[gmku]

L.A. Woman - The Doors

For me, albums are 90 percent cover art and 10 percent music. But I love this album in spite of the goofy transparency high-contrast photo of The Doors at the height of their hippy look, and inspite of the pretentious artsy crucifix thing on the inner sleeve.

At the same time, maybe I love the album because of this hokeyness, because you can love The Doors truly if you appreciate their hokeyness which they enjoyed brazenly.

Spin this and you'll get all the hokey rock you could want. For example, spin this on a rainy day and you'll think killer minds in the desert heading for the city of angels, desperados in torn jeans and dirty T-shirts shuffling in the dust to the next broken-down motel.

Very rootsy. Very bluesy. And very funny, too. Ridiculously funny. What's the obsession with snakes all over the place? And what does that line about throwing away the jack of hearts mean? And all the talk about being on the road and just getting into town? Ridiculously cliched. Ridiculously trippy--"L'Hyancith House," for example. And the band, wow, just sounds so good, like your eardrums popping open after a few hits of antihistamin on a rainy day. I love the winding serpent guitar of "The Changeling," the jangle of "Love Her Madly," the drone of "Cars Hiss by My Window," the getaway zoom of "L.A. Woman," which sounds soooo 1960s-70s Stones rockandroll that it just has to be a parody of 1960s-70s rock. And the psychedlic road saga of "Riders on the Storm," both beautiful and creepy, a ragged daydream of a song. But it's also one of the most well-done long songs I've heard any band do, ever.

I love this album not in spite of its ridiculousness but because of it. It's hard to take Jim Morrison very seriously--I mean, just listen to those pretentious, indulgent lyrics. Captain Beefheart does him just a notch better in the absurd wordplay department, but it's a small notch. I wonder what Morrison and Beefheart could have made if they'd gotten togehter!! But I get the feeling Morrison didn't want to be taken very seriously. Oh, quite the opposite. And that's what makes this album so hard to truly appreciate, but it's sort of like Dylan--you might not get it right away, and it may come across as just a bluesy bit of over-radio-played classic rock. But when you get it and it sinks in, you're hooked.