Immediately following “Waves,” “Light My Fire” is a triumphant piece that transitions from the quotidian to the exciting. It is controlled spontaneity that disrupts the norm without becoming reckless. “Controlled” because the sample is easily recognized; “disrupts” because the tempo and the mood are so suddenly changed; “reckless” because the sounds are not so jarring as to be uncomfortable. Rather, when juxtaposed against “Waves,” and its celebration of the everyday, “Light My Fire” captures a certain exuberance and daring that is no less a part of my life than my happy embrace of the familiar. At the museum, I can’t help but loiter by “Light My Fire” while fondly considering the decisions to stay out even though the bar was closing at 4 AM, to break up a humdrum Wednesday with a carefully executed scavenger hunt, to boisterously engage in a dinnertime discussion of the word “labia” (don’t ask). “Light My Fire,” for its fast-burning energy and subtle rambunctiousness, is very much a track about feeling alive, and a rebuttal to concerns about feeling too comfortable with the usual.
-Joey
There’s something a lot more moving about the sample of a soul cover of “Light My Fire” than the actual Jim Morrison vocal. Maybe it’s the key change and how joyous it sounds. Either way, there’s something real cool and insightful about sampling an extra-genre cover of a ubiquitous song and the brevity and feel of the beat makes it feel like it would’ve definitely been the hook of a track if someone made a record out of it, which is a shame that it wasn’t because it feels like something that could’ve definitely been at least an undie hit.
-Christopher
“Light My Fire”s sample source, a cover of the Doors radio staple by Lil Brown, mutates the song into a a terse early 60s soul-side–Check it–and not the groovy pop vamp of the original but somehow also ups the weird psychedelic factor too. Dilla takes it further, cutting the song closer to its essence, leaving only the hook, and racing through the rest in a merciless thirty-six seconds. Listening to Dilla’s “Light My Fire” is like putting a 12-inch single on 78 speed: All the weird, interesting details are there, they just race through your ears before you fully grasp them, only registering subliminally.There’s a tendency to read deep, heavy meanings into every single track, to find each and every parallelism or reference as funneling through to Dilla’s death-bed statement, but Donuts isn’t like that; The album’s not that simple. Quite a few tracks are pretty explicit–although never obvious–about his condition (“Stop!”, “Time”, a lot of the later tracks) but most are cool, weird instrumentals that build up to something devastating or leave it bouncing around in the background unannounced. The imminent but still unpredictable reality of death (life being cut short) echoes through every track’s abrupt ending–the way “The New” interrupts the final shout, formally ending this track not with “Light my fire” but “Light my f-”– but the beginning of each new track reminds you of the need to stalwartly persevere, keep going, start over, or adjust.
Taken with the “Outro”/”Intro” circularity of the whole thing, it’s no doubt a musical attempt to come to peace with the world, while also never forgetting to entertain. The first few seconds of “Light My Fire” is a party. Knotty drums chopped to feel like the beginning of Black Orpheus and party shouts of “Yeah!” (hinting at the Mountain samples on “Stepson of the Clapper”) gel into a cathartic “Light my fire” soul shout and response. Dilla knew Donuts would be his last project proper and so, his musical reputation and “legacy” are of a concern but not in an obnoxious, myth-making way–he has people like me, other bloggers, and a huge group of adoring musicians to make him into myth–just in a sense of wanting to keep doing what he’s doing until he couldn’t anymore.
Dilla knew he was legendary (he just didn’t care) and wants to interact with musical history. “Light My Fire” is one of those rock standards, that when you’re digging through a bunch of dusty records at a Goodwill or a record store and you find some weird, neverheardofitbutlookspotentiallyawesome instrumental rock LP or regional R & B record or whatever, there’s a decent chance it’ll have a cover of it (or “California Dreamin” or a Beatles track) towards the end of Side B or something. Dilla tosses one more weird version of The Doors song into the musical ether, floating around with Isaac Hayes’ killer version on Live at the Sahara Tahoe and the original and Al Green’s and Stevie Wonder’s and all those crappier, weirder, or just not as well-known yet versions too.
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