THE SEEDS - SINGLES As & Bs 1965-1970

In the accompanying booklet to The Seeds Singles: As & Bs 1965-1970 Alec Palao quickly counters the argument all Seeds songs sound the same by offering "Pushin' Too Hard", "Mr Farmer" and "Can't Seem To Make You Mine" as examples of their range. It's a common assertion and maybe an unfair one to suggest they had one song which simply varied in tempo and length when what the Seeds were, really, was consistent. 

Unlike contemporaries the Electric Prunes and Chocolate Watchband who saw their groups overtaken by record companies and session musicians to an extent they become unrecognisable,  the Seeds - until their last few singles - remained Sky Saxon (vocals), Jan Savage (guitar), Rick Andridge (drums) and Daryl Hooper (keyboards). Like LA counterparts The Doors, The Seeds didn't include a recognised bassist in the band but as this CD reveals their studio sessions were nearly all augmented by bass player Harvey Sharpe. Not the most virtuoso players, the Seeds were a solid unit who played to their strengths, creating well over three albums worth of creepy, crawly, menacing and unhinged psychedelic flower power built around Hooper's keyboard and Saxon's twisted otherworldly drawl and freakish yelps. I could rattle off now a dozen-to-twenty great Seeds songs without much effort. Many are featured here. 

The Singles As & Bs works for both the newish listener, giving an introduction but by no means featuring all their best material - "Evil Hoodoo" and "Chocolate River" being just two humdingers not to make it to a single - and the older fan who may not have all the non-album B-sides including "Six Dreams", "Wild Blood", "900 Million People Daily (All Making Love)".

For most of their original lifespan the Seeds recorded for GNP Crescendo with their established line-up until late '68 when Savage and Andridge left and the band went through a confusing muddle of personnel changes and winded up with a couple of releases in 1970 on MGM: the acid rock "Bad Part Of Town" and the gently trippy "Love In A Summer Basket". Both singles (and their respective B-sides) often harshly overlooked. Alec Palao's liner notes include interviews with some of these band members and sheds light on a previously dark corner of the Seeds story. It's a great insight into the band and the increasingly eccentric behaviour of the late Sky Saxon - a character worthy of his own biography - who told the band they'd go to hell if they ate an egg and how he felt sorry for chopped tomatoes. There are also plenty of previously unseen photographs.

The songs on the collection, the audio quality (original single masters), the packaging, the liner notes, all make this a superb addition to the Seeds already impressive catalogue. 

Singles As & Bs 1965-1970 by The Seeds is released by GNP Crescendo/Big Beat. Out now. 

SEPTEMBER PLAYLIST

Some highlights from this month's listening...

1. The What Four – “I’m Gonna Destroy That Boy” (1966)

Guitarist Cathy Cochran from this New York group said their records sounded “like an all-girl choir from a detention home”. Nice description, fabulous record.

2. Darrow Fletcher – “My Young Misery” (1966)

Darrow was aged between eleven and fourteen when he wrote then recorded this astonishing belter. A full collection of the material he scattered across several labels during the 60s and 70s is long overdue as I’ve not heard a bad one yet, and don’t expect to when he appears at the 100 Club on the 1^st of November.

3. Sarah Jane – “Listen People” (1966)

Many thanks to Bill from Anorak Thing for turning me on to this lovely Brit-folk single.

4. The Seeds – “Rollin’ Machine” (1966)

No other so-called garage band had as many brilliant songs as The Seeds. Their closest competitors had three, four or five. The Seeds had thirty or forty. I’ve picked this one at random. I wish Sky Saxon was still with us.

5. Big Daddy Green – “Who Done It” (1970)

From Louisiana, and he sounded like a big fella. What separates “Who Done It” from other swampy R&B 45s is the fuzz guitar that weaves its way through the grooves.

6. The Soul Children – “I Don’t Know What This World Is Coming To” (1972)

Public Enemy famously sampled the “Brothers and sisters” introduction for “Rebel Without A Pause” but the whole seven minutes of this Wattstax message song is funky vamping, hand clapping, testifying of the highest order (and cruelly cut from the film).

7. Bobby Womack – “There’s One Thing That Beats Failing” (1974)

There’s no bad track on Lookin’ For A Love Again and none better than this ender which with its spoken word parts, soaring strings, and soul man love throat does in a brisk three minutes what sometimes took Isaac Hayes quarter of an hour. 

8. The Staple Singers – “I Want To Thank You” (1975)

The Let’s Do It Again soundtrack written and produced by Curtis Mayfield and performed by The Staple Singers doesn’t rank among the finest artistic achievements of either (despite the title track being a US Billboard number 1 on the pop and soul charts) but it’s still a collaboration made in heaven and a classy LP.

9. The Adverts – “Bombsite Boy” (1978)

I was always put off The Adverts due to TV Smith being a punk with long curly hair which was unduly harsh on my part seeing how I overlooked that thing on Bruce Foxton’s head.  

10. The Wicked Whispers – “Dandelion Eyes” (2012)

Debut single from Liverpool band the Wicked Whispers could be the umpteenth single from The Coral, which is a compliment in the Psychedelic Jangle Handbook. 

THE SEEDS - "EVIL HOODOO" (1966/2011)

Four songs into The Seeds eponymous debut album came “Evil Hoodoo”. On a record stuffed with searing garage punk it stands as its highlight, even overshadowing the certified classic “Pushin’ Too Hard”. Clocking in at five minutes, it’s twice as long as the rest of the tracks and like most Seeds songs is simple and repetitive, yet here breathtakingly effective: rib shaking fuzzed up bass takes off like a jet plane with a broken engine; Sky Saxon yodels and babbles a steam of incomprehensible lyrics; disembodied chanting floats in and out of earshot; a tambourine is shaken to an inch of its life; razor sharp guitar lines pierce the skin; an organ and piano take alternate poundings; a harmonica is blown by a force nine gale; and a drum kit is bashed over a fiery cacophony of satanic stirrings.

Recorded on 1st April 1966, that five minutes now – thanks to a new limited edition 10 inch single release by the saints at Big Beat/Ace Records - turns out to be a mere edited version. The full length one is an incredible FOURTEEN minutes. Now, I’m usually the first to champion brevity, and one song the best part of a quarter of an hour is frankly an indulgence best avoided, but not in this case – it simply makes it three times better than the original. It is relentless. Not once does it slow down and pause for breath. Sky never considers saying “I wanna take it down one time”. The band never breaks into a trippy interlude. They chug away at a frantic pace until they’re spent. An exhilarating once in a lifetime ride.

If that wasn’t enough, side two features another couple of unreleased gems in “Satisfy You”, (without the dubbed crowd noises that blighted Raw and Alive), and an alternative take of “Out Of The Question”. Ordinarily I’d be raving about these – they’re both excellent – but fourteen minutes of “Evil Hoodoo” is, and I know I’m prone to exaggeration but you gotta believe me this time, the final word in psychotic garage punk.

“Evil Hoodoo” by The Seeds is released by Big Beat Records.
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A TRIBUTE TO SKY SUNLIGHT SAXON

When most of your favourite music was made between 40 and 50 years ago you get acclimatised to seeing endless obituaries for artists that left their mark in hearts and record collections. Without wishing to sound disrespectful, most of these I treat with a shrug as they were getting on, they hadn’t made a decent record for decades, and I never even saw them in concert let alone met them personally.

But I’m genuinely saddened to hear the news today of the death of Seeds supremo, Sky Sunlight Saxon. It’s taken as read those Seeds records are bona-fide garage classics; Daryl Hooper’s organ and Saxon’s unmistakable vocals ensured they sounded like nobody else. But it’s that Saxon was still active recently, gigging and recording, that makes this particular passing all the harder to take. I saw him perform three times in the last six years and loved them all, particularly the first one at the Borderline in London, 2003. It was like he’d been living in a psychedelic cave since 1969 only to come out blinking into the harsh modern age to give an amazing performance of classic Seeds songs and new songs about spiders, aliens and fools on Capital Hill. Take a listen to “Seven Mystic Horsemen” from his 2005 LP Transparency for evidence he could still conjure the magic.

I also had the real pleasure and honour of chatting to him a few times and he was such a lovely, sweet, soft spoken man. He was on a totally different planet though, and trying to pin his brain down was like trying to make water run upstream; you just had to go with the flow and see where you’d end up. One moment of clarity did occur when I asked about the Seeds and said I thought they sounded so unique I couldn’t tell where their sound, his voice, come from? “I was trying to sound like Howlin’ Wolf with a piano”. I’ve always listened to them slightly differently since and he's right you know.

The last word belongs to Sky himself with a quote from March 2009 on his website: “I think you could retire when you die. I don't, however, believe in death, so I guess I will retire when I leave my body. But I plan to continue writing and performing in heaven”.