I suppose you can catagorize the Doors with the Grateful Dead. You either love 'em or ya can't stand 'em. While I am not a fan of the Grateful Dead, I do enjoy the Doors. Actually, I was quite obsessed with them in High School. And this was long before that atrocious Oliver Stone movie came out.
A lot of my appreciation for the band came from my Dad. While he was not a hippy, he enjoyed some of the music that came out of the 1960's and 1970's. It was because of him and playing these records when I was very young I really appreciated Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, Leon Russell's Will O' The Wisp and The Doors LA Woman.
To this day Hyacinth House off LA Woman is one of my favorite Doors songs.
LA Woman itself was considered the Doors "comeback album". However, that comeback was short-lived due to the death of singer Jim Morrison.
But the band moved forward recording two albums after Morrison's death. The first of which was Other Voices. Which was released three months after the singer died.
I had bought the album on vinyl my first year down in college in Savannah from an overpriced record store. Although, I was no longer as fanatical about the Doors as I had been in High School. This was an album I had long since wanted to listen to.
The album itself was never officially released on CD due. The surviving members of the Doors disregard the two albums they recorded after Morrison's death.
To be honest, very few bands have been able to soldier on after the loss of their lead singer. Bands like Pink Floyd, Van Halen and AC/DC come to mind as acts that seemed to survive the change. Two of those band I honestly couldn't care less about.
I don't fault the Doors for wanting to carry on and work internally from within the band to split the vocal duties between keyboardist Ray Manzarek and guitarist Robbie Krieger.
I gave the album a listen recently for the first time since... well... I bought it in Savannah Georgia. To be honest, I didn't think it was horrible. Was it good as LA Woman. Of course not. Are the vocals as good. Of course not. Is it a bad album? Absolutely not! It's actually not half bad to listen to.
However, after listening to both sides of the record I was left with the feeling that the band itself would have been better if they just scrapped the idea of trying to replace Jim Morrison as a singer and continued on as an instrumental act.
Honestly, the most interesting bits of the album wasn't the lyrics. It was the musical arrangements.
I always thought Manzarek, Krieger and drummer John Densmore were more than just Jim Morrison's lackey's. They were the right musicians for Jim Morrison's lyrical style. I don't think Morrison would have been half as successful without those three guys style of music.
Maybe they wouldn't have had the same success as the albums they made with Morrison. However, I would have loved to hear other Doors albums if they decided to go instrumental.
Both Other Voices and their final studio album as a band Full Circle are now available as downloads through Amazon.com and iTunes. Definitely worth a listen for those who are fans of the band. Like I said, not as good as their earlier stuff. But not nearly as bad as you might think.
