Album of the day (#3047): L.A. Woman by The Doors - Music

baystateoftheart
Neil Young as a butternut squash

Age: 29
Location: Massachusetts

StreetSpirit wrote:

I know The Doors well beyond the superficial level. They were the first band I ever got into, been listening to them more than 15 years.

Romanelli wrote:

And just looking at your timetable a little bit...I've been listening to The Doors since probably about 15 years before you were born.

In response to both of you, listening to music for many years doesn't make one more qualified to assess it. To a certain point, more listens can help, but that's about time with the music, not number of years since first experience. This feels like the record store clerk-style snobbery that repels people who are newcomers to music as a hobby.
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Romanelli
Bone Swah

Gender: Male
Location: Broomfield, Colorado

Moderator

baystateoftheart wrote:

In response to both of you, listening to music for many years doesn't make one more qualified to assess it. To a certain point, more listens can help, but that's about time with the music, not number of years since first experience. This feels like the record store clerk-style snobbery that repels people who are newcomers to music as a hobby.

I absolutely agree with you. My response was not meant to say that my listening experience was superior in any way, but that who gives a crap how long you've been into someone's music. My entry into this was that I don't think it's necessary to come in and trash specific listener's opinions about music they enjoy because one feels their opinion is more important. He wants to call out the musical tastes of others, which I think is quite juvenile...and sure enough, he's not pleased when he's on the receiving end of that.

You can say you dislike an album without being disrespectful of the opinions of others. Period.
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CA Dreamin

Gender: Male
Location: LA

baystateoftheart wrote:

In response to both of you, listening to music for many years doesn't make one more qualified to assess it. To a certain point, more listens can help, but that's about time with the music, not number of years since first experience. This feels like the record store clerk-style snobbery that repels people who are newcomers to music as a hobby.

The only issue I have is that I feel time somewhat matters. For example, if one listens to an album 25 times in one year, it's likelier the listener will have a similar reaction all 25 times. Listen to an album once a year for 25 years, it's likelier the listener has a different reaction over time, because music tastes grow and evolve, and people grow and evolve as life provides new experiences. Same number of listens though. That's all I was getting at it with the '15 years' comment.

Sure my comments came off as snobby, and I admit I was trying to ruffle some feathers...in hopes a good discussion would come out of it (because good discussions are few and far between these days, and BEA is a boring as a result). Specifically, I was hoping we could use L.A. Woman as a lens into a discussion about albums with high highs and low lows. Or we could have simply discussed L.A. Woman and it's lesser known tracks, which I don't find very good. But if someone else does, great. I wanted to hear the praise. Maybe I would have heard them differently the next time I visited L.A. Woman, in a similar way Fischman was able to persuade me to hear Nirvana differently after that thread several months ago.

However, nobody came to L.A. Woman's defense. Instead, this turned into an offense against me. Whatever. We know from past threads that rarely leads anywhere. So I won't escalate this any further. Besides I'd rather get back to my baseball post. And Romanelli, I hope you'll like your selection.

Tha1ChiefRocka
Yeah, well hey, I'm really sorry.

Location: Kansas

"The End" is the worst song by The Doors

This is Jim Morrison's album.

I would say the enjoyability of this album does not hinge on how many times or how long you've listened to The Doors, although I'd throw my at in the ring as they were also one of my formative bands. but on the listener's familiarity with the blues. And not the B.B. King Chicago Blues, but John Lee Hooker, Delta, and Texas Blues. This is Jim Morrison's best album as a vocalist and one of the best albums for the band musically.

Strange Days, Waiting For The Sun, and The Soft Parade each have more filler or forgettable songs, to me, and the debut only narrowly beats this album on songwriting.

baystateoftheart
Neil Young as a butternut squash

Age: 29
Location: Massachusetts

StreetSpirit wrote:

The only issue I have is that I feel time somewhat matters. For example, if one listens to an album 25 times in one year, it's likelier the listener will have a similar reaction all 25 times. Listen to an album once a year for 25 years, it's likelier the listener has a different reaction over time, because music tastes grow and evolve, and people grow and evolve as life provides new experiences. Same number of listens though. That's all I was getting at it with the '15 years' comment.

You're absolutely right that time matters and one's taste can evolve over years. However, while we all clearly change our perspectives over time (however slightly), I think the quality of an evaluation of a piece of music is not usually a function of years listened. More often, I think the quality of an evaluation increases as a function of times listened (different rates for different combos of listener and piece of music). 25 listens in a year may lead to a higher quality of evaluation due to picking up more details, as opposed to becoming reacquainted once a year for 25 years.

This is a side note, as quality of criticism is different from quality of taste, but it's very tempting to believe that all of our tastes are continually improving. I think most music listeners probably believe this (I have compared my taste favorably to my past taste many times), but I'm not sure if that belief holds up under scrutiny. There's a desire to think of taste as a skill to improve, instead of as an ever-shifting personal relationship to an ever-shifting world of art.
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