Steve recommends “The Soft Parade” by The Doors
I first reacted to the word “medley” in 1996, when I picked up Elektra’s reissue of The Doors’ Absolutely Live. I have no details available to craft the particulars of this event. I dare say I didn’t even know what a reissue was. But I do recall that “Medley” stood out on the CD case. It introduced, complete with a colon, a famous four-song suite: “Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar),” “Back Door Man,” “Love Hides,” and its culminating and most powerful track “Five to One.” Against the character of the songs—sinister, elusive, and lurking somewhere amidst sex and rebellion—“medley” just struck me as weird. My mom always called them “mixed vegetables,” but even to a young person unfamiliar with the phrase used in more sophisticated parlance, “medley” felt all carrots, corn, and green beans.
Fast-forward nearly thirty years, and I am thinking about “medley” again. Here’s why. On Christmas Day, 2022, a good friend of mine texted me a picture of The Doors’ Paris Blues, which he recently snagged on vinyl as a Record Store Day release. A bit of envy crept in. I immediately assuaged this feeling with an impromptu binge of The Doors. I get classy when the spirit of Jim Morrison swirls nearby. Hence, my family spent part of their Christmas night listening to L.A. Woman and watching me drink wine from the bottle. I guess old habits die hard.
Over the past week since then I’ve dug in a bit deeper to rekindle a flame I thought had all but blown out. “The Soft Parade,” which readers here will undoubtedly know is a wacky kaleidoscope of a song, keeps creeping into my brain alongside that old troublemaker, “medley.” Want Jim Morrison the chameleon? Here he is—the esoteric preacher, the fragile observer seeking sanctuary (lots of hiding happening in Morrison’s lyrical world), the guy at the carnival, the off-the-hinges cocky bluesman who is ultimately “proud to be a part of this number!” I fade in and out of some of the early parts of the song, but man, by the time he gets to “Cobra on my left, leopard on my right, yeah!,” I am all in. Lions, dogs and horses show up, too. I have no idea what all of these animals are doing in this tune, but the band is churning and Morrison’s now gritty vocals reverberate and affirm some kind of psychedelic worldview I have no business accepting. Too late. Full-blown revelry. Morrison crescendos the line, “Everything must be this way. Everything must be this way!” Wait, what way exactly? Who cares! I holler back, “Hell yeah, it must!”
Something about “whipping horse’s eyes” tempers my enthusiasm, turns me to the analytic. For better or worse—and you are about to decide—these days I am prone to exercise an academic’s penchant for etymology. I look up the word, and discover “medley” actually has some chops, rooted in Middle English denotations of physical combat, with variants like “melee” and “meddle.” A quick look at a good dictionary and, lo and behold, the vegetables have grown teeth. For me, “The Soft Parade” is something of a battle, a medley that reflects the contending forces pulling at our variegated selves. Maybe that explains the lions. There is a jester at play here, asking us to inhabit the somber and silly, the drunken buffoon and cultural commentator. I will continue to oblige. Christmas was once a time of mischief and mayhem. I’m grateful that this season, the holiday spirit had me meandering back to “The Soft Parade.”
Steve Bellomy is an Assistant Professor of English at Clarke University in Dubuque, Iowa. He likes to talk about music, maritime literature, and tennis.
Listen:
