Sky Saxon was born Richard Marsh in Salt Lake City, Utah; depending on which source one cites, Marsh was born in either 1937, 1945 or 1946. Whatever his age, Marsh lit out for the bright lights of Los Angeles, California in the early 60s, determined he was going to be a singing star. Under the name Dick Marsh, he cut his first single in 1963, “What Chance Have I” b/w “There’s Only One Girl,” and quickly released three more singles as Ritchie Marsh or Little Ritchie Marsh; the material was well-executed but lightweight assembly-line pop of the teen idol variety, complete with honking saxophone and adenoidal vocals, and the only thing that links them to his later work is Marsh’s willingness to throw himself into the emotional deep end on tunes like “Baby Bay Baby” or “They Say.” By 1964, Marsh had adopted the stage name Sky Saxon, and cut a pair of singles that, like his earlier releases, didn’t go too far. (Most of these pre-Seeds sides can be heard on the 2003 Norton Records collection A Starlight Date With Richard Marsh.)

In 1965, Saxon met a guitarist named Jan Savage and they started talking about forming a band. Bringing in Daryl Hooper on keyboards and Rick Andridge on drums, they became the Seeds and started playing clubs on the L.A. rock circuit. A far cry from the well-scrubbed teenage charm of Ritchie Marsh, the Seeds conjured up a sound that was grimy and minimal, built around cyclical melodic patterns and Hooper’s relentless keyboard riffs (one critic suggested that he only knew one solo but played it over and over in different keys and octaves on each song). Long before the word “psychedelic” gained common currency in the pop music scene, the Seeds cultivated a distinctly druggy sound and aura, and several of their early tunes (such as “Mr. Farmer” and “Rollin’ Machine”) pointed to their inescapable love of marijuana. GNP/Crescendo Records signed the Seeds to a record deal, and in 1966 their first single, “Pushin’ Too Hard,” quickly climbed the charts. With Saxon’s sneering vocals, Hooper’s loping keyboard lines and Savage’s … well, savage guitar breaks, the tune was an especially potent example of California garage punk, and soon the Seeds were one of the biggest draws in town. In quick succession, the Seeds cranked out two albums in 1966, The Seeds and A Web Of Sound, and charted two more singles, the oft-banned “Mr. Farmer” and the more successful “Can’t Seem To Make You Mine.” (The latter became something of a garage rock standard, covered by the Ramones, Johnny Thunders and most notably Alex Chilton, whose version sounds positively deranged.) However, the glorious crudity of the Seeds didn’t leave them much room for advancement, and after 1967’s Future, an ambitious concept album that sounds more clunky and pretentious than anything else, things began to go downhill for the band, and within a year they released a live album as well as a set of blues workouts credited to the Sky Saxon Blues Band, though the lineup was the same as the Seeds. In 1968, they were reduced to something like self-parody, playing a hapless rock band called the Warts on an episode of the sit-com The Mothers-In-Law (they do just fine miming to “Pushin’ Too Hard,” but while none of the Seeds were actors, Sky’s slack jawed mugging suggests he was under the influence on the day of filming.)

The Seeds limped along for a few years, releasing a few singles on various labels, until the band finally called it a day in 1972. However, by this time Saxon had become interested in loftier pursuits. Tunes from Future like “Travel With Your Mind” and “Where Is The Entrance Way To Play” suggested Sky was interested in something a bit deeper than the grungy sneer of the Seeds, and in the early 1970s he fell in with the Source Family, a spiritual commune overseen by one Father Yod, aka YaHoWha (born James Edward Baker). The Source Family was affiliated with a successful vegetarian restaurant in Los Angeles (the eatery financed the family’s activities), and when they weren’t serving food, they were walking a spiritual path that combined Eastern mysticism and an understanding of “vibrations” with a desire to return to the ways of nature. Saxon became a passionate devotee of Father Yod’s teachings; he changed his name to Sunlight, became a member of the Source Family’s experimental psychedelic music group Yahowha 13, and when the commune moved en masse to Hawaii in 1974, Sunlight joined them. The one-time rock star’s public profile dropped to zero as he and his fellow seekers followed Father Yod’s edicts of sharing, respecting the Earth and not allowing lust to interfere with spiritual love (a big jump for the guy who recorded the marathon paean to teenage sex, “Up In Her Room”). Sunlight also developed a special concern for dogs, believing they had a special connection with the Heavenly Father (just read dog backwards … see?) and he worked with animal rescue groups.

Unlike most rockers who flirted with arcane religious pursuits in the late 60s and early 70s, Sunlight never walked away from the Source Family and Father Yod’s teachings, though he did return to California in the late 70s, moving back and forth between Hawaii and California for most of the rest of his life. (He also helped compile a box sex of rare YaHoWha 13 recordings, called God and Hair.) As the garage rock revival took hold and a handful of punk rockers name-checked the Seeds as a primal influence, Sunlight found that he had a small but loyal following, and while few outside of this band of loyalists were paying much attention, he began making music again, calling himself Sky Sunlight Saxon and mixing covers of the old Seeds standards with tunes that reflected his newer spiritual direction. Just a list of the names of his various bands of the 70s and 80s tells a tale in itself: Fire Water Air, Stars New Seeds, Universal Stars Peace Band, Purple Electricity, Fire Wall, Fast Planet, the Dragonslayers. Saxon assembled a new version of the Seeds and hit the road, though most of time Saxon was the only original Seed in the band (the rotating lineup at various times included Mars Bonfire, the studio keyboardist who wrote “Born To Be Wild,” and Don Bolles, drummer with the Germs, and the notion of one band finding room for both of those people is slightly mind boggling). Much of the time, Saxon’s new music made him sound like a slightly addled old hippie, but he also came off as a gentle eccentric with a plentiful head of energy and a willingness to do right by his increasingly warped legend.

In 2009, Sky Saxon relocated to Austin, Texas, a town noted for its friendliness to aging psychedelic rangers, and he continued to perform as his official website proclaimed him “King of garage rock! Master of psychedelia! Godfather of punk! Founding father of flower power!” That must have been a heavy legacy for one man to shoulder, and though Saxon soon found an unexpected patron in Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins, who recorded a tune with him, “Choose To Choose Love,” his health began to fail, and only a day after he played a show in Austin on June 20 with local band Shapes Have Fangs, Saxon was hospitalized, and succumbed to heart and liver failure on the morning of June 25. Or at least that’s how most of us look at it. As for Sunlight, only a few months before he passed on, he told an interviewer, “Well, I think you could retire when you die. I don’t, however, believe in death, so I guess I will retire when I leave my body. But I plan to continue writing and performing in heaven.” So who knows? Maybe Sky Saxon and Michael Jackson are teaming up for a double bill in The Great Blue Yonder at this moment. And why not? They both loved animals.

Stereogum remembers the late Sky Saxon with a song the Seeds frontman and Billy Corgan recorded together, “Choose to Choose Love.” Look for Allmusic’s Saxon tribute later today. [Stereogum.com]

A new supergroup is in the works: John Paul Jones, Dave Grohl and Josh Homme are busy recording their first album together. No word yet on a band name or release date for the music. [Spinner.com]

Grandmaster Flash talks to Rolling Stone about his heavy involvement in Activision’s long-awaited Guitar Hero spin-off, DJ Hero. Along with providing two mixes for the game, he contributes tutorial voiceovers, appears as a character, and acted as a consultant on the game’s jargon. [RollingStone.com]

David Berman may no longer be recording as the Silver Jews, but he has a new release coming out on Drag City: A book of cartoons he describes as “between and below Gary Larson and Raymond Pettibon.” [Pitchfork.com]

The Black Lips, Deerhunter and other friends of Bobby Ubangi are working to raise money to give the Atlanta musician, who lost his battle with cancer on Wednesday, an eco-friendly funeral when he passes. Check out Chunklet for more information on Ubangi and how to donate. [NME.com, Chunklet.com]

The Guardian’s School of Rock series explores some of pop music’s most quixotic talents, including Brian Wilson, Kanye West, and Mike Scott of the Waterboys. [Guardian.co.uk]

BLACKsummers’night is all devotion, regret, and heartache, written with Now collaborator Hod David and played by a session band, including a horn section, that sounds closer to a touring band that has been supporting the singer for years. The musicians morph with every shift in emotion through arrangements that are unfailingly exquisite and sensitively nuanced, even when they are briskly played. If the singer got into adventures while he was away, he does not detail them during these 38 unified minutes, but he did go through a serious, failed relationship, just as “Pretty Wings,” the album’s floating pre-album single, suggested. Like the real-life flipside to Al Green’s “Simply Beautiful” — the song Maxwell performed at the 2008 BET Awards, signaling his return — it’s catharsis through bittersweet elegance, equal in its enamored resentment (”You toyed with my affliction/Had to fill out my prescription”) and remorse (”I came wrong, you were right/Transformed your love into like”). Although the rest of the album leaves plenty of space for the most common form of pleading, the disarming “Fistful of Tears” is as impassioned as the steamiest moments and indicates the complexity of Maxwell’s relationship: “‘Cause I go insane, crazy sometimes/Trying to keep you from losing your mind/Open your eyes, see what’s in front of your face/Save me my fistful of…tears.” For all its dimensions and progress, the album is simultaneously designed to ensure that devoted fans will feel the wait was worth it. After all, its opening lines are “Make me crazy, don’t speak no sound/I want you to prove it to me in the nude,” and they are sung in falsetto.

Galaxie 500 has reissued all three of the indie-rock trio’s original albums on vinyl. The albums are also available as digital downloads with added bonus tracks and videos. [Stereogum.com]

U2 kicked off the band’s tour with an extravagant and innovative new stage show yesterday. On the tour, U2 are framed by a large stage set the band and crew have dubbed “The Claw” which features a huge 360 video screen, silk screens and a light show. The band are currently touring in support of their latest album No Line on the Horizon. [Rollingstone.com]

Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer has penned an auto-biography about his time in the iconic rock band. Titled Hit Hard: A Story of Hitting Rock Bottom at the Top, the book not only details Kramer’s life as a member of Aerosmith, but also delves into his substance abuse problems and his troubled relationship with his father. Released yesterday, the book also features a forward written by Motley Crue’s Nikki Sixx. [Billboard.com]

Swedish indie popper Jens Lekman contracted the H1N1 virus — a.k.a. the swine flu — on his way back from South America. Feel better, Jens! [JensLekman.com]

Don’t count out Vibe Magazine just yet — not if Quincy Jones has anything to do with it, anyway. The producer hopes to buy back the publication and make it an online-only concern. Vibe’s website is already profitable. Said Jones, “They just messed my magazine all up, but I’m gonna get it back. You better believe it, I’m'a take it online because print and all that stuff is over.” [Gawker.com]

Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava and pianist Stefano Bollani are performing tonight at Church of the Redeemer for a TD Canada Trust Toronto Jazz Festival this evening. The duo were interviewed about their creative partnership by the Toronto Star. [TheStar.com]

A down and dirty pianist and a surprisingly innovative singer (his frequent use of “oh well well” as a verbal punctuation device led to all sorts of variations by other singers), Wheatstraw was in essence the first gangsta, and his songs covered amazingly modern song topics like drug use (mostly alcohol), murder, suicide, unemployment, poverty and, of course, sex, and he was a pivotal figure in the conversion of country blues to urban themes. Wheatstraw seldom varied from his chosen template on sides like the jazz-inflected “Gangster Blues,” “Chicago Mill Blues,” and the jaunty (and ultimately ironic, given the terms of his demise) “Trucking Thru Traffic,” which features Lonnie Johnson on guitar. Even Wheatstraw’s tragic early death (he was 39 when he died) had rock star cinema written all over it, as he and his friends tried unsuccessfully to race their car through a train crossing with a train bearing down on them, finally giving, as the legend goes, the devil his due.

Aerosmith played a nearly two-hour long set on Friday night at New York’s Jones Beach that featured all of their classic album Toys in the Attic, as well as big hits including “Cryin’” and “Love in an Elevator”. For the encore, guitarist Joe Perry defeated his Guitar Hero doppelganger and the band closed with “Come Together.” [RollingStone.com]

Another band playing an entire album on tour: The Pixies, who will celebrate the 20th anniversary of Doolittle by performing all of the album and its B-sides on a European tour this fall. [Gigwise.com]

The Flaming Lips’ upcoming album Embryonic keeps getting more interesting. MGMT and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O are both contributing to the double album, which Wayne Coyne described as more “groove-oriented” than the band’s typical sound. Coyne also mentioned that a “weird mathematician guy from Germany” would be doing “some spoken word stuff” on Embryonic, which is due in September. [Guardian.co.uk]

Vibe Magazine is closing its doors. The magazine, which Quincy Jones founded in 1993, tried raising subscription prices and decreasing the amount of issues published to no avail. [Idolator.com]

Two of hip-hop’s best-known women will have shows on VH1 next year. Pepa of Salt-N-Pepa will be looking for love on her show, discussing her life with three of her friends over brunch. Meanwhile, TLC’s Rozonda “Chili” Thomas will also be searching for that special someone with the help of relationship expert Tionna Smalls on her series. [AllHipHop.com]

Indie artists who want their music included on Pandora’s streaming radio will have to meet new packaging and artwork standards and are strongly encouraged to pay a $29.95 yearly fee to join the Amazon Advantage Program. [Hypebot.com]

“Thursday night in New York was hot — after weeks of rain, it was one of the first real summer nights of the year. Car windows were open all over the city, and just about every station on the radio dial had switched to an all-Michael Jackson format; for the first (and, for all we know, the last) time, it felt as if absolutely everyone was listening to the same songs.” — Kelefa Sanneh, The New Yorker

“A showstopper in any definition of the word, he transcended generations and racial barriers. From oldies fans who were there from the start of his career in Gary to today’s young teens, whose attention span and too-cool-for-even-last-week’s-number-one-hit musical tastes rarely wander from the MTV playlists, he rocked them all. Even as I talked to a co-worker today, she told me about her 6-year-old son who goes to bed each night playing the Jackson 5’s greatest hits CD. That’s what you call IMPACT.” — Eric Luecking, Soul Sides

“If he did anything wrong in his life, and part of me doesn’t ever want to know if he did, he certainly also did more good than any of us can ever conceive of. He was easily the greatest dancer of the past three decades, probably the greatest singer, and quite possibly the greatest songwriter. Which adds up the greatest entertainer, period. ‘I can guarantee you one thing, we will never agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis,’ Lester Bangs wrote in his obit 32 years ago, only a couple years before Michael Jackson definitively proved him wrong, emerging full-blown into adulthood as the world’s most popular musician by presaging generations of young people who would celebrate their adulthood by refusing to grow up. And he emerged, of course, with some of the most celebratory music anybody from those generations will ever hear. But always, in the middle of that celebration, and not always submerged, there was dread. If anybody deserves to finally rest in peace, it’s him.” — Chuck Eddy

“The way he integrated MTV in 1983 with ‘Billie Jean,’ the ‘We Are the World’ extravaganzas, the face masks, the oxygen tanks, the Neverland Ranch — all that mixes in with everything from ‘Stop the Love You Save’ to ‘Dancing Machine,’ ‘Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,’ ‘P.Y.T.,’ ‘Man in the Mirror,’ adding up to the more than 750 million albums sold worldwide… I mean. And this is not the half, the tenth, the thousandth of what he was.” — Danyel Smith, CNN

“He was Blackness and maleness, soul music and pop culture, all forged pre-hip-hop, pre-Reagan, pre-crack, pre the implosion of short-lived Civil Rights-era idealism and hope. That’s an incalculably important point to understand the thick strands of optimism, possibility, aesthetic, and political vision that ran through his work. And that makes the darkness and paranoia that marbled so much of his later work all the more heartbreaking, especially as it roughly paralleled the shifting tenor of the times. He never lost his humanitarian streak or his belief in the overall goodness of humanity, but the evolution of his own relationship to the world and his feelings about how he was treated darkened noticeably.” — Ernest Hardy

“But what is the allure of this narrative that we — fans, consumers, the media, American culture, etc — somehow destroyed Michael? What anxieties do we displace by projecting them onto his troubled face? I always think back to the interrogation scene from Three Kings. ‘What is the problem with Michael Jackson?’ an Iraqi soldier asks a wayward American. ‘Your country make him chop up his face.’ He did it to himself, the American protests, but his interrogator insists: ‘Michael Jackson is pop king of sick fucking country.’ Maybe it is a ’sick fucking country.’ Maybe the idea of pop transcendence is deeply flawed. But we are truly the sick ones if we didn’t already know this, if we needed Michael Jackson to be our martyr. If we think we would trade it all for a world without Off the Wall or Thriller or ‘Butterflies.’” — Hua Hsu, The Atlantic

“I often thought of a veal calf when I saw him — he had been raised to perform under extreme pressure before he had any idea of what life could be beyond performing for others. Then he spent decades trying to build a life without ever having seen one. He had the best ear in the world but he had no apparent idea of how people experienced everyday comfort, or even boredom.” — Sasha Frere-Jones, The New Yorker

“We have to be sophisticated enough to acknowledge that greatness and a touch of evil dwelled in the man. I’ve always believed that transcendent art emanates from the purest, most evolved parts of our soul. But that highly spiritual achievement doesn’t absolve us of our daily misdeeds. To simply brand him a smooth criminal, as some have, or to overlook his tragic nature, as have others, is to deny his humanity. The meaning of Michael Jackson’s life — as a black man, a sexual being, a abused and abusing adult — will be interpreted to fit the prejudices of the speaker. His music — it speaks volumes.” — Nelson George

“Why would people try to tear down a man who constantly used his power, money, and influence to help others? Why would people express such disgust and contempt for a man who constantly sang of love and peace, and used his talent to entertain, uplift, and inspire millions? Tell em that its human nature, I suppose…” — Phonte Coleman (Little Brother, the Foreign Exchange)

“What we’ve lost, in a word, is monoculture. Michael Jackson is the final pop star of seeming consequence to everyone — not just people who don’t normally care about music, but people who don’t care about culture, period. Obviously, it’s been a quarter-century since that was unequivocally true. But he’s the last pop musician for whom it was even equivocally true. The fact that the business he saved has been crumbling for some time was given a brutal underlining by Jackson’s sudden, unexpected death, the question of what’s-next now punctuated with what-will-never-be-again.” — Michaelangelo Matos, Salon

“Rock with You” singalong outside Harlem’s Apollo Theater (hat tip to Soulbounce):

Glastonbury also saw plenty of Jackson tributes from Lily Allen, Dizzee Rascal, the Streets, and the Noisettes, among others. Not to be outdone, Nick Cave dedicated his set to the late Farah Fawcett. Blur’s triumphant set at the Pyramid Stage closed the book on the festival. [Stereogum.com, NME.com]

Paul Williams, writer and founder of legendary rock magazine Crawdaddy, is suffering from dementia and needs financial help to maintain his medical care. Williams’ friends and family have set up a donation page on his website. [Hitsville.org, PaulWilliams.com]

The Deftones have scrapped their album Eros, which featured currently hospitalized bassist Chi Cheng. “The songs recorded for Eros are very special to us as they are the latest with Chi (and we certainly hope not the last); they have history and significant meaning to us. However, as we neared completion on Eros, we realized that this record doesn’t best encompass and represent who we are currently as people and as musicians,” the band explained in a statement on their MySpace page. [PunkNews.org]

Men at Work are being sued by a music publisher that claims that the flute riff from the band’s smash hit “Down Under” was stolen from a children’s song. Larrikin Music is suing Sony BMG Music Entertainment and EMI Songs Australia for compensation from the royalties the song earned Men at Work’s Colin Hay and Ron Strykert. The publisher claims that the flute melody comes from “Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree,” a 1934 song written by music teacher Marion Sinclair; Larrikin says it bought the copyright to the song after Sinclair’s death in 1988. [CBC.ca]

Jezebel gathers some of the most creative Michael Jackson tributes on the Web. [Jezebel.com]

Those memories remained partially because they were burned into our collective consciousness - as the unprecedented worldwide outpouring of grief illustrates, there’s not a soul alive that hasn’t seen Michael moonwalking or dancing with his brothers - but because there’s no music as rapturous as Michael’s best. Even now, with the tragedy of his death fresh in mind and his sad decline all too evident, it’s impossible to hear “I Want You Back,” “ABC,” “Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough” or “Rock With You” and not get swept up in their transporting exuberance, his exhilarating brilliance preserved forever in the original productions by the Corporation and Quincy Jones. Darkness started to creep into the margins on Thriller - not through the horror movie homage of the title track, but in the paranoia that fueled “Billie Jean” and “Wanna Be Starting Something” - but it added depth and tension without stripping away the joy. And despite these deeply-felt undercurrents of tension and sadness on Thriller, something that can be traced back to the heartbreaking “She’s Out of My Life” on Off The Wall, what remains so captivating is its enthusiasm, so infectious that it seems pure, even though close inspection reveals how Jackson - with the assistance of Jones and Rod Temperton - created a clean, seamless crossover that touched upon every sound and format of the early ’80s, from electro-disco to soft rock and heavy metal.

Soon enough, those seams began to show as the joy calcified and Jackson’s desire to remain the biggest star the world has ever known slowly stifled his creativity. Bad still had a stainless steel appeal, its calculations perhaps a shade too evident yet its transparent multi-format appeal was coolly confident and suited to the tail end of the ’80s. In comparison, Dangerous seemed a bit desperate as Michael abandoned Q in attempt to sort out the ramifications of hip-hop, something that he never quite came to terms with, but that 1991 album turned out to be the last time he made music with at least one eye on the outside world. Hobbled by his personal demons, he painted himself in a corner, making wounded, vindictive, curiously compelling music that was purportedly pop but had no mass appeal: HIStory and Invincible attempted to follow the Dangerous blueprint, yet their overly labored production and crippling solipsism left them appealing only to the dedicated, of which there were still many millions.

But Michael Jackson was never meant to be a cult artist, which is one of the many reasons his music of the last two decades often struck a dissonant chord: he belonged to the masses, providing a soundtrack to billions of people around the world, from the millions that made Thriller the biggest album ever to those who never owned one of his records and yet knew all his hits. That is the Michael Jackson that has been absent for 20 years and that is the Michael Jackson that is being mourned today. His sudden death gives us all an opportunity to appreciate the enduring genius of his art but to realize that we have no musician that speaks to all of us … and that we haven’t for some time now.

(from Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5)
“You’ve Changed”
“Chained”

(from ABC)
“2-4-6-8″

(from Ultimate Motown Rarities Collection, Vol. 1)
“You Really Got a Hold on Me”

(from Third Album)
“Can I See You in the Morning”

(from Looking Through the Windows)
“Don’t Let Your Baby Catch You”

(from Skywriter)
“Uppermost”
“Ooh, I’d Love to Be with You”

(from Get It Together)
“Get It Together”