“Lose Your Mind”
by The Seeds
1966 song
"Lose Your Mind" was released on The Seeds’ first album in 1966, The Seeds. It never showed up on a single anywhere but it does contribute greatly to the album’s air of punky, youthful abandon.
The song features a classic garage-rocky Bo Diddley beat, but one psychedelicized by Daryl Hooper’s goofy keyboards. Vocalist Sky Saxon breathlessly exhorts his listeners to, well, lose their minds. Have some fun! It was a simple and simplistic attitude. But it is of course a basic one, and Sky Saxon would adopt “losing your mind” as a basic tenet of his existence for the rest of his life.
"Lose Your Mind", like many Sky Saxon lyrics of the era, features his favorite phrase “night and day”. Musically, the tune is raw, garage-y, crude, warped, and even mindless.
And yes, those are all meant as compliments. It’s not the most unique or complex of songs, but when someone asks you (as I’m sure they often do) “what is the essence of 1960s garage rock?”, play "Lose Your Mind" for them. If they don’t get it then, they aren’t listening and you can stop fraternizing with them.
Recording “Lose Your Mind”
The Seeds didn’t spend much time on "Lose Your Mind" – the music is simple and the band pretty much tossed it off quickly. The studio session took place on December 7, 1965 and included Harvey Sharpe on bass alongside the group. (Sky Saxon was credited as bassist on the LP jacket but this was not true.) Three takes of "Lose Your Mind" were attempted, with Take 3 being the one on the LP and in our hearts ❤️❤️.
Incidentally, this same session also yielded the LP’s tracks "Girl I Want You" and "It's A Hard Life". In addition, the great "She's Wrong" would be first released in 1977 on the Fallin' Off The Edge rarities compilation, and another outtake called “Dreaming Of Your Love” would remain unreleased until 2012. (An attempt at re-recording "Out Of The Question" ended up being rejected.)
All in all, a very productive session for fanatics of gritty mid-60s rock ‘n’ roll.
How “Lose Your Mind” Was Orphaned from CD Reissues
When The Seeds was released alongside the group’s second album A Web Of Sound as a single CD, "Lose Your Mind" was cut from the disc. Presumably this was to make room for both albums to fit, which clearly they wouldn’t. It was a bad decision; there’s no other way to say it. There are no Seeds albums that deserve any of their tracks to be excised from the running order. The Edsel single-CD release of the first two albums follows suit, disappointingly.
The back of the Edsel CD of The Seeds’ first two albums. Did they really think we wouldn’t notice "Lose Your Mind" not being in its proper place as Track 3??
Most other CD reissues of the first album alone did retain "Lose Your Mind", including the Japanese The Seeds + 8 and the German version from Line Records, which renamed the album Pushin’ Too Hard/First.
The now out-of-print 1998 Flower Punk box set also removed "Lose Your Mind" from its correct running order. There, it was placed on the Rare Seeds portion of disc 3. (Hey, at least it was somewhere, bastardized though it was.) On the other hand, "Lose Your Mind" was selected for the similarly out-of-print 1991 CD compilation A Faded Picture. So it’s got that going for it. Which is nice.
Most relevant of all, when Big Beat reissued The Seeds in an expanded CD with bonus tracks in 2012, "Lose Your Mind" was correctly in place as Track 3, the abandoned song back with its siblings at last.
As far as I can tell, all vinyl issues of The Seeds include "Lose Your Mind", including the 2016 2LP deluxe reissue.
