That song has been bouncing around the woefully inadequately insulated walls of my skull today. I thought I should probably write an entry. I bought this on vinyl when it came out, I could look up the release date, but that’d be like cheating. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have a turntable or access to one. That was a long fucking time ago. There was only one place that sold records within reasonable biking distance, so the release date and the date it was available to me might have been a bit different, but East Lansing was different place in those times; a big ten school, 45,000 undergrads and maybe 15,000 or so post bacs, protesting in the streets against war, for civil liberties, Sex, drugs and rock and roll. Just saying that little record store might have been fairly up to date.
I don’t think the town is remotely up to date these days, but that’s a whole other bucket of meat and, again, reflects the wants and needs of some sixty thousand transients. Hmmm, boy the place where I spent the previous three decades that would sound like I meant homeless. The homeless of Portland aren’t really transients, they’re mostly locals who don’t have a roof or walls. I used to be real qualified to comment on that; my son was born in a neighborhood that had a large homeless population. It has since been gentrified. I’m not going to use that as a talking point for or against gentrification; because in this context it would sound like an argument in favor of homelessness.
Here the use of the word transient means young people paying six digits a year to muddle through an education and eventually wander off. Since my father passed last June no one in this household has to pretend that they are anything but a pain in the ass. However, there doesn’t seem to be townies left in town, no young couples having children and settling down.
What does any of this have to do with the Doors? When you guys become linear thinking snobs? This entry really has to do with clearing shit out of my head to make room for insulation that I’ll be installing sometime soon. Probably, though smart money says probably never.
I think of the Doors as the west coast version of the velvet underground. Crazy you say? Did you miss the bit about no insulation and clearing out space? If you read the electric kool aid acid test you’d rather call the grateful dead the west coast velvet underground.
Oh, oh,oh. I saw this bumpsticker today on some weird American made hybrid, that said I may be old but I got to see the cool bands. It was one of those bumperstickers that was obviously self-made and I don’t think it’ll catch on, but the immediate things that sprang to mind were the grateful dead and Pink Floyd. I’d been to a few dead concerts where I can’t rightfully recall if I even looked at the band, and the one tour Pink Floyd ever made of the states that I could have ever possibly gone too, the band themselves didn’t do anything at all remarkable to look at; they stood there and played their instruments for three hours. In all cases very cool experiences, but, well, you know.
What I mean by by the Doors and Velvet Underground being a lot alike is they were both fronted by guys who weren’t really musicians, one of them sang passably, the other didn’t really sing at all, just spoke kind of lyrically. Both bands had like one musician and the other guys sort of learned as they went but the draw was more the scene than the sound. The grateful were musicians, but, and I don’t mean any offense to anyone, they were sort of self involved and more of a bluegrass band than a rock band. I mean in concert they used to take these interminable solos that if anyone in the crowd were sober they would wish they weren’t.
I don’t know I just wanted to get Maggie M’gill out of my head and into yours. I guess I better do the next one proactively
Loading comments...