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The Soft Parade

The Doors - The Soft Parade Audio CD

A fair review of the The Doors "The Soft Parade" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all The Doors reviews here, or go back to the The Doors tabs.

Band: The Doors
Title: The Soft Parade
Rating:

Release Date: 2007-03-27
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Tell All The People 2: Touch Me 3: Shaman's Blues 4: Do It 5: Easy Ride 6: Wild Child 7: Runnin' Blue 8: Wishful Sinful 9: The Soft Parade 10: Who Scared You (Bonus) 11: Whiskey, Mystics And Men (Version 1) (Bonus) 12: Whiskey, Mystics And Men (Version 2) (Bonus) 13: Push Push (Bonus) 14: Touch Me (Dialogue) (Bonus) 15: Touch Me (Take 3) (Bonus)

A gutsy move. You either like it or you don't like it
The Doors used an orchestra and brass instruments on a lot of the songs. When this album was released in 1969, people freaked. Their third album (Waiting For The Sun) made people worried because it was viewed as too commercialized, as if the band was abandoning their darker side and selling out to the Top 40 crowd. So when The Doors released their fourth studio album (The Soft Parade) it REALLY had people worried. How could The Doors go from the darkness and mysteriousness of their first two albums to something like The Soft Parade?

Time to review this unique and somewhat underrated album.

The first song, Tell All The People, sets the tone for the rest of the album. Brass and strings dominate throughout. The classic song Touch Me follows, with the famous saxophone solo at the end of the song by Curtis Amy. My favorite song on the album, Shaman's Blues, follows. This song is vintage old Doors music. No orchestra on this one. Just plain bluesy/rock & roll Doors music. The song Do It has Jim Morrison laughing in the beginning. Very upbeat. An average Doors song. Not bad. The song Easy Ride has sort of a polka type sound to it. A real changeup. The classic Wild Child is one of the great Doors songs of all time ("Do you remember when we were in Africa?"). The song Runnin' Blue is pretty much a bluegrass song. A Sandy Koufax curveball if there ever was one. Robbie Krieger AND Jim Morrison sing this song. It begins with Morrison saying a poem that is a tribute to Otis Redding, who had recently died. The song Wishful Sinful is a classic that has the orchestra's help This song is mellow and a little mysterious. The title track follows, the last song on the original release of this album. It clocks in at 8:40. A happy song, yet terrifying at times. Just when you start getting happy and comfortable, the atmosphere changes to classic Doors dread. A great song.

The rest of this CD has unreleased songs. The song Who Scared You should have been included on the original release in 1969, in my opinion. It's a very good song with the help of the orchestra. It's interesting to hear the lyrics mixed with the orchestra. Very unique. This song was released on the 1972 "best of" album Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mine, which I have. Again, I don't know why this song didn't make it onto The Soft Parade.

If you like The Doors and have avoided this album all along, I highly recommend it because The Doors were all about experimentation, and this album is a perfect example of that. From the trailblazing radicalism and darkness of their first two albums, to the Top 40 sell-out albums, to the orchestra album, to a straight blues album (L. A. Woman), The Doors' music didn't all sound the same. The Soft Parade's songs are so different from one another. You get a little of everything on this album - rock & roll, blues, bluegrass, pop, you name it. Buy this album. .

EasyRide
I was sixteen when SP was initially released in 1969 and I remember being slightly thrown off by the orchestrations and lack of any lyrical content you could bite into. The Soft Parade was always considered the Doors least inspired effort. If anything this is Doors Lite.
Having not paid too much attention to it over the past 40 yrs I've come to actually liking it a great deal more as the years have rolled along.
One question concerning the track selections that has always bothered me was the exclusion of the cut "Who Scared You" from the original album. Jettisoning mediocre tracks like "Do It" and "Runnin Blue" for the much better "Who Scared You" in my humble opinion would have added so much more musically to the final product. I could never reconcile how a mandolin could ever figure into a Doors tune??
Shaving a couple of minutes off the inflated title track and adding another rocker would have gone along way into making this a truly great record.
Tunes such as "Tell All the People" with it's soul-gospel feel ,"Wishful Sinful" a truly fine pop song that got limited airplay as a single ,probably due to Morrison's Miami bust ,when radio stations were pulling Doors songs off the airways. I seem to recall the Doors singles "Love Me To Times" and "The Unknown Soldier" also being heavily censored from the airways in 1967 and 1968 . . .
The great "Touch Me" with the Curtis Amy ending sax solo. "Easy Ride" a good rocker that harkens back to "Take it As it Comes" and "We Could Be So Good Together". "Shaman's Blues" and "Wild Child" both solid tracks .
The 40th anniversary mixes go a long way to sharpening the sound. I'm hearing instrumental coloring and texturing not heard previously .
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Weakest Effort but with a Lot of Good Stuff
More than any other Doors album, it provokes disagreements on its merits. "The Soft Parade" was the least well-received of the six Doors studio albums, at least among the critics, but many people like it. I will do my best here, and in any event, my comments are somewhat in between. Like many, I believe "The Soft Parade" is the group's weakest effort, but this is measured against a very high standard.

What is clear is that The Doors' power, in full display in the group's first two efforts, was fading during this period. This is true not only in the case of guitarist Robby Krieger's brass/string-backed songs but lead singer Jim Morrison's songs. Nevertheless, the Morrison compositions "Wild Child" and "Shaman's Blues" contain excellent lyrics, the former being accompanied by an interesting primitive beat with the Doors trademark sound. "Shaman's Blues," too, is Doors-like in hypnotic feel, and it creates a compelling mood.

Along with these two, the title cut is the highlight of the album. "The Soft Parade," also strong lyrically, compares favorably to the band's other long cuts. The music in this five-part suite is incoherent, but still interesting. Isolation and self-realization at the beginning give way to the simple, steady progression of the latter parts, which contain a parade of striking images.

As for Robby Krieger's entries, I liked "Touch Me" when I was younger and still do, but I am now ambivalent because of its pop excesses. "Tell All the People" even supersedes those excesses, but there is still something about its melodrama I like. Robby dedicated the un-Doors'-like "Runnin' Blue" to the recently deceased Otis Redding, but a catchy, if insubstantial, main verse is overshadowed by horns and an odd bluegrass chorus. "Wishful, Sinful" is the best Krieger entry, pretty with an underwater feel, although it is cloying at one moment too. "Easy Ride" (Morrison) and "Do It" (Morrison/Krieger) are both silly and flippant, but the former has a little more substance.

"The Soft Parade" reflects the last vestiges of the original Doors sound, somewhat degenerated. The hard rock and blues of the two subsequent releases serve as a reminder that "The Soft Parade" was not an ending or downhill point for this immensely talented band, but an inflection point for a new direction.

Bonus Tracks: There are a fair number, but do not be enticed unless you have a special interest. "Touch Me" is similar to the original. "Whiskey, Mystics, and Men" (basically spoken poetry) and the cocktail "Who Scared You" are available on the Box Set.
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The Soft Parade
Returned the CD for a replacement but that was the same, the title cut wouldn't play. The title cut on this CD would not play. Returned that one too and gave up on getting the CD.

Welcome to the 70's
But it still absolutely cannot be dismissed. 3 1/2

Regarded by some as their worst, TSP is indeed plagued with over-orchestrations and Morrison at his most indulgent, leading to its share of embarrassing moments. Some of the gruffer, shallowly composed songs may fall flat, but when the group attunes the big-band influences properly they still manage to land a handful of tracks that had that elusive immortal factor so much of their best work inhabited.

You can see a complete list of all The Doors discography, or go back to the The Doors tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.