Big mea culpa here: I've been playing Eilen Jewell's music for years on The Santa Fe Opry for years now and I've been mispronouncing her name. I've called her "Eileen," I've called her "Ellen," I've called her "Zsa Zsa" (OK, I'm just lying there), everything but her actual name, which, (as I found out tonight listening to some of her YouTube videos) is pronounced "EEL-un."
But the point is, I have been playing her songs on the radio for years, and I only play the stuff I like. So I heartily recommend you catch her show in Santa Fe this Thursday (November 19). She'll be playing at the Center for Spiritual Living, 505 Camino de Los Marquez. Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 at the door. Buy tickets HERE.
This is a homecoming of sorts for Eilen. She attended St. John's College around the turn of the century and she's said many times in interviews that her first public gigs were busking at the Farmer's Market here.
So be there at her show. Until then, enjoy a couple of her videos:
Sunday, November, 2015 KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M. 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell Webcasting! 101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org
Here's the playlist
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Mercury Blues by David Lindley
Don't Slander Me by Roky Erikson
I Guess You're My Girl by The Vagoos
Dial Up Doll by Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Tuned Out by JJ & The Real Jerks
Baby Doll by The Del Morrocos
Rickshaw Rattletrap by Churchwood
The Claw by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
Why You Leave Me by T. Valentine & Daddy Long Legs
Eclipse Boliviano by Rolando Bruno
Naspare by Cankisou
Bemin Sebeb Letlash by Mahmoud Ahmed
Tamiditin by Tinariwen
Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child by Rev. Johnny L. Jones
Yesterday, following my Tune-Up column on The Seeds: Pushin’ Too Hard documentary, which is showing at the Jean Cocteau next week, my KSFR crony and fellow Seeds fan Sean Conlon sent me an email about the time he went to a Sky Saxon show 25 years ago.
With Sean's permission, I share the email here:
"Bring me the hula girls!"
In 1990 I visited a friend in San Francisco and he told me we were going to see another friend's band open for Sky! I was surprised because I'd heard Saxon had burned out and disappeared, but my friend told me he'd seen a reunited Seeds share a bill with Love a few months earlier, and that Sky had been in fine form. So we head down to the venue, which turns out to be the lobby of a seemingly deserted SRO hotel in the Tenderloin. There was a hand-drawn cardboard sign on the door, and that was apparently the only advertising that had been done for the gig besides word of mouth. There were maybe 20 people in the dimly lit room. There was a bar, but no stage; just a corner that had been cleared out. In another corner was Sky, sitting with 5 or 6 hippie chicks. They were young, maybe about 20. He looked old, and in bad shape. During my friend's opening set (they were sort of a Toiling Midgets-wannabe band. In 1983 the Midgets had been our upstairs neighbors in the Mission district.) Sky's entourage got on the dance floor and hula-hooped. Things were looking up. There was a problem, though. Sky hadn't brought a band. I'm not sure if he thought the promoter was going to provide one, or if he just forgot. He asked my friend's group to back him, although they didn't know any of his material. No worries, he said, just do your thing and I'll work with it. So they noodled around while he recited some verse and a few lines from Pushin' Too Hard, and sang "Mr Mojo Risin'" over and over while the hippie chicks continued with the hula hoops. After about 10 minutes of this, Sky went back to his table in the corner, the entourage packed up and they all left. I'm still not sure if it was the best or worst show I ever saw.
So there you have it.
Don't forget the The Seeds: Pushin’ Too Hard is showing at the Jean Cocteau Cinema (418 Montezuma Ave., 505-466-5528) at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 18, and Thursday, Nov. 19. The doc’s director, Neil Norman will be on hand for Q & both nights.
I don't think hula hoops will be provided.
And don't forget tomorrow night's Terrell’s Sound World on on KSFR-101.1 FM. here I'll be playing a special segment featuring the music of the Seeds, Sky Saxon, and lots of cool bands covering their songs. The show starts at 10 p.m. with the Seeds set starting at the 11th hour.
Friday, November 13, 2015 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM Email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens
Tobacco Road by Southern Culture On The Skids
Drinking Problem by Audrey Auld
Tied by The Yawpers
MisAmerica by Legendary Shack Shakers
Still Sober (After All These Beers) by The Banditos
Streets of Bordeaux by Texas Martha & The House of Twang
Oui (A French Song) by Terry Allen
Swing Troubador by Christine Albert
When First Unto This Country by David Bromberg
Yuppie Scum by Emily Kaitz
Crazy Crazy Lovin' by Johnny Carroll
Hot Rod Lincoln by The Satellites
Blackeyed Susie by J.P. Nestor
No Judgement Day by Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs
In New Orleans (Rising Sun Blues) by Dave & Phil Alvin
Cigarette Party by Dex Romweber Duo
LSD by Wendell Austin
UFO on Farm Road 318 by Sidney Ester
If You Mess with the Bull by Luke Reed
Long White Cadillac by Janis Martin
The Over You Rag by Electric Rag Band
Crazy Heart by Augie Meyers
Sorry You're Sick by Mary Gauthier
Bad Dog by Ted Hawkins
Dried Out River by Dad Horse Experience
Lucille by The Beat Farmers
Dust Off The Old Songs by Jason Eklund, Mike Good & Tom Irwin
Mary Lou by Kell Robertson
Big Train From Memphis by Mary & Mars
Cold Black Hammer by Joe Ely
My Walking Stick by Leon Redbone
Legend in My Time by Leon Russell Green Fields of France by Dropkick Murphys CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets Like the Santa Fe Opry Facebook page Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican November 13, 2015 Thursday, June 25, 2009. A beloved and influential innovator of modern popular music is dead. A stunned nation mourns.
Actually, most of those stunned and mourning people that day were grieving for some guy named Michael Jackson. But not me. The only tears I shed that summer day were for Richard Marsh, better known as Sky Saxon, the singer of one of most important ’60s-garage, proto-punk (and don’t forget flower power) bands in rock ’n’ roll history.
I didn’t care about the King of Pop! On that sad day, I looked to the Sky!
Saxon and his band, the Seeds, are now the subject of a well-researched, thoroughly entertaining, and totally rocking documentary called The Seeds: Pushin’ Too Hard.
I’ve been a Seeds fan since I was in junior high in the mid-’60s, which was back when their song (“You’re) Pushin’ Too Hard” was first a big hit. That tune fit in perfectly with some of the great snot-rock of the era such as “Dirty Water,” “96 Tears,” and “Psychotic Reaction.” but until this film I didn’t really know that much about Saxon or the Seeds.
The Seeds
First of all, this was a real band, not just a charismatic singer with a bunch of sidemen. Director Neil Norman (whose father Gene Norman signed the group to his GNP Crescendo Records) includes footage of recent interviews with former Seeds keyboardist Daryl Hooper (whose Wurlitzer electric piano with heavy tremolo made early Seeds records unforgettable) and fuzztone-guitar pioneer Jan Savage, as well as some footage and taped commentary of drummer Rick Andridge, who died in 2011.
I also didn’t realize that Saxon himself had been knocking around Hollywood for as long as he did, trying to get a break in the showbiz game. Born in Utah, he first went to Tinseltown in the late ’50s, initially signing to a label co-owned by Fred Astaire. Some of those quasi-doo-wop songs, which he released under the name “Little Richie Marsh,” can be found on YouTube today. They’re kind of cool, but you’d never realize these songs are the seeds of the Seeds.
The magic didn’t really start until Little Richie hooked up with Hooper and Andridge, a couple of high school pals who moved to Hollywood from their hometown of Farmington, Michigan. They started out covering the usual early rock classics. Things started to happen after they began writing their own songs.
Like many rock docs, much of the story told comes from famous folks who are fans of the film’s subject. Here we have the likes of the late Hollywood creep Kim Fowley, Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys, members of the ’80s girl band the Bangles, Johnny Echols of the group Love, and others.
Iggy opines from his throne
My favorite celeb testimony in Pushin’ Too Hard is Iggy Pop, who says The Seeds “gave a lot of people a vocabulary.” Of Saxon, Iggy says, “Besides his great name, which is super cool, he doesn’t sound stoppable. He sounds like you can’t stop him or shut him up. ... He couldn’t really sing, but neither can anyone else who’s any fucking good.”
Watching the rise of the Seeds is exciting, and watching their fall in the documentary is painful. Norman presents the case that it was too much ego, as well as too many drugs, that led to Saxon’s decline and the disintegration of the band.
After two snarling, rocking albums came Future, an ill-conceived, badly executed third album — an artsy experiment, probably influenced by Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and all the other “rock is art” idiocy of the era. The Beach Boys’ Johnston grouses, “I didn’t want to hear the Seeds with harps.” (Perhaps he didn’t recognize the irony here — a lot of people said the same thing about the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds.)
Saxon’s appetite for LSD became a problem. “On stage it was like talking to a six-year-old,” a bandmate says. He tended to adopt stray humanoids who took advantage of his generosity and trust. Saxon’s house became a “flophouse for degenerates,” Savage says. “People fed Sky’s ego, giving him dope. He lost his edge.”
The Seeds broke up in 1969. Saxon apparently went to seed. (I apologize for that.) He lost his house, and folks would see him walking the streets or “wandering around the hills playing the flute,” according to one account in the film.
Saxon in later years
At one point in the ’70s, Saxon became involved with a utopian communal experiment (none dare call it cult) in Hollywood that ran a popular Sunset Strip health food restaurant (which is the subject of another fine documentary, The Source Family, released in 2012). Saxon was given a new name, “Arelich Aquarian,” by the group’s head honcho Father Yod. The former rock star worked in the restaurant and moved to Hawaii with the group when Yod decided it was time to flee the mainland.
There were reunions and reformations of the Seeds. Saxon recorded several solo albums (I have Transparency, which was released a few years before he died. It’s not bad, though it’s not the Seeds).
He eventually moved to Austin, where he worked with a band called Shapes Have Fangs. At the time of his death, he’d been planning on a tour with the contemporary versions of the Electric Prunes and Love.
The Seeds: Pushin’ Too Hard is showing at the Jean Cocteau Cinema (418 Montezuma Ave., 505-466-5528) at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 18, and Thursday, Nov. 19. The doc’s director will be on hand both nights.
Tune in to Terrell’s Sound World on Sunday, Nov. 15, for a special segment featuring the music of the Seeds, Sky Saxon, and lots of cool bands covering their songs. The show starts at 10 p.m. with the Seeds set starting at the 11th hour. That’s on KSFR-101.1 FM.
