate in 2002.

You have an odd way about you.

@Dan Gibson: "Music isn't that important to me, to be frank"

just a quote for the records..

Trolling the hate-machine to get a lot of comments, eh? Well done.

PS - Steely Dan would be found in my "Delete Permenantly" cache long before the Doors.

I think Dan hit the attitude of the blog right when he said "Music isn't that important to me, to be frank." He's just paying the bills, yo. And this story's doing alright.
PS: I'm not too big on the Doors, but "Touch Me" has karaoke gold written all over it.

@Clevertrousers:Sure they were cheesy and pretentious, but they were also weirdly necessary. Kind of like rock had to get something out of its system before it could move on.

This isn't Hegelian dialectic, this is retrofitting.

Oh, Christ. Are we REALLY dipping back into the Steely Dan bag, too?

I seem to recall us Dan defenders drove off the anti-Steely snakes several hundred posts ago.

@Dan Gibson: I doubt it. Kreiger is kind of a surly asshole. He would probably get halfway through washing your car and then stomp off in a huff.

As for not musically interesting, eh - depends on what you find intersting. Hell I think most rock from Chuck Berry to Radiohead sounds like kidstuff compared to Fela, James Brown and Parliament, but it doesn't mean it doesn't have it's place. And most Fela, James Brown and Parliment sounds like kidstuff next to stuff like Osvaldo Golijov, Gottschalk, etc. And EVERYTHING sounds like kidstuff next to Cuban music. But that doesn't mean I can't appreciate it all on it's own merits depending on my mood...

But kudos, you've certainly generated alot of page hits with your post. That's got to count for something.

@Ned Raggett: Heh... well said...

@TheContrarian: I gotta be honest, I was never a huge Steely Dan fan until I discovered cocaine. Then it ALL made sense. No wonder my older brother hid his shit in their records...

@NotPop: Just to understand: if you had a time machine, you'd use it to solve musical grudge matches instead of, say, stopping any number of historical genocides? I didn't say "music isn't important to me", as it obviously is; just not THE most important thing.

I'm certain there's more quoteworthy material to use on this site to discredit my taste without having to take my words out of context.

@Ned Raggett: his most recent work is, what, sex and the city and desperate housewives? i'd say his agent is still a little nuts (or rather, they both will take whatever paycheck comes their way, and can you blame them?).

oh, and yeah, the doors blow. but don't hate on ccr or the eagles.

@Dan Gibson: Dan how dare you say that genocide in Cambodia is more important than "Holiday in Cambodia." I can never trust you again.

I haven't heard a lot of Doors album tracks, but I like a good number of their singles. Most importantly, the Doors are just too funny for me to hate. All that baby elephant organ and Jim yelling "cumAWN!" between poems. Maybe if I knew more humorless fans I'd hold more of a resentment.

@Big Gray.: Seconded. I mean, they're okay, but they're not legendary. They should be remembered as fondly as an EMF-level band. Besides of the respect that should be doled out to the Doors (and some should) 95% belongs to Ray Manzarek. He carried the whole damn band.

They laid the groundwork for so much, and helped establish the genre as appropriate vehicle for sating one's metaphysical and sexual urges.

Not that I'm an expert on these things, but weren't the Grateful Dead establishing the basis of Blacklight Poster rock as a part of the Merry Pranksters before the Doors even met each other?

@Dan Gibson: If music isn't the most important thing in your life, then why the hell are you a music journalist? Lester Bangs would be spinning in his grave... if he hadn't been creamated by his freaky Jehovah's Witness family...

@GhostOfDuane: Ray Manzarek. Better than Jay-Z. Can the next inflammatory Idolator post be about whether my father is leading an army of balding, land-owning white males, hoping to take back internet music discourse with some sort of VH1 Classic Jihad???

@janine: Not really. Both bands formed in '65... a banner year for the Black Light poster...

@Dan Gibson: Stopping the Doors stops the genocide of my ears. Burn!

Seriously though, no reason to bring CCR into this discussion. They were the bond between D. Boon and Mike Watt.

@TheContrarian: It was a hard fought battle.

@Dan Gibson: No need to bring genocide onto the palate of analogies.
I was just trying to gauge your hate.

If you have singular most hated band - The Doors
Who is your most beloved Band?

For the record, if I had a Time Machine, I would go back and not click on this article.

@Rory B. Bellows: Not to mention between the Dude and Walter Sobchak.

@Clevertrousers: Ironically though, they were the wedge between John Fogerty and Saul Zaentz.

@TheContrarian: "...us Dan defenders..."

I will never get used to old people on the internet.

@Clevertrousers: Noo, The Dead played under the name the "Holy Modal Rounders" starting in 1964.

@Rory B. Bellows: Heh... and John and Tom Fogerty for that matter...