"King of Garage Rock" sounds like a ridiculous term. I mean if there's
one genre that's democratic as hell, it's garage rock: it's low budget, there are no instrumental chops necessary, and one just has to play loud and put his heart in it. Selling millions of records and filling stadiums is never an option. Yet if there ever was a royal figure in garage rock, it
would have been Sky Saxon. From young rocker to flower child to cult member to the psychedelic wizard-like figure of his last days, he always had the attitude. True, his post-Seeds output is mediocre and repetitive (the Seeds were also repetitive, but never mediocre) but if you buy into the legend you'll always find something to like. This particular album, recorded just one year before his death, turned out to be his last. From the beginning, it all smacks of exploitation: the cover art, liner notes, and song selection ("greatest hits of the sixties")... they all remind me of those old budget vinyl albums where nameless studio hacks would churn out relatively faithful covers of the hits of the day... you know which ones, they usually had pretty girls on the
cover. This one doesn't - well, not on the front cover anyway, although the back cover chick might easily have come from one of those TOTP compilations.
The band certainly deliver competent but mostly perfunctory versions of the old garage rock standards, while the production is clean but bland and lacking depth. Which begs the question: why the hell would you want to hear yet another version of "Gloria"? The answer is, of course, because of
Sky. Despite his 70 years he sings in the same unmistakable voice, and with the same passion and conviction as 30 or 40 years ago. The new versions of his old
Seeds hits ("Pushin' Too Hard", "
Can't Seem to Make You Mine", "Mr. Farmer") are therefore naturally great, if unnecessary. "Satisfaction" shows why young Saxon was briefly considered to be the American Mick Jagger, but the Beatles covers ("
Love Me Do", "Come Together") fall flat. An anemic version of The Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog" is saved by Sky's vocal, which exchanges the original's rabid delivery with passionate psychedelic incantations. It's his voice that also keeps the umpteenth covers of "Have Love Will Travel" and "Steppin' Stone" interesting, while "Wild Thing" and "
My Little Red Book" are pleasant but otherwise unremarkable. Although it's sometimes fun to listen to Sky tackle these classics, this CD is ultimately just a karaoke exercise, which makes it hard for me to recommend.
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