723. three more days

“Speaking of the Brave Generation (ie: those of us who were still little kids as the 1960s flipped over into the 1970s), pretty much everybody had a half-cool older brother or sister or cousin that had a copy of the Guess Who‘s Share The Land lying around – the one with the wise Indian on the cover. Which was rather the hippie teenage dream at the time. Smoke a little maryjane and get some mystical magical guidance from somebody/anybody who wasn’t your dad or your grand dad or your hockey coach, or anyone even remotely connected with your suburban whitebread, soulless culture. Or as the lyrics go in Three More Days (Burton Cummings channeling his inner Jim Morrison) ‘Freedom – paint me a picture – show it to me right now’. And then the band got busy stretching things out and tearing them up. Epic indeed.” (Philip Random)

GuessWho-1970

816. not to touch the earth

“I didn’t really twig to this track until I saw the Doors movie, which I realize I’m not supposed to like (or am I?), the whole thing just being so absurdly over the top — Val Kilmer chewing not just the cheap studio scenery, but great chunks of the Mojave desert as well. Except it’s true, all that excess. The psychedelic 60s were that weird, eruptive, wild, kicking into overdrive by 1967, blowing through to the darkness beyond the ozone by 1968, which is where Not To Touch The Earth comes in. You’re so high you’re not sure if you’re worm or a god, or maybe just some long dead Indian who snuck into your eggshell skull during a thunderstorm in the desert when you were still a small boy.” (Philip Random)

(image source)

867. L’America

Jim Morrison died less than three months after the Doors released LA Woman (or he successfully disappeared, left it all behind). Either way, it’s exactly the kind of album every dead (or merely gone) poet-sexgod-asshole-brilliant rockstar should leave in his wake, loaded with grit, shadow, unsolved mystery, kickass music.

(photo: Frank Lisciandro)