The Lizard of Id: Jim Morrison 75

Before you slip into unconsciousness

I'd like to have another kiss

Another flashing chance at bliss

Another kiss
another kiss

The days are bright and filled with pain

Enclose me in your gentle rain

The time you ran was too insane

We'll meet again
we'll meet again

Oh tell me where your freedom lies

The streets are fields that never die

Deliver me from reasons why

You'd rather cry
I'd rather fly

The crystal ship is being filled

A thousand girls
a thousand thrills

A million ways to spend your time

When we get back
I'll drop a line

The Doors

The Complete Stockholm '68 Tapes (Remastered + Pitch Corrected)

Konserthuset

Stockholm, Sweden

9.20.1968

CD1

(Early Show) 

01 Five to One

02 Love Street

03 Love Me Two Times

04 When the Music's Over

05 A Little Game

06 The Hill Dwellers

07 Light My Fire

08 The Unknown Soldier

CD2

(Late Show)

01 Five to One

02 Alabama Song (Whisky Bar)

03 Back Door Man

04 You're Lost Little Girl

05 Love Me Two Times

06 When the Music's Over

07 Wild Child

08 Money

09 Celebration of the Lizard

10 Light My Fire

11 The End

Total time: 1:56:09

Jim Morrison - vocals & percussion

Ray Manzarek - keyboards & vocals

Robby Krieger - guitar

John Densmore - drums & percussion

pre-FM reels from Swedish radio, remastered and optimized by "the face"

778 MB FLAC/December 2018 archive link

When I was a year old, my dad sat me at the turntable and handed me several records. The first one I ever played -- I guess it was then current -- was The Doors.

When I reached adolescence, I grew to hate them, their organist that played the same damn solo on the same damn 9th chord in every song... and especially their pseudopoetic, post-adolescent casualty of a singer.

When I grew up -- whether or not I have is still up for debate, really -- I grew to appreciate both of them... especially Mr. Mojo here, who, had he not made up his mind that "death and my cock are everything," might have been 75 years old today.

The fact -- maybe it took 50 years to show as writing on the wall -- is that James Douglas Morrison is arguably Rock's first and most iconic frontman, and a template-setter for every single one, male or female, that has swaggered a stage since.

And you know what else? His words -- I used to just laugh at them -- have more than stood the test of time. He's still representative of a lot of the worst aspects of his utterly pretentious and nihilistic generation to me, but his Art is only getting more relevant.

Maybe I'm like his dad -- the Admiral of The Fleet that spent the Sixties off the coast of Viet Nam, bombing them back into the Stone Age for President Lockheed Martin -- and it just took me decades to get it.

I hope Ol' Leatherpants, wherever he is, knows how revered and imitated he is, born this day in 1943 as he was and decades dead as he is. 

And I hope you commemorate the occasion with this Swedish concert, probably the Doors piece that most begs for an official release, sourced as it is from the pre-broadcast reels and despite Jim's propensity to blow out the mic with every syllable.

I'll return on Tuesday and Wednesday with back-to-back posts of Total Jazz Snobbery, but today is the day to revel in Indian Summer one last time and celebrate the platinum birthday of Jim Morrison, a lyricist, singer and stage presence whom new aspirants will copy for centuries to come.--J.

12.8.1943 - 7.3.1971