{"id":13970,"date":"2013-07-04T02:39:14","date_gmt":"2013-07-04T01:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=13970"},"modified":"2013-07-04T02:42:52","modified_gmt":"2013-07-04T01:42:52","slug":"strange-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2013\/07\/04\/strange-days\/","title":{"rendered":"Strange Days"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.discogs.com\/viewimages?release=605313\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"doors1.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/doors1.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Strange Days<\/em> was the second album by The Doors, released in October 1967. It&#8217;s the album that veers the closest to what people think of today as a psychedelic sound\u2014which puts it in my favour\u2014and is also unique in the group&#8217;s catalogue for minimising their presence on the gatefold sleeve, something Jim Morrison was always eager to do even as the record company were trying to turn him into a pop star.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.discogs.com\/viewimages?release=605313\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"doors2.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/doors2.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The cover photo by Joel Brodsky of street performers was intended to be reminiscent of a scene from Fellini. For years I was under the impression that this street was European, it certainly doesn&#8217;t look typically American, so it was a surprise to read earlier today that the location is <a href=\"http:\/\/goo.gl\/maps\/PVlYL\" target=\"_blank\">Sniffen Court<\/a>, a small mews in the heart of New York City. New York or not, I&#8217;ve always wanted to live in a place like this. You can keep your gardens and empty lawns, I&#8217;d be quite happy to see those wonderfully eroded flagstones every day. Contemporary views of Sniffen Court show that much of its atmosphere on the cover derives solely from Joel Brodsky&#8217;s skill at capturing the light as it reflects from the paving stones. The place today looks neater, cleaner and a lot less attractive, but that&#8217;s not too surprising for a historic area in one of the most expensive cities on earth.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.discogs.com\/viewimages?release=605313\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"doors3.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/doors3.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:Sniffen_Court_E36_cloudy_jeh.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"sniffen.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/sniffen.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Sniffen Court, NYC, in 2012. The plaques at the rear were sculpted by Malvina Hoffman.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere on { feuilleton }<br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/the-album-covers-archive\/\">The album covers archive<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Strange Days was the second album by The Doors, released in October 1967. It&#8217;s the album that veers the closest to what people think of today as a psychedelic sound\u2014which puts it in my favour\u2014and is also unique in the group&#8217;s catalogue for minimising their presence on the gatefold sleeve, something Jim Morrison was always &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2013\/07\/04\/strange-days\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Strange Days&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,4,3,12,17],"tags":[4949,4950,4951],"class_list":["post-13970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-design","category-music","category-photography","category-psychedelia","tag-jim-morrison","tag-joel-brodsky","tag-malvina-hoffman"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-3Dk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13970\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}