pretentious, fake, blowsy, unbearable prick, catastrophically self-serious

all faults in many walks of life, but all like gold-dust in the ludicrous world of rock 'n roll. Fake especially - there is no more over-rated trait in the world of music than honesty.

... those faults are usually raised in the context of musical criticism. "They are a shit band because they are (etc.)" Reasons for dismissal, in other words.

.....and 'Waiting For The Sun' are blinding records.
I avoided them when they were cool (the dire 1980s) but I'm pleased I stored the vinyl and CDs away for a rainy day.

they're a shit band but they make great records? Doesn't making great records lift you into the "great band" category?

FWIW, and leaving aside the post-Morrison efforts, I think that only "The Soft Parade" is a let-down and the rest are anywhere between very good and excellent. Sure, there are a few songs that haven't aged well; some of the lyrics are crigeworthy; Morrison was pretentious and could be obnoxious at times; and the whole Morrison-as-Rimbaud's-heir legacy thing gets a bit tiresome. But that certainly doesn't make them a shit band.

John Densmore is arguably one of the best ever rock drummers, never showing off and always trying to complement the song; Robbie Krieger is a terrific guitar player and songwriter; and Ray Manzarak adds great flair and drama to the records - which are well played, well produced and full of adventure, dynamics and tunes.

So in my view: great records, great band.

I think it's possible to detach your dislike for JM from your enjoyment of the overall sound. Frankly I enjoy The Doors, but then I don't really listen to the lyrics. I just enjoy the overall sound.

I would argue that they prove that if the records are good enough you can overlook the presence of a huge dollop of twat and therefore the music always comes before the twatness in a chicken and egg sense. If the music isn't quite enough the twat factor takes over and becomes overriding, ergo U2 QED. There is usually some degree of twattery in most bands after all, though some more than others to be fair, usually the singer, who tends to play the pseud role.

.. on why The Doors get a constant kicking on here - totally unjustifiably in my opinion.

I think they made genuinely good records - LA Woman is a stone cold classic. As as an earlier poster said - some of the playing is nothing short of brilliant.

Their Greatest Hits 2cd set is all killer and no filler - not many bands can say that, particularly some of the bands held up as some kind of beacon on here.

Robbie Kreiger - legend !

Jim Morrison - he was a rock star - he's supposed to challenge you; love him or loathe him - whatever; it is all part of the job description surely?

if you're a teenager.

Introduced to me both by a close friend and my brother. No matter how much they get slated, that can never be taken away from me.

If you listen back, yes there are clunky moments, and let's not discuss the pitiful live output, but there are some fantastic records that get overlooked, mainly because of Morrison's personality.

My favourite 5, which is mine and therefore not up for debate:

1. The End
(The mother of all acid freakouts - incest, serpentile hallucinations and buses)

2. Riders On The Storm
(Moody and funky at the same time? Oh yes. It's possible. Even Snoop Dogg's version was quite good)

3. My Wild Love
(Clapping, drones and vocals - very little else, but it's entrancing and just different sounding)

4. Not To Touch The Earth
(Wrong sounding organ stabs, rhyming dictionary lyrics, but some catchy guitar lines and overall grooviness hold together this record's oddness)

5. Peace Frog
(Blood on the Street? A song in which Jim's supposed childhood experience kills off the hippy era, but you can dance to it - and the first Doors song I ever loved)

Five completely different sounds from a band that can truly be described as "out-there".

.

A Jazz-Coloured Cock with A Big Speech Bubble full of bad poems coming out of the end?

Sorry. It's in the rules.

Heroes in my teens, heroes now. And that's the band, as individuals, as musicians, as a unit. I don't have much truck with the Morrison 'myth'. The Doors' music does inexplicably strange things to me that only a handful of other bands do.

This is genius, and that goes for the majority of their recorded output (IMHO, of course)...

LA Woman - The Doors

but The Doors made some fine, fine records.

Great bands make great records.
Shit bands make shit records.
BUT
Shit bands do not make great records.
That's the way it works my friend.
Tho' conversely, great bands do sometimes make shit records.

You can pick up all six studio albums for under 18 at Amazon

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Collection-Doors/dp/B0052FG750/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF...

I think this is the stereo mix from the Perception box set just without the booklets / extra tracks / packaging. Can't complain at less than £3 per album.

I watched this Granada documentary probably around the time the Oliver Stone film came out. I came out of it very much wondering what all the fuss was about... worst possible introduction, I've subsequently found.

Not as bad as the unintentionally hilairious Stone movie though. The scene where Agent Palmer and that bloke from Top Secret are walking on the beach talking about how they're going to be the greatest band in the world reminded me of nothing so much as The Young Ones. And was it Oliver's intention that we should spend most of the movie actually feeling rather glad that this pseudo-intellectual twerp was brown bread?

That said, some great songs. And a great voice, at its best.

Anyway, it's all here:

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/The_Doors

Blue Sunday is a sublime song and tune. Beautiful guitars. One of my top mellow tunes.

I love their music and don't understand the "shit" description at all. You could say they were the first real American "stoner" band. Morrison couldn't care less what people thought about him, he took rock music to the real dark side and he was the first frontman to send two fingers to an establishment still struggling to cope with the beast unleashed ten years earlier called rock'n'roll.

The Doors were also the soundtrack to the broken spirit of late 60s America, Vietnam, drugs and psychedelia. Not only were they a significant band with memorable hits but icons of the counter culture just as much as Dylan, The Beatles, The Stones, Janis Joplin and Hendrix.

They were okay - at least they had much more staying power than many of their contemporaries after all we still regularly refer to them 40 years after they fully existed. Also for you young ones out there you have no idea how great it was to see them on Top of the Pops doing Hello I Love You.

..he was such a poet."
No he fucking wasn't.

The equivalent of a full back scoring a 35 yarder once every 5 seasons.

Stereophonics - Local Boy in the Photograph
Razorlight - Golden Touch
Sham 69 - If The Kids Are United
Dodgy - Staying Out For The Summer

Morrison was a larger than life character while Ray Manzarek, John Densmore and Robby Krieger barely had one personality between the three of them.

Fantastic debut album, though.

which is, of course, Robert Ludlum's novel set against the backdrop of 60s LA.

The Doors are arguably the greatest rock band of all time, precisely because they are preposterous but perfect, of their time and yet transcending time and place.

If one were to accept the notion that '66 to '69 was the high water mark of all that was rock or pop or the hinterland between, The Doors would be what you should show an alien to describe why "the kids" were fighting, fucking, taking drugs, tuning in, dropping out and sensing that their time was now.

Dylan, Stones Mk 1, The Who, Love, Cream, Hendrix. All this and The Beatles too. What a time it was, it was. The Pill. Pot. Revolution. Something in the air. The magic of being young, momentous times and a magical soundtrack.

Father, yes son, I want to kill you. Mother I want to. Hello, I love you.

Cancel my subscription to the resurrection but Morrison was the pop star that Scott Walker wanted to be, less calculated than Jagger and more genuinely outrageous than Lennon. Uncontrolled, uncontrollable. And a damn fine singer too.

So, take our Alien friend by the hand , play it "When The Music's Over" and it will understand what made the boys stiffen, the girls moisten and why it all had to end the way it did

I was in Paris a couple of weeks ago and, inspired by a small feature in a recent issue of The Word, decided to visit Jim Morrison's grave.

The Père Lachaise Cemetery is an amazing place containing more celebrity graves than you can shake a stick at.

Here can be found the final resting places of Chopin, Bizet and Rossini, for example. Also remembered are (just off the top of my head) Oscar Wilde, Isadora Duncan, Marcel Marceau, Gertrude Stein, Gilbert Bécaud, Stéphane Grappelli, Marcel Proust, Yves Montand, Maria Callas and many, many more familiar (in France, at least) names.

Most of the plots are, if not exactly lovingly-tended, then fairly normal, tidy gravesites.

All except Jim Morrison's, that is. His grave is, it must be said, a shithole. Visitors have vandalised and graffitied the surrounding area to a radius of 50 feet and the actual grave itself is an untidy and unremarkable affair, wedged in tight between other plots.

I came away from Père Lachaise feeling fairly ambivalent. On one hand the cemetery itself really is a wonderful place, so full of history. On the other hand I felt vaguely ashamed that rock & roll fans could let the side down yet again by turning Morrison's grave into such a eyesore.

Last week, in fact.

Jim Morrison:

takes on a entirely new meaning at Jimi Hendrix's grave outside Seattle.

Six handrails AND a wheelchair ramp to negotiate just two steps.

And not a hint of graffiti to be seen.