Just Imagine

In 1989, Sky Saxon released the album Just Imagine, credited to Sky Sunlight Saxon Dragonslayers SSS. The Dragonslayers band included the irrepressible Mars Bonfire on keyboards, Tom “Atomic” Azevedo on guitar, Gary Stern on bass, and Paul Schofield on drums. The music on Just Imagine is professional late-80s studio rock, but with a pronounced carnivalesque keyboard sprinkled throughout. And of course Sky Saxon’s electrified burnout vocals. The LP came hot on the heels of Sky’s Fire Wall release World Fantastic and a brief reunion tour with some of the original Seeds.

An unfortunate aspect of this album is that nearly every song goes on just a bit too long — they’re good but tend to linger after making their point. This is most unusual in Sky’s career; he either stretched out for a good long while, as on The Seeds’ "Up In Her Room" or the lengthy Yodship jam sessions from the 1970s, or kept it short and sweet with his garage/punk/rock/(etc) songs which always kept up their energy from start to finish. On Just Imagine this innate sense of scale is lacking.

It’s a minor complaint, though. Just Imagine is great fun to listen to, and who can blame the band for being excited about the music they were cranking out?

The songs on Just Imagine

Just Imagine begins with “Black And Red”, sporting the album’s most demented vocals and a solid-rock “Louie, Louie” beat. Sky brings up his favorite animals, dogs, on "Focus Point", during the lackadaisically spoken story that comprises his entire contribution.

Things take a very unusual turn on "Wild Roses" — one of the standout tracks of Sky’s career, for its sheer uniqueness and ambition if nothing else. Over a soft Celtic-folk guitar and melodramatic wind-effect keyboard rushes, Sky croons along in a vibrato baritone that sounds like Elvis Presley impersonating Arcesia, with emphasis on the latter. Very stripped down, there is nothing else like "Wild Roses" on Just Imagine or, indeed, in Sky’s entire oeuvre. Interesting as it is, though, it seems unlikely that Sky had much to do with the track’s composition — or arrangement, which was courtesy of Tony Mikesell, later keyboardist for Arthur Lee. "Wild Roses" was released as a single with "Focus Point" as the b-side.

The title song attempts to deliver an Important Message™; it’s a minor-key song of stoned hope, with “deep” lyrics from an addled 1960s legend basking in the memory of Sgt. Pepper (mentioned in the lyrics). "Black Beans" should probably have been called “Poor Boy”, that being the main recurring phrase in this comparatively unremarkable track.

"Some People" fares better; it’s a ‘list’ song, rattling off things people like to do — watch the stars, go to Mars, do it in cars, be movie stars, etc. "Some People" is like a cross between the inane observations in The Shaggs’ “Philosophy Of The World” and the completist ambitions of Bob Dylan’s “Everything Is Broken”. The simple two-chord groove features heavy guitars churning menacingly in the muck.

"Million Miles" sports a double-time distorted guitar lead as a foundation, over which the keyboard figures from The Doors’ “Unknown Soldier” and Sky valiantly try to keep it all tied together. There are some good, dramatic chord changes, and the musicians build to a real climax, unlike most other tracks on Just Imagine. "World Tribute" finds a meaty metal guitar powering its way through the two-chord beat, while a processed organ sparkles incongruously and Sky reels off the names of animals.

Sky Saxon auditioning to be the lead singer of The Scorpions? (from the back cover of Just Imagine)

"Thriller Riff" may be the best song on Just Imagine, unless you’re in the mood for the escapist prog-psych of "Wild Roses". It’s a fast punk rock song, the keyboards mixed to an appropriate (and Seeds-esque) level. Everyone is having fun on this one, and the drums and bass in particular are in exciting lockstep.

The album closes with a remake of The Seeds’ classic song "Mr. Farmer". The guitar rhythm is nice, a little more metallic than the original, and there is a bright organ throughout with some rudimentary psych effects here and there. Sky does his best but sounds exhausted. Being the last track on the album, it has a kind of “pulling out all the stops” wrap-it-up feel that saves it from feeling too long, though the energy level is not as high as the musicians seem to believe it is.

The same band would release another album the following year, 1990, in France called Breakin' Through The Doors, after which Sky Saxon would enter a period of relative inactivity punctuated by the occasional project here and there before his final resurgence in the new millennium. Just Imagine was released in Germany on Pinpoint as a vinyl LP and CD; a cassette catalog number is mentioned on the LP sleeve but we don’t believe this album ever existed on cassette.

Track listing

1. "Black & Red"
2. "Focus Point"
3. "Wild Roses"
4. "Just Imagine"
5. "Black Beans"
6. "Some People"
7. "Million Miles"
8. "World Tribute"
9. "Thriller Riff"
10. "Mr. Farmer" [remake of The Seeds’ classic from 1966]

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