So shines a good deed in a Doors-weary world

It used to be that if a band sold their music for commerical use, they were "selling out," and they "lost credibility."

Name a band or musician today who wouldn't do it.

Dylan did it. Stones did it. Zepplin did it. The Beatles did it, but of course that's Michael Jackson's fault. U2's last single went straight to commercial without bothering to become a hit first, but hey, I'm loath to criticize the ethics of someone who's currently 8-1 for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Enter the holdout: John Densmore, drummer for the The Doors, who is refusing, under considerable pressure by his former bandmates, to allow any commercial liscensing of the Doors' cannon:

"People lost their virginity to this music, got high for the first time to this music," Densmore said. "I've had people say kids died in Vietnam listening to this music, other people say they know someone who didn't commit suicide because of this music…. On stage, when we played these songs, they felt mysterious and magic. That's not for rent."...

..."Everyone wanted him to do it," said John Branca, an attorney who worked on the Cadillac proposal. "I told him that, really, people don't frown on this anymore. It's considered a branding exercise for the music. He told me he just couldn't sell a song to a company that was polluting the world."

"I shook my head," Branca said, "but, hey, you have to respect that. How many of your principles would you reconsider when people start talking millions of dollars?"

So my hat is off to Densmore, and personally, I couldn't be more thrilled, since anyone who lives in LA is already forced to endure Doors exposure levels that would kill people most people from the east and midwest. LA DJs loooooooove the freakin' Doors, and since they only wrote, like, 5 songs, and I am now familiar with every millisecond of them, I am perfectly content in that at least one commercial medium is 100% Doors-free.