Raw & Alive The Seeds In Concert 2002 GNP CD

In 2002, The Seeds’ original label GNP Crescendo continued the hallowed practice of strangely conceived Seeds releases by putting out this single CD of the band’s faux-live 1968 album. Great – a new series of standalone discs for each of the band’s five original albums?

No, just this one. The Seeds and A Web Of Sound had been available on a single 2-on-1 CD since 1987, and all of The Seeds’ albums were released as a series of three similar discs in the mid 1990s. Then in 2002 came this one-off, the only time GNP Crescendo ever released a single 1960s Seeds album on its very own CD.

Why only this one? Maybe they were testing the waters and disappointed by the response. Who knows. But no further releases of The Seeds catalog came until Alec Palao at Big Beat was given access to the vaults for the remarkable series of multi-disc versions in the 2010s.

This 2002 CD version of Raw & Alive (the disc and CD case spines ignore the Merlin’s Music Box part – fair enough, since the band never actually played at the small folk club) features a nice booklet with a lot of photos of the band around 1967-1968, plus a short essay by guitarist Jan Savage wherein he rhapsodizes about the band’s days at the Bido Lido’s club. Based on Jan’s notes one might “accidentally” get the impression that Raw & Alive was recorded at Bido Lido’s, but of course it was recorded in the studio. Semi-official word circa 2002 was still that it was a live album.

The back of the CD booklet reproduces Sky Saxon’s short, psychedelic liner notes from the original LP back cover and adds a collage combining the cover art of Future and the Flower Punk box set. On the back of the CD case is the colorful image of the band’s faces from the front cover, but without the overlapping decorative text. Nice, if it weren’t so small.

I’m not sure why this CD exists, but for completists it’s not too hard to find. It certainly doesn’t hurt to hear this great album repeatedly in any format.

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