“Do The Swim”
by Sky Saxon and The Electra-Fires
1964 song
Sky Saxon’s final release before starting The Seeds was a non-psychedelic 7″ on the Joie label pairing "Trouble With My Baby" with the raucous and joyous "Do The Swim". On "Do The Swim", credited to Sky Saxon and The Electra-Fires, a chorus of revelers yells and hoots while Sky cries out about swimming and waterfalls.
With its itchy rhythm and party sense, "Do The Swim" is one of Sky’s best pre-Seeds recordings. It’s genuinely fun, and his crazy subject matter is agreeably idiosyncratic, something all Seeds fans can agree on as a Sky Saxon feature, not a bug. The 45 was released in August 1964; by April the next year he would be in the studio with The Seeds recording that band’s classic first garage-rocking single "Can't Seem To Make You Mine" b/w "Daisy Mae".
Arguably the best part of "Do The Swim" is toward the beginning when he lists several then-popular dances that “your ma wouldn’t let you do”, and he calls the mashed potato “the mashed potatoes”. (Some people did actually call it that but it still sounds funny.)
"Do The Swim" was added to the 1982 album Bad Part Of Town and the 1983 LP New Fruit From Old Seeds; both were recorded directly from copies of the Joie 45. Embarrassingly, Bad Part Of Town‘s version was edited – presumably there was a skip in their copy that the compilers had to paste over. (CD versions of the LP retain the error.) But then, unbelievably, Sky Saxon himself used a copy of the Bad Part Of Town LP when working on his own Takes & Glories album in 1987 – he needle-dropped that "Do The Swim" with its missing 15-second chunk, added new overdubs, and stuck the whole mess on his album as "Swim". Imagine that.
"Do The Swim" is also on 2003’s Sky Saxon Presents "A Starlight Date With Richard Marsh". This too was sourced from a vinyl single and has been compressed heavily in an effort to reduce surface noise.
