Wednesday, June 3, 2015

The Doors - "The Wasp (Texas Radio and the Big Beat)" - Song of the Day - 6/3/15

From Left To Right: Robbie Kreiger, Ray Manzarek, John Densmore, Jim Morrison

"Texas Radio" refers to high power Mexican radio stations that blasted into Texas in the 1950s. Not restricted by American regulations these stations, whose call letters started with X, could have up to 150,000 watts. Morrison wrote the lyrics years before this was recorded, and used to perform it as a poem.

Apparently, according to unverified sources, "The verse, "Comes out of the Virginia swamps cool and slow with plenty of precision with a back beat narrow and hard to master" is most likely a reference to Morrison's first real experience with the music scene. From 1958 to 1960 Morrison lived in Alexandria, Virginia and frequented the Juke Joints (blues clubs) on Route 1 just north of Fort Belvoir where Black Blues musicians would play on Friday and Saturday nights. That area where the Juke Joints used to be is right on the eastern edge of a swamp."

Either way, we love this damn song. 

R.I.P. Jim.

R.I.P. Ray.


5 comments:

  1. Do you know what the name of the swamp is? I think it is the Dyke Marsh but I am unsure.

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  2. I listened to this song carefully and repeatedly again tonight, and I could swear Jim is singing "OUT HERE WE IS STONE...." not STONED. I mean the standard LP version. I cannot now hear it as "we is STONED." Unless Ray's organ is somehow obscuring Jim's
    vocal line. I could be wrong and I never though much about it until I was studying the background of some Doors songs tonight and researched it. If anyone knows for sure what gives here, please elucidate! If you listen intently to the studio version, Jim does not enunciate "stone-d." it definitely sounds like "we is stone." I think the lyric/poem makes more "sense" as "stone"
    anyway, in the context of the song as a whole. Also I found out the lyric in Riders on the Storm is indeed "if you give this man a ride/sweet FAMILY will die," a reference to the real-life
    1950s hitchhiking killer from Missouri to Cali. that Jim's lyric was primarily referring to. Not "sweet memory" will die.

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