Customer Reviews

Seeds/a Web of Sound

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

All praise and glory to the Seeds! These L.A. based rockers were the only garage band, Stooges aside, to reach superstardom. The Seeds were wonderfully inept and so limited musically that they were a beacon of hope for every tone deaf kid who just bought guitar. This CD is actually the first two Seeds vinyl albums on Crescendo, isssued in 1966. In 1966 the Seeds were on the top of the heap of Sunset Strip bands and their primary rival was Arthur Lee's legendary group, Love. When the Seeds played clubs like the Whiskey, the Sea Witch or the the Trip they drew huge crowds and groups like Zappa's Mothers of Invention, the Doors, and Captain Beefheart actually were opening acts for the Seeds! The Seeds were the group that coined the term "flower power" and along with Love, were the first groups considered to be psychedelic. The pummeling, repetative 2 chord rock of the Seeds was anything but psychedelic, however. It was the bizarre free asscociation lyrics of lead singer Sky Saxon that made the Seeds unusual.

"Pushing Too Hard", a garage classic, is on this collection. There is a certain brillance needed to make a song simplier than "Louie, Louie" a top 40 hit. "Pushing Too Hard" features Saxon's bratty half spoken vocal and the snarling, reverb soaked lead guitar of Jan Savage. The second album, "Web of Sound" is the Seeds finest hour. In this one, Saxon's lyrics and vocal style are over the top. "Up In Her Room" is a 14 minute epic where Saxon improvises lyrics which become increasingly derranged. "Tripmaker" and "Pictures and Designs" are incoherent, yet mezmerizing songs about the delights of LSD. "Mr. Farmer" is a defining moment in the history of rock and roll. The band plays a mid- tempo marching beat and Saxon mournfully pleads with Mr. Farmer to let him water his crops..."Mr. Farmer, I want to be just like you." It doesn't get much better than this. The Seeds put out a couple of more albums after the first two, but Sky Saxon's songs like, "900 People Making It Daily", "Falling Off The Edge of My Mind", and "Love In A Summer Basket" became too psychedelic, even for their chemically fueled devotees. By 1969, the band was pretty much gutted, but the Seeds will always be the headline act in Garageland.

In my opinion, the repetitive (and in some cases obviously derived) nature of the first album is enough to warrant a mixed rating for this release. It would be an unfair overgeneralization of the Seeds for one to say that every song is like the classic "Pushin' Too Hard," but as noted by other reviewers, a number of the songs (No Escape, Evil Hoodoo, etc.) do tend to recycle riffs and ideas from the band's lone top 40 hit. In addition, the track "Nobody Spoil My Fun" sounds like an obvious re-write of the Stones cover "Down Home Girl." That said, the first album is still a lot of fun - sort of a wild and trashy brand of rock'n'roll with strangeness and attitude. Also of importance, the electric piano has a mysterious sound, one unique to the Seeds. The instrument is not one often found in garage rock.

I find the Seeds "minimalism" to be charming, if not wholly artistically successful. Case in point, "Evil Hoodoo" reminds me of some of what the Velvet Underground would later accomplish with their own seeming brand of drug induced instrumentation, yet it doesn't have the strong lyrical flourishes Lou Reed was known for. Another highlight was the almost top 40 "Can't Seem to Make You Mine." This cut gets me every time, as Saxon sounds completely out of his mind in his desire for a girl.

The second album Web of Sound was an improvement, and wound up as the best album the Seeds ever put out. This was chiefly because on Web of Sound, the Seeds had more adventure and variation in the songwriting. Indeed, I would argue that "Pictures and Designs" represents a top-notch effort in early psychedelia with its dark organ, snarling fuzz, sinister vocal exclamations, and out and out dementia. "I Tell Myself" was also a fine Stones-like lighter number. In addition, the overlong "Up In Her Room" has to be considered innovative on some level, because there would be some similarity in the Velvets' "Sister Ray" a little over a year later. And let us not forget the oddball "Mr. Farmer," where Saxon utters the ludicrous line "Mr. Farmer let me harvest your crops [sss]." Though a mixed bag, I would say that the second album was the one to most clearly represent the vision of Saxon and company. All in all, I would recommend this CD, which includes all of the Seeds first two albums, to music fans interested in garage rock.

When the conversation turns to the Seeds, their first album tends to be the one highlighted by those who strain for the least arduous way to let the uninitiated hear why this loopy quartet earned their legend as garage proto-psychedelics. It's the band's most accessible set (not merely because of the presence of their two bona-fide hit singles, "Can't Seem To Make You Mine"--which the Ramones couldn't resist including on their own 60s tribute, "Acid Eaters"--and "Pushin' Too Hard," the Seeds single even nonfans don't mind hearing once a year at minimum) and, over a decade before the Dead Boys picked the phrase for their own debut, the Seeds were young, loud, and snotty (just listen real carefully to Sky Saxon's warbling snarl) without aiming merely to blow out the woofer.

But the hardcore Seedlings point to "A Web of Sound" as the band's unqualified masterwork. You can pick any number of reasons why, from the stripped-Doors style of "Pictures and Designs" and "A Faded Picture" (which, in its idiosyncratic ballad delivery, anticipated the original Modern Lovers' "Hospital") to that impeccable epic of teenage lust smothered in a hookah haze, "Up In Her Room," which wrings out what "Gloria's" subject and protagonist were really up to after midnight, assuming a small quantity of controlled substances were among the consumables consumed. If their publicity was deliberately affected and pretentious ("...leader Sky Saxon's lyrics say today's teens are...the seeds of the next generation which will flower into something very beautiful," went one blurb I remember seeing; "Our music is definitely not rock and roll; our music is blossoming forth with power and colour," went another, attributed to Saxon himself, which was pretty audacious for a guy whose rock and roll heart probably was "Up In Her Room," after all), their attack was anything but. This was rock and roll just before it became just too cool to be mere rock and roll anymore.

And the Seeds themselves seemed to know it going in. It's probably a good bet that the band--or Saxon himself, anyway--had more than a small quantity of said substances in their system for what transpired afterward. When they came back down from up in her room, they went on to make one badly-advised and executed concept album ("Future") and a weakly-recorded live album ("Raw & Alive," though you get enough indication that these guys were pretty fly in front of the right audience), in between which appeared what was a blues album ("A Spoon Full of Seedy Blues," credited to the Sky Saxon Blues Band) just about in name only.

The Seeds might have graduated from there into just a pleasant if loopy memory if Lenny Kaye hadn't butted in and included "Pushin' Too Hard" among the "Nuggets" of his classic original 1960s psychedeligarage anthology. From there, at least a couple of new generations used that entree to give bands like the Seeds a deeper pull. Usually meaning the first two albums. Appropriately.

Those are still the two main reasons the Seeds mattered in the first place. A secondary reason, possibly: the sound and style on those two sets--the cheeseball organ riffing, the cheapo-distorto guitar, the rumbling drumming, Saxon's snarling warble--probably planted more seeds into what was to come from the original (read: the electric) Modern Lovers, the Fleshtones, maybe even Iggy and the Stooges (who could have been the result of what went down "Up In Her Room," if you thought hard enough about it), than people including those who populated those bands (and others) might suspect.

The Seed's first two lp's reissued on one CD,both with a 1966 release date.Simply a great garage/psych title that more than stands the test of time.Ideal for newcomers.Total of nineteen tracks that managed to hold my full attention.I noticed that on several of the tunes off the first s/t record here,that the main riffs SEEM to be borrowed from the three-chord riff from "Pushin' Too Hard".That's fine because it appears to work in this case.Very much so.Cuts I found most appealing were "Can't Seem To Make You Mine","Evil Hoodoo",their immortal(previously mentioned)"Pushin' Too Hard","Mr.Farmer","Tripmaker","I Tell Myself" and the 14-minute epic "Up In Her Room".Recommended for fans of Human Expression,Amboy Dukes,The Barbarians,The Troggs and Easybeats.

Wow! These albums still sounds so good! Whoever said that the Seeds were merely a one-hit wonder bunch from the '60s obviously never listened to their albums. They're remarkably consistent (or repetitive, depending on your outlook).
Y'see, Sky Saxon's Seeds had one big hit in '66 with "Pushin' Too Hard", one of the essential 2-note garage hits of all time, and many would say that he and the band merely recycled that formula for every other song they ever wrote. That may be true, but it works nonetheless.
The combination of psychedelic surf guitar, chintzy organ, 4-4 drum beats and Sky's patented sneer are the key elements to the Seeds sound. Dig the maudlin "Can't Seem to Make You Mine", shake it to the swingin' "Evil Hoodoo" and dance to the 14+ minute mantra of "Up In Her Room". The Seeds may not have pushed too many boundaries, but that's where their beauty lies. Repetitive?! I choose to call them "minimalist".
This CD features their first two albums and is essential to any fan of Love, Roky, Red Crayola, Beefheart, Joe Meek or any other true individuals of that decade.

I love the Seeds but I am appalled at how a record company can allow such a substandard CD into the market place. One of the tracks ('Tripmaker') is ruined by a sudden blast of some completely different music! (A female singer). It sounds as if when the album was being mastered or whatever, a dozy employee accidentally flicked a switch and managed to stick some other (non-Seeds) music on this CD. It's incredible! Don't they check CDs before they distribute them? Does Edsel/Demon/Westside have no quality control? 'Avoid'!!!

Yea, I had to check out whether my copy was defective on Tripmaker. However, my copy is not as described below as a female voice from some other source. My copy totally drops silent in one channel during the song for a second, funny thing on the line about 'being alone' So I guess it's trippy(?). I guess they tried to fix it this way. Anyone else out there care to comment? I want a better copy. By the by, they are both great LPs. Faded Picture gives me chills. 3 stars for the defect, otherwise 5.

I had never heard of "The Seeds" before, until i purchased the DVD "Psych Out/The Trip", back in October 2003~~

I like them. I heard "Pushin' too Hard" on the radio recently and "Pointing Two fingers at You" from the film "Psych Out" sound identical.

I am not criticizing, just commenting~~ but i like the sound~~

Sky Saxon has his own website, and has added the word "Sunlight" to his name~~

I enjoy the vintage music of the 1960's, and this is a definite plus to own~~

The Seeds are listed in a British Invasion section which is not correct. They were from Southern California. Someone in the group might have been from Britain but the lead singer Sky Saxon (real name Richard Marsh I believe) was from Utah. The group became popular playing clubs, the Santa Monica Palladium (formerly where the Academy Awards were held) and other venues near the California coast. Their first hits were around 1966 and later.

Yeah, I can see how a lot of people would consider the Seeds repetitive after hearing their first album and the uncanny similarities between "Pushin' Too Hard" and songs like "No Escape," etc.

And yes, it's true, sometimes even the solos are the same; I think the keyboard player plays the same solo three times on the first record in three separate songs. But hell, personally, I love it. Before hearing the rest of the Seeds' material besides "Pushin' Too Hard," I knew about their legacy to the history of brutal, raunchy, fuzzed out garage punk, so I knew what I was getting into when I purchased a Seeds record; you don't go into it looking for some real complex stuff, you know?

That said, the Seeds are the pinnacle of proto-punk garage rock, as far as I'm concerned. They had the sound, and most importantly, the sneer. To me, on the first record they sound like a very American early Stones on speed. Simple riffs (of course) with a dark lyrical underpinning and crazed, snotty vocals, somewhat akin to "December's Children" era Stones or early Kinks.

Favorite track goes to "Evil Hoodoo," with its unrelenting fuzz guitar line and high-decible, uptempo crush of noise. It's pretty amazing. "Can't Seem to Make You Mine," the "ballad," of sorts, is a simple, slow number (sounds a bit like "Time is On My Side") that highlight's Sky Saxon's whining vocals, also great stuff.

"A Web of Sound," the Seeds' second record, sees them branch out a bit into psychedelic territory, and the production is much improved. It's a much more well-rounded record, and the repetitiveness of the first LP is left behind a bit. "Mr. Farmer" is, of course, the standout, with its sudden shift to a dark, dark melody from the uptempo opening and Saxon's great lyrics.

"Tripmaker" ends in a Velvets-esque freakout, and "Faded Picture" shows the band's more sensitive side -- it's actually really good, surprisingly, especially considering the band's reputation as simple two-chord bashers. Not that the song is that complicated, but Saxon tones his usual vocal hysterics down a bit to good effect. It's almost, dare I say, tender? Dig the slide guitar on some of the tracks ("Pictures and Designs", etc.). To cap it off, "Up in Her Room" devastates with a churning, nearly 15 minute slab of pure mania from Saxon.

It's simple, and sure the Seeds sometimes fill a record with the same song, but listen to Chuck Berry and you can say the same thing. Doesn't make them any less influential or hard-hitting. The Seeds: For fans of great rock -- period.