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

doors soundtrack was probably where lots of kids first heard the VU ... and hated it.

― tylerw, Thursday, 3 September 2015 22:54 (Yesterday) Permalink

Yo, though I didn't hate it.

Also I'm trying to convince my wife its cool to get blown while doing a vocal

"Honey it was in the Doors movie! Plus I think I saw something in Tape Op about it"

love me two times. love me twice today

break on through
to the bad posts guy

I feel like Da Capo might have a better shot at being the first prog album. There are a LOT of sonic similarities between the furst Doors album and the first side of Da Capo but I have a hard time working out who influenced who in that...

One thing pribably safe to say: a lot of the groundwork for prog was laid in Los Angeles between 1965 and 1969

'Spanish Caravan' is one Doors song that comes to me that kinda seems progressive in a similar way to say the Nice or late 60s rock stretching arrangements and trying different sounds mixed together. Spanish Caravan has that Flamenco inspired acoustic number that fills out the front half of the tune then it breaks down and comes in with the similar melody electric half through the number. There is quite a bit of music packed into 2.59 in that Doors track.

It's based on Albinoni's Adagio so got the classical music thing going on.

Cool, did not know that. Makes sense.

The spoken word/poetry lp an American Prayer has the musicians from the Doors running through a straighter version of the Albinoni tune from what I remember, but I can't remember when it was recorded. If it is just part of the outtakes for Waiting For The Sun or if it was recorded later or even much later since the lp didn't come out until around 1980.

Doors were definitely influenced by Love, not the other way around. Think I read that's why they signed tomelektra -- they wanted to be on Arthur Lee's label.

*to elektra*

And I'm sure I read that Arthur Lee recommended them to Jac Holzman.

The thing here that made me question was that Da Capo was released after the first Doors album...Idk exactly how early that material is, obv 7 & 7 Is was around in 66 and Revelation was (purportedly) early enough to inspire the Stones' Goin Home, so its v possible the band were gigging a lot of the baroque/jazz-leaning songs in LA clubs early enough to influence the Doors' own sound (Morrison famously cited Love as his favorite band)...otoh I dont necessarily think its implausible that Arthur Lee, without denigrating his achievement, maybe tried to cop a little of Manzarek's steez for songs like Stephanie Knows Who and Que Vida?

I know Morrison was very influenced, especially in terms of stage presence & moves, by Van Morrison in Them when they played the whisky

It's not a huge leap from the harpsichord bit at 1:30 here to the main keyboard part of "Light My Fire":
https://youtu.be/XBRyj1ox8gs

Revelation was (purportedly) early enough to inspire the Stones' Goin Home

I thought it was the other way round

Also, "Da Capo" is 1966?

Yeah first album March and Da Capo in November

Oh wow you're right...I thought I read that it was 67. Well, then, yeah definitely I think Da Capo is the first prog record.

This is where I got the 'Revelations > Goin Home' point though:

What were the earliest LONG rock & pop songs on record?

interesting post on inspiration for Goin' Home from the Aftermath thread:

Regarding "Going home" - the idea of the long jam was stolen from Love who were playing what became "Revelations" in 1965 - it was then called "John Lee Hooker" Iirc. Mick saw them do it in LA, the next night Keith came along with Mick and saw them do it, and then used the idea as the template for "Going home". At least that's what I've read in two places - the "Da capo" sleeve notes and the book written by the drummer, or was it the bass player?

― Rob M Revisited, Tuesday, March 12, 2013 1:11 PM (Yesterday)

― brio, Wednesday, March 13, 2013 9:52 AM (2 years ago)Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

(Whose drummer, though? Love's or the Stones'?)

Unconvinced that Love were the first band ever to play a 'long jam' tbh.

... live, that is

I don't know, the sax solo in "Stephanie Knows Who" is like twenty-eight seconds total of music. The rest of it sounds like garage psych to me and I don't know as that I see much relation to prog in spite of the changing meters. The harpsichord on the chromatic chord progressions does sound similar to the Doors, though.

The funny thing about all this is all these guys were basically fingerprinting on the walls compared to like 10,000 jazz artists at the time

How about this:

It would seem to make some sense to say that American garage psych contained some of the roots of prog to a perhaps lesser extent than British psych but an extent nevertheless. When I say that "Stephanie Knows Who" sounds like garage psych, though, I mean that it sounds more like "Paradox City" by the Bohemian Vendetta than it sounds like "prog" as it's normally known. Take the saxophone out of that solo and it's the Byrds.

I also think elements in the Doors and Love like the sax solo were a move toward pop sophistication in what was, at the time, a traditional sense. Prog is more often futuristic, sometimes pastoral or goofy, but I don't know as that it was ever Sinatra or Johnny Mathis.

(Whose drummer, though? Love's or the Stones'?)

― watermelon nuns from Calgary (Drugs A. Money), Saturday, September 5, 2015 5:10 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

MIchael Stuart Ware was Love's 2nd drummer, possibly 3rd if Snoopy Pfisterer came between Don Conka and him. He had also drummed for Sons Of Adam.
He wrote the book Behind The Scenes At The Pegasus Carousel which I think I got mailorder which would mean it was around in the early noughties. There's been an updated edition out since, came out last year I think.

Somebody is currently trying to do a physical edition of a day by day book on Love, like Ritchie Unterberger's thing on the Velvets and various other things, I have one on the Kinks and one on the Monkees and missed picking one up on the Byrds.
He has run into trouble over images since Gettys controls them and want to charge a nasty amount for them and he's doing things on very low budget. So has been trying to find images not controlled by them. There has been a request for help on various boards.

Unconvinced that Love were the first band ever to play a 'long jam' tbh.
... live, that is

― Fields of Fat Henry (Tom D.), Saturday, September 5, 2015 12:19 PM (9 hours ago)

I've seen it said that the extended modal blues jamming of the Butterfield Blues Band's "East-West" was a big influence on the SF bands for opening up, jamming out and extending material. It definitely has a very Santana lilt even on the LP.

The song East West is epic

I've also heard Buffalo Springfield early shows in SF w Neil & Stills guitar dueling were influential on that scene

The funny thing about all this is all these guys were basically fingerprinting on the walls compared to like 10,000 jazz artists at the time

― Ma$e-en-scène (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Saturday, September 5, 2015 2:15 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This like a million times. At the time too it was so exciting just that rock lyricists were now dealing with "serious" lyrical themes, albeit in a "fingerpainting on the walls" level compared to, like, actual literature. While everybody has gotten over that move decades ago, and even prog revivalists don't go around defending Richard Palmer-James as a poet, the combination of "lyrical sophistication" and "musical sophistication" are a huge part of what created the whole idea of "progress."

Weirdly, prog is pretty great anyway, but I've never agreed that rock critics who weren't impressed at the time were totally wrong about that, because there was a lot of bogus shit wrapped up that we've forgiven and forgotten over the decades.

deacon jones

http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-steely-dan-created-deacon-blues-1441727645