A Web Of Sound

So how does a band follow up a debut album that reveled in its crudity and hinted at a new psychedelic outlook? By amping up the psychedelia, overtly referring to drugs, and grasping the string of the mind’s balloon as it floated skyward, ever further from the distorted landscape of that debut. At least, that’s how The Seeds handled the situation for their second album, A Web Of Sound, released in October 1966.

A Web Of Sound is soaked in drugs and sex in a more blatant and obsessive way than The Seeds was: "Mr. Farmer" and "Rollin' Machine" deal with marijuana, while "Pictures And Designs" and "Tripmaker" pay homage to the LSD that was sloshing around the L.A. scene – and especially in Sky Saxon’s brain. Take the legendary "Up In Her Room", a long, brainlessly repetitive ode to screwing a girl in her titular hippie pad. If certain uptights had been worried about Elvis’s influence on the youth of the 1950s, The Seeds must have represented an unimaginably depraved bluntness.

While the songs on A Web Of Sound retain the primitive underpinnings of the first album (and really, with Sky Saxon’s wild wolf-growl voice, would anything else have been appropriate?), they have learned more than a few things: some novel sounds, more complex arrangements, and — dare I say it? — a certain skillful restraint. Daryl Hooper has mastered the task of playing repetitive riffs that blend his keyboards with a song’s basic rhythm, and Jan Savage alternately fuzzes and chimes his guitar parts with more sophistication than before. Drummer Rick Andridge has also expanded his fills, giving the songs their suite-like qualities as he adopts a range of rhythms that throw everything into pronounced 3D.

Sky Saxon, thankfully, has put more work into his lyrics this time. Gone are the teenaged defiance and whiny girl troubles as heard previously on songs like "Can't Seem To Make You Mine", "Pushin' Too Hard", and "Nobody Spoil My Fun" (perhaps just as well since ol’ man Sky had recently turned 29). In their place are two distinct types of rock poetry: the freewheeling, kaleidoscopic litany of images that match the music on an emotional level; and a ghostly, introspective style, as found on the astonishing "A Faded Picture" – a good candidate for Most Psychedelic Moment Of 1966.

The Seeds, mostly with Hooper’s keyboards, also presage other famous rock moments of the future on A Web Of Sound: the cheesy Farfisa whine on "A Faded Picture" would soon be aped by countless garage bands; the brutal "Up In Her Room", musically, thematically, and length-wise, was a direct precursor to the Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray” and Love’s “Revelation”; and more generally, the carnival atmosphere of A Web Of Sound would be conjured up on The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. The Doors, too, must have played A Web Of Sound a thousand times.

Audacious yet cohesive, A Web Of Sound paved the way for The Seeds’ grand statement of 1967, the experimentally psychedelic art-rock album Future.

About the songs

1. "Mr. Farmer"
   Originally called “The Farmer”, this has become an enduring Seeds classic. It was released (twice) as a single in 1966. Even if Sky Saxon wasn’t doing so in the lines “Mr. Farmer let me harvest your cropsssss”, fans everywhere suspected he was praising the world’s marijuana cultivators. Many radio stations agreed and banned the song outright, robbing the band of a big hit and listeners of the chance to hear Hooper’s simple but iconic keyboard riff. Sky Saxon re-recorded this song several times throughout his career.
2. "Pictures And Designs"
   Peppy and queasy at the same time, "Pictures And Designs" is an excellent showcase for The Seeds’ instrumental strengths. Daryl Hooper’s sharp, high keyboard trill alternates with an equally economic fuzz guitar figure from Jan Savage, and Rick Andridge goes back and forth between a tasty chunk-chunk-chunk garage beat and more intricate patterns on the choruses. Sky is an insane person – “gone, gone, GONE GONE GONE WAAUGGHHHH!!” There are even two psychedelic freak-out sections on a single chord, maybe for the first time in rock history.
3. "Tripmaker"
   An ode to a kindly gentleman who provides you with trips. A clear reference to Sky’s beloved drug dealer(s), this song is musically similar to some of The Seeds‘s paleopunk but more manic, with Sky ranting about “orange, green and white crystallized powders” and “colorized vials”. The whole band sings along on the stirring chorus, there’s a whining police whistle inspired by Bob Dylan, and it’s another stone(d) cold garage-psych classic.
4. "I Tell Myself"
   The poppier, sunnier side of The Seeds. This pleasant, toe-tapping song features a tricky melody that occasionally escapes Sky Saxon but that only adds a slightly dazed air to the track, which sounds like a picnic on a church lawn on a sunny weekday afternoon. Distinguished further by some really groovy percussion and Jan Savage’s wild, heavily echoed guitar swoops.
5. "A Faded Picture"
   Submerged in heavy melodrama, this is the one slow song on A Web Of Sound and it’s remarkable. Sky sings emotionally of wanting to go back, back to his “happy place”. He exaggerates his lines with an unaccountably southern accent (“mah heppah PLICE”) – despite being a Utahan in California. The music is repetitive, similar to that of "Up In Her Room" but at half speed which gives it a drone-like quality. "A Faded Picture" is all echoes and drama, stinging sounds gliding up and down over a snail-pace rhythm. Wow.
6. "Rollin' Machine"
   Sky – and maybe a couple of the others in the band – enjoyed smoking joints. I think we can all admit that now. Well, here’s their tribute to a little device that would roll joints automatically. There’s a spooky kind of tension in this song, with its terse beat and descending connecting sections, but considering its goofy subject matter it never gets too heavy. Jan Savage, as usual on this album, slides his big single notes up and down the fretboard, like big painterly lines in a Van Gogh starry sky.
7. "Just Let Go"
   Sky as pied piper to young girls everywhere. Another darkly garage-psychy tune like "Rollin' Machine", this one is a breathless encouragement to go crazy, let yourself go – “follow me,” suggests Sky. There’s a great sparkle and crackle to The Seeds on this performance; Jan and Daryl join in a captivating pulse that’s enhanced by Rick’s tik-tik popcorn drumming. The relative calmness of "Just Let Go" is an excellent set-up for the next song, the calm before the storm.
8. "Up In Her Room"
   One of rock’s first “long songs” is this fourteen-minute wall of repetitive brutality. Making good on the threat of "Evil Hoodoo", which was edited down to five minutes, this time The Seeds stretch out and jam on a riff that never wavers and which allows Sky to beat you over the head with his exultations until you feel like you’re up in the girl’s room, feeling so good, over and over and over… until you drift off into exhausted, dreamy oblivion.

2013 Big Beat CD bonus tracks

The 2-CD Big Beat version of A Web Of Sound from 2013, in addition to the regular stereo version of the album, featured the album in mono, some bonus tracks never before released, and a mono version of the A Full Spoon Of Seedy Blues album.

Disc One bonus tracks

9. "The Wind Blows Your Hair" (version 1)
10. “Dreaming Of Your Love” (version 2)
11. "Out Of The Question" (version 4)
12. "I Tell Myself" (take 1)
13. "Pictures And Designs" (take 14)
14. "Just Let Go" (take 4)
15. "A Faded Picture" (take 1)

Disc Two: Mono mixes for A Web Of Sound and A Full Spoon Of Seedy Blues

1. "Mr. Farmer" [mono]
2. "Pictures And Designs" [mono]
3. "Tripmaker" [mono]
4. "I Tell Myself" [mono]
5. "A Faded Picture" [mono]
6. "Rollin' Machine" [mono]
7. "Just Let Go" [mono]
8. "Up In Her Room" [mono]

9. "Pretty Girl" [mono]
10. "Moth And The Flame" [mono]
11. "I'll Help You (Carry Your Money To The Bank)" [mono]
12. "Cry Wolf" [mono]
13. "Plain Spoken" [mono]
14. "The Gardener" [mono]
15. "One More Time Blues" [mono]
16. "Creepin' About" [mono]
17. "Buzzin' Around" [mono]

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