Sky Saxon

Today  a worldwide icon, an American sex symbol, and a music pioneer all died – any one of whom would have garnered a post. However the least noticed – Sky Saxon – is the one who probably had the most effect on my life. Here’s my take on today’s news in order of the decade that each star – Sky Saxon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson, had the biggest impact.

Sky Saxon

Sky Saxon (nee Richard Marsh) was the lead singer of 1960s garage rockers the Seeds, part of a wave of hard-edged American rock bands that would lay the groundwork for bands like The Stooges, the New York Dolls and The Dictators later in that decade and into the early 70s who in turn led to the great explosion of punk and alternative rock in the 80s and 90s.

I first discovered The Seeds on what was then New York’s classic rock station, WNEW, which would pepper it’s playlist with “Pushin’ Too Hard” and other great songs by less known bands in the mid 80s before radio became the walking corporatized zombie corpse it is now.

By teh time I got to college I had enough sense to pick up a copy of Lenny Kaye‘s compilation of 60s garage and psychedelia Nuggets (since re-issued as an essential box set) which featured several great Seeds songs inclusing the phenomenal ballad “Can’t Seem to Make You Mine”.

You can hear Saxon’s sneer as he sings, and the Seeds drug-hazed vision was laced with an anger that was the antithesis of the peace and love vibe of so many of their contemporaries. Though they later got sidetracked into unpromising art-rock songs like the above, “Mr. Farmer” and  “Up In Her Room” are pretty great. Saxon faded from the music seen by the eraly 70s, retreating to Hawaii and touring occaisionally. That’s what brought him to Austinand his last gig at Antone’s, after which he was hospitalized on Monday.

Here’s the staggeringly, heartbreakingly great “Can’t Seem to Make You Mine”:

“Mr. Farmer”

Their biggest hit, “Pushin’ Too Hard”, introduced by Kasey Kasem:

adolescence