Thursday Music

When I was a kid we had a neighbor who played music so loud the entire road could hear his musical tastes. Genres varied as he played Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner, and Led Zepplin, but one day as I was out playing in the field he decided to put on a an album by The Doors.

I had never heard them before, but I was mesmerized by the music, from the pop-ish tunes (Light My Fire, Touch Me) to the haunting melodies (The End). Having already taken to jazz I loved the rhythms as well as the strange lyrics and the keyboards. I became an instant fan and every time my neighbor across the road played The Doors I would sit quietly and listen.

I found myself a loner in the fact that I enjoyed them. My friends were more into Michael Jackson and the soundtrack to Footloose. For years I only had the chance to listen to them when I was alone. My parents hated them and called them devil's music. Early on they knew their child was weird.

Finally director Oliver Stone released 'The Doors', his biopic of Jim Morrison. Suddenly everyone was a fan for at least eight months. People would accuse me of becoming a fan only because of the film, which I wasn't, but I didn't see why that would matter. It's not as if radio stations were playing them so most of my generation's first exposure to them was through the movie. Regardless it was nice to hear people enjoy the music that I loved as a kid and as a benefit I got to hear it more.

While the movie may not have been entirely faithful to history I enjoyed it. Of course it portrayed Morrison as a megalomaniacal self destructive sociopath, but I didn't care. I was only interested in the music, songs that I would never stop enjoying no matter how old I get.

"Violence isn't always evil. What's evil is the infatuation with violence." - Jim Morrison