Raw & Alive: The Seeds in Concert at Merlin's Music Box | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
![]() |
||||
Studio album by The Seeds | ||||
Released | May 1968 | |||
Recorded | April 1968, Western Recorders, Hollywood, California | |||
Genre | Garage rock, psychedelic rock, proto-punk | |||
Length | 41:08 | |||
Label | GNP Crescendo | |||
Producer | Marcus Tybalt, Neil Norman | |||
The Seeds chronology | ||||
|
||||
Singles from Raw & Alive: The Seeds in Concert at Merlin's Music Box | ||||
|
Raw & Alive: The Seeds in Concert at Merlin's Music Box is the fifth album by the American garage rock band, the Seeds, and was released on GNP Crescendo in May 1968 (see 1968 in music). It was marketed as a live album, and actually was recorded raw, but all of the album's contents were completed in a studio. The album marks a return to the band's energetic punk sound that previously garnered them national acclaim. Upon release, however, the album, and its accompanying single, "Satisfy You", failed to chart, and the group would eventually disband in 1972.
The Seeds came to national prominence, albeit briefly, with hit singles such as "Can't Seem to Make You Mine" and "Pushin' Too Hard", which made them front-runners in the development of garage rock, and one of the more harder-edged groups of the era. However, the group's psychedelic concept album, Future saw the band attempt to create a sophisticated sound, and its successor, the blues-orientated A Full Spoon of Seedy Blues, completely missed the national charts. As a result, by 1968, the Seeds had all but been forgotten outside their loyal following in California, they fired their long-time manager Lord Tim Hudson, and the band sought a way to return to past fortunes.
The Seeds attempted to utilize the simplicity of their lyrical and instrumental arrangements of their first two albums and the psychedelia exemplified on Future for their next album. In early 1968, the group entered Western Recorders, in Hollywood, rather than the coffeehouse they occasionally performed in that is mentioned in the album title, with record producer Neil Norman co-producing Raw & Alive. The band's original plan was to replicate the vitality of their live performances, with relatively basic and stripped-down recording methods and an in-studio audience. However, the Seeds recognized that at the conclusion of the recording sessions the dynamics of an actual concert were lacking and the material was scrapped. Though none of the recordings were featured on Raw & Alive, they later appeared on a reissue of the album on Big Beat Records in 2014, with the previously unreleased track, "Hubbly Bubbly Love", included.