“Judge With A Bomb”
by Sky Saxon and The Seeds
2004 song
"Judge With A Bomb" is the spiritual cousin to the song "Cynical Watcher Mr. Peep". With their weird, exotic foreign-sounding sounds and pronounced waltz time signatures, both differ from the rest of the Red Planet songs in similar ways. The two should have been released as a 7″ single but alas, no singles were released from the 2004 album.
The band helps Sky Saxon out on "Judge With A Bomb", singing along with him on the psychedelic fallin’-melody choruses. Sky’s lyrics, which he sings in his fragile, nakedly-stoned voice, are especially interesting on this song. As one of several atypical character sketches on the album, the judge is depicted as a guy who always dresses in black, a guy who hunted for crack and heroin until he “lost all his bananas”. It might seem like an anti-drug message until you consider the druggy vocalist (and vocals) here.
"Judge With A Bomb" is scintillating, full of weird shimmering sounds over the determined velocity of the musicians. It’s also the final psychedelic word on Red Planet whose lengthy final cut is the crisp, acoustic "Coming Home".
