“Many Years Ago”
by The Seeds
2008 song
Daryl Hooper and Sky Saxon reunite on the first track from the 2008 CD Back To The Garden. "Many Years Ago" was written by Sky and collaborator Mike Oak. It’s a dense and slow opening miasma of crisply engineered music – resembling The Seeds’ "A Faded Picture" played by professional studio musicians. Daryl’s keyboards whine helpfully in the background, mostly adding long one-note tones over which Oak adds some high-pitched and dramatic guitar bends. Sky sounds weary but committed to the material on "Many Years Ago", although his voice is mixed lower than usual and he becomes merely a part of the stew and not its main ingredient.
It’s nice to hear Daryl and Sky together again. Daryl’s occasional contributions to Back To The Garden are possibly what led Sky and/or Mike to feel bold enough to call it a Seeds album. Listeners looking for a latter-day Seeds reunion might feel slighted when they put on the CD but with psychedelic atmospherics like "Many Years Ago" available they should dig deeper, hearing it anew with fresh ears.
