Re:music | Rudy Johnson

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."