“Paradise” / “Born To Be Wild” + 2

A promo-only EP featuring Sky Saxon and the band SS-20 was released in 1986 by The Voxx Record Co. Each side of the 33 1/3 rpm 7-inch vinyl record contains two songs. Sky Saxon is on the two a-side songs, “Paradise” and “Born To Be Wild”, but not on either of the two b-side songs, which are leftovers from SS-20’s 1984 album Dream Life. (These Sky-less songs are both covers: The Music Machine’s “Trouble” and Love’s “No Matter What You Do”, retitled “No Matter What”). This EP is a very rare post-Seeds instance of Sky not including “Sunlight” in his name.

The photocopied paper insert.

New song "Paradise" features Mars Bonfire on keyboards; the track was co-written by the him and Sky. "Born To Be Wild" is of course Bonfire’s most famous song from his Steppenwolf days. Sky shares the vocals on "Born To Be Wild" with SS-20’s Madeline Ridley, at least when he’s not going off-script to sing instead about dogs and wolves.

Both songs were again released in 1987 on a weird German LP by the so-called Sky Sunlight Saxon and The Original Seeds called Takes & Glories; "Paradise" became the final song on SS-20’s own album Son Of Fantasy that same year. "Paradise" also appears on CD versions of the 2009 Seeds album Back To The Garden as a bonus track. (Note that this is sometimes mistakenly referred to as a “bonus cut from 1980”.) "Paradise" is not related to a song with the same name from the Masters Of Psychedelia LP.

The Voxx EP is easy to find from online vendors with a little patience and luck. "Born To Be Wild" has not shown up on CD, making the vinyl EP the only place to hear it.

Track listing

1. “Paradise” – featuring Sky Saxon
2. “Born To Be Wild” – featuring Sky Saxon
3. “Trouble”
4. “No Matter What”

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