Sky Saxon, lead singer with 60s garage punk legends the Seeds, died on the morning of June 25, 2009 (or as his official web site put it, he “passed over to be with YaHoWha”); as it happened, he died the same day as both Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, ensuring that the entertainment press, who might have been expected to treat his passing like a one-line filler item, didn’t even give it that much attention. But Saxon hadn’t been a celebrity in the traditional sense for a very long time. Sky may have been a rock star for about two years on the strength of the singles “Pushin’ Too Hard” and “Can’t Seem To Make You Mine,” but after those twenty-four months as a bargain-basement Mick Jagger, he evolved into Flower Power’s Last Man Standing, a guy who let his freak flag fly with a wild-eyed sincerity that made most of his peers from the Sunset Strip scene look like weekenders, and transformed his story into something far more interesting than the typical two-hit wonder and cult hero.

Sky Saxon was born Richard Marsh in Salt Lake City, Utah; depending on which source one cites, Marsh was born in either 1937, 1945 or 1946. Whatever his age, Marsh lit out for the bright lights of Los Angeles, California in the early 60s, determined he was going to be a singing star. Under the name Dick Marsh, he cut his first single in 1963, “What Chance Have I” b/w “There’s Only One Girl,” and quickly released three more singles as Ritchie Marsh or Little Ritchie Marsh; the material was well-executed but lightweight assembly-line pop of the teen idol variety, complete with honking saxophone and adenoidal vocals, and the only thing that links them to his later work is Marsh’s willingness to throw himself into the emotional deep end on tunes like “Baby Bay Baby” or “They Say.” By 1964, Marsh had adopted the stage name Sky Saxon, and cut a pair of singles that, like his earlier releases, didn’t go too far. (Most of these pre-Seeds sides can be heard on the 2003 Norton Records collection A Starlight Date With Richard Marsh.)

In 1965, Saxon met a guitarist named Jan Savage and they started talking about forming a band. Bringing in Daryl Hooper on keyboards and Rick Andridge on drums, they became the Seeds and started playing clubs on the L.A. rock circuit. A far cry from the well-scrubbed teenage charm of Ritchie Marsh, the Seeds conjured up a sound that was grimy and minimal, built around cyclical melodic patterns and Hooper’s relentless keyboard riffs (one critic suggested that he only knew one solo but played it over and over in different keys and octaves on each song). Long before the word “psychedelic” gained common currency in the pop music scene, the Seeds cultivated a distinctly druggy sound and aura, and several of their early tunes (such as “Mr. Farmer” and “Rollin’ Machine”) pointed to their inescapable love of marijuana. GNP/Crescendo Records signed the Seeds to a record deal, and in 1966 their first single, “Pushin’ Too Hard,” quickly climbed the charts. With Saxon’s sneering vocals, Hooper’s loping keyboard lines and Savage’s ... well, savage guitar breaks, the tune was an especially potent example of California garage punk, and soon the Seeds were one of the biggest draws in town. In quick succession, the Seeds cranked out two albums in 1966, The Seeds and A Web Of Sound, and charted two more singles, the oft-banned “Mr. Farmer” and the more successful “Can’t Seem To Make You Mine.” (The latter became something of a garage rock standard, covered by the Ramones, Johnny Thunders and most notably Alex Chilton, whose version sounds positively deranged.) However, the glorious crudity of the Seeds didn’t leave them much room for advancement, and after 1967’s Future, an ambitious concept album that sounds more clunky and pretentious than anything else, things began to go downhill for the band, and within a year they released a live album as well as a set of blues workouts credited to the Sky Saxon Blues Band, though the lineup was the same as the Seeds. In 1968, they were reduced to something like self-parody, playing a hapless rock band called the Warts on an episode of the sit-com The Mothers-In-Law (they do just fine miming to “Pushin’ Too Hard,” but while none of the Seeds were actors, Sky’s slack jawed mugging suggests he was under the influence on the day of filming.)

The Seeds limped along for a few years, releasing a few singles on various labels, until the band finally called it a day in 1972. However, by this time Saxon had become interested in loftier pursuits. Tunes from Future like “Travel With Your Mind” and “Where Is The Entrance Way To Play” suggested Sky was interested in something a bit deeper than the grungy sneer of the Seeds, and in the early 1970s he fell in with the Source Family, a spiritual commune overseen by one Father Yod, aka YaHoWha (born James Edward Baker). The Source Family was affiliated with a successful vegetarian restaurant in Los Angeles (the eatery financed the family’s activities), and when they weren’t serving food, they were walking a spiritual path that combined Eastern mysticism and an understanding of “vibrations” with a desire to return to the ways of nature. Saxon became a passionate devotee of Father Yod’s teachings; he changed his name to Sunlight, became a member of the Source Family’s experimental psychedelic music group Yahowha 13, and when the commune moved en masse to Hawaii in 1974, Sunlight joined them. The one-time rock star’s public profile dropped to zero as he and his fellow seekers followed Father Yod’s edicts of sharing, respecting the Earth and not allowing lust to interfere with spiritual love (a big jump for the guy who recorded the marathon paean to teenage sex, “Up In Her Room”). Sunlight also developed a special concern for dogs, believing they had a special connection with the Heavenly Father (just read dog backwards ... see?) and he worked with animal rescue groups.

Unlike most rockers who flirted with arcane religious pursuits in the late 60s and early 70s, Sunlight never walked away from the Source Family and Father Yod’s teachings, though he did return to California in the late 70s, moving back and forth between Hawaii and California for most of the rest of his life. (He also helped compile a box sex of rare YaHoWha 13 recordings, called God and Hair.) As the garage rock revival took hold and a handful of punk rockers name-checked the Seeds as a primal influence, Sunlight found that he had a small but loyal following, and while few outside of this band of loyalists were paying much attention, he began making music again, calling himself Sky Sunlight Saxon and mixing covers of the old Seeds standards with tunes that reflected his newer spiritual direction. Just a list of the names of his various bands of the 70s and 80s tells a tale in itself: Fire Water Air, Stars New Seeds, Universal Stars Peace Band, Purple Electricity, Fire Wall, Fast Planet, the Dragonslayers. Saxon assembled a new version of the Seeds and hit the road, though most of time Saxon was the only original Seed in the band (the rotating lineup at various times included Mars Bonfire, the studio keyboardist who wrote “Born To Be Wild,” and Don Bolles, drummer with the Germs, and the notion of one band finding room for both of those people is slightly mind boggling). Much of the time, Saxon’s new music made him sound like a slightly addled old hippie, but he also came off as a gentle eccentric with a plentiful head of energy and a willingness to do right by his increasingly warped legend.

In 2009, Sky Saxon relocated to Austin, Texas, a town noted for its friendliness to aging psychedelic rangers, and he continued to perform as his official website proclaimed him “King of garage rock! Master of psychedelia! Godfather of punk! Founding father of flower power!” That must have been a heavy legacy for one man to shoulder, and though Saxon soon found an unexpected patron in Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins, who recorded a tune with him, “Choose To Choose Love,” his health began to fail, and only a day after he played a show in Austin on June 20 with local band Shapes Have Fangs, Saxon was hospitalized, and succumbed to heart and liver failure on the morning of June 25. Or at least that’s how most of us look at it. As for Sunlight, only a few months before he passed on, he told an interviewer, “Well, I think you could retire when you die. I don’t, however, believe in death, so I guess I will retire when I leave my body. But I plan to continue writing and performing in heaven.” So who knows? Maybe Sky Saxon and Michael Jackson are teaming up for a double bill in The Great Blue Yonder at this moment. And why not? They both loved animals.

Category: Misc
Description:
There are three distinct styles of German director Werner Herzog's films. There are his great, deep, and memorable fictive films - such as ‘Aguirre: The Wrath Of God’, ‘The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser’, and ‘Fitzcarraldo’, there are his smaller evocative documentary-like films - such as ‘Fata Morgana’, ‘Little Dieter Needs To Fly’, and ‘Grizzly Man’, and then there are his unclassifiable films - such as ‘Even Dwarfs Started Small’, ‘Heart Of Glass’, and 1984's ‘Where The Green Ants Dream’ (Wo Die Grünen Ameisen Traümen). Whereas ‘Even Dwarfs Started Small’ is an enigmatic study on Fascism that is beyond evaluation on a normal scale, and ‘Heart Of Glass’ was filmed with its actors hypnotized, ‘Where The Green Ants Dream’ is an odd concoction that mixes all three of Herzog's styles, along with the excellent cinematography of Jorg Schmidt-Reitwein, in its 95 minute running time. Like many of his films it involves Native Peoples - this time it's not Africans (‘Cobra Verde’) nor American Indians (‘Aguirre: The Wrath Of God’ and ‘Fitzcarraldo’) but Australian Aborigines. The film was based upon the then burgeoning Aboriginal Rights Movement and their initial lawsuit against a mining company that wanted to drill in lands the natives considered holy. After filming ‘Fitzcarraldo’, which drained Herzog emotionally, financially, and creatively, he stumbled upon the story while promoting the earlier film in Australia. To avoid a lawsuit by the real mining company, Nabalco, he changed the company's name, the product they were drilling for, and added his own made up mythos of the green ants, for he felt it more suitable and poetic than the more standard issue and nebulous claims of the real Aborigines. What sets this film apart from most is that it does not look nor feel like a major motion picture by a famed director. Instead, it feels like a first film by a young independent filmmaker, and I mean that in the best sense. Despite some wonderful scenery, Herzog is not fixated on natural splendour - such as rather brief shots of miles and miles of holes dug into the ground for opals and the resultant dirt and sand piled up and left to sit, something most filmmakers would ogle over, and spends far more time on the simple, unfolding tale. Yet, it does not focus on the human players as much as the issue of Native Rights vs. those accorded by old treaties. The lead character is a tall, blond, bespectacled geologist called Lance Hackett (Bruce Spence), who works for the A.S. Mining Company- which is in the uranium mining business. The film opens with him in his office trailer on the outskirts of a small town, Coober Pedy, in the Australian Outback desert. An old lady, Miss Strehlow (Colleen Clifford), who has lost a pooch in their tunnels is asking him for help in locating the dog, named Ben Franklin. He tries to pacify the old lady when he is informed of an Aborigine protest on the land by his older lead worker, a bigot named Cole (Ray Barrett). Hackett rushes out to see what is the matter and encounters two of the Aboriginal Elders, Miliritbi (Wandjuk Marika) and Dayipu (Roy Marika). Even though the site is not accorded reservation status by the Australian government, the two claim that their tribe views the site as a holy site, for it is where the green ants dream up all life, and if the company destroys it the world will end. They and their tribe are engaging in a sit down strike. Here is where Herzog deftly walks a tightrope. While not giving in to the PC and New Age wackiness of such beliefs, he does show the company trying to bend over backward to appease the Aborigines. They do not accept any such offers, and eventually the two parties- the tribe and the company, must go to court. There are some funny scenes- such as when company officials fly the two Elders to Melbourne, to negotiate, and they get stuck in an elevator while riding up a skyscraper. Eventually they are freed, but Hackett suggests it is all a dream, and they are really still stuck in the elevator. Sure enough, on their way down the elevator conks out again, and the claim by Hackett seems to be fulfilled. There are a few moments where the film gets too preachy, such as when Hackett visits Arnold, a supposed local white expert on Aboriginal culture (Nicolas Lathouris)- who also is a bigot of the worst order, but against his own culture, and the man merely preens and screams at Hackett as some harbinger of evil white culture, but most of the film is a bit less preachy. The Aborigines are shown to have their own silly customs, such as when- during the courtroom scene, the courtroom must be cleared of spectators due to Aboriginal belief that something bad will occur. Yet, the whites are no less silly, and midway through the film there's a funny scene where Hackett is meeting with a white entomologist. Fletcher . (Ralph Cotterill), who explains the facts behind the magnetically attuned green ants- which are not really ants, although they look that way. Instead, they are a variety of termites and more closely related to roaches than ants. The glee that the insect expert seems to rub off on Hackett is both perverse and funny to watch. Yet, like most of the film, there is no musical accompaniment. This is probably the Herzog film least dependent upon his key musical ear, and most dependent upon the story alone. Thus, very little is made of Native music from the didgeridoo, which is heard only a few brief times. The film is also notable because it was one of the few times that- till that point, Herzog's regular musical partner, Florian Fricke of Popul Vuh, did not work with him. Eventually, the company appeases the Aborigines by loaning them a green airplane, but after the Aborigines lose in court, a drunken Aborigine, who was in the Australian military takes the plane off to fly and loses it up in the mountains. A search is launched, and the film ends as it started- with some enigmatic shots of tornadoes filmed in Oklahoma, a tale by Hackett, to the old lady- who is still waiting outside one of the tunnels with an opened can of dog food that has dried and become food for flies, and Hackett telling her of a dream he had where he is watched by Catholic School students and nuns as he pisses in his pants and causes a river to flow. The last scene of the film shows Hackett back at the white Aborigine expert, who now accepts him as a 'good' member of the white race, and Hackett seems to go off into the desert to live in the expert's old home made of a larger steel water barrel. Because of the rather trite nature of the confrontation, admixed with its odd presentation, Where The Green Ants Dream is a film that is difficult to classify. There are funny scenes of Aborigines in business suits when in court, and holding religious ceremonies in supermarkets where a holy tree once stood- a tree needed for the men in the tribe to dream up their children before they are conceived, and humorously sad scenes, such as when Cole explodes to Hackett that Aborigine children have drained his Caterpillar of oil so they can sniff it to get high. The film is not a character study, not a true fiction, but a quasi-documentary-like film. That it does not go overboard on the New Age nonsense nor the Noble Savage reverse racism is good, but a bit more development of Hackett- whose life outside work seems to consist of listening to cassette replays of Argentina's first World Cup Soccer victory and getting turned down for dates by local women, would have been good, as would a bit more background on the town and some minor characters- such as a few company executives, like Baldwin Ferguson (Norman Kaye), and other Aborigines- such as the man they call a Mute because he is the last person on earth who can speak his native tribal tongue, would have made the film better. These minor flaws can be blamed on the too spare screenplay by Herzog and Bob Ellis, who also has a cameo role as the local supermarket manager. The acting in the film is also not the best in the Herzog canon. Like many films that try to use authentic ethnic actors, there is a small pool to choose from, so the film suffers for this. I am reminded of the poorly acted Eskimo film of a few years back, ‘Atanarjuat’. That said, even the white actors are not top notch, as Spence spends much of the film with his mouth agape and looking like Lurch from the old ‘The Addams Family’ sitcom. The DVD, put out by Infinity Arthouse, is well transferred- although it has a bit more of a made for television movie in its look, and shown in a 16:9 full frame aspect ratio. The extras are rather spare- a Herzog bio, German and English trailers, a trailer for a Rainer Werner Fassbinder film, and a commentary by Herzog, along with an interviewer, but done in German, with English subtitles. As usual, Herzog's comments are among the best out in the DVD market, as he both explains what was on his mind with a particular scene or actor, as well as often digressing in a truly creative fashion, on the mythos behind said scenes and characters. The best example is when he describes the genesis of this film, from an earlier trip promoting ‘Fitzcarraldo’, and how the making of this film led into his eventual making of ‘Cobra Verde’, by meeting the author Bruce Chatwin while in the country. ‘Where The Green Ants Dream’ is not Herzog at his greatest, but it is an interesting and good little film that rises above the contemporary condescending approach to Natives, and compels anyone who starts watching it to finish watching it. Just compare it to the ongoing American obsessions with Noble Savage Native Americans and Mystical Negroes, and the difference is clear. In the commentary, Herzog even laments that this film is too preachy at times, in scenes with both the Elders and the small minded Arnold, and how his own personal disagreement with the Green parties around the world are due to their lack of empathy for humans, while praising nature at all costs. It is especially noteworthy to compare this film to the work of Native American director Chris Eyre, who made ‘Smoke Signals’ and ‘Skins’, for one can see numerous areas where the younger director could learn much from a Master like Herzog, who, even when not in top form, can create compelling art that lasts, even if in ways as odd as his subject matter.   EXTRAS INCLUDE: -Director's Commentary as 2nd audio track (SUBTITLES ARE FOR THE COMMENTARY TRACK, FILM IS IN ENGLISH) -Herzog bio (3xjpgs) -trailer  PLEASE SEED AND ENJOY!!!
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