a visual sound

in case you didn't get it

2010-02-04T08:25:00.000-08:00

This Blog

Has

Moved

A Visual Sound moved here.

A Visual move

2009-01-24T11:56:00.001-08:00

... At least I won the biggest gap between posts for this year. Well my friends, I was busy with breaking my back, and also moving this blog to greener (literally I hope, cause I need to take baths in Benjamins, really) pastures.

A Visual Sound is from now on hosted on Wordpress, and you can check it here, and update your links, and be happy you don't have to type that stupid "cara-" before the title. Anyway, see y'all there!

My other blog Memory Screened also moved over there as well, and found a home right here.

A teasa please | Mystery solved

2008-12-21T20:28:00.000-08:00

As Boil The Ocean perfectly summed it up, 2008 was most definitely the year of the Tim And Henry format’s resurrection.

Are these things long trailers?

Or short videos?

Why are bushes bushy?

So many questions, so few answers. I’ll still call them “teasers” though, for the sake of my feature’s title's pun, and while some left us hanging wanting to see less, some definitely worked their magic. Like Stereo's "Dyson" part, the semi-recent Mystery promo is one of these.

With the brand's trademarked black-and-white-only aesthetics and tasteful riders choices (Pete Eldridge shouldn't be installing fireplaces), it’s also a success on the musical front. Which for whatever reasons I was expecting (dreading) to be way more three-chords or even worse, arena-rock, inclined. Well my friends, hosannah ! It wasn’t. Let’s see what this promotional teaser’s black box has to say.

1. Chuck Berry : The Downbound Train (Intro)
Right after he got advised by his idol Muddy Waters to go and meet a certain Leonard Chess, the musician whose cousin improv'd for a fresh-out-of-1984 Marty Mc Fly -shamelessly stealing his song from the retro-future, Johnny B Goode, as any serious biographer knows- recorded his first hit in 1955. It was called Maybellene, and got shortly followed by the No Money Down 7-inch. The Downbound Train could have been forgotten on its B-Side… Until the Mystery promo resurrected it. Feeling as bluesy as a 500-frames-a-second videographer losing all the colors on his screen, reverting back to trolley-less, Eastern Exposure 3-black and white times. Perfect mood-setting tune.

2. Smith: Baby It’s You (Everen Stallion)

The archetype of the one-hit-wonder that disappeared without a trace –still trying to contact Q Lazzarus, dudes-, Smith’s glory peaked in 1969 with this song. Nice performance when you come to think that it was only a cover of a 1961 Shirelles tune, that got also sung by The Beatles in 1963. But no, Smith got the money, and their beautiful soulesque interpretation of Baby It’s You can be heard on their debut album "A Group Called Smith," and in that fancy double-feature Tarantino film.
Four decades later, Smith’s singer Gayle McCormick ‘s poisonous delivery of these Cause-baby-it’s-yous still work -look at the photo at the beginning of this post and let imagination do the rest. Also, this band invented a very popular grind in skateboarding.

The other tunes
3. Sly And The Family Stone: Underdog (Montage)
4. Sean Price : King Kong (Pete Eldridge)

Re:music | Ed Tempeton's greatest almosts

2008-12-17T14:35:00.000-08:00

Ever imagined what Nick Trapasso's already classic Suffer The Joy part would sound like without Sleepwalk's nonchalance? Ed Templeton and Kevin Barnett did, they even contemplated the option for a while. It wasn't the only one. Whatever the reason was, this one and a bunch of other tunes that should have been in Toy Machine videos never were. Why? Ed picked five and explains.

1. John Renbourn: Nobody's Fault but Mine
"Austin Stephens wanted to skate to it in Good and Evil but we couldn't secure the rights, so we used Peggy Honeywell's Sing, Sang, Sung instead."

2. Bob Dylan: One More Cup of Coffee
"That's the tune Nick Trapasso wanted for Suffer The Joy. But he got Sleepwalk by Santo and Johnny."

3. Johnny Cash: Hurt
"Billy Marks was trying to get this one but we ended up using Ladytron's Blue Jeans in Good and Evil."

4. Some song from Yes
"Kerry Getz was going to use a song from the band Yes in Jump Off A Building but then changed his mind, using the Scorpions."

5. Led Zeppelin: Immigrant Song
"This one was supposed to be Donny Barley's song in Welcome to Hell, but at the last minute he switched it to Ozzy, then Jeremy Wray used it I think..."

Interlude | Memory Screened is up

2008-12-09T06:40:00.001-08:00

Oh by the way, I just started also the Memory Screened blog, it's an archive of that page in Skateboarder aimed at creating a mess in pros' garages by asking them to dig up their five favorite boards and comment them.

So far I posted the two first installments (Ed Templeton and John Cardiel) and will update it once a week -yeah right, just like this one. Anyway, it's up.

AVS # 7 | Penal Code 100 A (1996)

2008-11-27T08:46:00.000-08:00

From Kingpin # 60

Sure, before FTC’s first video Finally, some people had dabbled in the classic soul-ish repertoire. Some. Because in 1993, rare were the ones who allowed themselves to think outside the Das Efx/De La Soul box when it came to picking tracks for a skate video. A smooth-operating, Chico Brenes Finally part set to Sade’s suave purring later (not to mention the OG Jackson 5 intervention in Video Days), it suddenly made sense. So once again with FTC’s second film, Aaron Meza digged deep for the oldies (*) and skateboarding’s soundtracks were changed for a while, launching a trend that culminated with Girl’s early flicks.
Penal Code 100 A is such a good shop video, it even made forget that there's a Coolio tune in the Howard/Carroll part –courtesy of Mike Carroll, according to Aaron. The epitome of the SF/NYC connection, it also doubled as the the swan song of the hi-top white Superstar craze and featured about fifty of the most-wanted (sometimes blunted) skaters from both coasts, on classical spots. Penal Code 100 A also drew the blueprint, music-wise and otherwise, for the Girl/Chocolate decade to come.
Welcome to the 7th installment of A Visual Sound, dedicated to all the Markus Browns and Ben Sanchezes and Keefe bros out there. Droorstalgia at its fullest, people. Again.

(click on the sleeve, see the part)

Van Morrison: Moondance
Tune used: Caravan (Bobby Puleo)

As the Cliché team has proved more than once with its infamous tours, the gypsy lifestyle has been fascinating “gadjos” for a while. Irish songwriter Van Morrison was no exception, as the Rroms prompted him to write Caravan, a tune present on his third album from 1970 –with the other inspiration being how as a kid he could distinctely hear his neighbor’s radio, even though the guy was one mile away down the road. Weird, huh? Especially the link between the two, pretty hard to figure out but hey, what do you expect from a dude nicknamed “The Man” thirty years before John Reves?

Besides being one of George Ivan Morrison Order Of The British Empire’s reliable live crowd pleasers, Caravan reached a mythical status as one of the highlights in Last Waltz, the Martin Scorcese doc about VM’s last show before his band split, in 1976. Which leads us to our own legends and Martin Scorceses : Bobby Puleo and Aaron Meza. The former showed how to pop properly out of a f-side boardslide on a curb, while the latter figured out how all this epicness could be encapsuled: via a song from an absolutely classic album by Van The Man, brewed in a time when ‘R&B’ actually had the words “rhythm” and “blues” in it. “I like how the lines are during the versus and the single tricks during the chorus,” Meza had to say about his second-favourite tune on PC100A, after Althea and Donna’s (*).

The Isley Brothers : 3+3
Tune used : Who’s that lady (Montage #3)
Allright, allright: some might argue that this section’s highlight actually starts when the music stops. Just when the brothas from the same motha stop wondering who that intriguing lady might be, the Lennie Kirk show begins. Two sick lines, one drop of death, no music, cut. This said, this 90s skater’s wet dream montage wouldn’t be this good without The Isley Brothers’ track, a 1973 reworked tune inspired by, yes, another Impressions song. Which in turn was used by the Beastie Boys on Paul’s Boutique. “They sampled this and I loved it,” Aaron says, “so I just went to the source on this one.”
Back to more skate-related concerns, though: Guy Mariano’s come back. About as big as The Isleys’. Hailing from Cincinnati in 1954, they consisted originally of four brothers and lasted only one year with the original line-up, before they disappeared. The reason being, one of them died in an accident. Three years later, using the reliable Phoenix tactic, they rose from their ashes and went on as a trio, briefly using a guitar player named Jimi Hendrix. After elaborating some pretty cool soul/funk singles and LPs, success came when the Isleys somehow looked in their drawers and found two more brothers, plus one brother-in-law. Hence their album’s name, as simple as what they had become : 3+3.
After various disbandings, platinum albums, deaths and add-ons, things became fairly more complicated, so why get into it? All you need to know is that some of the most powerful (sometimes political) soul music came from this band of bros that sang a tune called Fight The Power 25 years before Public Enemy. Also, that once upon a time, a skateboarding montage bared names such as Weston Correa, Pepe Martinez, Robbie Gangemi, Rob Carlyon, Ben Liversedge and... wait, was that photographer Lance Dawes, almost a decade before Chomp? Meza truly invented everything.

Sly and The Family Stone : There’s a Riot Goin’On
Tune used : Family Affair (Montage #2)
Skateboarding’s always loved lyrics that matched the “montage spirit,” for some reason. While the Plan B guys were appreciating “a little help from their friends” in Virtual Reality, FTC saw the whole thing pretty much as “a family affair”. Cute. “I think I picked the people for this section that were actually family,” Meza explains, “like Marcus and Lavar McBride and the Keefe brothers, or people who were really close friends. Pretty corny, huh?”
Anyway, Sly’s little affair wasn’t any less rambunctious, as he stated on his 1971, Rhodes piano-led, synth-drummed mega-hit co-sung with his sister Rose. Family Affair definitely helped propelling the band’s fifth, darker and more conscious album to the very top of the charts. A funny destiny when you keep in mind that the tune itself got recorded in a Wenebago, at least part of it. And also that it was this close to becoming nothing at all: according to the biography Sly and the Family Stone An Oral History, the singer felt that Family Affair wasn't strong enough to be released as a single. Imagine that. What would Aaron Meza have done? Use Thank You For being A Friend by Andrew Gold, of Golden Girls fame?

(*) Disclaimer : Please note that if one of the cleverest-matching tunes of all video-times, Althea and Donna’s Uptown Top Ranking, “Nah pop no style” (on Huf's section), isn’t part of this selection, it’s simply because it is drowned in one of these disappointing reggae albums (jut re-listened to it, I confirm) –and we’re all about fully classic LPs over here, sorry. What do you mean, what’s a LP?

Re:music | Adventures in chill with Nicolas Malinowsky

2008-11-24T11:36:00.000-08:00

Ever heard of Rémy Bricka, l’homme-orchestre? Nicolas Malinowsky would be his skate counterpart, collecting slashes the way your grandpa accumulated war medals. For those who don’t know, "Mémé" happens to be a really good skater straight outta the ‘90s school of Shell-toeing (see pic), a DJ/producer –he did among others the music for JJ’s part in Cliché's Europa-, a video animator, and also quite a stunning, meticulous graphic designer whose hand-drawn fonts always leave crowds of humid fans in awe, as his adventures with Chill mag, and now with his Ill Studio buddies, attest.
To sum it all up, a musician who skates, a skater who makes music, the link to A Visual Sound was almost too obvious. Here are French Skateboarding’s own Rémy Bricka (minus the fireworks)’s picks when it comes to his 5 favorite tunes, ever, on video parts.

1. Steely Dan: Peg
As used in: Let The Horns Blow
(Scott Johnston’s part)
“I watched this video a lot, and particularly Mr Johnston’s part. This came out when skating was becoming stylish again, i.e. when the whole thing was about doing lines (preferably in SF event though in my case it was more in Issy-Les-Moulineaux, but it worked too) based on well-selected, basic tricks to be landed in the cleanest possible way. A whole different approach than trying a new late-underflip combo a la Damon Byrd.
Anyway, this song fits perfectly Scott Johnston’s part, it’s catchy and sums up for me a certain spirit in skateboarding : going downhill in half cabs, wearing a (not-so-baggy) Droors jeans and a (mad Circle in this case) white t-shirt.”

2. Royal Flush: Worldwide inst.
As used in: Mouse
(Gino & Keenan’s part)
“OK, so this one has been my party hit for the past ten years. You know the four skaters present will always go off when you play this inter-planetary hit... For the true nerds [French nerds, he meant -Seb’s note], the must-have on this instrumental is the freestyle by Lunatic, X-men an Oxmo Pucino, recorded live on 88.2 FM in 1996, during the best ever moment in French rap history.
Back to Gino, since he’s pretty much the best skater in the world, any track that would be ran on his parts would become dope anyway, BUT this Royal Flush did have a little something. The little squeaky sample works perfect, not to mention the acapella, which I remixed all over the place. Recently, I reworked it with the instrumental from Rustie's Just For Kicks. By the way, I really love Rustie, the latest add-on to the “new comer from Glasgow” category… It made me think that I can’t wait for the new Chocolate video.”

3. Jacqueline Taieb: Le coeur au bout des doigts
As used in: Stereo promo
“This one, Jason Lee and Dune killed me [the original expression, in French, was “they sawed my anus in two”, which alas doesn’t work that good in English –Seb’s] when they pulled it out of their trenchcoat. Jacqueline Taieb was one of these female “yéyé” singers as we say, she put out an amazing LP in 1967 called The French Mademoiselle. Ca défouraille sec! I think you can find the video for her song La Fac De Lettres on Dailymotion. If you ever find it on vinyl, buy it cause it’s worth gold these days, and not only in Japan.
Le coeur au bout des doigts represents the ultimate class as far as Frenchitude goes. I have to say Stereo already hit a spot with Gainsbourg [and this one], but I give them the Digger’s Award to have dug this one out. Watch out though and stay away from Jacqueline’s ‘80s stuff, it really sucks”.

4. De La Soul: Odle of O’s
As used in: Goldfish
(Mike Carroll’s part)
“One of my favorite Mike Carroll’s parts, because of its tune too. De La Soul’s smoothitude matches really well Mike’s. I thought about it cause I just found the Saturday EP, which was missing in my “emergency party dancefloor hits” collection. It reminded me how I used to listen so much to 3 feet High and Rising and De La Soul Is Dead in these days, and how it was such good hip hop. Hip hop was better before anyway, and if I dared I’d say it’s skateboarding’s case too, but I would sound too much like an old fart. Plus skating still looks cool today, especially when it’s Lucas doing it, or Gino. Still the best, even without skating!”

5. Casual: Lose In The End
As used in: Virtual Reality
(Mike Carroll’s part)
“Allez, another Mike Carroll part that rules, as much as Casual’s album. What was it called? Early hyphy? This one, I bled the cassette dry in my walkman, going to school when it was still dark after having smoked weed with my friend Jimmy til 5 in the morning. It was also a very good office pick when we were doing Chill. Actually, it’s one of these hip hop albums that can be listened to on and on, like a good fusion jazz album. It might be looped and looped, the whole Bay Area/Carroll/Sheffey feeling you get from it just never gets old.”

Also, here are a few random bonuses that Nico wanted to add too:
. Company Flow : 8 Steps To Perfection (Josh Kalis in The Sixth Sense)
. Cream : White Room (Jeremy Wray, Second Hand Smoke)
. Chocolate Milk : Actions Speak Louder Than Words (Richard Mulder, The Chocolate tour)
. Steppenwolf: Born To Be Wild (Chico Brenes, Love Child)

Intermission

2008-11-17T01:15:00.001-08:00

... Not dead yet ! Just kinda travelling up and down at the moment. This will be updated sometime this week, I hope and almost swear. It will be about full-on Droorstalgia, as it often occurs. Let the horns blow!

Interlude | Nico Levet is seeing red

2008-10-29T07:17:00.001-07:00

Tired of staring in the eyes of Dee Edwards's beautifulness, now below this post? OK, I got something you might like better. I am talking Haters' Ball, SxE-esque, not on a positive trip, raw and immaculated misanthropy. So as the world should know, Nicolas Levet is a French fun ball hailing from Grenoble, France, and got nicknamed many moons ago 'Marre De Vivre' (Tired of living) for he, as about two other people in France, has been enjoying the merry , somewhat monastic, straight-edge lifestyle. A very apt nick as, besides being an excellent, and creative skater part of the Trauma adventure, Nico's been known to address the world issues by calling a firestorm upon them -literally, as it is one of his favorite Earth Crisis songs. Which include anybody dressing unaccordingly, the TWS videos makers, a very vast array of pro skaters, hippies, the general French population etc etc. There's nothing, he swears, that hanging wrong-doers in an organic sleeping bag while a team of righteous, animal-friendly, compassionnate buddies whip them with bike chains can't fix. Ethical purification? Mmmh, tooouchy subject.
The funniest thing is, Nico is actually a sort of shy and hilarious dude from what I remember -I haven't seen him since 1998- who incidentally also enjoys the world to see his "quenelle", and photographer Loïc Benoit's (thanks for the pic) for that matter.
Anyway after this fastidious introduction, which will probably only attract a firestorm threat upon me -not to mention upon my pagan dub habit-, here are the straight-edge tunes MDV would like to see in a video, and for what SxE skater. "It was hard to find 5", Nico conceded. Yet, he enlightens us in his concessions-free fashion:

1. Earth Crisis : Firestorm
"Would have been a good tune for Mike V's part in New Deal's 1281, even though the original tune was actually by legendary SxE singer Dan O Mahoney, who allegedly was ths first one to get a 'Poison Free' tattoo. Back then, Mike V was the shit, he wasn't corrupted by the dollars and the merchandising yet. The Earth Crisis song's tough guy touch would have fit perfectly the character he was, I remember that once he fought Joey Suriel cause he did a bad joke to Templeton about veganism. In these days, Mike V could have thrown a firestorm to purify skateboarding".

2. Side By Side: You're Only Young Once So Do it Right
"This I can see on a Geoff Rowley part, understood that he stopped being vegan when he was 30, so yeah, he saved his youth. Maybe they should modify the title and call it You're Only Old Once So Do it Right".

3. Bold: Always Try
"This one should back a Jub part. It would be good in a video just because of the slams he gets."

4. Seven Seconds: Young 'til I Die
"For this hardcore SxE classic tune, you need a classic skater. I'd say Rick Mc Crank, still vegan, still straight-edge".

5. Minor Threat: Minor Threat
"I think that Ed Templeton might like this. I mean, he seems to be a lot into Dischord and Fugazi [Ian Mc Kaye's label and current band, note] stuff, so..."

Oh, and I almost forgot : for those who can read French, you MUST read his video reviews on the Mofo blog. Too bad the slogan "He says out loud what everybody only thinks" is already taken by the National Front in France, cause that would suit perfectly.
I can't resist translating just the outtro to his Ride The Sky article :

"If you like the Zero vids, you won't be disappointed.
If you like the Static vids, then don't bother.
If you like TWS vids, then you like anything.
If you like the Jolie Routine, then go and kill yourself.
If you like the Parisien vid, then go and hang yoursef in a sleeping bag to a rafter, I'm coming with a sledgehammer to kill you [I liked it very much - Seb's note. What color for the bag?].
If you like the Antihero vids, then do run away.
If you like Eastern Exposure, then you know what's up."

A teasa please | Dyson and Dee

2008-10-13T09:24:00.000-07:00

Teasers suck. I mean, usually. If it's for my retina to be bombarded by a 30-second epileptic pile of half way-cut tricks and/or just slams, I tend to end up more frustrated than, hum, teased. There are exceptions, though. If you extend the concept to (a very selected amount of past) 411 commercials and "short video parts that should do until something more consequent drops", then you might find a few gems, skate-wise and music-wise. Hit or miss kind of deal : you only have one tune to pick, so please dig deep and don't embarrass yourself by using Highway To Hell for the 234th time. Plus, you can choose a tune you actually love, as you'll be able to keep it under the radar in terms of music rights clearances...

Anyway, this is a new, irregular feature on A Visual Sound, which will resurrect everytime an above-average tune pops up in of these court-métrages, the idea kinda came from this previous post.

So, has anybody noticed the brilliance of the choice on this Dyson Ramones teaser from a few weeks back? Perfect skating style aside (very important for a stale fart such as yours truly who grew up watching all the Ethans and the Barleys and the Luy-Pas out there), listen carefully.
At first, the fuzzy guitar might lead you in a wrong, hippyish/psych direction. Spit your acid and save it for later -at least wait for the Bummer High teaser- as instead, this is the intro to Why Can't There Be Love, by soul diva Dee Edwards.It originally came out on a very much sought-after 7'' on the Bum Shop (sic) label in 1972, and is easier to find around here in its German version (on Vogue, see picture), yet, if your record-shopping budget doesn't bare the equivalent of a small country's Gross National Product, this delicate English DJ Gilles Peterson has a present for you : he included it on this compilation.

Dee's life was pretty interesting too : born in 1945, she passed away in 2006 in Detroit due to a heart attack after a night out, fallen soldier-style, a definitely familiar adieu in the skaters' circles. After starting The Paragons -the US ones, not these awesome Paragons- she went solo in 1963 and You Say You Love Me, her first tune on her own, came out on the local, Alabama-based label Tuba.
After a sting of 45s for the label, she proceeded to marry arranger Floyd James and recorded a bunch of soul gems for various labels -try to find one that didn't include the word "love"- before hitting the charts with a disco tune in 1979 (The musical equivalent to becoming a contest robot in skateboarding), then disappearing during the '80s, focusing on her painting and family.
Dee only had time to have one full LP out, Heavy Love (on Cotillion), but Why Can't There Be Love will always remain a Northern-Soul collector favorite. Kind of like the first Natural Koncept video: the second time around, you miss the surprise factor -even though, please, do yourself a favor and check Dysfunctional Family.

(Think a particular teaser had a good tune to it? Please do comment...)

Re:music | Rudy Johnson

2008-10-02T06:52:00.000-07:00

As absolutely nobody noticed, I haven't posted anything substantial in a while, yet actual articles might come back at some point. Maybe. In the meantime I'll just throw a meager bone every now and then...

So again, this was part of a bigger Rudy Johnson interview that I did for his 'Memory Screened' page in Skateboarder a few months ago. I left the charango bit that was in the mag, just cause, but the rest wasn't used yet. I'm thinking of starting a separate blog with the full-on interviews cause there are always some funny anecdotes in them -in Rudy's case, how he hung up on Mark Gonzales the day Gonz asked him to ride for Blind, as he thought it was a prank call, or how his Big Brother interview in issue 3 was actually made up, since he was dissing his mom's girlfriend in the actual cold call he got, and wasn't too stoked about it being run as the girlfriend in question was a Powell am's sister. That kind of stuff. Realistically though, I already have trouble updating one blog every now and then, so... two? We'll see.
For now, here's a little thing about Rudy J on music. I hope that will do until a bigger post.

Just Like Heaven
"In Video Days, I think the only people they picked the song for were Guy and Jordan Richter. Guy’s part, that was perfect. I remember Jason wanted Milk, and Mark wanted some jazz. I definitely picked that Dinosaur Jr tune, the Cure cover. It was cool cause it was on a tiny little mini-disc, really small, you couldn't find it on any other CD [It later came out on the Fossils single compilation]. It worked perfect for the part.
I hesitated between a few other songs but I would have had some metal for sure, something heavy. I’ve been playing guitar for like 20 years, when I first started it was like: Metallica! I always had the rock in me. I knew for sure I wouldn’t take no rap."

The charango board
“Paulo Diaz and I, we went to Bolivia in 1995. We went together, without no skate affiliation. We went just to go on vacation, for probably two and a half weeks. And it was really strange, cause we were very young, like 22 or something. But we went out there, and we learned about all these instruments. This is like a strange instrument, with ten strings, but it's only five double strings. And this one in particular is called a charango, it's made out of an armadillo, a real animal.
We went to Bolivia cause that’s where they make this instrument. There are three countries that make it: Peru, Chile and Bolivia.
This actual graphic is a poster that I brought back. The whole ting. Instead of my name, it said : Ernesto Cavour, who was a master player. And it just said that, it was the exact same layout. I was so happy to ride this board, and people loved it. I still own two of the posters.”

A message to you...
"Right now I play in The Allentons, we are a seven-piece band, I play drums in it, it’s a traditional ska band. It's been over ten years, we keep it as a hobby first, but we play around town, or in Canada, in Mexico, on the east Coast, we even backed [legendary Jamaican trombonist] Rico Rodriguez !
It's not like we're gonna quit our jobs to do it though. I mean, I maybe would, man. Not all the way, I would keep in touch with all this, nowadays you can be anywhere in the world and send images or whatever.
I also play the guitar, which I consider my primary instrument, I got my own music and actually I'm gonna be doing a lot of writing and music and maybe get some stuff in the Chocolate video and some other projects. You guys will be hearing it soon."

Bonus | The You Will Soon box set

2008-09-23T02:58:00.000-07:00

As you might know already, the You Will Soon dudes are "a bunch of white guys obsessed with shoes and the gangster lifestyle who live with their moms and need to get a life". Or not.
Anyway, I, the David of blogs, won't make you the offense to introduce the Goliath of the www, cause you know and follow their adventures already if you landed here, I'm sure.

Now ready for the most impressive skate-tunes playlist ever? Straight outta The North of Everything, here's a little explanation about the four undecipherable screens below. The newest honoris causa citizen of the Nerdistan Republic, Dan Watson compiled the ultimate, 9 hours-long playlist of tunes that were in skate videos and has this to say about it:

"I've been working and adding to this playlist for so long. I've been rocking a version of it since like 97 or 98 on cassette tape, obviously when mini discs and IPods came along it allowed me to expand the playlist. I work in a skateshop and it's so good to listen to because the entire playlist is like 9.2 hours long, so gets you through a whole workday.
My skate nerd trick that I impress all my employees with is to quiz me at any time on any song and I can tell them what skater's section it's from and what video it's in."

Re:music | Ron Allen

2008-09-05T23:12:00.000-07:00

"I love Ron Allen, he proved that one can be old and skate something else than just bowls." A very famous French desk editor just told me this, and he pretty much summed up exactely why Ron's the man. I mean, H Street, Life, the '90s heart throb company Fun (Pupecki, Keenan, Travis Mc Glothin, Huf, Liversedge... and even this close to get Gino) and the politically-charged American Dream -the resume says it all.
What's below is just a small portion of a really long interview I did with him recently, a well-deserved space for the original "I make my my music for my own part" pro. Besides how Ron was not too stoked on some morbid graphics the Godoys did for him, and how he got paid off from H Street with 500 boxes of plain white t-shirts in order to start a new company somewhere else, I also found out some interesting bits about his experience in the music field. While I'm at it by the way, how come everybody remembers Sheff from A Soldier's Story, but never John De Ago? I digress, though. Ron Allen about music, it's pretty long, and it's right here:

“Rudy Ramos was this amazing musician, he could play every instrument. He could play bass, he could play guitar, he could play everyting. He would lay down a drum track, play instruments and I'd come in and do vocals to it. Just me and him in his appartment making 4-track music. And all the people were like tripping, they thought it was baaad! Then a couple of stuff we did with bands, but it would always come after we did the 4-track stuff. We’d call ourselves Black Dress Theory, Sir Lady Java or Loopzilla cause we were making loops. I didn’t know it would ever been known. I even did an interview with a German mag, just about Shackle Me Not’s music, they called it ‘H Street music’! We weren’t even a garage band, we were a ‘inside somebody’s bedroom band’. I would record the lyrics in a closet, shut the door and just bang out the lyrics.

Most of it was me and Rudy. It’s funny, we split out cause he hated rap and I couldn’t help it, I loved it. That’s when I made the music switch from being involved in rock to hip hop. I play with a lot of different bands. I was just the lyricist for that band Cannonball, they toured and played everywhere. It was jazz, then they’d funk it up or hip hop it up and I’d rhyme over it. They played in more places in California than I have ever heard of.

There was a third band called Hueman Flavor. It was interesting cause it came right when the whole skate thing kinda ended for me, when Deluxe told me that American Dream was over, and I was kinda like wow, tripping on that. I was hanging out at this jazz club and there were playing. They had this dude named Josh Jones and they were these sick jazz cats. I was like, man, I wanna rhyme in that band some day. So I did a couple shows with them, then I was invited to this gig they had every Tuesday. After that they were invited to the San Francisco jazz festival and they were like, dude, you rhyming on stage with us. So I went, I was the first MC to rhyme at this festival. At that time it was taboo, hip hop and jazz, you wouldn’t do that...

They ended up opening for sick acts, like Nas. I remember at the time I was the younger in the band, and I was 32! There were some heavyweights in that band. The guitar player, he was also my landlord, when Jerry Garcia died, they asked him to come and perform. They were like, you ride that skateboard, huh?
And then in 1997-98, my girl and I did a night club in the City, for like two-three years, called the Red Light. We’d do the flyer for it, find the talent for it, but it was such a blast, so many arists came through, you’be blown away by who’s on your stage. Freestyle Fellowship used to come through. Sometimes they’d come through and there’d be 8 people in the club. And then slowly it got more popular. There are some nights where Weapon Of Choice played, George Clinton got on stage with them. Literally, capacity was 750 and there were 1500 people there that night. It was just that little hip hop Monday night in San Francisco.”

Top 3 Ron Allen's tunes in skate flicks
1. Black Dress Theory : Greedy (Shackle Me Not)
2. Loopzilla : It's Gone (Lotti/Carter in Hokus Pokus)
3. Sir Lady Java : A Soldier's Story (take a wild guess)

Did you read all this? Come on. I know you only clicked on the links.

Interlude | The French romance

2008-08-20T03:51:00.000-07:00

He ain't French, hence his name : French, straight outta Thornton Heat (London). Not only a professional artist but a full-time dreamer as well, French approaches life with the playful spunk of a baby seal and... what do you mean, that was Andy Roy's intro in Big Brother? I'm into literary sampling, it's an art form too. Anyway yeah, French's artwork is awesomely evil, the man himself loves to drink tea and more importantly, as far as A Visual Sound is concerned, he doubles as a death-metal monomaniac.

What tunes from this delicate soul-oldies-inspired subgenre would sound good in a skate video? Let's listen to what this man of widom has to say. Or grunt.

French's disclaimer :
"OK, so I don't know about what I'd wanna put on a video but these are the ones which I fucking love and think could work well if I was making a one. These are all proper death metal, mostly pretty modern, none of this "oh yeah I'm really into death metal, my friend once lent me an Entombed record" shit. It's proper."

1. Putrid Pile : My Inner Demon

From : The Pleasure In Suffering

"Putrid Pile is seriously under rated. The guitars are sickness and the vocals are total brutality, without any sort of vocal distortion.
The art on the CD is sick as well, and it's unbelievable this is just one guy."

2. Rompeprop : Vaginal Luftwaffe
From: "Hellcocks Pornflakes"
"These guys could only be Dutch for fuck's sake. The cover is a fake cock cumming into a bowl of cornflakes and the vocals are just unhuman. All in all, this is one on my favourite songs/records of all time. Its insane vocals and powerful riffs are all you need in gore/grind."

3. Inveracity : Visions of Coming Apocalypse
From: "Extermination of Millions"
"I'm actually going to see these Greek nutters tonight. They are tight, the songs are really techniqual and they hold their shit down well.
It's this song that has the amazing pitch and tempo changes but continues to hold the brutality."

4. Lividity : Coated With My Semen
(live bonus track)
From: "Fetish for the sick"
"I just love how out of order these dudes are and how all the songs are about fucking and murder or the two in one. But more than ever the crazy intro the lead singer gives would be rad for a skate video: 'This ones for the ladies who love big dicks and cum in the face, coated....with...my.....SEMEN!!'"

5. Prostitute Disfigurement : Body to Ravage
From: "Left in a Grisley Fashion"
"My ex-girlfriend hated their name so much she wouldn't let me keep the records in the house, so she's now my ex. Anyway, this song has a rad intro and then breaks into a short or death/ thrash Malevalent Creation style riff, but still with the pig grunting vocals. The Dutch must be loving death, as these dudes are Dutch as well."

Cute, huh? I'm in a romantic mood too right now. I mean, a romance-coated mood.

Interlude | An Eclipse on the Ocean

2008-08-12T13:59:00.000-07:00

Aww, sorry for the pun in the title, sometimes I can't help. Anyway yeah, a reader once asked me, a long while back, more info about The Eclipse, a mysterious band that perfectly fit Ocean Howell's and Markus Wyndham's parts in Risk It. Since this had been intriguing me for a minute as well, I just asked Ocean to see what he had to say.
Incidentally, and it might have been the true aim of this post, this whole thing served the purpose to link Bertrand Trichet's website, an awesome French skate and non-skate, thanks lil' baby Jesus, photographer who did some stuff with Ocean a few years ago in SF. So, The Eclipse, you said?

Ocean Howell:
"The Eclipse was a local band from North County San Diego. A good friend of mine was in it in high school. I don't have the recordings anymore, but someone else asked recently so I think I'll try to get in touch with my old buddy Jonny Eads to see if he has any copies..."

Meager, but to be continued. Ocean's tune was called Bugs and Markus' Love's Last Whisper, and that's all I know for now. I will keep the Eclipse-hungry masses in touch if anything more manifests, though.

AVS # 6 | Sight Unseen (2001)

2008-08-03T00:05:00.000-07:00

From Kingpin # 56

Remember how it started with indigestible bands like Fluf and The Presidents Of The USA ? Well, it continued for a while (never use the CDs that labels send you, never), not to say until such recent past that we might as well call it "the now". If the Transworld videos have been ground-breaking on many levels, definitely killing the derelict filming look inaugurated with Rubbish Heap and pioneering the "fixed-camera-on-a-tripod-filming-for-a-whole-day-with-cars-and-people- going-really-fast-in-the-street"-type intros, they’ve never really let the music lovers in awe as far as selection.
Until Sight Unseen that is, which contains besides the three albums below a lot of definitely worth-your-money music –surprised that Jay Mascis doesn’t have an exclusivity contract with Alien Workshop? So here it is, all broken down : A Visual Sound # 6, another partial and musical voyage to the faraway land of skate flick music Nerdistan.

(Oh, and the good old "click on the sleeve, see the part" hi-tec feature is back)

Cali Agents: How the West Was One
Tune used: Neva Forget
(Henry Sanchez)
The Black Sabbath tune might have given the wrong impression –it was his choice too, thank you very much, not some Rocco scheme- it’s pretty notorious that Henry Sanchez has been a great archivist of underground Norcal hip hop. In Sight Unseen’s case, for "the part until which you had counted me out", as he bluntly puts it on his Myspace page, he chose a tune from Cali Agents, the bicephalous unit made of Rasco plus Fresno’s finest, mixtape king Planet Asia, straight out of their second album. Or did he ? "I didn't choose it", Henry told me, "I didn't get the impression it was up to me. I would have used some old Cellski song." For those who didn’t know, the latter is another one of these underrated SF MCs who used to also go by one of the best nicknames ever, Break-A-Bitch, so it’s safe to say that the Daisy Age didn’t smell like roses for everybody.
On a more serious note, Cellski has six albums under his belt and rolled with Yukmouth, E-40, the RBL Posse and Cougnut, so street cred isn’t really a concern here. On his side, Henry also added that some alternative choices of his would have been Silk The Shocker's Ain’t My Fault, or in a totally different genre, Baba O Riley by The Who, "but for these I didn't even ask cause I knew it would be out of the question", he swears. So that was it. Nevertheless a good tune, from a classic undergoundesque disc.

Sizzla/Anthony B: 2 Strong
Tune used: Haunted and Nervous
(John Cardiel)
For whatever mysterious reason, good reggae’s barely ever used in skate videos. Sure, from Sergei Trudnowski to Ryan Nix there have been exceptions -see this post. But one part will forever outshine them all : Cardiel’s rabid Sight Unseen section, set to the ferocious rant of bobo dread-in-chief Sizzla Kalonji. Fight fire with fire. Perfect match. While some see it as Miguel Collins’ golden age for the Star Trail label, this late ‘90s tune represented a perfect balance of raw dancehall energy and the then-still-somewhat-melodious singjay style adopted by the young Emmanuelite.
Since a handful of early, absolutely necessary LPs (besides 2 Strong, shared with Anthony B, count Praise Ye Jah, Black Woman and Child, the 1998 Reggae Max compilation), Sizzla has been über-prolific, shooting 45 after 45 with a bunch of good full-length surprises along the line (The Real Thing, or the R&B hybrid Soul Deep, or the recent Judgement Yard mixtapes) and a lot of forgettable efforts too. Who’s counting ? He isn’t. What matters here is how parallel Cardiel’s and Sizzla’s destinies were at this very point in time, and how it showed in John’s first full part since the Dogtown video.

The stitches: 8x12
Tune used: My Baby Hates Me
(Dustin Dollin)
Besides the interesting Oxnard scene from the early ‘80s, and a bunch of bands from these days and ages, California hasn’t necessarly bred a whole lot of interesting punk outfits lately –unless of course you are looking for the soundtrack to a wakeboard/FMX video, and if that’s the case LagWagon probably has a new, 345th, album out.
So even though The Stitches come from Orange County, even though they tried to recreate a genuine 1977 punk sound twenty years too late, well, this album is actually, almost hurts to say it, good. Plus they stayed on obscure labels on purpose (Disaster, Vinyl Dog, Kapow…), had really good albums names (12 Imaginary Inches is one) and matched perfectly Dustin Dollin’s skating. Apparently they skate pretty good themselves, too, their singer Mike Lohrman used to be sponsored by Circle A –Salman Agah and Ed Templeton started the same way- and he even built a ramp in his mom’s backyard. The icing on the cake? According to a memorable Thrasher interview, he also revealed how Jim Greco used to call him « 20 times a night for fashion advice, plus he wanted to hang out and smoke crack and play guitar ». Not to mention how Lohrmann once pissed unpuposedly on an undercover cop at Sadlands... So that would be Greco, Dollin, punk, pee, drugs. You do the math. Even if they carry that heavy OC burden, The Stitches are, like, totally awesome.

Double dipping | Hugo Liard

2008-07-28T21:54:00.000-07:00

They don't have rim sponsors, they didn't even buy Harleys! What a bunch of unpretentious, skateboarding-for-fun-type losers... Instead, the Antiz team decided to go tour Southern Spain recently on a bunch of beat-up mopeds. You think that' how you're gonna win the Maloof Cup? Pathetic.

Anyway, Hugo Liard, one of France's finest and one of the masterminds behind this deck company/co-op, is also an expert in all sort of musical Frenchnesses, not to mention his tendencies to be an unapologetic Hessian.

It's on behalf of these two qualities that he's allowed not one, but two playlists at once. By the way, am I just another old fart, or does skateboarding need more Antiz-style ventures? Meaning, Maloof bros-free?

(For those who didn't know, you should download their latest vid, Z Movie, right here)

Oh, and the photo comes from the Antiz website, and it's uncredited on there too. I need a lawyer?

The top 5 French tunes

that would sound good in a skateboard video | by Hugo Liard

1. Trust: Certitude/solitude
"It's Trust's best tune, complete with fast and dynamic guitar riffs. It's all skateboarding music needs, plus the lyrics are really good."

2. Trust: Préfabriqué
"I love the aggressive lyrics, mixed with these super-fast riffs."

3. Warning: Rock city
"This French band kind of remained in Trust's shadow, but they sounded heavier."

4. Renaud: Laisse béton

"Hard to translate in English, but there's a pun for me with the word beton, which can mean 'concrete', so this one would sound good for a pool session or something."

5. Noir désir: Comme elle vient

"Super fucking putain d'énervé, with overwhelming lyrics too."

The top 5 metal tunes of all time, that would also sound good in a skate video | by Hugo Liard again

1. Mötörhead: Go To Hell

"Still these awesome '80s riffs, plus the prallele hell/skateboarding that gets me amped."

2. Kreator: Phobia

"Some powerful modern metal."

3. Manowar: Ride The Dragon
"Epic metal, kinda like speed metal, wich means that it means 'speed'. You know?"

4. Apocaliptica: Master of Puppets remix

"Really, really powerful, I stil have goose bumps. Better than Mozart for the dead."

5. Trust: Limewire

"Huh huh, it's a AC/DC cover in English. Fuck yeah, finally a French band that didn't have to blush compared to one of the universe's biggest hard rock bands. Trust actually almost opened for AC/DC in the US in 1981, but instead they chose to go on a French tour!"

AVS #5 | "Sick Boys" (1988)

2008-07-14T10:05:00.000-07:00

From Kingpin # 55

It’s been twenty years. Twenty years since the skateboard masses have been grossed out by Bryce Kanights’ “breakfast of champions”. A pinnacle of wilderness in the streets, Sick Boys was now-famous snowboard movie mogul Mac Dawg’s first effort, and remains as one of the first flicks heavy on actual street skating –i.e. not that many ho-ho plants.
The hour-or-so film, directed by “your mama” as the ending credits states, featured the mid-‘80s cream of the crop, including Natas, Jim Thiebaud, a handrail f-side boardsliding Julien Stranger, Mic E Reyes, Ron Allen, Cab, Tommy Guerrero, and even Chris Branagh, skateboarding’s own white Gary Coleman. Plus about a million other people, unoficially starting the H-Street’s school of video making.

While some rememeber it as one of the most quotable skate videos of all time ( “You need big balls to do that and Mick E Reyes surely doesn’t lack in that category”, or the even awesomer “Sometimes we take the locals for a ride into the G-Forces of hell”), others used it to discover some of the rawest skate-rock ever, and again, nobody’s talking Pennywise’s blue album here. More so The Boneless Ones, Wonderful Broken Thing, Verbal Abuse, M.A.R live, MDC, MCM And The Monster… Most of them coming from the mythical Berkeley-based label Boner records, and all captured in the lowest fidelity lowfi can offer.
Young students, Sick Boys’ soundtrack has “classic” written all over it, no wonder the video itself is being reissued as we speak. Welcome to a crazy world full of airwalk ollies, wall rides, crazy headbands and pools. Wait, what year was that, again?

(Witness the whole mayhem here)

Thee Fourgiven : It Ain’t Pretty Down Here

Tune used: You Can Come To My Room (skate camp)

In 1988, things were a lot different, probably. Because a song called You Can Come To My Room wouldn’t first come to mind nowadays to back up a skate-camp section, with all the strict rules and the little kids and everything. Very taboo. Anyway, what can be heard from the tune worked perfectly to accompany a hefty dose of curves destruction courtesy of Tony Mag, Bod Boyle, plus a Derby Park-wrecking Tony Roberts, and comes from the first album ever recorded by Thee Fougiven. How did Mac Dawg get a hold of them? Not too hard to guess, since Thee 4-G got started by Venice legendary skater Ray Flores (bass/vocals) and his buddy Matt Roberts (“drums, garbage can, screams”, his bio states), after they both left The Unclaimed.
Musically, this sounds like a blend of punk rock with subtle touches of psychobilly and drunken exotica –a prerequisite when your album is out on a label that pays hommage to the god of wine, Dionysus- and could have been the last, because Matt allegedly left the band for “a couple of weeks” and didn’t return for several years.
Thankfully though, Ray Flores wasn’t the only skater/muscian around and brought Bela Horvath to the mix, taking the band on two memorable Europe tours, where they opened for The Miracle Workers and... The Unclaimed, that ended up quitting one week after the beginning of the journey. Even though they broke up in 1989, Thee Fourgiven are still around, and were planning in early 2007 to release a compilation album. No news since. The producer must have gone on a trip for a few weeks.

Verbal Abuse : Just an American Band

Tune used : Social Insect (plus two)

In the early ‘80s, Verbal Abuse was such a hardcore punk classic that Mac Dawg made sure everybody got it, using no less than three of their tunes from their 1983 Just An American Band LP. A classic among classics, straight out of the very same Bay Area scene that gave birth to the Dead Kennedys or Fear. Which means expect some simple, raw, in-your-face kind of tunes, all screamed in the most sociopathic fashion, and not some of that feelings-driven emo music. Heaven knows the Texas transplants felt miserable then, no reason for it to have changed some odd 25 years later…
Regarding this classic LP (Remember Slayer's Undisputed Attitude hardcore covers album?), the purists already own its original version out on Bitzcore records, of course. Yet, they don’t frown upon the reissue put out by the skateboard company/skate-rock label Beer City a few years back, for it includes also a 1984 live in New York. Who cares? Anybody who enjoys one more Black Sabbath cover (Paranoid), and more incongruitously a mind-blowing version of We’re an American Band, by the kinda cheesy arena-rock stars Grand Funk Railroad!

MDC : Smoke Signals

Tune used: Missile Destroyed Civilization (Blood Bowl session)

Before the NoFX singer felt the urge to write a song about how he hates shower days, American punk was used to address issues a bit less captivating: political and social problems, for instance. Very, very boring. Plus, like, dude, it hurts your head.
Totally oblivious to the fact of one day being picked to set the mood of a session at the Blood Bowl in a skateboard video, Austin-based band MDC was definitely one of these bricks thrown in The Man’s windows. A heavy brick, thrown from the guts. Yeah, this section is now written by Jello Biaffra, did you notice? Did you even read that far? I hope not.
All this to say that even with its strong political stance and all, the outfit formed in 1979 in Austin as The Stains didn’t forget a little touch of humour, once they switched to MDC the following year, changing on each album the meaning of their initials. Millions of Dead Cops being the most famous one, they also called themselves successively Multi Death Corporation, Millions of Dead Children, Millions of Dead Christians, Millions of Damn Christians, Metal Devil Cokes, and Magnus Dominus Corpus. Like Verbal Abuse, they relocated to San Francisco in 1982 after a bumpy ride that notably included a fiasco of a Bad Brains/Big Boys/MDC Rock against Reagan Tour, after Bad Brains left when HR found out that the Big Boys’ singer was gay… PMA, bros, PMA!
Missile Destroyed Civilization came out on their second, maybe more rockish 1986 album Smoke Signals, and for once here’s a band that didn’t water down excessively as the years went by. Well, everybody has the right to have mixed feelings regarding their hip hop/vegan tune from Hey Cop! If I Had a Face Like Yours but all in all, MDC’s career stayed pretty straight. Still active and now set in Portland, its members still haven’t written a song about the delights of not showering.

Bonus : Mac Dawg on "Sick Boys"

2008-07-14T09:52:00.000-07:00

A small interview with the man behind the mirrors and wires... Sick Boys by its creator, Mike "Mac Dawg" Mc Entyre, whose latest film I saw, sorry to admit, was The Hard, The Hungry and The Homeless from, what, 1993? Anyway.

Was Sick Boys your first project?
MD: Sick Boys was my first film that was for sale. I had made several short films before that point with the standout being called Goons in Paradise.

Would you consider it a documentary?
I think Sick Boys documents the times that I had when I was with the skaters in the film but not a true documentary in regards to full interviews and the such. It does however portray the period in a great light which is the mark of a good documentary.

Did you do any skate films before and after Sick Boys?
I worked for Jon Malvino as a camera assistant/sound man for a couple of years before Sick Boys. He was shooting all the top skaters in 16mm with a lot of sync sound. Unfortunately that footage was never released, which was a good part of my motivation to make Sick Boys.
After that, I got a call from the late Mike Ternasky who hired me to make Hokus Pokus with him. During that film I hooked up with Noah Salasnek who was a am for H-Street and also a great snowboarder. He wanted a snow shot for his part. I filmed it a Squaw Valley and after Hokus Pokus I pretty much was hooked on filming snowboarding and being in the mountains. There has been a lot of skating in our snow films over the years from Noah to Shawn White.

Are you planning do do any more skate flicks at all?
Not really. I think it is quite a bit different now and my path is not headed that way.

Are you planning to ever release Sick Boys on DVD?
The plan is a re-release of Sick Boys late summer or fall of 08. This is coming about with the help of my friend Bryce Kanights who is putting all the pieces together. We are planning on doing a bunch of behind the scenes interviews and letting the riders in the film tell stories about the filming. I should be really cool for kids to see where a lot of their sport developed from.

How did you find the bands for its soundtrack?
A lot of the bands in Sick Boys were into the whole skate scene in Nor Cal at the time. We would go to their show and just get wasted. They were all super cool with the film and we got to use the music for free. Those were the good old days. I think Sick Boys only sold 500 copies so I did not make any money off it or anything.
I knew [legandary Venice skate loc] Ray Flores of Thee Fourgiven and Miles of MCM and the Monster. I met a lot of the other bands but it was really when it was a party scene and not everyday type of friends.

Screen Memory | JB Gillet

2008-07-05T07:29:00.000-07:00

From late 1996 to at least early 1997, I decided that I was a skateboard photographer. I mean, I lived in SF and had a FM2, right? Right. It took me a few years to figure out I wasn't -My apologies to Fred Demard and Benjamin Deberdt for trying to convince them that I wasn't into such obsolete concepts as "sharpness" and "lighting" by choice.
Anyway during these crazy SF days, I shot with true locs such as... JB Gillet, once and only once, and I'm not sure we've seen each other since. Funny enough when you consider that we're both French and live about two hours apart. Oh well, c'est la vie as American people say, plus I was busy with that little recluse thing I got going.
12 years later we reunited this awesome collab of ours, with JB doing a playlist for A Visual Sound. Wah nom de dieu, that's what's up!

(Since we're talking modern blues, true romantics and poignant, urban poetry here, I found it opportune to run a few of my personal favorite lyrics from each tune)

The top 5 gangsta-est hip hop tunes
that should be in a skateboard video | by JB Gillet

1. Tha Dogg Pound: Coastin'
"We Daz, Kurupt / Kurupt and Daz / We puff on the trees / We get the cash / We DPG back on the mash."

2. Tha Dogg Pound: Some Bomb Azz Pussy
"While I bust a hellified superfied nut, I had to go / Straight pimpin in the city, shakin ass and titties."

3. Pimp C: I'm free
"Wasn't nothin like "Oz," a bunch of iron and bars / Bunch of player hatin snitches, talkin to the guards / And a whole penitentiary bein' ran by broads / Some of 'em kept it one hundred, most of them was frauds."

4. E-40: I'm Da Man
"I'm buyin my yola, you gettin chronic / I'm tryin to go out the park, you tryin to bunt it / So you know if I drop it then it's a hit / The game got it in my grip like a catcher's mitt."

5. Three 6 Mafia: Knock The Black Off Ya A**
"I think they better call Bush 'cause it's a national disaster / When I unleash my pistolgrip Bushmaster / Ring the alarm I got double charms / 100 round spinnin' you can't hide you can't run."

I wonder what kind of nut tree produces hellified, superfied nuts. Can't be organic I'm sure.

Interlude | Brian Lotti's mystery tune

2008-06-27T05:45:00.000-07:00

So as you know, Brian Lotti's new movie, Free Pegasus, just came out. It's been filmed in Barcelona BUT doesn't for once consist of an US Attila-style spot invasion. Ever tried to just cruise down there? I know. Crazy, non hammer-oriented, idea. Anyway, I had a little hand in this project, more like half two fingers, and I would love to push it a little, in a Visual Sound fashion -Remember, skate flicks and music?
So I just lined up all of Brian's video parts and tried to figure out what musically can be intriguing about them. His Ron Allen tune in Hokus Pokus? It is, but more about this later. There's another one: the mystery tune on his groundbreaking Now'n'Later section -so groundbreaking that some moron once wrote a Wikipedia entry about Lotti, stating that "he pioneered skating in pants"-, actually coming from a 5-track demo cassette by a band that became legendary on the sole benefit of this very part : Handy With Shovels.
It took me a minute but I tracked down two members of this Stockton, CA-based outfit. Here's what they have to say about the whole Now 'n Later buzz.

Brian Tomei, guitar player:
"The demo was submitted through an ad in Thrasher. Not The Same is of course available on the original demo, and also on the CD compiled in 2006/2007. I remember we had a party-premiere, and it was a "15 minutes of fame"evening. It should be noted that we could have done a split w/ Pavement, but I think we all agreed they sucked. Now many critics and mags praise Pavement... go figure!
Yeah, Lotti's skating is stellar for the time and place. I guess we should be flattered that our music graces that scene. We could all skate in our own right, especially Bryan Chuck, our bass player. I guess he still skates.
Musically, I have 2 or 3 projects most of the time. FCA plays monthly. I play bass with Eric Torres and Johnny Cruz in Hearts Beat Faster (when Johnny is not on tour with Samiam) , and I also play in Fat, Drunk, and Stupid with what's left of the punks in good ol' Stucktown. I think the last time I typed this much I was still in college."

Jimmy Bell, lead vocal:
"We were aware that it was used, we also had a song in an H Street video, not sure if it was before or after the Planet Earth one. A few years back 411 Video magazine used the Lotti footage and didn't even give us credit.... They never returned my calls, very lame.
The song can be found at CD Baby on a CD that I released which has Not the same, Nervous nightmare and everything else we ever recorded as Handy With Shovels.
I have had requests for that song since I first started my website years ago. So many requests from literally all over the world, that I finally put it all on disc and released everything.
We all got together and watched the video when it came out. I didn't think the Lotti part or the song would be so popular.
I'm now an audio engineer, and do location sound for TV and film. I have a small studio in Sacramento, and live with my wife and son. I also paint and have 2 CDs out with a band called Jimmy Bean and the Playground Revolution ( it's what I call punk for kids)."

Interlude | The question

2008-06-21T01:18:00.000-07:00

A question from Cam:
"What is the song on this Vox trailer, and who is the band?
I can't figure it out for the life of me."

An answer from Nate at Vox:
"The song is from a late 70's band called Model Mania. They only had one 45 release as far as I know. No Pride, Slow Suicide is the name of the song. I have it on vinyl off of the Bored Teenagers comp. Good luck finding it."

Plus some more research:
Model Mania' were formed in late 1975 in the UK– three brothers, Jim (vocals), Rob (guitar) and Andy (drums). They were later joined by Martin Beech (Boco) on bass.
In the next six months they played all over, opening for bands such as The Vibrators, Johnny Thunders, The Clash, The Slits, The Adverts, The Stranglers, Subway Sect etc. Bernie Rhodes showed interest so they got on tour with the Clash. In 1977 they made their first demo No Pride and 2 others, Shit and Glass.

In 1979 they made a record and released it on their own Boob label. When the records arrived back from the pressing plant the labels weren't quite ready so the band designed and made up a ink stamp and then stamped up 250 copies so that they could start selling them. Then one week later the labels arrived and the remaining 750 copies had proper labels stuck on. Then Boco decided to leave. They carried on but it was all over really. They came very close but not close enough, that’s the story, not the facts.

In 1982 they changed their name to Powerfarm and were joined by Sean Walters, they made another single Which Way USA, which was also released on Boob Records through Red Rhino distribution.

AVS #4 | "Fully Flared", Lakai (2007)

2008-05-31T06:09:00.000-07:00

From Kingpin #54

For the seasoned journalist, there's no feeling like getting the scoop. After rounds and rounds of minutious fact checking, I am today in the position to reveal that Lakai shoes released a video. Fully Flared, it’s called. I know. Nobody’s heard about it yet, it’s some kind of secret project. Anyway, on a more serious note, what needs to be dissected that hasn’t been? Heated debates have been the rage on the web, scrutinizing the pros and cons of, among others, slow-mos, musical choices, angles, and mid-air farts.

In this maelstrom of opinions, only one thing stands for sure : if everybody feels the need to give it their two cents, it’s a strong sign that FF won’t know the tragic kind of future that, say, Airwalk’s Skateboarding Video ’96 did. A true cornerstone, then. Music-wise too? According to Guy Mariano -who loves his two Band Of Horses songs, thank you very much-, the whole process came naturally. “Ty played all these songs on tour, without telling us they were the ones he had in mind for it”. And even though some Aaron Meza input was alas lost, there are definitely three albums worth acquiring from the XXIst century’s Hokus Pokus. Remember, this feature ain’t no video review, more so just what a future Pulitzer Price of Investigative Journalism believes to be the three classic albums that you should own from it, in order to build the ultimate skate video nerd sonic library.
(click on the cover, see the part)

Bad Brains : Banned In DC
Tune used : Don’t Bother Me
(Anthony Pappalardo)
It takes a certain kind of skater to handle Bad Brains. Imagine Chris Fissel backed by Slayer… Chris who? Kids, if you only knew... In Pop’s case, the choice proves perfect to accompany his fast and furious balance of tech and simple tricks. The album the tune itself comes from, Banned in DC, is such a classic that purchasing it is a no-brainer –this one was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize of Awesome Puns too.
This compilation of early material came out out of the blue in 2003 as comprehensive surprise, after years and years of chaotic moves from a band that started good, though, in 1979, right after the intricate jazz band Mind Power discovered punk-rock and decided to change name in honor of a Ramones song (Bad Brain).
Pappalardo-wise, it’s not the first time Don’t Bother Me was released. The track was part of the Black Dots album too (1996), an earlier effort at compiling original Bad Brains music, built around the same low-fi 1979 hits (Attitude, Don’t Need It, Pay To Cum…). Which one to choose now? Hard to say. HR’s fake cockney accent on some of the Black Dots tunes is priceless, while Banned In DC includes the crucial Sailin’On. Both sound good, just add 1986’ I Against I and the OG 1982 self-titled LP, maybe dabble with some of their oeuvre until 1989’s Quickness –not only for Ryan Fabry’s Don’t Blow No Bubbles in Plan B’s Questionable.
Later stuff is more risqué, bearing in mind that HR’s antics never helped, and that Lil John invited Dr Know, Daryl Jenifer and Earl Hudson on his tune Real Nigga Roll Call. Crunk and positive harcore music hand to hand? Now that’s some PMA.

Judas Priest:
Screaming For Vengeance
Tune used : Riding on the Wind
(Mike Carroll)
Hesh or fresh? How about both? If the Gino/Guns’n’Roses combo worked once, could it be reproduced ? It took four years, until Fully Flared, to obtain a definite answer to this Kafkaian, haunting question. “Yes,” Mike Carroll’s part replied, to the second tune of Judas Priest’s eighth album that’s not unfamiliar to skateboarding : its artwork got used first for a Kelly Bird board on Real. “No doubt the most memorable of all my graphics” Kelly states, “and I’ll never forget when I saw Carroll on the cover of Slap wearing the shirt. No royalty check would ever amount to the personal value of that cover for me.” Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, this is most probably why Jamie Thomas re-used it on a deck years later…
Anyway, back to all things evil, up until the 1986, synth-plagued Turbo album, it’s safe to say that Judas Priest were the true metal gods, beating Maiden by a (permed) hair. Partially because it’s at one of their shows that the pinnacle of mulleted splendor, the Heavy Metal Parking Lot documentary, was filmed, and also because Rob Halford’s band had to go to this ridiculous trial for supposed subliminal messages in one of their songs, not Maiden. Two major plusses, not to mention Halford’s heroic on-stage Harley accident.
For all these scientific reasons, Judas Priest wins. Not by much, though. Maybe if they had got a cease-and-desist from Gene Simmons (Kiss) for using a patented face make-up paint pattern, as King Diamond did –confirmed by Simmons on his website- the victory would have been more undisputable.

Silence of The lambs (soundtrack)
Tune used : Goodbye Horses
by Q Lazzarus (Marc Johnson)
“There is so much violence and obscurity within the walls of Goodbye Horses. It is what the world would be listening to on a Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war, only if the Nazis had good taste. This song rivals every other song ever known to man”, somebody claiming to be one-hit wonder Q Lazzarus herself modestly states on her MySpace regarding her1991 tune. “I feel creepy just listening to it”, ‘Q’ adds. Not because of MJ’s award-winning part. More because it accompanied serial killer Buffalo Bill’s awkwardly onanistic dance in front of his mirror in Silence of the Lambs. Please note that director Jonathan Demme must have some sort of complicated fetish with Goodbye Horses, for he used it already in Married To The Mob, three years before… But that’s not the point.
The important thing is that Q Lazzarus, a former NYC cab driver, has reached mythical status by performing a disappearance of Jed Walteresque proportions, while some of her former band members are still around to confirm that, yes, she’s real. But that’s about it. To get this unsettling great track, only two options : either go the intellectual route by purchasing the Silence of The Lambs soundtrack (it features Tom Petty and Savage Republic too), or go the parodic way by getting Clerks 2’s. As Fully Flared incidentally, it showcases King Diamond’s talent. Yet counter-balanced by a Samantha Fox joint, though.

Screen memory | Tom Knox

2008-05-29T06:39:00.000-07:00

Ever since his part to Motorcycle Psycho in Risk It, it would have felt weird, for some reason, if Tom Knox had been, say, into Usher. A big psycho/punk connoisseur, he took some time off his multi-tasking life (training for his Brazilian jiu-jitsu brown belt, as he already got a black one in judo, part-time structural aircraft ingeneer, drummer, pro skater too by the way) to share a little playlist. Can't be flamenco every time, people.
(click on the titles to see clips)

5 bad-ass standup bass songs that would sound good in a skate video | by Tom Knox

1. Hank III: Straight to Hell
"Because this is where skaters are going!"

2. Reverend Horton Heat: Big Sky
"The opening riff gets you pumped."

3. Cacti Widders: The White Whale
"A song about being on the road in a shitty van, something skater can relate to."

4. Stray Cats: Rock This Town
"Classic bass line in a song about tearing up the town."

5. Tiger Army: Never Die
"Something skaters will never do!"

This means (no) business

2008-05-20T05:06:00.000-07:00

Hey sorry I just skipped a week, I'm on an excellent NYC adventure right now, so I'll post some more stuff in a week or something. That's leaving you some time to learn flamenco guitar, right?

Screen memory | Daniel Lebron

2008-05-06T11:05:00.001-07:00

Some time in 1996, the skate shop we were hanging out at in Montpellier (France) received some super ghetto, home made posters for a random contest in Llerida (Spain). Back then there weren't really any Euro mags around, barely any internet access amongst our circles, so we didn't know anything about the Spanish scene. Were there even skaters there? We had no clue. The contest had some prize money, cool, so some people in our crew -I won't "poucave" any names- developed definite bounty hunter thoughts about it. The only problem? There was a bit of an obstacle between the loot and our elite's grandeur dreams. Once we reached basically, and I've been to all the Munsters and the Radlands, we witnessed the most amazing street course destruction I've ever seen. EVER. It got stormed by then unknown names such as Javier Sarmiento, Sem Rubio, Marcelino Castro, Alex Castaneda, Pablo Dominguez, Raul Retamal. Daniel Lebron was there too, I think. Or maybe he wasn't, but I just wanted to share one of these humbling moments that life teaches you sometimes. Anyway. As you might know by now, Dani is also a really good flamenco guitar player. Here's the playlist qui va avec...

5 flamenco tunes that would
sound good in a skate video | by Daniel Lebron

1. Paco de Lucia: La tumbona
Listen to it here, but don't buy from them

2. Paco de Lucia: Entre dos aguas
Check the 1976 video here

3. Camaron: Romance de la luna
You think it's a video, but it's ony the tune, right here

4. Camaron: La leyenda del tiempo
Musical slideshow, this way

5. Vicente Amigo: Ciudad de las ideas
Better than Live After Death, aqui

Freedom ads | Le informeur de la police

2008-05-02T15:45:00.000-07:00

Being a big fan of the Police Informer blog, here's my contribution to ad nostalgia, it's a pretty honest look at how French mags rolled circa 1992. Recipe for fast art directing an ad in Anyway mag : when two US pros (Kareem and Dune in this case) would come over, the distributor would take the second-choice photos from the tour article, lay them out with a priceless hand-drawn font plus all the mandatory shout-outs to the shops that helped along the way, et voilà. Not quite Supra ad budget. Scans courtesy of Mikesquad, a damn fine cartoon artist from Bretagne, and stuck in the early '90s skateboarding-wise...

And no, there's absolutely no link to music in skateboard videos on this one. I can stretch it by flaunting the Stereo/Chris Pastras/Visual Sound correlation maybe.

AVS #3 | Element "Fine artists" (1994)

2008-04-28T16:34:00.000-07:00

From Kingpin # 53 (May 2008)

As 1993 slowly morphed into 1994, skateboarding started to drop its most shapeless baggy pants, for life can't be a giant rave circus eternally. And Underworld Element dropped "Underworld" from its name, introducing Fine Artists vol.1, the swan song of its golden age -meaning: when Andy Howell was involved. But what a swan song ! A true masterpiece, featuring among others Billy Pepper, Doug Saenz, Andy Stone, Eric Pupecki, Stevie Williams in his first real video part, and, needless to say, Pepe Martinez in his legendary curtains segment. No communion with Mother Nature here. In its 1.0 version, Element was street tough certified, as one of skateboard vid's greatest street fights attests in the ending credits. What was that guy in the motorcycle helmet thinking? Nobody knows, but what's for sure is that 1/ It comes a close second in the skate flick's hall of fame bloopers, right after that one gentleman getting his cranium cracked by a bearded psychopath's board at the end of Right To Skate, and 2/ It fits perfectly Joe Jackson's desperately bluesy tune What's The Use of Getting Sober... Ah, the Droorstalgia !
Showcasing a mix of '90s hip hop, classic soul and the mandatory Sabbath track, the third installment of Visual Sound pays a double tribute to, respectively, the five years skateboarding's been missing Pepe, and an unplausible time period when a Champion sweat-shirt was actually not a fashion faux-pas.

(Couldn't find each separate part so here's the whole video right here. 24 minutes of attention. You can do it)

The Commodores: Commodores
Tune used: Brick House (Billy Pepper)
How can an editor use a tune already used in another skate video and sleep at night? Major no-no. Oh, the pathetic moment when Powell recycled McRad's Weakness from Public Domain! It's OK though if the second attempt gets a 100 times stronger impact, which is the case with The Commodores' Brick House. A forgettable background to a surprisingly front-foot double flipping Mike Maldonado in H Street's Lick (speaking of swan song...), the 1977's sick and slick soul tune made perfect sense, two years later, to underline Billy Pepper's compact, dynamic skateboarding.
With a moustache-emblazoned Lionel Ritchie singing the praises of a "mighty-mighty, waaw" woman, the track itself comes from the seminal, self-titled LP and describes a young creature allegedly "built like a brick house". Which is, hum, good. Probably. Funny enough, legend has it that the lyrics were written by William King's wife, who wrote them overnight after her husband fell asleep on the couch, trying to figure out a last song for the LP. On a more tragic note, Brick House also got re-recorded in 2003 for the movie House Of 1000 Corpses, by a stunning Lionel Ritchie/Rob Zombie duet. As bizarre as a woman made out of bricks.

Black Sabbath: Master Of Reality
Tune used: Sweat Leaf (Eric Rewadi)
A very brief part for a very brief career. Eric Rewadi, ladies and gentlemen ! As Element was going East-Coast crazy, it gave the Philadelphian a chance he never really pursued in the limelight - even though he still skates, with Fred Gall and Lou Metal these days. So. Black Sabbath. Again, a muddy terrain since Ozzy's band's repertoire has been over-dug into, from Henry Sanchez' to Fred Gall's epic parts to even naming a Zero vid, Thrill of It All. Yet, the less-than-a-minute part lets Sabbath's third album's first track resonnate all over Love Park -an abrupt contrast to, say, Stevie Williams' choice of scat jazz/rap pioneers Freestyle Fellowship (Project Blowed) on the same spot- and it kind of works.
The full LP, anyway, released in 1971 six months only after Paranoid, is part of the Sabbath classics everybody should own. Which means the pre-1980 ones, before the Ozzy-less band pathetically tried to compete with all these cheezy stadium metal bands. A blend of hallucinated, beefed-up, greasy rock, infused in the finest drugs available at the time. Even though Rolling Stone saw Master of Reality as "naive, simplistic, repetitive, absolute doggerel" when it came out, well, that's maybe exactly what you should be after. For intricate heavy metal (ie guitar solos), just invest in Dokken. And die.

Lord Finesse & DJ Mike Smooth:
Funky Technician
Tune used: Funky Technician (Pepe Martinez)
Legends unite ! As much of a cornerstone as Pepe's switch back flips up stairs, the debut album from Finesse and Smooth will remain one of the turning points in the early '90s hip hop history. It doesn't take a specifically seasonned crate digger to understand that when DJ Premier, Showbiz and Diamond D are behind the wheel, the result might come out fine.
Released in 1990, these very 13 tracks shaped the way of many beats to come, and are still regarded as legendary in 2008. Of course, 18 years later people have stopped sampling only James Brown (in Pepe's tune's case : Blind Man Can See It from the Black Caesar soundtrack) to widen their horizons, yet then, the whole approach was revolutionnary. As much as a f-side 180 nollie over a standing garbage can.
As an echo to this musical evolution, the most observant video nerds will have noticed on a side note that Martinez' clothes mutate throughout his part, going from potato-bag chic to tight(er) white t-shirts and semi-normal pants. Skateboard history in action, people ! "To many I might look like a hoodlum, but I'm a rapper and a pretty damn good one", Finesse stated. Pepe could have claimed the same status in the slateboarding world. From '93 til infinity, he will rest in peace as Pulaski's own funky techician...

Screen memory | Aaron Meza

2008-04-19T07:55:00.000-07:00

Having picked the soundtrack to FTC's Penal Code 100 A, alone, makes you a permanent honoris causa citizen of this blog. Aaron Meza, of crailtap fame, did. So instead of talking about his greatest achievements, which we all know and revere, how about his greatest almosts? Here are some tunes that shoulda, coulda, woulda been in skateboard videos if only it was all up to the mullet-girded 8th grader on this photo.

5 great songs that should (or maybe one day will)
be in a skate video | by Aaron Meza

1. John Simon: Tannenbaum
"I thought Rick or MJ could have skated to it in Fully Flared. Damn it, outvoted again. I was going to use it for the JJ Rouseau part of The Déjà Vu Cliché video but they booted him off the team."

2. Belle and Sebastian: Fuck This Shit
"A sad instrumental that could be used for the bummer part of a bummer video."

3. Diamond Head: Am I Evil
"Alex Olson should have skated to this, you'd probably have to lose the intro though."

4. Sleep: Dragonaut
"But only if it were never used in Gummo and it was of two skaters, friends, skating through town hitting spots like in an old Powell video, and then they go sniff glue and kill cats. I'd cast Lennie Kirk and Josh Kalis from 1996."

5. Alice Cooper: Hello Hooray
"It'd really be at the front of the video and only on the premiere copy. It'd play while the audience was in the theater waiting to see the video that took another four years to finish. I'd be kind of an apology but it'd be triumphant as well. At least that's the way I'd see it."

Interlude | France's museum of horrors

2008-04-15T10:37:00.000-07:00

Now operated from Tunisia, Yoann Cimier's site bares a name as plain (Skate Site) as its content is excellent. Besides his pretty cool photos and artistic manifestos, he's also been compiling a bunch of vintage books, mags (some erotic ones in there too, you sleaze balls) and LPs that once bared skateboarding on their covers. Music-wise, here's a small look at these doomed times when skateboarding in France was cool and all over the place. Makes you love these recessions even more...

Aimable : Un Air de Hit Parade
Alas deceased in 1997, French "suspended-piano" all-time champ Aimable ("loveable", yes) can be seen as yesterday's Pete Rock, as far as instrumentals go. For the anecdote, he recorded over 10,000 tunes and started as a sax player, until a soccer game with an empty can went wrong and broke all his front teeth as a kid. Rough and tough is the accordeonist life, dog.
Regarding this great cover shot, no idea how he came up with that daring concept, though. All the skateboarding world needs to know is that French balloche-style accordion's heaviest-hitter sends a shout-out to "The Saint-Nicolas D'Igny high school skate club" in the credits. Matt Hensley beware, Aimable is rolling 12-deep.

André Brasseur : Skateboard USA
Hailing from neighboring Belgium, André Brasseur's music was actually kinda super-cool. An acclaimed jazz Hammond player, he did experience success in 1965 with Early Bird Satellite, launched on the same time frame than the first telecommunications satellite. Today he probably would have composed The I Phone Boogie or something. Brasseur then went on to become very collectable to DJs/crate diggers for his handful of mid-60s sonic experiences, which happen to be very listenable, such as this 45.

Lady Skate & Les Skateboard Kids : Skateboard Baby
"The two feet on your skate, bend your knees, get ready/for the big slalom!" Lady Skate's enthousiastic energy is just awesomely scary. Like when you stumble upon these Mormon kids who try to lure you in by being overly nice and it gets all awkward, you know? Creepy.
Set to a hybrid country-ish/rock background, Lady Skate's only known 7'' was a stellar one-hitter. Only, it didn't really hit. Usually sells for under a buck on Ebay.

Topaloff : Les Rois du Skateboard
One of France's favorite buffoons, Patrick Topaloff got famous in the '70s, for his first single J'ai Bien Mangé J'ai Bien Bu got produced by disco-pop legend Claude François. He then proceeded to establish pure stardom by connecting to his fan base via breath-taking performances on camping grounds and/or supermarket parking lots. This all-out approach propelled the people's choice icon into some of France's finest slapstick movies such as Le Führer en Folie or Drôle de Zèbre, so surreal they might actually be worth something, some day.
More unbreakable than Zoo York, Topaloff relentlessly delivered the, mmh, "goods". A tune with the biggest amount of puns based on he word 'egg'? Check. Johnny Be Good adapted and sung in an Arabic accent under the name Ali Be Good? Check. The mandatory skateboard tune in 1978? Check. After Les Rois du Skateboard, Topaloff never forgot skateboarding : he later got this very chef 'oeuvre covered by the unforgettable, yet forgotten somehow, Patrick Dupin, before slowly disappearing from the limelight and becoming homeless. So that's cool, France had its Andy Roy too. Minus the tattoos and probably the projectile vomiting, though.

Don't forget to go see more on Skate Site, Yoann also has sound clips on there, and a ton of other songs, not all bad -JFA, Dead Kennedys and such. To complement it, also check the special Skateboard playlist on Bide&Musique, a website strictly dedicated to cheesy French tunes.

Visually collaborative (kinda)

2008-04-12T19:51:00.000-07:00

It's not really a collaboration, since there's only been one issued, but I pompously pretend it's one, so one day it will sell for an unreasonable price at like Undefeated or Colette. Working on my retirement, folks !
As you might know, or not know, Traffic Skateboards skater and Direction East boss Henry Panza, besides being one of the highlights of the Via flick, is also linked to the Pennswood woodshop, where everybody can get some super sick custom boards made. Anyway, we were kind of talking about reggae, and Henry liked some of the photos I've been taking over the past ten years of the heaviest dub sound systems in London (Jah Shaka, Aba Shanti, Channel One, King Shiloh...), and the rest is not history at all. Just a cool board that I really like. Thanks Henry !

Screen memory | Fred Demard

2008-04-09T18:57:00.000-07:00

We all were going to keep on lamenting forever after the demise of Chill mag, made by these people of taste and fine defenders of the Droorstalgia themselves. So one day the French president called Fred Demard, the man, the legend, the tail-grabbing pop-shove it icon, and Soma magazine was born. Super nice layout, small format, available for 1 Euro only at all the fine skate-shops in France. Until a new real posting, in two weeks I think, here's Soma's editor in chief's little playlist...

5 songs that should be
in skateboard videos | by Fred Demard

1. The Beatles : Helter Skelter

2 Fugazi : Guilford Fall Demo (Instrument album's version)

3. Beefeater : Wars in Space

4. Dag Nasty : All Ages Show

5. Neil Young : Southern Pacific

"Oh and also I would imagine Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA over a Bam Margera part, that would kill", Fred added. Just to give you a small, small glimpse of his kind of humour...

Only built for cuban links

2008-04-09T08:39:00.000-07:00

Being new to the blog thing, not sure about etiquette dos and donts, might sound corny but I'd like to thank crailtap, slap, 1 fellswoop and you will soon for the link up. Without these guys I could never have bought that first Red Bull Range Rover.

Screen memory /// John Cardiel

2008-03-29T07:40:00.000-07:00

Did you notice? You barely hear any good reggae in skateboard videos. Most of the time, you end up with some home-recorded material made by the skater himself, all the way since Jeff Hartsel, with more or less convincing results. Besides the cleverly-fitting Pioneers tune on Sergei Trudnowski's part in Sheeps' Life Of Leisure (Wolves in Sheep Clothing), or Althea and Donna's Uptown Top Ranking jam for Huf in Penal Code 100 A, what stands out? I'll tell you what : John Cardiel's section in Sight Unseen, set to the ferocious spiritual rant of Bobo-dread general Sizzla. For those who didn't know before the VBS series, the one that proved that you don't need to be crazy or have killed somebody to deserve a biopic, John Cardiel is a massive reggae head. These are some tunes he'd like to hear, just one of these days -pivate Sizzla joke- on a skate flick soundtrack. Needless to say you can add your own tunes in the comments...

The top 5 reggae tunes that would
sound good in a skate video /// by John Cardiel

1. Junior Byles : Fade Away

2. Barrington Levy : Rock and Come In

3. Assassin : Surprise

4. Sizzla Kalonji : Talk All You Want

5. Shinehead : Know How Fi Chat

Screen memory /// Henry Panza

2008-03-26T16:22:00.000-07:00

I know. I lied. It was supposed to be strictly an archive for the Kingpin feature, then you spend a day or tow without new posts and it looks so empty. So, being lazy (I blame it on excessive South-of-Frenchness), I decided to let the slavemaster in me express himself and have other people do my job and do some playlists on various themes. Outsourcing at its best -ie at its least tiring.
In order to cross-celebrate the Traffic skateboards article in the new Kingpin and the birth of this very section in the mag, the first one to do the honors is one of my favorite skaters from the past years. Very honored to welcome the Direction East don, and East Coast powerhouse, über-pop wizard Henry Panza.
(Photo from the Traffic website by Stadler)

"5 songs I felt fit the skater
and worked the best in videos" /// by Henry Panza

1. Misfits : London Dungeon
(Mike Maldonado, Welcome to Hell)

2. GZA : Publicity
(Gino Ianucci, The Chocolate Tour)

3. Neil Young : Cowgirl In The Sand
(Aaron Suski, In Search of Roots & Culture)

4. Metallica : Damage Inc.
(Ricky Oyola, Eastern Exposure 3)

5. Pink Floyd : Time
(Mike Maldonado, Jump Off a Building)

More tech than a pressure flip

2008-03-23T07:36:00.000-07:00

Oh and by the way, forgot to say it but if you click on each album cover you get to see the matcing video part, whenever I could find it. Feeling as tech as Damon Byrd over here.

AVS #2 /// “Mosaic”, Habitat (2003)

2008-03-22T07:51:00.000-07:00

from kingpin # 52, april 2008

For the second installment of what has officially now become a monthly feature, and almost as obvious of a choice as last month’s pick Mouse, here comes Habitat skateboards’ Mosaic.
Besides the occasionnal RJD2 beats lost in this mostly late 60’s rock invasion, and the mandatory Dinosaur Junior tune without which the Sect would lose a tad of its Sovereignity, Mosaic's stands as one of these soundtracks where it’s hard to only pick three crucial albums from.
But bravely we dared, baring in mind that most the other artists present on it (The Chocolate Watchband, Papa M, Cymande, The Greenhornes…) also deserve to suck your wallet dry.

The Masters Apprentices : s/t

Tune used : War or Hands of Time (Stefan Janoski)

As everybody knows, Midnight Oil and INXS are the greatest Australian bands ever. Just kidding, come on. AC/DC having been played to death, or at least to nausea in skateboard videos –next editor to use Highway To Hell will be shot- how about The Masters Apprentices ? From 1964 to 1972, they ruled the local charts and went on to look for decent success overseas (alas it never really came), starting from the ashes of a band called The Mustangs, one of these dance band-style clones of the Shadows.

Even though War or hands Of Time –actually the B-side to Undecided, their early hit- was in 1966 the first Australian pop song to directly address the Vietnam war issue, we all know what you care about : how did the video editor to Janoski’s part manage to synchronise so perfectly the two quick drum rolls with the firecracker down that set of steps ? Almost as good as Rick James’ little scream to Rick Howard’s switch tre at Beryl Banks in Virtual Reality, you think. Not interested in history, huh ? Shame on you !

Mudhoney : Superfuzz Bigmuffs plus early singles

Tune used : If I Think
(Heath Kirchart / Steve Berra)

Seems like each and every Sub Pop, Seattle-based band from the early ‘90s appeared on videos from these troubled times. Only Mudhoney is one of the few that deserved to outlive the grunge hype. It did, brilliantly (9 albums in 18 years and counting, folks), and Heath and Steve haven’t forgotten about Mark Arm’s stoner lowfi outfit, picking the song for their joint part from Mudhoney’s chef d’oeuvre of a 1989 six-track EP, Superfuzz Bigmuffs.
OK, no tune of theirs will probably provide the adrenaline rush Let It Slide did on SMA’s Debunker did in its time, but till… To sum it all up, early-‘90s Mudhoney was the blueprint band to a whole generation of music, so why give a chance to followers ?
On a fashion note incidentally, they are also partially responsible for introducing the flanel shirt to the little skate world, leading to the amazing raver/lumberjack hybrid skateboard look that was the rage in 1992. Other necessary albums from them include Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge and Piece of Cake.

Spoon : Kill The Moonlight

Tune used :
Way We Get By (Jason Dill)

Seeing Will Ferrel acting serious is like imagining Jason Dill conventionnally dressed: if not impossible, barely imaginable. However the former once did, in Stranger Than Fiction, and the latter too, in Mosaic. Both flicks share one thing : a song, Way We Get By, by an Austin-based band that formed in 1998.
Once you manage to swallow that little in-mouth throw up triggered by anything your oh-so-close-minded skateboarder brain identifies as "hipster material" (we’re talking about the band only here, and God knows being remixed by M.I.A.’s DJ Diplo won’t help), truth is that Kill The Moonlight is more than just a fine 2002 Bowesque, Bluresque, power-popish album.
It still is their best one to date and goes hand in hand with their Girls Can Tell effort, while the OGs –I mean, if OGs were into emotionnal shit and not, like, Suicidal Tendencies- worship instead their famous The Agony of Laffitte EP, where they diss the Elektra executive who dropped them from the label. Anyway. Back to Way We Get By, simply remember it as « the one and only time Jason Dill didn’t skate to Radiohead’s Polyethylen and it worked » song.

AVS #1 /// “Mouse”, Girl (1996)

2008-03-20T09:01:00.000-07:00

from kingpin # 51, march 2008

Some artists were already superstars, some bands could have remained local heroes forever. And some should have. Until one day, now or then, a track of theirs got used in a skateboard video. Operation Ivy? Without their This Is Not The New H Street Video bonanza, not sure they would have gone anywhere special. Band Of Horses? A two tracks, Fully-Marianer’d part later, they’re all over discussion boards. 1989’s own Handy With Shovels, who accompanied Brian Lotti’s revolutionary part in Now'n'Later? To this day, they say, they still get inquiries about Not The Same, from their 5-tracks demo tape. And so on…

Call it skate-rock, skate music, skoundtrack. It generated more or less long-lived trends (What happened to Master P?) but point is, admit it or not, most of your musical background comes from skateboard videos. From now on, Kingpin is going to help you build the ultimate skate-nerd music library, picking videos on their sole musical interest –which happen usually to have a major skateboarding interest too. Welcome to our new monthly feature, A Visual Sound. For its first installment, why not start with the mother of all soulful soundtracks? Ladies and gentlemen, Girl skateboards' second flick, Mouse, straight out of 1996.

(Disclaimer : for obviousness reasons, I purposedly left Herbie Hancock's Watermelon Man out of this selection, assuming that the whole world owns this album already. No?)

Bob Dorough :
“Multiplication Rock”
Tune used : 3 is a magic number (intro)
As you might know, three is the magic number. While number 9, still according to Bob Dorough, is arguably “naughty”. Through the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, this vocal jazz singer who used to jam with Miles Davis suddenly became every little American kid’s nightmare, thanks to the Schoolhouse rock show that he hosted on local ABC channels. Just kidding.
Still alive and well today (age 84), Dorough stands as probably one of the few people on earth who actually made kids remember math tables, thanks to funny lyrics and that soothing voice. Not the most immediate tune that comes to mind for a skate video soundtrack some might argue, it still achieved cult status when sampled by De la Soul and also appeared on a more musically-minded Blue Note compilation called Blue Break Beats 4 – featuring also progressive jazz god David Axelrod, among others.
In any case, it perfectly fits any movie scene that involves a giant mouse riding a Vespa in the streets of Torrance with Mike Carroll disguised as an In'n'Out employee.

Cymande :
“Promised Heights”
Tune used : Brothers On The Slide (D.Castillo / S.Randle / G.Rodriguez)
They might occasionnally lyrically praise Jah, don’t get mistaken though : Cymande was, is and will always be one of the most infectious all-time funk groups.
With musicians hailing from Guyana and Jamaica, including reggae band Aswad’s amazing multi-terrain sax/flutist Michael “Bami” Rose –black music’s John Cardiel, if you will- the nine-members equipage still remains as one of the most sampled acts ever. Funny enough, its serious political message on Brothers on the Slide, if taken litterally, later proved to apply to two of that 3-skaters part : shortly after Mouse, Shamil Randle and Gabriel Rodriguez totally slid out of the skateboarding world. Trippy ! Not as much as Cymande’s album covers.
Anyway, the track in question can also be found on their Renegades of Funk comp or on the reissue LP Best Of Cymande, for the fetishist, yet cheap, vynil enthusiast.

Royal Flush :
“Worldwide”
Tune used : Worldwide instrumental mix (Gino Ianucci /
Keenan Milton)
When curly-haired soul music über-star Billy Preston covered You Are So Beautiful in 1974, he certainly didn’t think that his stellar, heart-melting effort was to become one of the hip hop sensations of the moment, twenty-or-so years later. In 1996, as sampled by the likes of East-Coast ghetto sensation Royal Flush, the tunes’ violins became an instant success again, propelling the humbly self-called “Street Boss” into selling over 150,000 copies of the album that followed the release of the 4-track 12’’ used on Ianucci’s and Milton’s 46-seconds-long part (counted).
For those who didn’t know, the full-length was called Ghetto Millionnaire and came out on Blunt Records, so that might give away a handful of the philosophical themes discussed in this true masterpiece. Like The Hieroglyphics Crew, The Beastie Boys or Lord Finesse, Royal Flush stands as one of the most memorable skateboard-affiliated rappers. Not sure he kows, even less sure he cares.

Skatemaster Tape

2008-03-20T08:28:00.000-07:00

Some time last year, i found a really interesting cassette. Kids, a cassette is, or was, a rectangular piece of plastic with a magnetic band going at the bottom of it that played music. Anyway, this very tape was a compilation of my personnal favorite tunes from skateboard videos, from 1989 to 1992. Yeah, it took me 3 years to complete it, and being from the smallest neck-of-the-wood village in the south of France, that was my only access. I mean, try to go to La Disquerie in Narbonne in 1989 and ask for an Odd Man Out album, just to see the guy's face...
Needless to say, the sound engineering was immaculate, crisp, professional : this stunning 82-tracks chef d'oeuvre was recorded with a tape player stuck to the TV's speaker, which allowed all kind of noises to invite themselves on it -my dad's cough being always a crowd favorite-, and they would harmoniously complement the various board noises/cameramen shout-outs that we all know and love. Even now when I hear the actual tune I'm surprised not to hear "Yeah, Matt!" on Sub Society's A Whole Lot Less...
For shitty as it was, re-listening to it 15 years later, it made me think that this very tape was the very foundation of the music I was gonna be into for the next decades. Fortunately thank you so very much, I've moved away from the Operation Ivys and Skatemaster Tates since, yet it helped a lot to build a taste for "different" music, from punk to hip hop to reggae.
Over the years after the tape, I've always picked up music I heard in skateboard videos. Big mistake sometimes (I have that Pennywise blue album too), but some of it remains eternally good, I think. Cymande, Black Sabbath, Lord Finesse, The Pioneers, Q Lazzarus, GG Allin, Casual, the list is endless.
It's to pay a tribute that I started this monthly feature in Kingpin Mag. It' s called A Visual Sound as one more tribute to one of my favorite skate vids of all time. Roll tape...