“Star Jewels”

“Do you feel yourself getting high?” asks Sky Saxon during "Star Jewels". It’s a fair question.

The trippiest moment of magic on the live Heavenly Earth LP from 1977 is this, the final track. "Star Jewels" stretches out over seven minutes, repeating Rainbow Neal’s shimmering two-chord guitar figure without deviation.

"Star Jewels" is distinguished by beautiful, understated electric piano work, a dramatic and drawn-out false ending (that surprises even the band), and Sky’s ever-hopeful exhortations that you join him and his friends on their cosmic trip to Venus. The chemicals are in full effect now and the “spacecraft filled with diamonds” is departing. All aboard, brothers and sisters.

It was a lucky audience indeed who got to experience "Star Jewels" when it happened because no other recording of it (say, a studio version) has ever been released. To hear it, you need a copy of the 1977 record, pressed onto either blue or green vinyl (the blue is far more common), which has not as of this writing been reissued on CD or anything else. The show was recorded on September 9, 1977 at the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles, California.

“This is another new song and it’s called ‘Star Jewels’. Use your imagination and we’ll take you out into the universe and show you what’s waiting for you. Red! Green! White! Gold!”
– Sky Saxon’s intro to "Star Jewels"

Rainbow’s guitar riff, distorted with its fat, fuzzy stabs of perfectly-timed notes, drives "Star Jewels". He is in perfect sync with the drummer, Ed, throughout the performance. It’s up to Sky’s voice and Brian Eye-Zen’s organ to burble along over and under (respectively) the guitar-and-drums rhythm. (There was no bassist at this show.)

The Cosmic Theme of “Star Jewels”

Sky’s lyrics are mostly improvised, but are designed around a certain theme. It’s a cosmic one that matches the tentative, wide-eyed wonder of the slowly tumbling music. Centering around the idea of traveling in a space ship to Venus, a supposed land of paradise (and not, as you might have heard, toxic gases and fatal air pressure), there is no narrative to "Star Jewels". There are merely friendly beckonings and recitations of the riches that await the tuned-in and turned-on traveler.

The jewels in question are mentioned by Sky several times: topaz, amethyst, diamonds, et cetera. Sky is insistent, but gentle. His invitations are open to all, and by the end you can indeed envision the spacecraft and its piles of expensive minerals on board. And you feel there’s going to be a seat waiting just for you.

Sky and Rainbow outside the Orpheum, 1977

One reason that "Star Jewels" can transport you there is the conviction of the performers. Halfway through the song seems to end, but Sky doesn’t stop. He continues cooing into the microphone and so the band gently starts back up. In this section, listen closely to how Rainbow’s guitar notes match Sky’s vocal ones: they are in perfect harmony, producing an audible buzz. Documentary evidence that “good vibes” aren’t just a lysergic hippie notion – hear them yourself right here.

"Star Jewels" ends the album, but apparently not the actual show: as the music draws to a peaceful denouement, Sky Saxon tells the crowd that the band is going to take a break and will be back in ten minutes. Would that the rest of this show were located somewhere and released in full.

Well, one can dream, right? I mean, that’s what this song is about, after all!

Label from the blue vinyl version. "Star Jewels" is listed as 7:30 but is actually shorter than that by about 20 seconds.

The gorgeous meditation that is "Star Jewels" occupies a unique space in rock history: between molasses-punk rock and unsettling doomsday cult musings. There’s not much on Earth quite like "Star Jewels". And, while you may be able to find clips of it online, there’s really nothing like playing the actual Heavenly Earth LP. Let the music come, and get lost in the turntable’s needle moving through the colored-wax grooves of this inspiring message from a real Venusian wanderer and his fearless cohorts.

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