Raw & Alive – The Seeds In Concert Merlin’s Music Box

First thing’s first: Raw And Alive — The Seeds In Concert Merlin’s Music Box is not a live album — it’s a studio album. The sounds of screaming fans were grafted on after recording. Crass, perhaps, from today’s perspective, but The Seeds weren’t the first sixties band to do this. Raw And Alive was released in 1968.

And it is a Seeds album and should be judged on its musical merits. Raw And Alive remains some fans’ favorite Seeds record, due to its energetic performances and its many truly fantastic new songs. It was the band’s first album since the unexpected hard blues fourth LP A Full Spoon Of Seedy Blues, and represents something of a return to the form of Future, the band’s adventurously psychedelic third album.

Five of Raw And Alive‘s eleven tracks are re-recordings of older Seeds songs, and the updated "Can't Seem To Make You Mine", "Mr. Farmer" and "Pushin' Too Hard" are examples of how a more experienced band can tackle its old stuff with panache. (The other two remakes, "No Escape" and "Up In Her Room", sound fine in their new forms here too; the former has all the sped-up punk of the original while the latter, at nine minutes, is five shorter than the original on A Web Of Sound but is just as groovy and sexy.)

But it’s the new songs, unavailable elsewhere, that make Raw And Alive truly notable, and necessary. "Satisfy You" is one of The Seeds’ very best pop-punk songs, with a tricky little structure and sneering Sky Saxon vocals, while "Night Time Girl" is a straightjacketed punk-raga nightmare, as only The Seeds could and would have done. "Gypsy Plays His Drums" is as snakily psychedelic as its title suggests.

"Mumble And Bumble" is a musical two-step return to "March Of The Flower Children", without the tuba, and adding a fractured chord and melodic structure reminiscent of the deranged "I Tell Myself". "Forest Outside Your Door" sounds like an account of a lost afternoon the protagonist of "The Wind Blows Your Hair" might have experienced in his more manic, single days – before he was domesticated by Satanic wedding. Maybe he even met his future wife while lost in that forest.

Perhaps most infamous of all is the track "900 Million People Daily (All Making Love)". A slow-burning, moody, organ-led meditation on sex, love and drugs, it continues the tradition of long Seeds songs like "Up In Her Room" and "Fallin'". Unfortunately, the studio recording was cut to five minutes on the album; the full-length version was eventually released decades later (see below).

‘Clean’ studio versions

Over the years there was a steady drip of Raw & Alive recordings without the offending crowd noises. The "Pushin' Too Hard" remake came out on 1977’s Fallin' Off The Edge, while "Satisfy You" and a longer version of "900 Million People Daily (All Making Love)" with its original vocal take saw the light of day on 1993’s Travel With Your Mind (a CD that also included the "Pushin' Too Hard").

In April 2011, a 10″ vinyl EP featuring "Evil Hoodoo" was released for Record Store Day that represented the first vinyl appearance of the ‘clean’ "Satisfy You".

Finally, if years too late, the complete crowd-less Raw & Alive was released, in 2014 by Big Beat. Also on the CD is the original crowd version of the album plus an earlier live-in-the-studio performance done for a group of fans that was the original attempt at the LP. Many of the same songs were in this performance but there were some surprises there too. The Big Beat CD must surely be the final word on Raw & Alive.

Merlin’s Music Box

There really was a place called Merlin’s Music Box for a brief time in Los Angeles but The Seeds probably never played there (it isn’t known definitively). Merlin’s was more of a quiet folk club but the name sounded nice for the album title. Despite this historical inaccuracy the album’s status as “live” didn’t seem to overly trouble anyone, and official word for decades was that it was really recorded in concert. After all, there’s screaming and an introduction by local disc jockey ‘Humble’ Harve Miller, and Sky even addresses the “crowd” before "Pushin' Too Hard" just as he did in real Seeds concerts (dedicating the song to “society”).

It wasn’t until some of the songs started being released without crowd noises that people began to notice the curious lack of connection between band and audience, and ponder why the album seemed so well-produced (with effects like Sky’s voice echoing back and forth across the channels being an unlikely feature of a live album).

Track listing

Original 1968 LP

1. “Introduction by ‘Humble’ Harv”
2. "Mr. Farmer"
3. "No Escape"
4. "Satisfy You"
5. "Night Time Girl"
6. "Up In Her Room"
7. "Gypsy Plays His Drums"
8. "Can't Seem To Make You Mine"
9. "Mumble And Bumble"
10. "Forest Outside Your Door"
11. "900 Million People Daily (All Making Love)"
12. "Pushin' Too Hard"

Big Beat version, 2014

Disc One: Raw and Alive Raw
[Undubbed, ‘clean’ versions; "900 Million People Daily (All Making Love)" not included because the longer and crowd-less version was already released on Big Beat’s expanded Future]

1. “Introduction By ‘Humble Harve’ Miller”/"Mr. Farmer"
2. "No Escape"
3. "Satisfy You"
4. "Night Time Girl"
5. "Up In Her Room"
6. "Gypsy Plays His Drums"
7. "Can't Seem To Make You Mine"
8. "Mumble And Bumble"
9. "Forest Outside Your Door"
10. "Pushin' Too Hard"

[The original album with crowd noises]

11. “Introduction By ‘Humble Harve’ Miller”/"Mr. Farmer"
12. "No Escape"
13. "Satisfy You"
14. "Night Time Girl"
15. "Up In Her Room"
16. "Gypsy Plays His Drums"
17. "Can't Seem To Make You Mine"
18. "Mumble And Bumble"
19. "Forest Outside Your Door"
20. "900 Million People Daily (All Making Love)"
21. "Pushin' Too Hard"

Disc Two: Live in the studio February 20, 1968

1. “Introduction By Gene Norman”
2. "Mumble And Bumble"
3. "Gypsy Plays His Drums" [new mix]
4. "Mr. Farmer"
5. "No Escape"
6. "Satisfy You"
7. "Can't Seem To Make You Mine"
8. "Two Fingers Pointing On You"
9. "900 Million People Daily (All Making Love)"
10. "Forest Outside Your Door"
    The song was actually still called “Flyin’ With Love” at this point.
11. “Hubbly Bubbly Love”
12. "Up In Her Room"
13. "A Faded Picture"
14. "Fallin'"
15. "Pushin' Too Hard" [new mix]
16. “WDGY Spots”

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