Why do ships with sails love the wind?
And will I be thinking of you
Will I ever pass this way again
I'll be returning some day
Until then, please don't ask me my direction
Let my tracks be buried in the sea
'Cause to wander is my infection
'Till the four winds bring you back to me
Don't count your memories
Think of me as just a dream
Just like this melody, I sing
SO....The first Doors album I ever bought and probably heard full length was Other Voices which was released three months after Jim Morrison's death and does not feature him or his lyrics. Ray and Robbie do the vocals and the arrangements are of a lighter fare than L.A. Woman. Needless to say when my older brother heard and saw this record he was taken aback said it was the Civil War without Ulysses S. Grant. I was young and had only just started to build my record collection so I played this album a lot. The album opens with "In The Eye Of The Sun" which has Ray singing as close to Jim's style as he can get and features organ rhythm and typical Krieger guitar lead in an opposite stereo mix. Listening now it does sound like The Doors of the past but Ray can't help singing within the beat not like the poet could have sang it. Robbie sings "Variety is the Spice of Life" and its pretty much a barn burner with a boogie woogie feel, very typical of the early seventies with its Dr. John sensibilities. The seven minute plus "Ships w/ Sails" is a great Doors song that I know the lyrics so well I decided to preface them to this blog. I can hear the echo of the poet in the strained voice, a bit of longing for the baritone from the tenor. God, I played this record a lot in Junior High, I am so surprised how well this Elektra vinyl has aged...still clean and deep, wow. Side one ends with "Tightrope Ride" (Watch out, don't fall! Careful, don't slip!), another blues influenced pounding organ song featuring nice clean guitar riffs yet not as well developed as one would hope. I played Ships so much and then this song would come on and I would hesitate to flip the record. But I had to, I had to hear "I'm Horny, I'm Stoned", I was a teenager after all.
Think of me as just a dream
Just like this melody, I sing
SO....The first Doors album I ever bought and probably heard full length was Other Voices which was released three months after Jim Morrison's death and does not feature him or his lyrics. Ray and Robbie do the vocals and the arrangements are of a lighter fare than L.A. Woman. Needless to say when my older brother heard and saw this record he was taken aback said it was the Civil War without Ulysses S. Grant. I was young and had only just started to build my record collection so I played this album a lot. The album opens with "In The Eye Of The Sun" which has Ray singing as close to Jim's style as he can get and features organ rhythm and typical Krieger guitar lead in an opposite stereo mix. Listening now it does sound like The Doors of the past but Ray can't help singing within the beat not like the poet could have sang it. Robbie sings "Variety is the Spice of Life" and its pretty much a barn burner with a boogie woogie feel, very typical of the early seventies with its Dr. John sensibilities. The seven minute plus "Ships w/ Sails" is a great Doors song that I know the lyrics so well I decided to preface them to this blog. I can hear the echo of the poet in the strained voice, a bit of longing for the baritone from the tenor. God, I played this record a lot in Junior High, I am so surprised how well this Elektra vinyl has aged...still clean and deep, wow. Side one ends with "Tightrope Ride" (Watch out, don't fall! Careful, don't slip!), another blues influenced pounding organ song featuring nice clean guitar riffs yet not as well developed as one would hope. I played Ships so much and then this song would come on and I would hesitate to flip the record. But I had to, I had to hear "I'm Horny, I'm Stoned", I was a teenager after all.
Supposedly side two opener "Down on the Farm" was written for the previous album and it does seem to fit although it sounds very Moody Blues like on the verse (Don’t need none today/Master’s gone away/His mind has gone astray) then like The Band on the chorus (Gonna run a rainbow ragged/Ask the mountain men, they’ve had it/City life’s a real bad habit). The piano pulses in and the guitar attacks and the ubiquitous "I'm Horny, I'm Stoned" starts and I am dancing around the room. I can't help it, here's the lyrics:
Well I'm tired, I'm nervous, I'm bored, I'm stonedDon't you know life ain't so easy when you're on your own
I'm lonely, I'm ugly, I'm horny, I'm cold
Don't you know life ain't so easy when you're on your own
Leaving home
Well I got ripped off, wiped out, I got burned
Don't you know life ain't so easy when you're on your own
I feel my mind is shaking out of place
I look like a truck ran over my face
The doctor says I'm not a hopeless case
I really want to join the human race
Well I got ripped off, wiped out, I got burned
Don't you know life ain't so easy when you're on your own
Well I'm tired, I'm nervous, I'm bored, I'm stoned
Don't you know life ain't so easy when you're on your own
Leaving home, on your own
On your own
A harpsichord opens "Wandering Musician" which could of been song from the big pink yet once again the vocal struggles to have conviction. But this song has some nice interplay between percussion and guitar along with piano. Percussion is forefront in "Hang Onto To Your Life", then electric piano, then that guitar punctuation - what a good band this was. This song ends the album strongly being the most jammy of all the tracks, really like it when Ray gets all wizardly on the keys. When I finally heard other Door albums (of course I had heard the radio songs still I was more familiar with Jose Feliciano's Light My Fire since he was on TV performing it what seemed like a weekly basis), Other Voices faded from my repertoire although I would still play Horny and Ships for friends and curious onlookers. Yes my Doors education was flawed starting at the wrong point in time, Still like many of the records I will discuss this holds a certain charm in my heart, the faint memory of a seventh grader listening to records in the basement while playing pool or cleaning up after the damn cat (oh I love and miss you Skippy).
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