coolermaster

I agree with the reviewer: the album evokes the same feelings and effects for me as well. A warm night at the end of the '80s, in a house, with a high school friend, invited by a very beautiful girl, our classmate: she was still, beautiful at 18, independent (she already lived alone)... making tea... the TV on, and the video for "On the Turning Away"... "on the wings of the night," Gilmour sang, and that night was magical, like the ticket I received as a gift from my parents for the Floyd concert in Monza! It was May 20, 1989, and that date will be indelibly stamped in my heart... like the first kiss, the first time... AMLOR is the Pink Floyd... and just Wright's intro is enough to understand that this is the band that 12 years earlier had birthed the "jewel par excellence" that is "Wish You Were Here"... it was them, back after years of schizoid oblivion, after the ramblings of The Wall and The Final Cut, finally free from the father/master Roger Waters, who had annihilated, diminished and distorted the sound of the Floyd, that "Pink Floyd London" on which the camera lingered back in the days of "Pompeii"... Just a few seconds are enough, and you can hear Wright, you can hear that sound, now modernized yet unmistakable, that rowboat that peacefully "is the English way" glides on a river... And everything materializes, comes back to life, a sound crystallized for years, a sound that still moves...

Ah, if you say they were a notch above....especially De Andrè, especially musically...Abstractism? "La leva calcolastica," "La donna cannone," "Generale," "Atlantide," "Il cuoco di salò," "Santa Lucia," "il ragazzo"...etc....etc...Abstract? No, no, they seem very concrete to me!!

BUT YOU HAVE SPREAD YOUR DELINQUENCY AND YOUR ORGANIZED CRIME ALL OVER THE WORLD AND MADE US ITALIANS LOOK LIKE RAVING BEASTS!! YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS, I SWEAR YOU WILL PAY!!!!!!
The alleged Padano has betrayed himself: a truly northern person would NEVER write: "And made us Italians...." Using "us" as an object is typical of the dialects from the SOUTH, especially Neapolitan, as in "I took my sister for a ride".... A person from the north would never say that....
That said, I hope many of your posts were jokes, but when you bring up Auschwitz and Hitler so lightly, I shudder....
Ah, by the way, PADANIA does not exist; it is an invention of Bossi.... I live in the central/northern area of Milan and even those from the Corvetto neighborhood (where Emilia passes) are all terroni to me :-)))

Only now have I stumbled accidentally upon this pearl of an Off Topic\Post review.
Let me preface by saying that I am Milanese for generations, but not like many who claim to be Milanese only to turn out to be country folk (that is, "ariosi" as we call them). That said, I have just one thing to say: SHAME!
Shame on all of you, TERRONI AND PADANI. Abroad? Hahaha, my family is half English, I have traveled the world since I was a child, and I can assure you that in America or England, they don't give a damn about Milan, Naples, or Palermo: to them, WE Italians are all the same, that is, all terroni!
That said, we are bordering on racism here; when? In 2007, in the third millennium when we Italians, along with the rest of the (Western) world, should be facing threats far more serious than a mafioso. Seeing Arabs and similar scum: those are the dregs, the filth of the world, not those born in the historic and noble land of Sicily, which even gave birth to our Italian language, or at least to its literature!
I know many guys from the south here in Milan, my colleagues, honest people who come here to work, maybe holding down three jobs, and maybe studying too... people who break their backs from morning till night, and are kind and cultured... But where do you presumed Leghisti live? In the heaths of Veneto, perhaps... And do you think that I, being Milanese, feel the same as you? Muahahahaha... Do you think you are superior to a farmer from Locride? But if the Venetians have provided the highest number of emigrants after Sicily, Puglia, and Campania... You are just coarse, ignorant farmers... I have been to the SOUTH and I can tell you that life is good there... the people are friendly, much more cultured than you might think, civil, and above all, something I envy, they know how to enjoy life! Enough with this nonsense, for God’s sake... we are all Italians... I have had Neapolitan friends, even girlfriends, Sicilians, Pugliese... and here in Milan, there are countless former immigrants (now perfectly Milanese)... so? We are Italians for God’s sake, Italians... we should all be united, remember our glorious past, the art, the culture, of which the south has played an important part. We should fight united to export our country, to reclaim the place that belongs to us, all of us, from Bolzano to Agrigento!!! But how can you be so blind??
The League? To me, the League can go to hell: it reminds me of a coarse Bergamasque or Bresciano, which for me, a central Milanese, has a much worse effect than a Sicilian errand boy delivering messages to Provenzano!
Our country is beautiful all over. The problems in the south are many, it's true, the Mafia is still there, but things are changing... There are also many honest people... To those who wrote those infamies about southerners: Giovanni Falcone, Paolo Borsellino? You are offending them too... You are also insulting those who kicked the Arabs in the ass 1000 years ago!!!! And thanks to them, we prevented the conquest... You offend millions of people who, even in the south, wake up every day, go to work, facing 1000 difficulties, 1000 obstacles... and yet they do it! I have seen them with my own eyes, even in Naples, believe it or not, with a briefcase in hand going to the office... or do you think only a Genoese or a Milanese does that...
Bah, I don’t know... I won’t add anything else, only that certain outbursts leave me stunned... you have also offended all my friends from the south, my colleagues, guys who, like you, come here to produce, breaking their backs for maybe 800 euros a month... How sad to see Italians still like this…
How sad...
A proud Milanese (not racist)
Best regards

And fuck you, you cut off my answer... never mind, Paganini doesn't repeat!!!
By the way, the discourse about the Durans is interesting... Francis, you recovered that era, I lived it!! The Durans the best band of the eighties?? Bah... and where do I put the Spandau? Save a Prayer is beautiful, we all danced to it when there were slow songs at parties, just like we danced to "Reality" from "Le Pomme de ma Mère"... and look, I’ll tell you with the same intensity... and so too Careless Whisper by Wham, a band that for me is more talented than the Durans, eh, sorry about that... Then you know I was a paninaro, but since I’ve never been completely stupid, I didn’t ignore "other" music… and here there's plenty to indulge in... Sorry, but where do you place the Cure? And Prefab Sprout? And Simple Minds? And The Clash? Joy Division? Nick Cave? Ehm... then still on the other side there were some guys with tight jeans and long hair: they were called Iron Maiden... and believe it or not, there were those other idiots... yeah, the ones who in '83 released an album that simply said "kill them all!!"... bah, I think their name had something to do with metal, I don’t know I can’t remember, I’m old... Ah, then there was the little prince... no no, not the novel by Saint Exupéry... and he was black... mmmhhh... Then there were those who were always "in the shit" and who were evidently in love with Shakespeare (you should appreciate this) since they dedicated a song to "Romeo and Juliet" right in ‘80... then I don’t know... let me think, oh yes, there was the one who "loved Chopin" madly to the point of dedicating a song to him (poor Chopin!) and who was another background for groping in the dark between a Fanta and a pack of Smarties... and then after him came his other relatives, the one who loved Fellini, and another blonde, handsome, cool like few (but he didn’t sing, no no not that he couldn’t sing, he didn’t sing on his records) who recently did a "Celebrity Island".... Then there were some German Teutons, Klaus Schulze and Edgar Froese's bastard children who sang like queers in heat, dressed worse, but were popular among us super young... Then uhm... speaking of queers there was a big one, with a mustache, but who had a vocal range envied by many opera singers... I don’t know it seems to me that his last name had something to do with thermometers... Damn, what can you do... it's age that gallops, I can’t remember a thing... then I think there was another group that sang a song about Bloody Mary... uhm... no no it wasn’t the Bloody Mary... but I think Bloody was in the title... then they made an album about a tree... it was even on the cover... mah...
Please Francis, I’m getting old, the progressive degeneration of brain cells is in progress... please help me clarify the fog that darkens my memories of 80s bands....
Thanks a lot
Bye

The review is very beautiful, even though I don't share what you've written. First of all, just to clarify, I don't buy shirts from "Ralph Lauren" (yes, I have those I use for gardening), but I have them made by "Caraceni" in C.so Venezia in Milan at the modest price of 250-300 euros each. So, just to introduce ourselves...
That said, the Doors are the soundtrack of my 18-20 years, along with a few others, listened to unimaginably by me and many of my female friends... Since I am uglier (and I was back then too) than "Jimmy the phenomenon" hit by a truck on the highway while trying to sell his ass to a wild goat... it goes without saying that the envy for a beautiful, free, unconventional man, musician, womanizer, poet, and "damned" was high... And Jim was also an indirect protagonist of my greatest NON love story with a high school classmate, who back in 1989 gifted me (I didn't know it then) her personal copy of "An American Prayer" by Morrison, only to tell me two years later (exact words): "Ugly jerk, do you think I give away my private copy of a Morrison record to the first fool who comes along? Know that I didn't give it to you just because I knew you liked the Doors!" There you go, my famous "night before the exams" I also remember for that strange, belated, and unspoken confession of love... the second one came five years after high school... Well, I’ve never been very lucky with women...
Ahem, anyway, to get back to the album, we should carefully analyze various parameters, and I believe you have the tools to do so since you mention "Wyatt," "VU," etc...
Kid (I assume you are, since you say you are a university student), rock has 1000 faces, 1000 sounds, 1000 voices... it has always had them, and that’s why it has survived for 40 years, always different in form, but always the same in content: going against the grain, breaking (sometimes of the balls), anger, a cry for freedom, encoded in different ways, of course, but always the same in strength (if it's real rock).
Ray Manzarek, after Alan Price of the Animals, was one of the greatest innovators of the Hammond organ, played in a rock style, the one who "shaped" and gave strength and grace to the sound of the Doors, the musician of the group, who knew how to enrich the voice and lyrics of the Lizard King with his instrumental flights, which are nevertheless the offspring of a jazz/blues tradition traceable in many kinds of music...
Krieger and Densmore were honest supporting players for a SOUND that did not want to be complex but direct. Simplicity! You mention Byron, Shelley, and Keats, perhaps not considering that their Sonnets were the children of that Greek/Roman simplicity that made European culture immortal... Read Sappho, Marcus Aurelius, to find the seeds of English romanticism, which besides the mentioned includes William Blake, whom you overlooked! 'Damn you! :-))
The Doors were the black soul of rock until then, the dark face of psychedelia... Do you have any idea what it meant in 1967: "Father, yes son, I want to kill you! Mother, I want to.....Ffffffffffffffffffffffffffrr rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbaddd ddddabaaaaammmmmmmmm (Fuck covered by the epic ending of The End). With them, perhaps for the first time (at least in America, the Stones thought of it already in England) the figure of the Rock Star emerged, ugly (well, it’s a figure of speech), dirty, and bad, and unlike the English bands, the Doors had something to say! The lyrics became engaged (attention, Morrison never said: fuck Vietnam, war, long live the workers, themes so dear to the Italian critics of the time)... different...
Anyway, the tradition of rock as a "3-minute song" with the usual love story, the hot teenage girl, and all the imagery that existed before was being broken... Those of Morrison were certainly not the metropolitan slashes and punk ante litteram of the Velvet... they were more shamanic reflections, soaked in Indian culture, typically "Southern" Californian cult

If for you "Spanish caravan," reshaped on the Asturias by Albeniz, "Summer's almost gone," "The unknown soldier" (back then there was Vietnam) and even the first "little song" by the Doors, beautiful in its simplicity (Hello I Love You), are underwhelming works, I’m afraid you haven’t understood much about the Doors... really no offense, this band might not be for you, nothing wrong with that, but do me a favor: ask the staff to remove your review... no, I’m not biased, your review is simply incorrect...
Hi

No no, my dear sirs, the MINOR ALBUM by THE DOORS (if we can even speak of a minor when it comes to the Gods, of the minors, indeed, but still of them) is THE SOFT PARADE, the group’s most commercial album, with those symphonic contraptions (and therefore mooltoo reassuring for the time) that got a series of "new" girls all hot and bothered... so much so that "touch me" is still the most popular at teenage brain-dead and bourgeois parties, certainly not "the spy"...
Morrison Hotel (Hard Rock Café) with the ANTHEM par excellence from "easy rider" (or biker) which is "Roadhouse Blues" (second only to Born to be wild by Steppenwolf) is THE ROCK, at least the road rock, that smells of burnt rubber on the blazing Highways cracked by the sun, smells of sex, drugs, and freedom..... Waiting for the sun is a piece that has always thrilled me like a Swiss beetle on vacation in Taipei.... quite a lot! with that Manzarekata (on the Moog, I believe) setting the rhythm and Krieger's embellishments with a guitar more lascivious than ever... Then there’s the sunny "Queen of the highway" which needs no translation.... another classic for a cheerful outing of young ones "on the road"... certainly not in Busto Arsizio! But with "Indian Summer" we remember that the "lizard king" didn't go on vacation and after carefree rock blues songs comes the introspection, the seductive lyrics, whispered and psychedelic.... as if to say: at the end of the outing, the sunset lights dim, it’s time to stop in the middle of the desert. What could be better after roaring around on Harleys than a nice bonfire, everyone around, roasting chickens on improvised wooden barbecues à la mode Indiana and plenty, plenty of weed.... Then off to bed under the stars and the sky never completely dark for companions, the fresh prairie breeze caressing the faces and weary bodies after the orgiastic feast.... And that’s when "the Spy" can start... while everyone sleeps, sated and happy... "I know the dreams you’re dreaming... I’m a spy of love"
Masterpiece
Cheers

Iggy Pop deserves credit for "inventing," or rather taking to the extreme, "garage rock" still steeped in real or alleged psychedelia from bands like "MC5," "Standells," "Blue Cheer," and their happy company, which years later across the ocean in old Europe would be better codified as Punk, indebted to both these mentioned groups and the more visceral (and thus de-intellectualized - forgive the term) glam of T-REX led by Marc Bolan... That was his merit, but I agree with LORD: after 5 minutes I find it unlistenable, especially with the Stooges.... little by little alone, especially with the later works like "No Fun," "Nightclubbing," and the famous "The Idiot" (autobiographical tracks??!!) ... Yes, URIAH HEEP play a different kind of music, and I find them a tad superior... Amen

But good God (Morrison :-))) how can you give a 1 to an album that is a milestone? The Doors' last work, their swan song? An album that definitively closed the chapter on psychedelia and certainly does not conform to the "California Rock" that was in vogue at the time? Far removed from the likes of "Crosby, Stills, & Nash," "Neil Young," and the "Dead"? Christ, how can one not understand an intimate masterpiece like "riders on the storm??" Oh, if only Morrison had lived longer! From the tracks of this album, one can already see the direction that The Doors' music would take, a direction that was promising for the future.