Rockin’ The Croc/West Coast

This 1995 cassette release by Sky Saxon’s band Fast Planet, which showcased an augmented lineup, is a live album that leans heavily on 1960s Seeds classics plus a few songs from the Fast Planet’s studio album Down The Nile. And one enjoyably bizarre ad-libbed song.

Rockin' The Croc/West Coast was recorded live at the Crocodile Club in Seattle in May 1994. It features a slightly different lineup than the Fast Planet CD Down The Nile, in that Mark Love isn’t on stage but Sam Andrew (from Big Brother and The Holding Company; guitar) and George Michalski (from Blue Cheer; keyboards) are. From the regular band are, besides Sky Sunlight Saxon on vocals, Chris DeMorsella on guitar, Mike Oak on bass, and both Patrick McCarthy and Tommy Goodwin on drums.

The band sounds very well-rehearsed and comfortable with the songs. Sky is relaxed and lucid, and the camaraderie in the band is evident by the frequent calling out of each other’s names during the show. At one point, impressed by the work of the two drummers, Sky calls for a drum solo, and the band improvises a weird workout called "Locust". Rockin' The Croc/West Coast is a fun document of a fun show.

And it’s virtually impossible to find. I’ve never seen evidence of the cassette (or rumored CD version) ever having been sold on the internet – and I watch these things! Perhaps it has, but not that I know of.

An MP3 download of this album, surprisingly, was available on Amazon.com from about 2012 to 2014 (Amazon product number B008MZURYO) but has since been taken down. This version included the 1991 studio recording "Dying Butterfly".

If you ever see a copy of Rockin' The Croc/West Coast for sale, buy it without hesitation — you may never see another copy.

Low-res shot of the cassette inlay.

About the songs

1. "Hijack"
   The show opens with an unintentionally comical moment: under gorgeous cymbals and majestic, celestial keyboards which sound as if they’re presaging the beginning of a glorious new age for humanity, Sky takes the mic and, in an appropriately slow and awed tone, says, “We’re Fast Planet. And by the way we’ve got some posters out there for sale…” After also plugging Down The Nile CDs (“under $10!”) and introducing Sam Andrew from Big Brother and the Holding Company, the band plays the first song from their album. "Hijack" sounds great, all powerful well-balanced hard rock and Sky’s masterful vocals; this is going to be a good show.
2. "Up In Her Room"
   After Sky describes how Fast Planet have relocated to Seattle and aren’t “selling out to the majors” (the presumably broken-hearted major record labels couldn’t be reached for comment), Fast Planet embarks on a spirited if truncated version of the Seeds classic "Up In Her Room" from A Web Of Sound. The sizzling electric guitar wails and trades some great licks with George Michalski’s 1960s-ish keyboards.
3. "Mr. Farmer"
   One of Sky’s favorite Seeds songs to revisit, the presence of "Mr. Farmer" makes Rockin’ The Croc the fourth album out of his last five to feature a remake of this A Web Of Sound track. Unlike the guitar-y Down The Nile version, the song’s famous main riff is once again played on keyboards.
4. "Don't Slander Me"
   “Have you ever heard of rock around the clock? Well, we’re gonna rock all night,” promises Sky after introducing everyone in the band. What follows isn’t Bill Haley, though, but this Roky Erickson song that Sky first recorded for his 1988 Fire Wall album World Fantastic. At any rate, "Don't Slander Me" pulses excitingly along its minor-chord blues jam track, with arrestingly virtuoso keyboard solos. Sky works in references to his dog.
5. "Pushin' Too Hard"/"No Escape"
   You can’t have a Sky Saxon show without "Pushin' Too Hard". After once again promising to rock around the clock, Sky calls this a song for “the system”. This is a wired, almost heavy-metal version of The Seeds’ biggest hit, though the meaty guitar never steps on the excellent keyboards. The best part may be when Sky is joined by some of the other members in an exhortation to “Make peace and love! Make peace today!” After a blistering solo, the band transitions seamlessly into "No Escape". These two songs were listed as two different songs on the original release, but were combined into one track in the 2012 Amazon MP3 download version (as they probably should be). Sky praises the two drummers after this performance, saying, “Patrick and Tommy! All right. We ought to cut ’em loose with a drum solo. Let me see what song I could do…”
6. "Locust"
   The promised drum workout comes: furious percussion plus manic electric guitar, plus Sky chanting “Locust! Locust! Black leather!” It isn’t clear if this is an actual pre-written song or an extemporaneous jam; all evidence points to the latter. Whichever, this is a genuinely insane performance. Upon its conclusion, Sky says mysteriously, “Thank you. Try to guess who they are,” to which another band member replies, “Locust!” But of course.

7. "Can't Seem To Make You Mine"
   The Seeds’ first song from 1965 is played with a pleasant and relaxed groove. As he often did, Sky changed the “bee” of the original to “hornet” – thus this Fast Planet show has a little insect-themed middle section. One of the other band members gushes in the introduction how this song used to make him cry and that it was amazing that he was now playing with his idol Sky Saxon.
8. "Down The Nile"
   The best song on Fast Planet’s album was its riveting title song. It doesn’t translate perfectly to a live setting (where’s the sitar, for example?) but this shorter version of "Down The Nile" does its best to honor the studio version. The band reaches great heights and Sky passionately delivers his idiosyncratic sermon. Fast Planet should be commended for daring to explore new peaks and troughs in this song during a live show, and doing it so successfully.
9. "Crying Heartbreak"
   Introduced as a request of drummer Tommy Goodwin (who wrote it with Sky), Sky seems surprised by the last-minute track list change but flows right along with it. This song is all dramatic pounding and muscular stops and starts, Sky screaming pitifully about being a man “drowning in an ocean of tears”.

Screen shot of the Amazon version of Rockin' The Croc/West Coast, before it was mysteriously removed from the site.

Bonus tracks

Some sources mention that a CD version existed of Rockin’ The Croc, and that two studio bonus tracks were on it: "Dying Butterfly" and "Summer Of Love", though I’m not sure that’s true. (See for example this page from Google Books, which has a Sky Saxon section in which virtually every sentence is wildly inaccurate; note the sigh-making blurb “Thanks to Sky himself for updates”).

"Dying Butterfly" was made available as an MP3 download on Amazon.com around 2012, as a bonus track on Rockin' The Croc/West Coast; the album has since been removed. "Summer Of Love" is presumably the collaboration with Fast Planet member Mike Oak that Sky released on Back To The Garden in 2008.

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