The Doors, funky?

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:11:05 -0700

The Doors were accused of a lot of things, but being funky wasn't one of them. So I am naturally surprised when I hear Doors influences in contemporary funk; who'd'a thunk it? Nicole Willis and the Soul Investigators (she's from Brooklyn, they're from Finland) play deep funk, but they stretch out into more soul and R&B styles than most other deep funk bands. Listening to their Keep Reachin' Up album on my way to work the other day, I started hearing the Doors all of a sudden: halfway through "A Perfect Kind of Love" there's an instrumental break with a bassline right out of "Light My Fire," and then Antti Maattanen lays down a Ray Manzarek-like organ solo over it. It's what the Doors would have sounded like if they'd had some rebop!

06 - A Perfect Kind of Love

Nicole Willis and The Soul Inv

So then I thought back to another Doors-influenced song that I liked last year, which I always meant to post here but never got around to; isn't this the perfect time for it? The Doors influence in "The Witch" by The Broken Keys is in the Morrison-esque vocal (he even rhymes fire with pyre, just like Jim did), but for the life of me I can't figure out who is actually singing it. The Broken Keys are two English dudes named Nostalgia 77 and Natural Self (whose real name, apparently, is Keno-1); on their own they each make richly-layered hip-hip-flavored jazz with no male vocals (in what I've heard), so it could be either one of them singing here, or someone else altogether. This, too, is what the Doors would have sounded like if they'd had any funk:

05. The Witch

The Broken Keys

That is heavy; with those horns it could almost be an Ides of March song. I can hear a Black Sabbath version in my head, too, and the lyrics are right up their alley.

Maybe I'm too hard on the Doors. They did get almost funky once, with "Peace Frog"--

That's a pretty good beat; it would turn up again in Echo and the Bunnymen's "Bedbugs and Ballyhoo" (can't find it right now), and the Charlatans' "The Only One I Know"--

The Charlatans are streaming from Donnaslut.com: a single page with about 300 eclectic mp3's, including many of my obscure favorites, such as Allez Allez, Jerry Harrison, Nico + the Faction, SSQ, and lots, lots more. Check it out! Make sure you have playTagger installed first, so you can stream them from the main page instead of loading each one in a new page.

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The Doors, funky?