The Doors are a PROGRESSIVE BAND, one of the best ones and they are American

So are the Doors!

not intentionally (at least not that I can tell - Jim's stage banter could be amusing)

the doors are ridulous and ridiculously awesome it doesn't matter what they meant

lots of ppl in this thread aren't very good at being fans of rock music step your game up

red are the arms of luxuriant chairs

Guy who wrote "Dear God" accuses leather trouser'd beer swigging ham of not being fun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig-ZoUQKst4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEk2zJ3jpuM

If we need more Doors fans, Julian Cope said they were his favourite band and Michael Gira likes em too.

Guy who wrote "Dear God"

Most important member of The Doorks.

"Fairy Killer" is tremendous in my opinion.

I guess Mahavishnu Orchestra, Battles, Todd Rundgren, Utopia, Zappa, and Cairo are my favourites American ones so far. Throw in some metal like Cynic and Death.

The Mahavishnu Orchestra were only 40% American.

Never thought of it before, but prog-ish bands helped keep classic-rock radio a lasting thing: Rush, Moody Blues, maybe Doors, breaking up the major keys and bar blues.

BOSTON, CHICAGO, KANSAS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCACYgvMgHQ&list=PLoRNXsrOuZ-VVB4IGR2RxJi33O1U3Mgwu

RIP odesses

― Οὖτις, Friday, 28 August 2015 17:21 (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ah, I see!

haha did not mean to imply that oddesses was a sock of mine (although I can see how our names might lend that impression), just that he appears to have left and not come back

the answer you seek lies in the admin log

If the Doors were a band today they'd be called DOOOOOOOORS and their logo would be a pizza. Prog.

Yeah, I actually don't mind The Doors, but I have to be in the correct mood to listen to them, if I'm not, then they do have a tendency to grate on me a bit... and yes, they were quite a huge influence on The Stranglers - Hugh Cornwell and Jean-Jacques Burnel in particular were huge fans, although interestingly the keyboard player much less so, he was more into British prog bands like Camel. The story goes is that when The Stranglers' keyboardist joined the band (he was the last person to join the "classic" line-up), he was coming up with all these Doors-like licks and Cornwell and Burnel were like "this guy is just like Ray Manzarek!" and the keyboardist, Dave Greenfield, asked "who is Ray Manzarek?" - Cornwell and Burnel liked this and were like "okay, it's by accident - even better!" ... Having said that, the approach they took on their cover of 'Walk On By' is definitely Doors-like, with the keyboard and guitar solos and the way it vamps on a couple of chords in the middle for a while quite like how 'Light My Fire' does.

It's undoubtedly going to sound sacrilegious to some, but if I had to choose between listening to a Stranglers record or a Doors record any time of day, any day of the week, I would definitely choose to listen to a Stranglers record, without a doubt.

The Andy Partridge quote about The Doors being "no fun" comes from an interview he did when he was trying to explain the difference between British psychedelia and American psychedelia, about how British psychedelia came across as being far more lighthearted (think stuff like the second side of Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, or Sgt. Pepper's), whereas the Americans approached psychedelia from a more serious angle. The American stuff was far more tense, whereas the British stuff was more "dropped some acid in the park and laughed as we ate a splendid cream bun" etc.

haha did not mean to imply that oddesses was a sock of mine (although I can see how our names might lend that impression), just that he appears to have left and not come back

― Οὖτις, Friday, 28 August 2015 21:02 (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the answer you seek lies in the admin log

― slothroprhymes, Friday, 28 August 2015 21:03 (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Nah, don't worry, Οὖτις, I never thought that for a second... it was more that I saw your post, checked the admin log, and was like "ah, right!"

Partridge generally otm there imo

ah now it is my turn to see

xp

Billy Cobham was born in Panama so technically Mahavishnu where 20% American.
\pedantry

Panama is not and never has been part of America
\uberpedant

I know. The violin dude was the only american, hence 20%

haha ah I get it my bad

& he was in a San Francisco band with proggish tendencies too innit?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is9Wh1iXIxA

Thanks for the Yezda Urfa clip, that sounds amazing.

glad you like it. they're a hidden gem -- some of the most complex 'rock' music i've ever heard

craziest song by yezda urfa is this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKK8kdDVMag

but it also reveals problems with the notion of american "prog" as a genre. there's very little that can be called "prog" during the peak years of the british movement from '69-'74. what shows up is later, mid-late '70s, and is either horribly obscure (yezda urfa, graced lightning, random) or, you know, kansas. kansas are actually one of the more interesting examples here, as the "kansas ii" lineup, aka proto-kaw, was operating during the prime uk prog period, and was doing extremely far-out vdgg-influenced material like "totus nemesis", containing a long section best described as noise (it's on cuneiform, so i can't link you to something to listen to).

now, in the late '70s, you had stuff in the dc area like "happy the man" (not actually named after genesis), "the muffins", which were more avant-garde and slightly more popular than graced lightning or tommy marolda's private press prog lp (which is so obscure that i still haven't heard it, although it's doing the cd-r circuit), and it's this sort of music that feeds directly into the us avant-prog scene which has existed continuously since then, but as far as what is known as "symphonic" during prog's prime years, there's just not much american stuff to speak of. late '70s dc-area prog does have a precedent in the earlier baltimore group "oho":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEWQYmanG3M

but again, we're dealing with a band which was deeply obscure and which nobody heard at the time, and again we're clearly dealing with something, like yezda urfa, which is derivative of first-wave UK prog.

as for the doors, if they're prog than jim morrison is america's greg lake.

by the way, i forgot to mention one of my favorite us prog bands, jasper wrath. the stuff they did after their first album (some of which came out on tax scam labels under pseudonyms like "zoldar & clark") is better than their first album material, which is very much in the "proto-prog" vein, but they're still near the top of the heap as far as us prog goes.

there's also the first couple JOURNEY albums, and more obscure, CATHEDRAL, MITHRANDIR, and SHADOWFAX

I think elements of The Doors was 'progressive' in a 1967-69 sense before prog was really a more defined genre of rock. I'd say this even goes more for Love and Spirit. Love definitely went into using some Sgt. Pepper orchestral arrangements. Spirit had a legit jazz background and their albums have all sorts of vaguely spaghetti soundtrack style pieces. All three bands (The Doors, Spirit & Love) being from the same rock scene that birthed the Mothers of Invention. There was that few year period where bands often had very wide repertoires. They might do some heavy blues, maybe a couple of acoustic numbers. In the UK, I'd say similar groups would be Jethro Tull and Colosseum both of which had the heavy blues numbers but then had other tracks that would venture into acoustic folk and soundtrack jazz.

Oh yeah, I kinda think a 'prog' Stooges is Black Sabbath.

ban me from this site but i swear "GOOD VIBRATIONS" is a total proto-prog jam

You got to figure the Moody's were way into the Beach Boys.

You can stream a track from that Proto-Kaw album on Cuneiform's Bandcamp page:

http://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/early-recordings-from-kansas-1971-1973

the GRATEFUL DEAD are (at least sometimes) an american progressive band

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugRct9pNQYM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN6mjNMNytY

so is deicide

and SYMPHONY X

The Doors, one of the better LA 60s bands with a keyboard player. Better than The Music Machine; probably not as accomplished as The Association; not as rocking as The Seeds.

The Seeds - WEB OF SOUND - 1966

try:
"Pictures and Designs"
"Tripmaker"

Prog Stooges = Magma?

1 (although "Talk Talk" by The Music Machine rivals anything by anybody, and "Eagle Never Hunts The Fly" is ersatz to the max.)

2 (Talk Talk should have done a song called "The Music Machine". But they didn't.)

Prog Stooges = The Stooges

The Doors, one of the better LA 60s bands with a keyboard player. Better than The Music Machine; probably not as accomplished as The Association; not as rocking as The Seeds.

The Association didn't have a keyboard player.

The Doors aren't supposed to "rock"

Listing the 'better LA 60s bands with a keyboard player' and not mentioning Spirit?

The Doors weren't better than the Music Machine is some ways. They surely had more pretty moments overall, but they were together longer. The Music Machine did what they did better than anybody, which was turning garage rock into high musical drama with just note-perfect execution. Maybe they were the only band really shooting for this, but that was part of their genius. I think my favorite Music Machine songs are "Masculine Intuition" and "Double Yellow Line."

how fucking cool looking was jim morrison? it's fucking ridiculous is what it is, what a rock star

I don't mean to give the Doors any short shrift, by the way - just sticking up for the Music Machine. The Doors' accomplishments were sometimes super massive. I'm still a big time believer in the literary adventure of the pop musician, whatever my feelings might be about particulars in this Doors lyric or that. The spirit of the thing, literary seriousness - I am still a believer.