My Top 2000 Songs #1102: The WASP (Texas Radio & The Big Beat)

Another one of the handful of tracks that rise above my mixed feelings for The Doors. And I wish I could say why, but I can't. On the surface, "The WASP (Texas Radio & The Big Beat)," off 1971 swan song L.A. Woman, combines some of the things I like least about the band. The music is largely structured around a fairly mundane blues riff, not a lot to distinguish it from, say, the earlier "Roadhouse Blues." And the lyrics are the sort of ponderous Jim Morrison spoken-word poetry that I generally find a little cringe. (Indeed, the song existed as a spoken-word poem performed live for several years before it was joined with the bluesy music for the '71 album.)

Yet, magically, the whole congeals into something far more interesting than the sum of its parts. Some of this is simply the fact that the deep cut wasn't one of those overplayed classic rock staples of my youth, so I didn't get completely sick of it by the time puberty arrived. But I also have to credit Morrison with concocting some lines that, for all their usual invocations of Morrison tropes, have enduring impact. And like most of their records, the sound is immaculate--bracing and immediate.

Live 1968, spoken word poem used to introduce "Love Me Two Times":

Also 1968, this time as an intro to "Hello, I Love You":

1975 cover by Alexis Korner:

Robby Krieger & John Densmore playing it live for the first time (those spoken-word performances aside), earlier this year!