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...
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...
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