Music For Filthy Little Hipsters: LA Woman

Kids today have such terrible choices for music. 

Every week I will expose the kids to something better.

I once read a post on a blog about The Doors: When You're Strange, a documentary that was narrated by Johnny Depp. They said everyone goes through a Doors stage. I know this for myself that is true. I discovered the Doors around the time the Oliver Stone movie The Doors came out. Me and one of my buddies from the Boy Scouts got into at the same time, I remember the two of us scouring the record sellers at the Scout Flea market for any Doors records, but alas there were none. I think the first Doors record I owned was the soundtrack for the movie. Which is a nice beginner course on the Doors. From there I went on to buy most of their albums. All these years later, and I am still rocking’ out to the Doors in the car.

About six years ago we were in Los Angeles for a wedding, the first morning there I was driving along the highway going towards the California branch of my employer at the time. And the song LA WOMAN popped into my head. The sunshine, the mountains, and the traffic everything seemed right. It stayed with me as we drove around Hollywood that night. I don’t think you can understand someone’s words until you can really picture where the music was spiritually created. Seattle was like that for the music of Nirvana, and Los Angeles is like that for The Doors.

Back to LA Woman, the song is a love song to a city. Personified as a lover. The music was made for driving around on the highway, it rambles on like smooth asphalt never getting in the way of Jim Morrison’s words. All the while never giving up any ground to the vocals.

Like most of the Doors music, there is a heavy blues influence on the music. I could imagine a song like this being played at a rock club jam-packed with the beautiful people or some small out of the way blues club with the local drunks. On a slight tangent, the "MR MOJO RISIN" portion of the song became a rallying cry for the 1999 Mets team that made a run to the playoffs as a wild card.