Doors – "The Crystal Ship" (1967)

The crystal ship is being filled
A thousand girls, a thousand thrills
A million ways to spend your time

[NOTE: The 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME includes two Doors records, but this is the first Doors recording to be chosen for the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME.  I thought so highly of “The Crystal Ship” that I chose it to feature in the 10th 2 or 3 lines post ever.  What follows is a slightly edited version of that December 26, 2009 post.]

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The Doors' debut album (The Doors) was released the first week of 1967 – that's 42 years ago. If I were to really think about that, my whole day would be ruined.

One reason I always liked the Doors was because Jim Morrison had a relatively low voice, and so did I. When I was singing along with the radio, I couldn't reach the high notes in a lot of my favorite songs – but that was never a problem with a Doors song because Morrison and I had similar vocal ranges. (Speaking of my singing along with the radio . . . I remember one long drive when my father suddenly turned the car radio off. When I protested, he said "We can either listen to the radio, or listen to you.  But not both.")

Jim Morrison

"Light My Fire" wasn't the first song released as a single from The Doors – "Break on Through (To the Other Side)" was.  I assume that was because "Light My Fire" was over seven minutes long.

Six months after the album was released, a more radio-friendly 2:52 version of "Light My Fire" was created, and became one of the most unforgettable hit singles of the AM radio era. It is #7 on VH1's "100 Greatest Songs of All Time"and was one of the few rock songs included in NPR's ranking of the 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century (which included, among other things, "West Side Story" and "Rhapsody in Blue"). When you come across The Godfather Part II on television, you have to watch it, and when you hear "Light My Fire" on the radio, you have to listen to it.  

"Light My Fire" was #1 on the Billboard "Hot 100" for three weeks. Jose Feliciano's cover version reached #3 only a year later, and an astonishing variety of others have covered the song since then – including Patricia Barber, Nancy Sinatra, Shirley Bassey, Stevie Wonder, Al Green, B. J. Thomas, Type O Negative, and Massive Attack. (Massive Attack's version samples the "Light My Fire" covers by Jackie Wilson and Young-Holt Unlimited.)

(I need a pair of leather pants just
like those Jim Morrison wore)

*     *     *     *     *

The B-side of "Light My Fire" was another song from The Doors – "The Crystal Ship." 

 I didn't own the album until many years later, and I'm not sure when I first heard "The Crystal Ship." I must have heard the entire album played by friends during college, but I don't remember hearing "The Crystal Ship" until the early 1980's, when I was living in San Francisco and it was played regularly on a local classic rock station.  

It's a classic Jim Morrison song – which can be good news and bad news. Morrison, who considered himself first and foremost a poet, was influenced by William Blake, Baudelaire and Rimbaud, Joseph Campbell, and the "Beat Generation" writers. (The name "The Doors" came from a line in the Blake poem, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell": "If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite.") 

Morrison took himself just a tad too seriously, and he wrote a lot of crap. But his lyrics are like no one else's, and the Doors' best songs are unique and really get under your skin. If you're in the right mood – nostalgic, or longing for something that you can't quite get a grip on – a song like "The Crystal Ship" is just what the doctor ordered.

*     *     *     *     *

Some people interpret "The Crystal Ship" as a drug-trip song – of course, that's the default interpretation for any 60's or 70's song that you can't make sense of. (What is a "crystal ship" anyway? I have no clue, but it sounds awfully fragile.) 

The other explanation you'll find is that the song is Morrison's good-bye to a former girlfriend. (I suppose it's a bummer when a rock star dumps you, but having him write a song or two about you before the breakup is pretty cool.)

I don't really care what the song means. It's a gorgeous two and a half minutes of dreamy, loopy music and dreamy, loopy words. The studio recording is perfectly arranged and executed – especially the way Morrison's voice crescendos into the last stanza, peaking on the word "crystal."

Click here to listen to "The Crystal Ship."

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.

Click here for a video that combines a pretty good live performance of the song with some very interesting photos of Morrison and the other Doors.

Doors – "The End" (1967)

Ride the snake, ride the snake

To the lake, the ancient lake

The snake, he’s long

Seven miles

Ride the snake

He’s old and his skin is cold

As I noted in the previous 2 or 3 lines, the British Film Institute’s 2022 “100 Greatest Films of All Times” list omits Nashville, The Wild Bunch, The Godfather Part II and several other films that anyone with half a brain would agree belong on the “100 Greatest” list.

*     *     *     *     *

The movie that was ranked #1 by the BFI’s 2022 voters is one that I’ve never heard of – much less seen.  I would bet dollars to donuts that you’ve never heard of it either.  

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles – a 1975 film that was written and directed by a 25-year-old Belgian woman, Chantal Akerman – barely cracked the top forty on the BFI 2012 list.   But ten years later, it was ranked #1. 

Chantal Akerman

What explains the sudden ascension of this rather obscure movie to the top of the new list – replacing Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, which in turn had replaced Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane?  

 Obviously Jeanne Dielman was the same movie in 2022 that it was in 2012.  What changed in those ten years was the BFI electorate. 

The BFI sent ballots to 800-odd film critics, programmers, and academics in 2012, but invited twice as many to vote in 2022. 

The new 2022 voters apparently included a lot of politically correct  types who gave more weight to diversity than to any other criteria. 

“It’s high time a woman won,” one British critic wrote, explaining his vote for Jeanne Dielman – and probably explaining why that film ended up in the top spot of the “100 Greatest Films” list.

*     *     *     *     *

As noted above, I’ve never heard of Jeanne Dielman, much less watched it.

I did find a four-minute clip from the movie on Youtube tonight and watched it.  That four-minute scene consists of a static shot of movie’s title character preparing a couple of breaded veal cutlets for dinner.

Jeanne Dielman preparing veal cutlets

First, she dredges the cutlets in flour.  Then she dips them in the whisked egg.  Then she coats the cutlets with breadcrumbs.  Finally, she covers the dish containing the cutlets with a sheet of aluminum foil and put the dish in her refrigerator.

Click here to watch that scene.

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From the reviews of it that I’ve read, Jeanne Dielman consists of roughly three hours of similarly banal scenes leading up to the disclosure of an awful secret.

I had hoped to watch the movie before publishing this post so I could tell you whether the ending justifies the three tedious hours that precede it.  Unfortunately, my local public library – which is not only the biggest and most well-funded library in the state of Maryland, but also as woke a library as you would ever hope to find – doesn’t own a DVD of Jeanne Dielman.  

So I’ve made a request through the state’s interlibrary loan network, and will hopefully be able to offer my thoughts on Jeanne Dielman in the near future.

“Why didn’t you just buy a copy of the movie, you cheap bast*rd?” I can hear you saying to yourself.

No way, dude.  It’s enough of a sacrifice that I’m going to spend three-plus hours of my life that I’ll never get back watching Jeanne Dielman – no chance I’m going to spend my own do-re-mi.

*     *     *     *     *

“The End” – which was released in 1967 on the Doors’ eponymous debut album – is about 12 minutes of not very much happening.  You could say it’s the classic-rock equivalent of Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.  

A special remix of the recording was featured in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 movie, Apocalypse Now, which came in at #19 of the BFI “100 Greatest Movies” list.  Apocalypse Now has it moments, but you are out of your pea-pickin’ mind if you think it’s better than Coppola’s Godfather Part II.

Better than Apocalypse Now?  You bet it is! 

But that wasn’t the only time the BFI voters picked the wrong movie by the right director.  For example, they picked three Stanley Kubrick movies for the “100 Greatest” list: The Shining, Barry Lyndon, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.  But Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and Full Metal Jacket and Clockwork Orange should have been ranked ahead of those movies.  

Hell, I might even rank Eyes Wide Shut and Lolita – hot messes, both of them – above 2001.  A friend of mine once ascribed the legendary status of 2001 to the fact that almost everyone who saw when it was first released (which was 1968) went to the theatre high, and I think he was 100% correctimundo.

Click here to listen to “The End.”

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.

Doors – "Touch Me" (1969)

Come on, come on, come on, come on now

Touch me, babe!

NOTE: “Touch Me” was one of the songs on the reel-to-reel tape that played in my high school cafeteria during lunch in 1969-70, when I was a senior.  

I’m not sure why the school administration allowed us to play “Communication Breakdown” (Led Zeppelin) and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” (Rolling Stones) and “Touch Me” over the cafeteria P.A. system while we ate – especially given that my friends and I were wont to sing rude alternate lyrics for the song.  (Oliver Stone copied our idea in his 1991 movie about the Doors.)

What follows is an edited version of my original May 1, 2018 post about the newest inductee into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME:

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The Washington Post recently published a long article about professional cuddlers.  Here are some excerpts from that article, which was written by reporter Tara Bahrampour:

The 32-year-old photographer from Virginia had a busy life, but he was single, and starving for physical contact.  “I started to get to a place where if somebody started to greet me with a hug or even being in close proximity to someone, it was almost sort of a shocking feeling,” he said.

And so he turned to one of the country’s newest professions: cuddling for hire.  Once a week he paid $80 to be held, stroked and embraced for an hour in a nonsexual way.  Like most people interviewed for this story, the man, Chuck, wanted only his first name used because paying to get cuddled can feel embarrassing — especially in less touchy-feely areas like Washington.

But demand is growing.  In the past four years storefront cuddle shops have opened in Portland and Los Angeles, and one-on-one cuddle providers are proliferating across the nation.

While paying for touch may sound awkward or unnatural to those who get plenty of it from partners or other close connections, for some people it is an antidote to a culture where casual physical contact seems elusive.  The percentage of U.S. adults living without a spouse or partner has risen from 39 to 42 percent in the past 10 years, according to a recent Pew Research Center study, and the rise in on-screen interactions means more socializing takes place without even the possibility of touch.

The Post article focuses on the certified professional cuddlists who are listed on the Cuddlist.com website, which contains profiles of hundreds of certified professional cuddlists who charge $80 an hour to cuddle:

The Cuddlist site has logged over 10,000 requests and lists dozens of providers.  The West Coast and New York City are home to many, but the practice appears to be catching on more slowly in the D.C. area. . . .

Jasmine Siemon, 37, a cuddler in Germantown, Maryland who trained in Los Angeles and was recently certified by Cuddlist, said there is a robust market in this area, from stressed-out college students to lonely empty-nesters. . . .

While massage therapy might seem to be the perfect way to fulfill the need for touch, nonsexual cuddling addresses a deeper, more emotional need, professional cuddlers say.

“Massage therapy ethics are all about one-way touch,” said Annie Hopson, a Cuddlist provider in Ellicott City, Md., who is also a massage therapist.

Some cuddlers also host cuddle parties where strangers come together for a communal hug.  These have an eager clientele in the Washington area, said Edie Weinstein, a licensed social worker who has hosted over 300 of them here since 2004.

Dan, 43, who works in finance, said cuddling sessions took the place of an intimate relationship for about a year when he didn’t have one.

“I was aware that I needed contact with people,” he said. “I had been to massage parlors that were not on the up-and-up. I’d leave there with feelings of shame or feeling dirty, and this was different.” 

Click here to read the entire Post article.

*     *     *     *     *

A lot of the comments that readers of the article posted on the newspaper’s website were more than a bit weird.

From henryfpotter:

I've seen, in various books, the claim that physical touch is a necessity of life.

1. All these books were written by women; if a man were to say such a thing out loud, it would immediately peg the creep-o-meter.

2. I haven't been touched since before 9/11 and I'm doing just fine.

From nancykmiller:

speak to people, don't touch them in this time.

we have a big problem with contagion.

you don't really want their germs, they don't want yours.

Here’s what fried003 had to say:

If I casually or accidently touch a female, it might be grounds for accusation of sexual harassment.  If I touch a male beyond a handshake or fistbump – it's something that I learned in primary school not to do.  Moral of the story – it's best not to touch anyone who isn't a close relative.

Another commenter who wanted no part of cuddling was asgoodasitgets:

I live alone and haven't been in a relationship in eight years, but I'm not this desperate.

Another negative comment came from vanative:

Our culture is getting lamer and needier by the day. Paying for cuddles is sad and creepy.

But amytales thought vanative had it backwards:

Or here's a thought: we might be getting lamer and needier in part due to lack of physical contact with other humans.

I’m not sure if zlwonder’s comment was serious:

I don't mind cuddling in a nonsexual way, as long as it leads to sex.

Here’s active999’s take on the article:

Cuddling is a start.  Prostitution (male and female) should be legal.  If the hubby or wife goes cold you can still get some lovin.’  Everybody needs a booty call every now and then.

From globalperspective:

My friend's marriage broke up after her husband began using a cuddler.  Call it what you'd like, but I wouldn't feel real great if my spouse suddenly started seeing a cuddler.

*     *     *     *     *

My original plan was to poke fun at people who pay $80 an hour to spoon with “professional cuddlists,” which strikes me as more than a little ridiculous.

But being deprived of physical contact with others is no laughing matter.  It’s a very, very, VERY sad state of affairs in which to find yourself.  

*     *     *     *     *

“Touch Me” reached #3 on the Billboard “Hot 100” chart in early 1969.  It was released on the Doors’ fourth studio album, The Soft Parade, which I played pretty much to death.   

Click here to listen to “Touch Me,” which famously closes with Morrison singing “Stronger than dirt” – that was the well-known slogan for Colgate-Palmolive’s Ajax household cleaner.

Click below to buy the record from Amazon:

Doors – "Light My Fire" (1967)

The time to hesitate is through

No time to wallow in the mire

In 2000, NPR – which had listed “Light My Fire” as one of the 100 most significant American musical works of the 20th century – interviewed the surviving members of the Doors about the song.

The late Ray Manzarek

Here’s what the late Ray Manzarek – the Doors organist – had to say about what inspired “Light My Fire”:

We were aware of Muddy Waters.  We were aware of Howlin’ Wolf and John Coltrane and Miles Davis.  Plus, Jan and Dean and The Beach Boys and the surf sound.  Robby Krieger brings in some flamingo guitar.  I bring a little bit of classical music along with the blues and jazz, and certainly John Densmore was heavy into jazz.  And Jim brings in beatnik poetry and French symbolist poetry, and that’s the blend of The Doors as the sun is setting into the Pacific Ocean at the end, the terminus of Western civilization.  That’s the end of it.  Western civilization ends here in California at Venice Beach, so we stood there inventing a new world on psychedelics.

Whatever you say, Ray.

(You can click here to listen to that NPR interview.)

*     *     *     *     *

One day, Jim Morrison gave his bandmates a homework assignment.  He told them all to go home and spend the weekend writing new songs.

Guitarist Robby Kreiger was the only one of the group who didn’t show up at the next rehearsal empty-handed.   The rest of the Doors liked “Light My Fire” – which  was what Krieger called the first song he had ever written – but it was far from a finished product.

Robbie Krieger

For example, Krieger had written only one verse:

You know that it would be untrue

You know that I would be a liar

If I was to say to you

Girl, we couldn’t get much higher

Jim Morrison came up with a second verse, the language of which sounded nothing like Krieger’s:

The time to hesitate is through

No time to wallow in the mire

Try now we can only lose

And our love become a funeral pyre

(“Wallow in the mire”?  “Funeral pyre”?)

*     *     *     *     *

The Doors’ first single, “Break On Through (To the Other Side),” is a great song – arguably even better than “Light My Fire” – but it was a commercial flop.

A few months later, the band released a three-minute version of“Light My Fire” (which was originally just over seven minutes long) as a single.  It went to #1 on the Billboard “Hot 100” and stayed there for three weeks in the summer of 1967.

I was 15 years old that summer – too young to drive or have a job – so I spent a lot of time at the local country club.  (My parents didn’t move in the same social circles as the other members, but my mother was the club’s office manager, so we were allowed to play golf and hang out at the pool.)  

Swimming pool babes (circa 1967)

I vividly remember hearing “Light My Fire” playing on the pool’s public-address system.  I also vividly remember the mean cheeseburgers and excellent chocolate milkshakes the club’s snack bar served up. 

Because it was a country club, you didn’t pay cash at the snack bar – you simply signed the check with one of those short pencils that were also used by the club’s golfers to keep score.  (Make way for Mr. Big Shot, you hoi polloi!)

Click here to listen to the single version of “Light My Fire.”  (This is the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME we’re talking about, after all.)

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

Doors – "Touch Me" (1968)

Come on, come on, come on, come on now

Touch me, babe

The Washington Post recently published a long article about professional cuddlers.  Here are some excerpts from that article, which was written by reporter Tara Bahrampour:

The 32-year-old photographer from Virginia had a busy life, but he was single, and starving for physical contact.  “I started to get to a place where if somebody started to greet me with a hug or even being in close proximity to someone, it was almost sort of a shocking feeling,” he said.

And so he turned to one of the country’s newest professions: cuddling for hire.  Once a week he paid $80 to be held, stroked and embraced for an hour in a nonsexual way.  Like most people interviewed for this story, the man, Chuck, wanted only his first name used because paying to get cuddled can feel embarrassing — especially in less touchy-feely areas like Washington.

But demand is growing.  In the past four years storefront cuddle shops have opened in Portland and Los Angeles, and one-on-one cuddle providers are proliferating across the nation.

While paying for touch may sound awkward or unnatural to those who get plenty of it from partners or other close connections, for some people it is an antidote to a culture where casual physical contact seems elusive.  The percentage of U.S. adults living without a spouse or partner has risen from 39 to 42 percent in the past 10 years, according to a recent Pew Research Center study, and the rise in on-screen interactions means more socializing takes place without even the possibility of touch.

The Post article focuses on the certified professional cuddlists who are listed on the Cuddlist.com website, which contains profiles of hundreds of certified professional cuddlists who charge $80 an hour to cuddle:

The Cuddlist site has logged over 10,000 requests and lists dozens of providers.  The West Coast and New York City are home to many, but the practice appears to be catching on more slowly in the D.C. area. . . .

Jasmine Siemon, 37, a cuddler in Germantown, Maryland who trained in Los Angeles and was recently certified by Cuddlist, said there is a robust market in this area, from stressed-out college students to lonely empty-nesters. . . .

While massage therapy might seem to be the perfect way to fulfill the need for touch, nonsexual cuddling addresses a deeper, more emotional need, professional cuddlers say.

“Massage therapy ethics are all about one-way touch,” said Annie Hopson, a Cuddlist provider in Ellicott City, Md., who is also a massage therapist.

Some cuddlers also host cuddle parties where strangers come together for a communal hug.  These have an eager clientele in the Washington area, said Edie Weinstein, a licensed social worker who has hosted over 300 of them here since 2004.

Dan, 43, who works in finance, said cuddling sessions took the place of an intimate relationship for about a year when he didn’t have one.

“I was aware that I needed contact with people,” he said. “I had been to massage parlors that were not on the up-and-up. I’d leave there with feelings of shame or feeling dirty, and this was different.” 

Click here to read the entire Post article.

*     *     *     *     *

A lot of the comments that readers of the article posted on the newspaper’s website were more than a bit weird.

From henryfpotter:

I've seen, in various books, the claim that physical touch is a necessity of life.

1. All these books were written by women; if a man were to say such a thing out loud, it would immediately peg the creep-o-meter.

2. I haven't been touched since before 9/11 and I'm doing just fine.

From nancykmiller:

speak to people, don't touch them in this time.

we have a big problem with contagion.

you don't really want their germs, they don't want yours.

Here’s what fried003 had to say:

If I casually or accidently touch a female, it might be grounds for accusation of sexual harassment.  If I touch a male beyond a handshake or fistbump – it's something that I learned in primary school not to do.  Moral of the story – it's best not to touch anyone who isn't a close relative.

Another commenter who wanted no part of cuddling was asgoodasitgets:

I live alone and haven't been in a relationship in eight years, but I'm not this desperate.

Another negative comment came from vanative:

Our culture is getting lamer and needier by the day. Paying for cuddles is sad and creepy.

But amytales thought vanative had it backwards:

Or here's a thought: we might be getting lamer and needier in part due to lack of physical contact with other humans.

I’m not sure if zlwonder’s comment was serious:

I don't mind cuddling in a nonsexual way, as long as it leads to sex.

Here’s active999’s take on the article:

Cuddling is a start.  Prostitution (male and female) should be legal.  If the hubby or wife goes cold you can still get some lovin.’  Everybody needs a booty call every now and then.

From globalperspective:

My friend's marriage broke up after her husband began using a cuddler.  Call it what you'd like, but I wouldn't feel real great if my spouse suddenly started seeing a cuddler.

*     *     *     *     *

My original plan was to poke fun at people who pay $80 an hour to spoon with “professional cuddlists,” which strikes me as more than a little ridiculous.

But being deprived of physical contact with others is no laughing matter.  It’s a very, very sad state of affairs in which to find yourself.  

*     *     *     *     *

“Touch Me” was one of the songs on the reel-to-reel tape that played in my high school cafeteria during lunch in 1969-70, when I was a senior.

I’m not sure why the school administration allowed us to play “Communication Breakdown” (Led Zeppelin) and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” (Rolling Stones) and “Touch Me” over the cafeteria P.A. system while we ate – especially given that my friends and I were wont to sing the rude lyrics that we made up.  

It doesn’t require much imagination to figure out what verb we substituted for “touch” in “Touch Me.”  (Oliver Stone copied our idea in his 1991 movie about the Doors.)

“Touch Me” reached #3 on the Billboard “Hot 100” chart in early 1969.  It was released on the Doors’ fourth studio album, The Soft Parade, which I played pretty much to death.   

Click here to listen to “Touch Me,” which famously closes with Morrison singing “Stronger than dirt” – that was the well-known slogan for Colgate-Palmolive’s Ajax household cleaner.

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Doors – "Shaman's Blues" (1969)

There will never be another one like you

There will never be another one who can

Do the things you do

The music that was released when I was a senior in high school holds a special place in my heart.  If you don’t understand why that is, there’s no point in my trying to explain.

The Soft Parade was the Doors’ fourth studio album, but it was the first one I bought – when I was a senior in high school.  

I purt near played it to death – particularly the B side, which featured “Wild Child,” “Runnin’ Blue,” “Wishful Sinful,” and “The Soft Parade.”  (“YOU CANNOT PETITION THE LORD WITH PRAYER!”)

But today we’re featuring a song from the album’s A-side, “Shaman’s Blues,” because it’s in 3/4 time.

In case you haven’t figured it out – and it appears that none of you have – this year’s “29 Songs in 28 Days” theme is the number three. 

Every song featured on 2 or 3 lines this month has the word “three” in the title, or was performed by a three-piece group, or has some other OBVIOUS connection to the number three.

Except that connection was obviously not so obvious to the loyal but mostly dull-normal*** readers of 2 or 3 lines.   

(***According to Webster’s, a dull-normal person is someone “having an intelligence level on the borderline between normal intelligence and mental deficiency.”  SOUND LIKE ANYONE YOU KNOW?)

*     *     *     *     *

Here are a dozen other songs in 3/4 (or 6/8) time:

– “Manic Depression,” by Jimi Hendrix

– “House of the Rising Sun,” by the Animals

– “I Put a Spell on You,” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins

– “I Got You Babe,” by Sonny & Cher

– “Mr. Bojangles,” by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band 

– “Norwegian Wood,” by the Beatles

(Don't you just hate it when that happens?)

– “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You),” by Aretha Franklin

– “How Can I Be Sure,” by the Young Rascals

– “Scarborough Fair,” by Simon & Garfunkel

– “What’s New Pussycat?” by Tom Jones

– “Breaking the Girl,” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers

– “Nothing Else Matters,” by Metallica

*     *     *     *     *

Here’s “Shaman’s Blues”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: