An American Prayer

[jedi]

American Prayer is amazing! I'd love to hear more of Jim's poetry!

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Rick will have The Lost Paris Tapes boot with the 1969 LA poetry session somewhere in his files...check out Jim without The Doors....much better by a mile....

[ensenada]

yep i do indeed have the lost paris tapes. wil have to do you a copy nic! i could do with opying all my stuff for you really....

[jedi]

Ensenada said:

yep i do indeed have the lost paris tapes. wil have to do you a copy nic! i could do with opying all my stuff for you really....

Now that would be great!!! ;D
Thank you!!

[alabamaangel]

I love Feast of Friends, two particular pieces:

'Death makes angels of us all and gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as raven's claws'

and

'I prefer a Feast of Friends to the giant family'

Awesome and so inspiring

[alabamaangel]

sparky said:

No more money no more fancy dress, this other kingdom seems by far the best.


I really really love an american prayer at the moment, first thing before i go to work i put it on and wen im going to sleep i listen to it too. im breathing an american prayer at the moment!!

...I love it too, a masterpiece

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

An American Prayer

"Ah, here we go", you're thinking, "he's bottled it." The one album out of all my collection that I could justifiably give a ridiculously low mark to and thereby somewhat dispel the accusations of me being too generous. If you weren't aware, this is a shameless cash-in with recordings of Morrison reciting his poetry set to music by the Doors years after he died. In fact they couldn't even be bothered properly soundtracking it so a lot of material on here is just snatches of songs from the Doors' back catalogue.
1* surely? No. No, I just won't have it.
As you may have realised by now I have a soft-spot for this album. For me, it was the soundtrack to many a hot summer night in the company of my friends. The final days before, to quote the Doors themselves, "Summer's almost gone", both literally and metaphorically. To be honest, I practically know this album off by heart and still enjoy listening to it now and again. Of course, I can't say I listen to it more than two or three times a year, but then I could say the same about Sgt. Pepper so that fact alone doesn't establish anything. So why not give it a high mark then? Well, I'll admit it isn't the greatest work of art ever. Its originality and artist ambition is overshadowed somewhat by the wholly capitalist motives for releasing it in the first place. To be honest, I've no idea if Morrison intended to release these ramblings while still alive although it is likely he probably did (otherwise why record them in the first place?). In any case it is really hard to properly evaluate this album, certainly in strict relation to normal albums. In the end I've opted for a (more or less) positive mark but I thought it a little unfair to give it the same rating as The Soft Parade. The one thing that really saves this album is the listenability. A full-length album of basically narration might seem a little daunting but Morrison's reciting voice is so easy on the ear yet compelling at the same time it represents no problem. All in all, the perfect voice for such a project and, like I said, this is probably what led to the whole thing being lodged in my mind for so long. Just when you might be getting a little tired of all this pretentious ramblings the band throw in that infamous live version of "Roadhouse Blues" I was lauding earlier, slap-bang in the middle, to re-engage the wandering mind. The version itself is just simply blistering and is probably one of the best live performances of any song I've ever heard. The crowning glory, though, is a bit of banter left on the end between Jim and an adoring fan. "Yeah, that's right baby I am a sagittarius, the most philosophical of all the signs... anyway, I don't believe in it, I think it's a bunch of bull-shit myself..." I'm not going to type out the whole thing but it certainly reinforces the impression that Jim Morrison was one the coolest men who ever lived. The only problem with the inclusion of "Roadhouse Blues" is that it might make you somewhat annoyed that you're not listening to proper music. It reminds you how great the Doors' were without actually delivering anything more. Still, I don't find it a great problem myself as it is soon followed by Jim's lament for his cock which is, at a push, the most unintentionally hilarious moment (of many) on the album. As long as you don't take the album too seriously I think there is plenty of enjoyment to be had. The use of the likes of "Peace Frog", "The Wasp" and "Riders on the Storm" as backing music adds immensely and surprisingly doesn't sound too out of place. That said, most of the new backing music is pretty good, particularly the opening "Ghost Song" and the closing "An American Prayer". In preparing for this review I listened to the whole thing again (the second time this year and it's only May) and I definitely still enjoy it. Maybe it is the memories but surely I'm not alone in enjoying this? During a long hot summer night why don't you unbelievers dig it out and give it a listen? You might be pleasantly surprised. That said, the odd mood of the album doesn't make it a good early morning listen. This record must be played at night. By the way, there are a few bonus tracks included. The a cappella "Bird of Prey" was actually sampled by Fatboy Slim (giving the record executives a new marketing spin) but the best bonus track is "The Ghost Song" which is assembled as a composite whole - a sort of psychedelic proto-rap song. Anyhow, to repeat: I'm not bottling out, I actually like this album and, even objectively, I think it has some artistic value. Listen to it now or else, before you know it, summer will have gone. Then where will we be? 6/10

Jack Feeny Review Pages.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Mexican Edition!

[jym]

Looks the same except the spelled some things wrong.

[nick]

Reckon dem wetbacks jes don't no no betta or they tryinga
be funny or summin?

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

An American Prayer Rare 1978 US Elektra promotional-only press pack for the album which is a unique compilation of the lyrics and poetry of Jim Morrison from The Doors which includes a 2-page press releas, July 1969 edition of the 'Rolling Stone' magazine interview insert with Jim Morrison, 6-page 'Rock' January 1977 issue insert and 8-page 'Eye' April 1968 Jim Morrison insert plus three 8" x 10" black and white publicty photographs of Jim and one 8" x 10" photograph of The Doors.

[jym]

Very cool to have that.

[sparky]

this is my favourite part of an american prayer.

Angels and sailors,
rich girls,
backyard fences,
tents,
Dreams watching each other narrowly,
Soft luxuriant cars.
Girls in garages, stripped
out to get liquor and clothes,
half gallons of wine and six packs of beer.
Jumped, humped, born to suffer,
made to undress in the wilderness.

I will never treat you mean
Never start no kind of scene
I'll tell you every place and person that I've been

Always a playground instructor, never a killer,
Always a bridesmaid on the verge of fame or over,
He maneuvered two girls in to his hotel room.
One a friend, the other, the young one, a newer stranger
Vaguely Mexican or Puerto Rican.
Poor boys thighs and buttocks scarred by a father's belt,
She's trying to rise.
Story of her boyfriend, of teenage stoned death games,
Handsome lad, dead in a car.
Confusion.
No connections.
Come 'ere.
I love you.
Peace on earth.
Will you die for me?
Eat me.
This way.
The end.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The Doors: Album Guide - American Prayer (1978)

Released seven years after Morrison died, and the band eventually broke up (after struggling on bravely if somewhat forlornly for a while as a trio), An American Prayer was an inspired way of both introducing the band to a generation of fans too young to have experienced their music first time around, and bringing a new slant to a greatest hits collection for an older audience that still hadn’t gotten over the band’s demise (like Elvis, rumours of Morrison’s ‘faked death’ did the rounds throughout the 70s). A mix of live tracks, old favourites and some newly created instrumental backdrops from the surviving members against which the ghostly voice of Morrison reading his poetry in 1970 is cleverly set, this is a must-have for serious Doors collectors. A huge hit, it also set in motion the revival of the band’s fortunes which would see them elevated to the status of legends in the 1980s.

Tracklist: Awake / Ghost Song / Dawn's Highway / Newborn Awakening / To Come of Age / Black Polished Chrome / Latino Chrome / Angels and Sailors / Stoned Immaculate / The Movie / Curses, Invocations / American Night / Roadhouse Blues / The World on Fire / Lament / The Hitchhiker / An American Prayer / Hour for Magic / Freedom Exists / A Feast of Friends / Babylon Fading / Bird of Prey / The Ghost Song

Mick Wall 2008

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

AWAKE/GHOST SONG

Is everybody in?
Is everybody in?
Is everybody in?
The ceremony is about to begin.

WAKE UP!
You can't remember where it was had this dream stopped?

AWAKE
Shake dreams from your hair
My pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
The day's divinity
First thing you see.

A vast radiant beach in a cool jeweled moon
Couples naked race down by it's quiet side
And we laugh like soft, mad children
Smug in the wooly cotton brains of infancy
The music and voices are all around us.
Choose they croon the Ancient Ones
The time has come again
Choose now, they croon
Beneath the moon
Beside an ancient lake
Enter again the sweet forest
Enter the hot dream
Come with us
Everything is broken up and dances.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

An American Prayer

Do you know the warm progress
under the stars?
Do you know we exist?
Have you forgotten the keys
to the Kingdom
Have you been born yet
and are you alive?
Let's reinvent the gods, all the myths
of the ages
Celebrate symbols from deep elder forests
[Have you forgotten the lessons
of the ancient war]
We need great golden copulations
The fathers are cackling in trees
of the forest
our mother is dead in the sea
Do you know we are being led to
slaughters by placid admirals
And that fat slow generals are getting
obscene on young blood
Do you know we are ruled by TV
The moon is a dry blood beast
Guerrilla bands are rolling numbers
in the next block of green vine
amassing for warfare on innocent
herdsmen who are just dying
O great creator of being
grant us one more hour to
perform our art
and perfect our lives
The moths and atheists are doubly divine
and dying
We live, we die
and death not ends it
Journey we more into the
Nightmare
Cling to life
Our passion'd flower
Cling to cunts and cocks
of despair
We got our final vision
by clap
Columbus' groin got
filled with green death
(I touched her thigh
and death smiled)
We have assembled inside this ancient
and insane theatre
To propogate our lust for life
and flee the swarming wisdom
of the streets
The barns are stormed
The windows kept
And only one of all the rest
To dance and save us
With divine mockery
of words
Music inflames temperament
(When the true King's murderers
are allowed to run free
a thousand Magicians arise
in the land)
Where are the feasts we were promised
Where is the wine
The New Wine
(dying on the vine)
resident mockery
give us an hour for magic
We of the purple glove
We of the starling flight
and velvet hour
We of arabic pleasure's breed
We of sundome and the night
Give us a creed
To believe
A Night of lust
Give us trust in
The Night
Give of color
Hundred hues
a rich mandala
For me and you
And for your silky
pillowed house
A head, wisdom
And a bed
Troubled decree
Resident mockery
has claimed thee
We used to believe
In the good old days
We still receive in
little ways
The Things of Kindness
An unsporting brow
Forget and allow
Did you know freedom exists
in a school book
Did you know madmen are
roaming our prison
within a jail, within a gaol
within a white free protestant
maelstrom
We're perched headlong
on the edge of boredom
We're trying for something
That's already found us.

We can invent a Kingdom of our own
grand purple thrones, those chairs of lust
and love we must, in beds or rust
Steel doors lock in prosoner's screams
amd musak, AM, rocks their dreams
No black men's pride to hoist the beams
while mocking angels sift what seems
To be a collage of magazine dust
Scratched on foreheads of walls of trust
This is just jail for those who must
get up in the morning and fight for such
unusable standards
while weeping maidens
show-off penury and pout
ravings for a mad
staff.

Wow, I'm sick of doubt
Live in the light of certain
South
Cruel bindings.
The servants have the power
dog-men and their mean women
pulling poor blankets over
our sailors.

(And where were you in our lean hour)
Milking your moustache
or grinding a flower?

I'm sick of these dour faces
Staring at me from the TV
Tower, I want roses in
my garden bower; dig?
Royal babies, rubies
must now replace aborted
Strangers in the mud
These mutants, blood-meal
for the plant that's plowed.

They are waiting to take us into
the severed garden.
Do you know how pale and wanton thrillful
comes death on a strange hour
unannounced, unplanned for
like a scaring over-friendly guest you've
brought to bed.
Death makes angels of us all
and gives us wings
where we had shoulders
smooth as raven's
claws.

No more money, no more fancy dress
This other kingdom seems by far the best
until it's other jaw reveals incest
and loose obedience to a vegetable law.
I will not go
Prefer a Feast of Friends
To the Giant Family.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Music Review: The Doors - An American Prayer

An American Prayer by The Doors is definitely an acquired taste and for many it is a taste that is difficult to swallow. Whatever one's feelings about the album, it does remain an interesting look into the mind and poetry of Jim Morrison.

I must admit it is an album I have not listened to for decades. If I want some Doors on my turntable, I usually turn to L.A. Woman, Morrison Hotel, or their debut. Whatever my feelings, though, American Prayer was a commercial success at the time of its release. It may have only reached number 54 on the American album charts but it did sell a million copies and receive a platinum sales award.

This was a posthumous album. Robbie Krieger, Ray Manzarek, and John Densmore reunited seven years after Jim Morrison’s death and recorded backing music to set to some of his poetry. While recognized as an official Doors studio album, it is very different from all of the band's other releases.

The poetry is typical of Morrison. He had a way with words and was able to create images that would mesmerize. These words and images were not always clear or understandable but they have a weird depth about them.

The music tends to fit the words well. While the band revisited some psychedelic sounds from their past, they were smart enough to fit the music to the individual poems. Rock, classical, and even some smooth-jazz tones provide a nice background and add a positive effect to Morrison’s spoken words.

The only oddity is a seven-minute live version of “Roadhouse Blues.” While it does not fit in with the rest of the material, it is so good that it makes you wish for more of the same. It may have been included because of the record company’s desire for a single from the album.

An American Prayer is probably just for committed fans of The Doors. The 1995 remastered release is divided into sections and is a good deal longer. In the final analysis it occupies an interesting if nonessential place in The Doors' catalog.


David Bowling
The Discographer July 2010

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

Hello Sailor singer offered American Prayer tour spot.

Singer tells of drugs and fame
By NEIL REID - Sunday News 23/05/2010

The "Godfather" of New Zealand music has lifted the lid on his chart-topping - and at times hell-raising - career. Rock 'n' roll survivor Graham Brazier gives a rare glimpse into his 35 years as frontman of iconic band Hello Sailor as New Zealand Music Month celebrates its 10th year.

Brazier, who recently turned 58, revealed:


The "Godfather" of New Zealand music has lifted the lid on his chart-topping - and at times hell-raising - career. Rock 'n' roll survivor Graham Brazier gives a rare glimpse into his 35 years as frontman of iconic band Hello Sailor as New Zealand Music Month celebrates its 10th year.

Brazier, who recently turned 58, revealed:

Rumours about the extent of his former drug habit were just "urban legend".

He was inspired to write a new track after witnessing first-hand the destructive effects of methamphetamine on two relatives.

His advice to up-and-coming music stars on the perils of life on the road.

His lengthy career had given him fame but not fortune.

"That [rumour of him being rich] always amuses me," Brazier told Sunday News.

"As Bruce Springsteen sang, `I have got bills no honest man can pay'. I think that was just a line for Bruce, but for me it is reality."

Brazier, a former teen league sensation from a working-class family, said the best advice he could give to new bands was to "hold on to your money and don't give up".

His first big band, Hello Sailor, which he joined in the mid-70s, made plenty of cash with sell-out tours of New Zealand, Australia and America. The problem was most of the money got blown.

"It is very easy to do a successful tour, get a wad of money, but not realise that you are not going to get any money for the next six months," Brazier said.

"Four weeks later and that money has gone and you are nowhere.

"If you have done a successful tour, hide some of the money, put some away in the bank, so you have some money down the track."

Constant touring wasn't an option either, he said. Hello Sailor had tried that but the cost, mentally and physically, was immense.

"You can't drag yourself around and around. That is what kills a lot of bands. They go, `s**t, we can't do this any more'."

Brazier said Hello Sailor turned down a lucrative international contract with Polygram because they were worn down from life on the road.

"We are starving, we are broke, we have various degrees of ailments – hepatitis and things like that. You either harden up or fall to bits. We were screwed, we were stuffed.

"In America, I had dropped from 13 stone to 11 stone. I was basically a walking skeleton.

"And when you are not eating properly and you are constantly travelling, everyone is expecting you to be writing songs but you physically can't in that situation."

Despite their trials and tribulations, Hello Sailor continue to have pulling power 35 years on.

Their recent gig at Auckland's Whiskey Bar, celebrating Kiwi Music Month, saw security turn away three times the venue's legal capacity.

Not only is Brazier's music still in demand, so too is the worldly wisdom he has picked up during his decades in the music scene.

"A lot of young people who I meet ask me questions. And I am only too happy to answer them," he said.

That includes advice on the perils of drug use.

"In the 1970s, as you well know, drugs weren't just available, they were fashionable, available and cheap," Brazier said.

"And people took delight giving musicians drugs. They would go, `Take this, it will help with the show'."

But he said many of the stories which have circulated about the level of his alleged drug use during Hello Sailor's heyday were off the mark.

"You could divide by 400 times the exaggeration of urban legend to cut it to its real status," he said.

"I didn't take psychedelics. I didn't take amphetamines or ecstasy.

"I took things that killed the pain I was in – physical pain and probably mental pain too."

Brazier said he had been drug free for years.

But the issue was still close to his heart. He wrote the song The Ballad of Holly and Billy about the perils of meth. "It is a true story. It is about a couple who get messed up on P... just kids," Brazier said.

"I have just seen so many kids wrecked, just totally wrecked by it.

"I just sat down one day and wrote a song about it.

"I wasn't too sure if it [the song] would work but the band gave it a really good arrangement and it worked out great."

The Ballad of Holly and Billy will feature on Hello Sailor's next studio album.

Brazier revealed the legendary band had already decided on six songs for the album being recorded at Neil Finn's studio.

They were now working on a further six to eight songs.

Looking back at his long career, he highlighted Billy Bold, New Tattoo and High Wind In Jamaica as songs that have stood the test of time.

Another of his personal highlights is Friend, his contribution to the Tuwhare compilation which featured top Kiwi musos putting the poems and short stories of Hone Tuwhare to music.

"That was Hone's favourite song off the album. I was brought into the whanau because of that song," he said.

Brazier is also considering an offer to write a tell-all book about his life and times.

It would include his invitation to front The Doors in 1978 – seven years after singer Jim Morrison's mysterious death.

The Doors had reformed to release An American Prayer – a project featuring rare audio of Morrison reading his poetry over a musical soundtrack.

The Doors were to tour in conjunction with the release and asked Brazier to sing the band's greatest hits, including Light My Fire and Love Me Two Times, during the second half of each concert on the 33-date tour.

Brazier declined. He says: "It would have meant leaving the other guys in Sailor without any work. I couldn't do that.

"The socialist blood running through my veins wouldn't allow me to do that."

Hello Sailor & Ray

'ladies and gentlemen a chap has just sneaked up onto the stage' yes he does tend to do that sometimes...should have had better security

Hello Sailor at the Whiskey A Go Go with Ray Manzarek of the Doors circa 1979.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

14 Reasons To Love John Densmore.
Modern Drummer 2010

This divisive album which sets Morrison's spoken word recitations to old and new Doors music is adored by some fans for sonic clarity and sheer zaniness and disregarded by those who prefer Morrison's songs to his poetry.
But American Prayer contains some of Densmore's deepest grooves (Ghost Song) plus it's a hoot learning everything you didn't want to know about Morrison's fetishes and obsessions.
Sure some of the new stuff is a little smooth with it's disco and Latin textures and without the unruly frontman in the studio to muss things up.
But the material that weaves Jim the Bard through original Doors tracks such as Newborn Awakening and The Hitchhiker leads to hearing familiar sounds in a new way.

[TheWallsScreamedPoetry]

The Doors: An American Prayer

WHAT JIM MORRISON wanted more than anything – more than fame, more than wealth, more than the women's wet submission that fame brought with it – was to be taken seriously as a poet. But he was too immature. Too unfinished to sense how little he knew about the job of turning a vision into meaningful words and rhythms.

The Doors' most ambitious work was often their worst. Trying to make of rock & roll something it could never, should never be, Morrison seemed a pompous fool rather than the intrepid seer he fancied himself. With dark, messianic urgency, he delivered images and ideas that were embarrassing in their unoriginality. In the small book of poetry from which this record takes its title, Jim Morrison asked, affectedly forsaking any question mark, "Do you know we are ruled by T.V." We might be surprised by the dullness of those words, or by their arrogance, but we aren't surprised that a vanity press published them.

The failings of his boyish poetry don't efface the fact that Morrison was one of the great rockers. He and the Doors, in their four fast years in the public eye, made a music unlike any other, and that music was more often brilliant than not. An American Prayer, like every Doors disc, offers further testimony. Though the new album concentrates on spoken poetry rather than songs, it contains a live version of 'Roadhouse Blues', cut in Detroit during the 1969/1970 Absolutely Live! tour, that, by itself, is a solid enough plinth for rock & roll immortality to rest upon.

An American Prayer also strongly suggests that Jim Morrison might've eventually gotten what he wanted, and deserved it, had he not died at twenty-seven – the same age at which, in 1913, Ezra Pound (who'd also been a vanity-press poet) remarked: "Most important poetry has been written by men over thirty."

Jim Morrison's obsessions were sex and death, and while he wore the uraeus of those obsessions well and always, he looked upon them as impenetrable enemies lying within. When love and the funeral pyre were sung about in the same breath in the summer of 1967, it seemed a pretty conceit. It seemed less pretty when, in the months and years after 'Light My Fire', it became obvious that Morrison, his figure ever darker and more estranged, wasn't only writing and singing rock & roll songs but was also trying to vanquish his demons and curses by invoking new demons and curses. "I am the Lizard King. I can do anything," he had the strange, young nerve to say and believe. It was mythopoeic, but it was also classic paranoia.

Most of An American Prayer was recorded on Morrison's last birthday, December 8th, 1970. By then, his libido and his death wish were becoming one, entwined and inseparable, and that perverse oneness seemed to enthrall him. As Ray Manzarek's funereal organ weaves a lewd threnody, Morrison declares, in 'Lament', that "Death and my cock are the world." In the same piece, he says, with a sweet voice: "I pressed her thigh and death smiled."

His most impressive poetic efforts are his thoughts about death. In 'An American Prayer', he sees death as "pale & wanton thrillful... like a scaring over friendly guest you've brought to bed." Toward the end of the poem, with an almost Miltonic metrical precision, he writes: "Death makes angels of us all/& gives us wings."

Suggestions of sexual impotence slither through the record. "I'm surprised you could get it up," a woman ("Vaguely Mexican or Puerto Rican") taunts him in 'Stoned Immaculate'. The essence of 'Lament' is one of ritual mortification: "All join now and lament for the death of my cock/...I sacrifice my cock on the altar of silence." Morrison's reflection upon this impotence is oblique, resigned but maybe more perceptive than he himself knew: "Boys get crazy in the head and suffer." Lizard psychiatry.

As death was in his mind, so was murder. Jim Morrison's fantasies encroached on his rock-star reality. At dusk one day, he went into a phone booth outside the Alta-Cienega Motel in Los Angeles, close to both the Doors' office and Elektra Records, and called poet Michael McClure in San Francisco. In his wasted voice, he told McClure that he'd just killed somebody out in the desert: "I don't know how to tell ya, but, ah, I killed somebody. No... It's no big deal, y'know." Morrison's friend, Frank Lisciandro, who'd worked on the singer's film, Hwy, taped the call, and it's one of An American Prayer's eeriest moments.

It all comes together, or falls apart, in 'Stoned Immaculate', the LP's most striking passage. Drunk in a dirty room, with a strange woman and his obsessions, he utters, slowly and simply, all it seems he'd ever really wanted to say:

Come 'ere.
I love you.
Peace on earth.
Will you die for me?
Eat me.
This way.
The end.

Looking for once toward life, Jim Morrison says with quiet resolution in 'Lament': "Words got me the wound and will get me well." But a few months later, he died. It's a loss. An American Prayer is shot through with youthful, flawed aspirations, yet whenever it touches its tongue to brilliance (which it does for long, sensuous moments on end), it illuminates the meaning of that loss and what might have been.

Nick Tosches, Rolling Stone, 1 January 1979