Taking Sides: The Velvet Underground vs. The Doors

"Heroin" vs. "Love Me Two Times?" come on!

PS - Car companies know what's up and ♥ putting "Heroin" in ads.

SQUUUUUUUUUUUUUUAWWWK!

If the Velvets had ever had a top ten hit, and gone on Ed Sullivan, would they have the same "cool" cache?

Search: The Jesus and Mary Chain
Destroy: ??????

!!!!!!!!!

The genetic mutations therein produced a new form of life, which explains the existence of Bobby Gillespie! Ah-hah!

[ very slowly and nervously raises hand ]

ummmmmm, excuse me but..... I do.

I can't.

Not just like that.

I'm a complicated person, I like all sorts of different things.

OK, I admit I probably wouldn't be as fond of The Doors as I am, if I hadn't discovered them so much earlier than I did any of their contemporaries (Beefheart / Grateful Dead / Jefferson Airplane / Love / MC5 / Stooges / Zappa etc.) back in the post-glam, pre-punk days when I was younger and more impressionable; so maybe part of their appeal is nostalgic.

Nevertheless, certainly on the first 4 albums, there are some great pop songs, some superb playing (especially John Densmore and the way he reacts to and interacts with Jim Morrison) some laughably pretentious psych-silliness and some equally laughable Spinal Tap rock 'n' roll excess.

And that's without even mentioning the trousers.

Unfortunately by about 1970 I think Morrison had started taking himeself far too seriously both as a pschedelic guru as as a teentbop pin-up and sadly I think this tends to overshadow the earlier stuff for a lot of people.

Cool intersection: Nico moaning "The End" with rich gothy goodness courtesy of her trusty, rusty harmonium

I do actually quite like both, though my vote is definitely with the VU. I like the cartooniness of the Doors, and, as Dan pointed out on the other thread, they had an ear for the catchy pop single. When both Morrison's self importance and the musicians' pretentiousness were kept in check, they were capable of entertainingly dark pop.

However, the difference is, that there always seemed to be another, deeper, nastier perhaps, but more interesting layer underneath the VU, while the Doors were cartoons, sunshiney LA kids playing with the plastic affect of darkness. While the VU seemed to be genuinely nasty people making genuinely nasty music that also happened to be beautiful.

Not to make it about coast vs. coast, but NYC has a subway, and LA does not, which is what makes me choose the VU over the Doors.

but Jim Morrison so obviously lacked both a sense of humour and a sense of the ridiculousness of his own po-faced and smug 'poetry'... "I feel awriiiiight" repeated a squillion times in '1970' = much better than any of the turgid "Lizard King" wank morrison ever turned out....

i was a teenaged doors fan. i have since recanted. some of the music is good, but it says a lot that Ian Astbury was considered a fine replacement for Morrison by his bandmates...

cliche, smliche... that 'awriiiiiight' repeated a billion times in '1970' kills because the repetition accents the mindless and bloodied mania at the heart of the whole Funhouse LP - ie, Iggy howling "I feel awriiiiight!" again and again and ever more serrated and choked of vocal suggests that, actually, perhaps sir If of Pop isn't "Awriiiiight", and that he indeed is trpped in the funhouse that steals your heart away. the way Iggy sings it annihilates all thoughts of cliche, etc, because it works as dramatic conceit, not signifier of some garage-rock blankness (j'accuse almost every band in 2003 with guitars and white belts)

well that's it really, isn't it... whatever suits yer taste, though i'd arge Iggy's howls wwere always art, maybe i just define art differently than you...

My friend Frances has just make a joke about leather trousers:

Leather trousers? Responsible for the widespread condition known as Rock Bottom, which is what you get if you wear them all the time and get too sweaty...

And considering how much time I've heard Courtney Taylor-Taylor-Taylor-LeBon-Rhodes complaining about his sweaty ass in leather trousers, I don't really want to think about that.

but did they repeat that 'alright' a billion trillion times with squaalling sax and the same gutrut guitar riff ruffsqealing in the shadows again, again and again?

No, they repeated that awright a billion times with droning and humming and whirring and endlessness and phase and repetition and my god the transcendant horror and joy ... maybe this didn't actually happen and I'm just imagining the very cliche of what a Spacemen3 song should be.

Ian Astbury's career followed a very similar trajectory to Jim Morrison's right up until the point where he somehow failed to die under mysterious circumstances in 1988

i only 'discovered' VU in my early 20s, having heard the first LP and hating it when i was 15 or so...

having heard the first LP and hating it when i was 15 or so...

Ah. This explains *everything* with regards to the differences in our musical tastes...

Oh, the ravages of age!

Even without that tortuous time way back when, the VU win this without even breaking a sweat.

What'd ya get?

Velvet Underground: Mo Tucker

The Doors: nothing

Argument over

Custos it just shows you need the first Doors record, which is like a Greatest Hits all by itself—the aforementioned god-like "Crystal Ship", "Take It As It Comes" "Backdoor Man" etc in addition the "The End" (which i ALWAYS skip; i.e. "Heroin"; i.e. watching 2001 for the 20th time) and the rest. Plus you get that nice big photo of JM on the cover.

oh: LR's stab at "goofy": appearing w/Conan O'Brien, Dana Carvey, and Jimmy Fallon, doing "Wild Side"! CASE CLOSED!

LA does indeed have a subway:
http://www.mta.net/metro_transit/metro_rail/mr_system_map.htm