They couldn’t claim a string of international hits, but The
Seeds were LA garage rock royalty, and sitting on the throne was yowling,
howling spaceman Sky Saxon. He and his horde—rippling electric pianist Daryl
Hooper, fuzz-faced guitarist Jan Savage, and slamming drummer Rick
Andridge—spun out two-chord songs simple as nursery rhymes and monstrous as
Grimms’ fairy tales. Their eponymous debut is a work of pure excitement, and
though they’ve been accused of recording the same song over-and-over, there’s
enough blood running through The Seeds
to make it a killer record in the Ramones-vein.
In fact, tracks such as the single-minded “Pushin’ Too Hard”, the mesmeric
noise “Evil Hoodoo”, and the chanting “No Escape” are as punk as anything The
Ramones and their brethren did a decade later. The debut single “Can’t Seem to
Make You Mine” contrasts the prevailing speed and stomp with a dreamy pace, but
it also has Saxon’s most intense vocal as he erupts into anguished primal
screams. I wonder if John Lennon was listening.
