Stranded veteran rocker to play impromptu gig
Weeks after a performance at the Gagarin Club in Athens as frontman of his reformed Seeds, the seminal late-1960s garage-punk-psychedelia band, the aging Sky Saxon is still in town, presumedly having a good time. With all other band members gone, Saxon has booked an impromptu solo gig for tonight at the Small Music Theater in the capital’s Koukaki district (33 Veikou Street). Saxon will be backed by local rockers Ichoglykemia. For decades, it has been an erratic life for the mysterious rocker. When his influential LA band the Seeds broke up in the late 1960s after a four-year spell, Saxon, born Richard Marsh, embarked on a topsy-turvy solo career between stints as a mystical guru in Hawaii. His ensuing solo releases increasingly reflected a drug-induced separation from reality. By the mid-1970s, the wayward rocker began releasing work under various names, including Sky Sunlight, Sunstar, and the Universal Stars Band. The cult figure Saxon’s enduring appeal proved pivotal in establishing a neo-psychedelic movement in California in the 1980s, with acts such as the Dream Syndicate, Opal and the Droogs at the forefront. He has continued returning to Hawaii, but for now it seems Athens is his new home.
