Going Up in the Spirit to the Sky: or, Really, Sky Saxon's UP There, I Seed Him!

SKY SAXON
(1946 - June 25, 2009)

by Don K. Barbecue

I'm old enough to remember toolin' aROWLnd and aROWLnd in my pop's car listening to the radio blast "Pushin' Too Hard" when it was new and and Sky and his band became overnight Saxon symbols. This was, more or Les Paul, about the time when even Dylan, the oily Stones and Ray Davies still had a few toppa the pop charts hits bombasting the charts before they'd perhaps worked all the roof risin' Kinks out. Wasn’t all that far from a time when Van Morrison, who sounded enough like Jagger that I remember friends and relatives Who couldn't tell one from the other, was competing, drums a'beating behind him, against ‘em while with Them.

You have to realize, wayback when… then… the car radio was indeed a magical Merlin's Music Box, capable of cranking out all kinds of diversitudely tunes. Top 40 featured all kinds of pop in the post-Beatles '60's: rock called pop, Sinatra, Johnny Cash, Roger Miller, Motown, Muscle Shoals, Beach Boys, Bobbie Gentry, an Alka Seltzer commerical that ev'ry time I heard it I reached so fast to crank it up it’s a miracle I didn't get the old man's car T-Boned. There was Johnny Rivers doing a British t.v. spy theme song, the song an understanding lyrics challenged friend of mine insisted was “Secret Asian Man.” There were songs by The Ventures, Bobby Fuller fighting the law and the law # 1, English chicklets prone to lying in wait in some dusty spring field to white collar some son of a preacher man. All of which sinspired a to morph in the 70’s Ramones, raw moan style of thinking out there in teen-age wasteland, one that made any kid in the middle of nowhere pick up a guitar and PLAY. You can friggin’ bet ev’ry kid so inclined was thinking "I can do better than THAT." So, competing amongst all these fellers and femettes previously mentioned a’ merrily rushin', there were tons of what we now know as garage bands, what which spawned and spermed punk somewhat layed her. I mean, those days what could a poor boy do except join a band to get the hot chick from study hall to, ahem, lecher come Up In Her Woo, I SAID Room?


Thing is, mentioning to the right gal that one’a Sky’s songs just might play on yer car radio that night just might get YOU not driving aROWLnd as usual by yer lonesome, but rather cruising with some lick, I mean, like minded gal whose folks’ car didn’t have a radio. Where up on you could, purr laps, get what we used to call “lucky,” as teen pleas were appeased and pleased to the light of the dashboard, while the moon hit the thighs like a big piece'a … pie.



And, trust me as I rust on about this, there wasn't much off with her top 40 D's material on the radio bed her than Sky's to make yer best gal feel such behavior was, soddenly, alright, all tight and maybe not all night but home by 11:00, at lust. The Sky-ster’s stuff was, howl to lay, one potent aural aphrodisiac. As in when, with the help of a little "Pushin' Too Hard," one’s first loves didn’t, soddenly, feel too Seedy. So, thanks, Sky now up in the sky, for lending me a hi-fidelity hand those starlit nights with certain cherished in memory Pennsylvania coal town lasses, when without ya I couldn’t seem to make them anything but “Eee-yew!” mined.