Starry Ride

Starry Ride is a “mini LP” containing four songs by Sky Saxon with some of his frequent collaborators including guitarist Rainbow Starburst; it was released as a clear vinyl 12″ record in 1984 in the UK. Two of its songs had been released on a 7″ EP seven years earlier while the other two are new to this record.

The music on Starry Ride is gritty garage rock, with some psychedelic touches here and there and Sky’s usual heartfelt and spaced-out vocals. It’s like late 1970s punk played at 75% speed, with a singer holding forth about loving kitty cats and soaring through outer space.

The front cover of Starry Ride dares to invite mockery: with long hair, straggly beard, and stoned eyes, Sky Saxon stands in front of some bushes and shows off an all-white suit replete with its own cape which billows out to the side. He holds his arms in front of him, sending beams of energy directly from his fingertips into the camera and at the viewer. All lettering on the front and back covers is in a garish gothic font – something grand to fit the groovy music inside.

The photo on the back cover is some more California hippie bliss: Sky, in a red tunic, and Rainbow (in blue) sit in the orange late-afternoon sunlight high up on a hillside, the city stretching out behind them out of focus. Both have serious looks on their faces, wrinkling their brows and summoning up some determined-looking gravitas.

The exact recording date and personnel of the four songs on Starry Ride are something of a mystery: musicians are credited for the record as a whole and include:

Vocals – Sky Sunlight Saxon
Lead Guitar – Elliot Englebar [sic] (from Fraternity of Man)
Bass Guitar – Mars Bonfire (composer of "Born To Be Wild")
Rhythm Guitar – Rainbow Starburst
Drums – Ron Bushy (from Iron Butterfly)
& some of their friends

Notable is that Mars Bonfire, usually a keyboard player, is on bass and that players from famed sixties bands Iron Butterfly and Fraternity of Man appear. (Elliot Ingber’s name is misspelled “Englebar”; even more entertaining, liner notes-wise, is the oddly defensive and quasi-legal phrase “Leased from Water records, tapes, & videos – all rights paid”. Whoever was supposed to get money got it, you can be sure of that. Wink wink.)

The recording dates are unknown, and it isn’t even clear that these songs all date from the same era. "Starry Ride" and "I'm In Love With Life" were released on a 7″ vinyl EP around 1977, and have a different sound than “Drums, Stars, And Guitars” and "24 Hour Rocker", which don’t sound particularly like each other either. And there is that tantalizingly vague line about “some of their friends”. So, either one, two, or three different slices of time, and perhaps as many sets of musicians, seem to be represented on Starry Ride. Sky gets a credit as “Master producer” while Rainbow (who is quite likely on every song) is designated “Co-producer”.

As with so many Sky Saxon-related releases, there are several ponderable questions about Starry Ride: why were two of the songs from the 1977 EP included – instead of all of them, or none of them, for example? Are the same musicians on every song? (I’d wager not.) When were the two “new” songs recorded?

Sky’s years between 1977 and 1984 are somewhat mysterious as there was no new output from him during this time; apparently he spent much of his time in Hawaii but the liner notes on Starry Ride claim that the songs were recorded in Hollywood. He may indeed have had occasional sessions during this era and selected some recordings for this EP from them; or the two new songs here may even date from the early/mid 1980s when the EP was released.

Until further information comes out, we can only shrug, throw Starry Ride on the turntable, and ride along with Sky and his cohorts through their jaunty, daring space trip. Drums, stars, and guitars indeed.

The songs

All four songs on Starry Ride are credited to Sky Sunlight Saxon, despite the first two having already been released and credited to “Sunlight – Rainbow”, i.e. Sky Sunlight Saxon and Rainbow Starburst.

"Starry Ride"
A real Sky Saxon classic, this particular recording was on side A of the 1977 EP and was also recorded by the Allright Family Band in 1980, where Sky guested as vocalist. Dramatic and propulsive, Rainbow Starburst’s fuzzy guitar bounces back and forth incessantly along the track’s sleek riff while Sky seems to really touch the stars with his wide-eyed explorations.

"I'm In Love With Life"
A somewhat more conventional rock song, this recording was titled simply "In Love With Life" on the 1977 EP and, as there, goes well with "Starry Ride". Sky bellows passionately as the gritty band churns away. The track verges on chaos but is kept impressively together by the adept band. Another triumph.

“Drums, Stars, and Guitars”
The first song new to Sky fans on the EP. Has a sharp lead guitar line, fat and heavy but slicing, whose quality and prominence would suggest that this is where Fraternity of Man’s Elliot Ingber makes his appearance. It’s a catchy song because of that lead guitar, too; Sky Saxon, for his part, contributes vocals haphazardly exploring the themes found in the song’s title.

"24 Hour Rocker"
This song takes up all of Starry Ride‘s Side 2 and is part of a longer recording (it fades in and, nine minutes later, back out) and is mostly a tight, one-chord garage rock jam showcasing Rainbow Starburst’s always excellent rhythm guitar work. Ron Bushy, if that is the drummer here, keeps the song pulsing and adds some fun little fills into the mix. Sky meanders through a particularly free-form singing performance.

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