Last Thursday morning, on the Zeros' Javier Escovedo's Facebook page there was a simple one line tribute "I got the Seeds on the stereo", a line lifted from the Zeros song "Wild Weekend", one he wrote thirty years ago. To anyone who knows the Zeros and the Seeds, the message was apparent, and there was perhaps no more fitting tribute. When "Wild Weekend" was originally released, that simple nod to the Seeds added much to the Zeros' pedigree. While a lot of punk bands at the time cited the New York Dolls, the Stooges, the MC5 and other post-garage bands (which the Zeros did too), few mentioned the Seeds, the Standells, and others from the first garage era. It was clear that the Zeros were not jumping on some sort of bandwagon, this was pure lineage.
Unlike the "destroy (something)", "anarchy (something or other)" prevalent in '77 era punk lyrics, the Zeros, like the bands of the garage band era, touched on the pulse of teen angst. They didn't have to scare parents, they just reminded us not-quite-adults that parents were the opposing team. Nowhere did they convey it better than their in-your-face second single "Wild Weekend". We enter the scene, with the parents gone, a girl on the way over, and a six-pack procured:
Baby, baby, I can't let go,I got the Seeds on the stereo,If they walked in now,Man, I'd get get hung,but I don't care,Fuck them, I'm young,.It gonna be a wild weekend,and I just know it,I'm feelin' crazy,and I gotta show it.
The fact that Javier chose that for his Facebook header on Thursday says volumes. It was the same day the original Zeros line-up was reuniting for a hometown gig, for the first time in years. He could have plugged the show, or the recently released "Zeros Live in Madrid" DVD, but he didn't. The tip of the hat did not go not unnoticed. It was, in fact, how I figured something in the Sky Saxon Seeds camp had happened.
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[7/4/09: The LA Times July 4th account of the Zeros' reunion show concludes with "Earlier in the day came news of Michael Jackson's death, yet the Zeros have another musical icon in mind. The final encore song is "Pushin' Too Hard," a garage rock classic and anthem of romantic angst by the Seeds, whose singer Sky Saxon also had passed away that day."]
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You've no doubt heard that Sky Saxon, lead singer of the Seeds, sneered his last on Thursday. With him, a piece of our team passed. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he never really crossed over to the other side. To wit: most middle-aged people would feel comfortable, even honored, to sit down and dine with Mick Jagger. But you put a sixty-something Sky Saxon in front of them and they would run. On the other hand, twenty-somethings would look at him and instantly know that he had something going on, at least enough to know that he wasn't like their parents. The phrase "cool old dude" comes to mind.
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"I ran out of gas one day, so I took Michael Jackson's album in, and all I could get was a dollar" - Sky Saxon, 'Rolling Stone' #456
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Back in 1976, Lester Bangs, wrote an excellent essay "Protopunk: The Garage Bands," in which he described the Seeds appeal:
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"For my money, the Seeds best epitomized the allure L.A. had then: there was real smog in Daryl Hooper's organ melodica and Sky Saxon's Mick Jagger routine seemed somewhat more convincing, though every bit as trashy as all the others of the era. Perhaps it was because Sky Saxon really believed every moronic word that he was singing in their rattling little songs, each sounding the same as their one big hit, 'Pushin' Too Hard.'"
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"All the bikers around San Diego thought the Seeds were the apocalypse, then. I recall one hog-ridin' couple, Candy and Smacker, who didn't take the Seeds first album off their turntable for three solid months."
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Take it from Candy and Smacker...and Lester Bangs...and the Zeros. No further endorsement is neccesary.
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Sky Saxon photo by Mark Berry
