Here it is, the first album by The Doors that I personally owned. This was one the Christmas present albums that my cousin gave me. I’m not certain why she selected The Soft Parade. While it has some great Doors music, it isn’t one of the more iconic albums. Maybe that is why I like it so much.The Soft Parade has that middle child kind of stigma. It does fall basically in the middle of their studio works. It also seems to be kind of a departure from their earlier sound with the addtion of the horn section and orchestration.
I suppose that if you were going to give somebody an album by The Doors, and it couldn’t be a Greatest Hits thing, I’d probably go with Strange Days. It probably has more recognizable stuff on it. Being a student at Vermont Academy for a couple of years, I was osmotically familiar with pretty much all the studio stuff. At that time I couldn’t tell you which songs were from which album but I was familiar with the tunes.
It would be a couple more years before I became more familiar with The Doors as an entity behind the music and the persona of Jim Morrison. I’d also enjoy a reunion withThe Doors thanks to Oliver Stone.
So here I sit as I have for so many posts before. Listening to The Soft Paradeand letting my mind wander. I cannot pinpoint why The Doors were so wildly popular on a tidy prep school campus in the foothills of the Green Mountains. It was a decade after Morrison’s death. Was it just us or did the student body there always love The Doors?
As I sit back and free associate to the songs on The Soft Parade, most of the imagery centers around Vermont Academy, Skiing, The Dorms, spring cook outs with Arnie Knwolton on the grill, that amazing extended twilight phonomenon, the river, tie-dyes, bandana’s, lacrosse and ultimate frisbee.
Tell Al The People
Touch Me
Shaman’s blues
Runnin’ Blue
Wishful Sinful
The Soft Parade