"Their style is early cunnilingual, late patricidal, lunchtime in the Everglades, Black Forest blood sausage on electrified bread, Jean Genet up a totem pole, artists at the barricades, Edgar Allan Poe drowning in his birdbath, Massacre of the Innocents, tarantella of the satyrs, L.A. pagans drawing down the moon... Jim Morrison [seen above] is an electrifying combination of angel in grace and dog in heat... The Doors are musical carnivores in a land of musical vegetarians... The Doors scream into the darkened auditorium what all of us in the underground are whispering more softly in our hearts: We want the world and we want it... NOW!" Young music critic of the year contender Andrew Mellor would do well to study that purple prose by Tom Robbins , which describes a 1967 Doors concert in Seattle. Robbins was writing for the underground paper Helix , and his plea of “We want the world and we want it… NOW!" chimes with Mellor’s recent musings in the New Statesman about cl
Comments
I wonder if you are familiar with MacDonald's theory of "midcult." I question the idea that all music is or should be made accessible to everyone. At the risk of repeating Babbitt's "Who Cares if You Listen?" mistake, I rather feel that certain music can only be appreciated by those who put in the effort to do so with their full attention. Yes, future generations might be more visually attuned than aurally, but that does not mean we should give up on helping them to cultivate their ears and practice listening; the brain is amazingly plastic, after all.
I can name plenty of songs that, while musically perhaps not so exciting, became popular because of an entertaining dance or video attached to them. I don't look forward to the day when a composer's success is measured by how much they can spend hiring artists and CGI editors to mask their mediocre music.