“Evil Hoodoo”
by The Seeds
1966 song
"Evil Hoodoo" is a classic song on The Seeds’ debut album from 1966, The Seeds. Lengthy for its time, the brutal punk raveup is one of The Seeds’s most remarkable achievements and one of rock and roll’s greatest and most awe-inspiring performances.
The adjectives that spring to mind when describing "Evil Hoodoo" reflect the jumbled musical ingredients that make up the song itself – it’s incessant, crude, ferocious, intense, monotonous, impenetrable, multilayered, and unforgiving. In short, damned glorious.
And varied… as soon as your ears to manage focus on one instrument or band member, you are immediately distracted by something else. It happens over and over and over and over again, for the song’s length. Even after you’ve heard "Evil Hoodoo" a thousand times.
The Beatles had used a fuzz bass on “Think For Yourself” the previous year on Rubber Soul, but it was nothing like the chainsaw sound heard on "Evil Hoodoo", recorded on April Fool’s Day 1966. For once, Sky Saxon’s strangled razor-wire of a voice is in danger of drowning in the morass of the music.
A 1988 vinyl picture disc version of the Evil Hoodoo Seeds compilation.
But it doesn’t, not quite. Sky, when he dances close enough to the microphone to be heard, chants the song’s basic lyrical hook – “you must have an evil hoodoo on me daaaaaaarlin'” – as the 5-note fuzz bass riff is repeated over and over, with varying levels of technical proficiency (read: the fingers are not so much playing the riff as violently choking the guitar).
Elsewhere, circusy organ notes burble and pop, locked in a deadly fight with the wild, stinging, lead guitar notes, unburdened by having to stay in any particular key, to steal the spotlight from the humorlessly anchoring bass. It’s a feat neither manages to quite pull off, though not for lack of trying. Sometimes things almost quiet down enough for the fuzz bass to take prominence; at other times the guitar gets its turns to shine… and Sky takes an inspired harmonica solo at one point.
But ultimately, it’s the wailing background voice that gives "Evil Hoodoo" its real sense of absolute abandon. And from underneath it all, everything gets shoved further in your face by the breathless drumming (not by regular drummer Rick Andridge, who was absent from this session, but by a fill-in whose name history has forgotten) and raucous tambourine.
2011 Record Store Day 10″ featuring the full-length cut of "Evil Hoodoo".
Five thrilling minutes later, the song fades, leaving the listener wondering what the hell has just happened and gingerly picking their head up off the floor. (And if any is wondering what happened after the fade-out, we now know – in April 2011 a limited-edition 10″ EP was released featuring the entire, uncut 14-minute recording of "Evil Hoodoo" for Record Store Day. This uncut monstrosity has been added to subsequent reissues of The Seeds by Big Beat and GNP Crescendo.)
"Evil Hoodoo" must have been a shock in 1966, even with the other musical mini-revolutions that were afoot that year, such as “7 and 7 Is”, “Tomorrow Never Knows”, and “Eight Miles High”. More than forty years later, few have matched the greatness and keyed-up release that this song offers. If someone ever asks you what is garage? What is punk? What is noise? What is fury? or What’s so great about The Seeds anyway? Play "Evil Hoodoo" for them. Loud.
CD version of the 1988 Evil Hoodoo compilation.
Oddly, although Sky Saxon often re-recorded and released notable Seeds favorites with his endless bands over the decades there are no other other versions of "Evil Hoodoo" around besides The Seeds’ original. So it’ll have to do. And it does, on all fronts.
"Evil Hoodoo" wasn’t released as a single in the US but did appear on a rare 7″ EP in France. In 1988 a compilation was released entitled Evil Hoodoo, now out of print but still a good introduction to The Seeds.
