Not really liking either band.

The garage rock Dead songs from the first record are good. Touch of Grey is good. All the country-rock Americana stuff and lengthy live noodlings leave me cold, but easy enough to avoid.

The Doors had more good songs, and the Morrison hate is overdone. I’ll give this one to the Doors. Would definitely take them over the Stooges “my first band”, 6 minute verse-chorus songs, riffs that end on the chord they started on, for 3 albums, heroin chic pedo bullshit.

A_Man_Who_Tries wrote: Fri Feb 24, 2023 2:51 am

The Classical wrote: Thu Feb 23, 2023 4:31 pm The Doors are the pinnacle of American rock music.

HoF.

The bigger takeaway there is the Brits kicked our asses in that dept.

I've always liked the first few Doors albums along with LA Woman. I used to hate on the Dead, but have come to appreciate Anthem and Live Dead. I guess I'll give it to The Doors. But GD was less posturing for sure; they were the annoying hippies that their work evoked.

I love them both, for different reasons. The Doors were a dose of something dark and scary among the peace and love vibes of their contemporaries. I'm really hard pressed to think of another 1960s West Coast band that pulled it off as well as they did.

For all their influence The Doors were a blip on the radar. The Dead were a cultural institution spanning decades and generations. Here's the point everyone misses about The Grateful Dead: their canvas was the concert stage. Add psychedelics. Not the studio albums and not bootleg tapes, the live experience. The Dead's shows were notoriously hit or miss but when they hit they knocked it out of the park.

I saw The Dead twice when I was at college in the late '80s and they were pretty boring (my favorite band at the time was Husker Du). But then I saw them in Las Vegas in 1991 and I had an epiphany (and I'm not some new age goofball). Maybe it was the combination of the right friends, the right crowd, the right vibe, the right drugs, whatever, but something clicked and I GOT IT. At one point during the second set when the music was particularly intense a voice inside me said TURN AROUND and when I did my field of vision encompassed the whole of the UNLV Bowl and I saw what looked like every single person there thousands of them on their feet dancing and I felt a tremendous wave of positive energy a gigantic ecstatic YES flowing through band and audience alike and I had no choice but to ride that wave and it was pure bliss and sure I was tripping my balls off but it was REAL I know it was and so did everyone else there that day and as my mind took it all in that voice inside me said THIS IS CHURCH and I knew it was true.

So I can understand the jam band phenomenon because once you experience THAT MOMENT at a concert you want to try and make it happen again. And again. But the jam bands are missing the X Factor that made every Dead show unique. The hat's empty, there's no rabbit inside. They're all professionals, something The Dead definitely were not. No one in Widespread Panic is going to do some bad dope before going onstage and royally screw up their classics in front of a stadium full of adoring fans. Neither are they going to fit the key in the lock and open the door to the infinite. It's just not going to happen. The members of Phish are such talented improvisers, you'll be happily sailing through one of their free form sections only to be brought crashing to the ground with some cutesy-pie aren't-we-clever lyrics about bouncing, tweezers or nipples. At least The Dead wrote songs about guys playing poker, drinking whiskey, running from the law and getting shot.

Anyway it was a period of my life I'm glad I went through. I had a blast. I made lifelong friends and I think I came out of it without too much chromosome damage. I sure as hell never ate food out of a dumpster or served it to anyone for dinner. The Dead's music still makes me smile but these days I'd rather listen to Fugazi. Or Unwound. Or The Ex. Or Hot Snakes. Or Neurosis. Etc etc etc ...

I never saw the Dead live. Technically I could have, and had a social scene, particularly in college, that somewhat intersected Deadhead culture. Also it seemed like that scene was permeated with middle/upper-middle kids who’d dress in rags and pretend to be broke but had Saabs and could always seem to get money for lift tickets and stuff like that. I was actually for real broke. Even at like 18 or 19, it seemed pretty obvious to me something was off here.

I like the Dead fine now and agree with everything Tony said above about them being about the live experience, trailblazing, sometimes transcendent, but very human in their failings.

Voted for the Doors because their catalogue is briefer and more consistent (apart from the two Jim-less albums). I'm grateful they didn't try and release another record with Ian Astbury on vocals, otherwise I'd probably have voted for the Dead.

Having said that, I prefer the first side of "Anthem of the Sun" to anything the Doors released - but once the Dead left psychedelia behind and settled into a comfortably chugging country rock groove around 1972 or so, they got very old very quickly. I'll be fair and refrain from blaming them for Phish.

twelvepoint wrote: Also it seemed like that scene was permeated with middle/upper-middle kids who’d dress in rags and pretend to be broke but had Saabs and could always seem to get money for lift tickets and stuff like that. I was actually for real broke. Even at like 18 or 19, it seemed pretty obvious to me something was off here.

yeah, the biggest Deadhead I knew in high school sold the nice Jeep her parents bought her to buy a VW van that broke down every other day. I never thought much about it, but yeah, one would have to have some means to take a summer off and follow the band around.

penningtron wrote: Sat Feb 25, 2023 8:06 am

twelvepoint wrote: Also it seemed like that scene was permeated with middle/upper-middle kids who’d dress in rags and pretend to be broke but had Saabs and could always seem to get money for lift tickets and stuff like that. I was actually for real broke. Even at like 18 or 19, it seemed pretty obvious to me something was off here.

yeah, the biggest Deadhead I knew in high school sold the nice Jeep her parents bought her to buy a VW van that broke down every other day. I never thought much about it, but yeah, one would have to have some means to take a summer off and follow the band around.

I wasn’t from a class where if you fuck up or drop out for a while, you were guaranteed to be bailed out, and once I realized that, I was kinda resentful! The Dead kinda took some collateral damage around this issue of mine, which I’ve made my peace with 30 years hence!

The Dead rules. The Doors do nothing for me, but I appreciate a whole lot of their trip (musically).

Would pick either one over nearly any other modern band I can think of right now, except for like Sons of Kemet or something like that.

Somehow my daughter got herself a 2023 Doors t-shirt (wasn't me) and was complaining that one of her teacher's told her that if you're wearing a band shirt you need to know at least 3 of their songs. She wasn't too pleased when I agreed with the teacher so we went on a little Doors deep-dive. Made me realize that I must be getting old as even the shitty Doors songs are kinda enjoyable to me (even if it's really more comic relief as some of these songs are really ridiculous. "Land Ho". wtf).

Also, the Doors shirt has a fucking Door on it. Had to take a trip to the mall a while ago and also saw a Def Leppard shirt with a picture of a leopard on it. Not sure what to make of this but it seems kinda dumb. I'm getting old. Oh well.

Doors win, I guess.