“East Meets West”
by Sky Saxon's U.S.A.
1991 song
When the song "East Meets West" begins, you’d be forgiven for not recognizing it as a Sky Saxon performance. The crisp synthesizer pop comes on like a forgotten Duran Duran album track, its vaguely Caribbean steel drum-like sound giving it a wan, tropical feel. When Sky’s faint and fatigued vocals enter it’s quite a shock. "East Meets West" is on the 1991 CD Flashback by Sky Saxon’s U.S.A. which was a collaboration between The Seeds’ frontman and multi-instrumentalist Dana Smith.
While he often left the music to others so he could focus on singing, on "East Meets West" Sky doesn’t seem to have written the words either. (This despite references to “sad-eyed dogs” and “poor homeless cats” – maybe he influenced those lines.) Jennifer Tiangco adds background vocals to parts of "East Meets West", and there’s a rhythmic kind of spoken middle section, apparently in Chinese, courtesy of a “Mrs. Chen”. This inoffensive pop tune is not the Sky you know, but it’s a part of the story and needs to be heard by his fans.
