Wednesday, February 17, 2016

The Seeds: Night Time Girl (Norton Records/2014)



The Seeds were allegedly the best live band from Los Angeles in the 1960's, so it's a mystery why their label would want them to record a “live” album in the studio and then overdub crowd noise over the results. In April of 1968 the band recorded the album at Western Recorders and would be released as Raw & Alive: The Seeds In Concert At Merlin's Music Box. In 2014 the UK label Big Beat Records released the album without the dubbed audience noise plus another earlier attempt at a full-length live-in-the studio affair, on a two-disc set simply called Raw & Alive.

The wonderful Norton Records released a 7” vinyl teaser from the album. “Night Time Girl” starts off with what sounds like an early synthesizer but it's probably just an over-modulated keyboard. The song sounds like The Stooges meets The Doors, which isn't so surprising. You can hear how Sky Saxon's vocal prowess influenced Iggy Pop on the B-Side “Gypsy Plays The Drums”. These may be my favorite recordings by The Seeds.


If you're a fan of proto-punk, garage rock or rock and roll in general this most very highly recommended.   

Here's the video review:


No comments:

Post a Comment