Ten Good Years

If you can listen to "Light My Fire" like it's the first time you ever heard it, you know your head is in a good place.

I was be-bopping to The Asylum yestermorn listening to The Doors first album.

Great stuff.

A lot of times when it gets down to "Light My Fire" I only half listen, which is a terrible insult to the song.

Yesterday the thing just reached out and grabbed me. I hung on every word and every note.

Delicious.

Got to "Back Door Man" and I began to reflect upon guttural screams, grunts and moans. The stuff you find in so many rock and blues songs.

The stuff that used to drive my parents crazy.

"You call that music?"

Yup, I do. It is precisely those grunts and moans that make this music so raw, so heartfelt, so passionate.

As the ominous guitar work opens up the song, Morrison lets out a low yell. Like he can't wait to get to the lyrics, his emotions are overwhelmed and he could not prevent this expression from leaving his body.

Janis Joplin's scream in "Take Another Piece Of My Heart". The Who have a lot of great screams in their songs. There are a million examples.

Great stuff.

Then I got to thinking about musical lineage. "Back Door Man" was written by Willie Dixon and recorded by Howlin' Wolf.

Howlin' Wolf was absolutely primal. Guttural. Down and dirty. If you are not into the blues do not even try to listen to HW. You would not be able to handle it.

His version is hot.

What The Doors did to it is absolutely amazing. Transformed the song while still keeping to the spirit of the thing.

Morrison inhabits the soul of a back door man. He is definitely eating chicken while you eat your pork and beans.

His voice even cracks at one point during the song and they left it in there.

Authenticity, baby.

Then I got to thinking about the wrenching musical transformation I went through in the sixties.

The Beatles and The Stones duking it out for the entire decade. Beautiful fallout from that competition.

1967. The Doors first album. Blew me away. So different. So dark. So literate. They grabbed me hard and never let go. Definitely one of my favorite groups, big time.

1969. The Allman Brothers Band's first album.

BOOM.

These guys hijacked my soul, my mind, my heart, my entire essence.

I have worshipped at their altar many times and will continue to do so to the grave even though they are calling it quits.

I will never again experience the emotions that surged through me in the short span of ten years. Emotions originated through music, my emotions captured and expressed in music, sheer joy, honest tears, worship of lyrics.

Mumford & Sons woke me up a couple of years ago and I dig that. They made me feel something I thought I never again would.

That was cool. But it is one group. Not a movement. Not a lifestyle.

Those ten years formed me in many ways and I dig it. I have no problems, no regrets at all about how that music shaped my personality and outlook.

It is part of who I am and I am proud of that.