THE SEEDS: Can’t Seem To Make You Mine

SAN DIEGO CITYBEAT:  So who will remember that on the same day Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson died, Sky Saxon died, too? He was the singer and bass guitarist of the 1960s psychedelic garage-rock band The Seeds. Originally a teenage doo-wop crooner from Utah, Little Richie Marsh moved to Los Angeles, cut a few records and fell under the spell of the British Invasion like so many other young American musicians in the mid-’60s hungry to capture some of that screaming-girl glory. Renaming himself Sky Saxon, he took his cues from the gritty blues-inspired primitivism of The Stones over the sleeker, more melody-focused approach of The Beatles. His hits with The Seeds, “Pushin’ Too Hard” and “Can’t Seem to Make You Mine,” have endured (in places like Axe Body Spray commercials and as a Diplo spank-rock sample, yes, but also in the collections of aficionados and repertoires of great musicians like Alex Chilton, The Ramones and Yo La Tengo) because the simple, raw guitar and organ grooves and thumping beats are relentlessly infectious and sexually charged. But it worked most of all because of Saxon’s plaintive growl, at once sincere and maniacal. He literally cast a spell over Southern California’s youth and garnered a following and mystique on the Sunset Strip every bit as potent as Jim Morrison’s. MORE