The Seeds

Lost heroes of the 1960s, psychedelic rock scene, The Seeds reached cult status in more recent years thanks to a revival of garage bands and their place on the influential compilation album Nuggets (a collection of obscurities that has become a favourite with record collectors and obsessive music journos). Led by front man Sky Saxon, they were part of a wave of West Coast bands who took inspiration from the British invasion of rhythm and blues acts, but were just too strange to infiltrate the pop charts. Instead, the band scored local radio hits with their singles Pushin' Too Hard, Mr Farmer and Can't Seem To Make You Mine while debut album The Seeds (1966) later inspired The Ramones and is regarded as one of the pre-cursors to punk. Its follow-up A Web Of Sound (1966) descended further into hypnotic acid rock territory, but again proved a major influence, this time on Iggy And The Stooges, Velvet Underground and Love. The band had petered out by 1972 with Saxon going off to join a religious commune in the Hollywood Hills, before resurfacing with a number of local bands and appearing in the Smashing Pumpkins video Superchrist. He died suddenly of kidney failure in 2009, but The Seeds reputation as one of L.A.'s great underground rock acts continues to inspire new generations of bands, including the likes of The Horrors, Django Django and Black Lips.