SS-20 WITH SKY SAXON (SKY SAXON WITH SS-20)
Another song by SS-20, “No Matter What” is included on one of the Battle of the Garages albums on Voxx Records, specifically Battle of the Garages, Vol. III (1984). I don’t have any of the original Battle of the Garages albums, but I do have a compilation album that collects songs from Vol. III and Vol. IV among these albums, Battle of the Garages, Part II (1993) that has a nearly identical cover to Battle of the Garages, Vol. III. SS-20 did not make the cut for Battle of the Garages, Part II, but the song does appear on SS-20 with Sky Saxon.
SS-20 and Sky Saxon also collaborated on a 7” EP on Voxx Records called SS-20 with Sky Saxon (1986). Their cover of “Born to be Wild” mentioned above comes from this EP. Also on hand is Mars Bonfire, the songwriter for “Born to be Wild”; Sky Saxon and Mars Bonfire co-wrote the opening song on the EP, “Paradise” that was evidently created during the recording sessions.
The two songs on the B side of SS-20 with Sky Saxon are outtakes from the Dream Life LP (Sky Saxon is not involved in these recordings) and are two more cover songs by SS-20 of the Music Machine’s “Trouble” and “No Matter What” by Love (who had called the song “No Matter What You Do”). In their entry on this disc, the website www.skysaxonseeds.com/ notes: “This EP is a very rare post-Seeds instance of Sky [Saxon] not including ‘Sunlight’ in his name.”
(December 2017)