lizard king

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

 in their "the illustrated new musical express encyclopedia or rock" (london 
 1977: salamander, here p. 69), nick logan and bob woffinden write about jim 
 morrison: "like  eddie cochran, jimi hendrix, janis joplin and also james dean, 
 he was an incorrigible rebel who seemed ineluctably commited to a course of  
 self-destruction. he played every show like marlon brando in 'on the 
 waterfront'(...) though perhaps not a genius, he was one of the few commanding 
 talents the genre had thrown up. he quite literally lived and died for his 
 art". morrison's greatest talent was probably his pop-shamanistic 
 stage-presence; in this context his fascination by avantgardistic 
 theater-projects might be an interesting thing to note. the quoted words 
 "though perhaps not a genius" do still sound adequate to me. actually, we can't 
 know how morrison's poetry would have developed in later years; & i prefer, to 
 say this also, his neo-rimbaudesque american prayers to head-jerk poems by 
 people like enzensberger any time. regarding the music, i consider "morrison 
 hotel" [1970] to be the doors record having aged best. it still sounds fresh! & 
 i've heard rumors that eminem wants to use a sample of "peace frog" for his 
 next solo single: "blood in my love in the terrible summer/bloody red sun of 
 phantastic la ..." kfl ... ps: although "natural born killers" might even be 
 worse (actually, i was so fucking bored and turned-off that i left the cinema  
 after 45 minutes), stone should also burn in hell for his doors movie ... 
 damaged the morrison-reception seriously ... oli knows nothing about artistic  
 ecology ... throws in all the anecdotes and (nearly) all the songs (often with 
 truly barbarian cuts) and makes a 3-hour commercial without one single  
 motherfucking moment of silence ... a cultural crime, actually ... there's,  
 btw, a "seinfeld" double-episode ("the new friend") with a baseball-player  
 named keith hernandez, which contains a funny "jfk"-parody with amateur-video  
 outtakes in washed-out colors where one sees kramer get hit by the spit in  
 slomo ... pps: those who need a direct pynchon-reference to enjoy this mail i  
 may remind that "people are strange (when you're a stranger)" gets played by a 
 radio station in vineland ...