Word: album
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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STRANGE DAYS (Elektra). The Doors have reached that point in fame at which they can now simultaneously have police problems in New Haven, Conn., appear in Vogue, and be praised for this album. Some high points: Moonlight Drive and My Eyes Have Seen You have a rare quality of quiet sensuality, while Strange Days and Unhappy Girl tell of alienation and aloneness with cool emotion...
...from even humbler beginnings. I Pity the Poor Immigrant, chanted to a tune that is as basic as one of the late Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl ballads, is a melancholy portrait of a misanthropic, malcontented wanderer "who passionately hates his life and likewise fears his death." The album's title song, John Wesley Harding (who "was never known to make a foolish move") is an oldtime saga about a kind of Nietzschean super dream...
...Like It Is." His version of "Knock on Wood," though it retains almost nothing of the great Eddie Floyd original, is undoubtedly the definitive version of that song. His arrangements are infinitely varied. Before one understands the arrangement of "Tell It Like It Is," recorded on his joint album with Carla Thomas, it sounds as though it is being played at the wrong speed. The greatness of the effect may take some time to become clear...
Redding was also a great comic, and this would have been much more obvious had he chosen to use that ability more often. In the song "Tramp" on the album with Carla Thomas, Redding plays the part of a southern provincial. His lines are really hilarious, as when Carla accuses him of being from the Georgia woods and he replies in the most accurate vacuous Georgia woods fashion, "That's good...
Redding would often sing in subtle opposition to the beat. In "It's Too Late," on the album "Otis Redding Sings Soul Ballads," the opening comes so close to being in disregard of the music, and yet is not quite, that somehow the sound expresses complete desolation...