Skipping ahead then to seventh album, Barabajagal (1969), which is even more of a rock record. Unfortunately it's also massively annoying. For the most part this is repetitious childish singalong rubbish which can be intensely grating. I don't need to hear 'I Love My Shirt' ever again for instance. When it isn't being whimsical and wide-eyed it can be pretty effective (the title song is pretty impressive, driven by a serious rock backing by the Jeff Beck Band) and there are a number of decent songs, and the psychedelic strand through it is still fairly strong. But every time you think the album is back on track you get a 'Happiness Runs' or 'To Susan on the West Coast Waiting'. Interestingly, 'The Love Song' sounds like something on a post shark-jump Belle & Sebastian album. That tells you how insipid this stuff is. Anyway, if you're in the mood for a hippy afternoon when the suns out, it'll do the trick admirably, if you want to listen to a great album from the late 60's I'd suggest giving Barabajagal a miss... (the reissue more than doubles the album with 13 extra tracks, which for the most part are more of the same.)
As one of the most accessible (read, boring) of the "California sound" bands, the Doobie Brothers' best excuse for ever existing was to facilitate the excellent joke reference to them in Romancing the Stone. Beyond that it's all pretty bland bluesy choppy laid-back California rock. Muddy production helps ensure that the self-titled debut album (1971) is a thoroughly uneventful album. One of those rare occasions when the word "pleasant" is an insult, the sheer lack of reason to be engaged makes it almost entirely worthless. Sort of a shame really because it doesn't actually do anything wrong, it just meanders along with its anodyne riffs and soulful vocals. The fact the production is totally off is demonstrated by the song 'Feeling Down Farther''s chorus which sounds like the lyrics are in fact about a town made of peanut butter. As total musical wallpaper, the album is fine, but at a time when people where making far superior similar records the release of this album suggests that the Doobies were pretty second rate. No wonder they sold more records than anybody else.
Second album Toulouse Street (1972) is a marked improvement, but that doesn't mean it's any good particularly. It kicks off with the mega smash hit 'Listen to the Music', which is lively, bluesy and ragged enough, but it's still a pretty weak tune. The attempt to rough up the sound into a kind of Skynyrd come Allman Brothers type of deal singularly fails, not least because the Doobie's sound was just too inherently sweet. The attempt to give Skynyrd a run for their money on the debut album, 'Beehive State', was a car crash and on Toulouse Street it's played out more successfully, but it still doesn't convince. Again, like the debut, Toulouse Street is a perfectly pleasant listen but there has to be more going on in a record than being a soundtrack to pass the time with. To explain how bland and predictable it all is, there's a song called 'Rockin' Down the Highway' on it. And there's a song called 'Mamaloi' which is a cod reggae thing. I think that's all I need to say.
The Doors really are one of those divisive bands. Personally I think they were a half decent blues-jazz outfit with occasional psychedelic flourishes and a prancing dick for a frontman whose turgid, juvenile attempts at rock poetry amounted to little more than the vainglorious self-aggrandisement of the sixth-form show-off. But what do I know eh? 8 zillion students couldn't have been wrong in the late 80's, can they? The sixth and final album with Jim Morrison, LA Woman (1971), is an interesting example of the best and worst traits of the band, containing great lengthy workouts (the title track really is a fine piece of rolling, driving rock) and a couple of decent shorter pop songs. But it also has pretension dripping from the speakers, a determination to be abstract, both lyrically and musically which is not only unimpressive but wholly meaningless, and it has some truly turgid stuff on it too ('Cars Hiss By My Window' covers all the negative bases pretty much). And it also has the truly unforgiveable 'L'America' on it, which may well be the worst of all Morrison's terrible lyrics. The difficulty is that when it's good, it's startlingly good and that's about quarter of the time. Then we have the 1985 Best Of compilation that was standard issue in every student's record collection for the ten years following its release. Covering the official Morrison releases only (ie, the first six albums - 1967-1971), it's effectively all anybody really needs of the Doors. While most of the stuff on it simply doesn't hold up any more, you can pretend that it's like amazing man and enjoy it well enough. All the big numbers are on it ('Love Her Madly', 'People Are Strange', 'Riders on the Storm', etc, etc, etc) and it's a really smart overview. The big deal really is the inclusion of the full-length version of 'The End', which was the entry point to the Doors for most people who weren't there at the time, by being used in the opening of Apocalypse Now.
What happens for the next two days is that we step hand in hand into a musical nightmare. It's eleven hours, yep, eleven hours of the Doors live shows. How? Why? What? I'll explain tomorrow once the gates of hell have opened and we're marching merrily into the flames.
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