Re:music⎜The question

After the post below was up, the reader known as “El Blint” asked:

“Satva’s song in Welcome To Hell was sick too. Who was that? Ramsey Lewis; Ray Bryant?”

- Pretty close, but no. It was a tune called Superstar by the Overton Berry Ensemble, the band put together by the legendary Pacific Northwest pianist. It came out in 1995 on a jazz compilation called Feelin’ Good, on the (I’d guess) SF-based label Luv’N'Haight. Which misled numerous skate-nerds looking for that track, as the credits at the end of Welcome to Hell stated that the band was called “Feelin’ Good.”

- From Satva: “Being a DJ I have always been a big fan of Jazz samples that Hip Hop groups have sampled. At the time when we were putting together the final touches on the Welcome to Hell video I had heard a lot of the other music that Jamie was going to use for the video and I wanted to use something a little different and that reflected my steez.

The song I picked by The Overton Berry Ensemble was sampled by the Coup “Funk” which I was thinking about using but I instead used the OG break. It’s funny because over the years people always ask me about this track.

It’s fun searching old record stores for these original breaks and when people are trying to figure out that song I used. It kinda makes people get in that state of mind like a record collector searching for that ultimate break which was not my intention but it seems like it turned out that way.”

Interlude⎜Satva Leung’s greatest picks

As time has passed, mid-’90s Toy Machinist Satva Leung has found, as you already knew, a few different outlets for his creativity than just nollie backslide flipping through grannies’ ankles at Union Square.  He is/was a DJ, the mastermind of the Streets videos series and has been doing a million other things since, thank you very much.

First and foremost, he’s now the senior video producer at MediaMobz. Also, he just produced, shot, and edited the Students Saving The Ocean documentary film, produces video content on DJS, events, and some skate stuff for Vimby -type his name in the search engine and it shall be revealed. Amongst all this, he still lives life with his wife Karine and tears Golden Gate Park apart on the weekends on his skateboard.

So how did such a busy dude find time to put together the list of his five tunes in a skateboard video for A Visual Sound? No idea. But hey, I’m not complaining.

*****

Sir Lady Java: My Mom Said
As used on Ron Allen’s part in A Soldier’s Story (Life, 1990)
“The Life video, a timeless classic. I really liked the way this song came on in the video, it is kinda of a slow song but it was real powerful and surreal song. Props to Ron Allen!”

Broun Fellinis (**)
as used in Ride On (Real, 1995)
“I had just moved to SF about a year before this video came out and it was all about slashing up the avenues as we lived in the Sunset. The way the video starts with the Huf blazing down the avenues with the Brown Fellinis horn solos matching every ollie, it definitely captured the SF just roll out your door and hit the avenues.”
See it here

Casual : Lose in the End
As used on Mike Carroll’s part in Virtual Reality (Plan B, 1993)
“I used skate while listening to this song in my walkman all the time at EMB in hopes of some day being able to be as good as MC. Great song though and I still play this song when I DJ out at spots if there are some backpackers in the crowd.”
See it here

Michael Jackson : I Want You Back
As used on Guy mariano’s part in Video Days (Blind, 1991)
“I am sure there are tons of skaters that have picked this song but it is the truth, it was one of the most influential parts of all time and the song fit the part perfectly.”
See it here (*)

De La Soul : Eye Know
As used on Daewon Song’s part in  New World Order (World Industries, 1993)
“Daewon Song part was amazing in this video and usually is in all his video parts. The way it starts out with him killing Burl Banks and how the song starts, magical. I remember watching this video and we thought it was sped up as Daewon skates so fast.”
See it here (*)

(*) : … And I mean just “see” . No more soundtrack. Thanks WMG ! Really making the world a more musical place.

(**) Game show alert ! Whoever guesses first the title of the Broun Fellini song wins a Ron Allen CD -the one that features the Sir Lady Java tune right above ! How convenient. Now to the “Comments” section…

Sunday song⎜Brenton Wood

If I ever manage to remember to post one every Sunday, then this might as well become a regular feature. Otherwise… Oh well. Here’s the non-skate version of a yes-skate classic. Ladies and, err, ladies, Brenton Wood’s 1967 hit single, Gimme Little Sign -which is even more famous as a chicano/lowrider tune than for its presence on Jason Dill’s Snuff part (1993), believe it or not.

AVS 14⎜A Reason For Living (1990)

Sure, it might have been Santa Cruz videos’ ugly duckling of the golden age. Not easy to be noticed in between all the Streets on Fire and the Risk Its out there, especially when the riders’ list on the sleeve bears no less than 37 names, each one receiving a minute-or-so section. But so was A Reason For Living, the ultimate socialist dream where Sheffey, Dressen or Stranger received an equal treatment as, no offense, Troy Sliter or Beaze Lovelace -little known fact: these 56 minutes also invented the vert button on remotes worldwide.
In retrospect though, it might have been actually one of NHS’s best, come to think of it. What un-curious ’90s skaters never understood at the time was that this vid was one of these pivotal moments when the old and the new worlds in skateboarding collided, as the cover montage attested : Bod Boyle fastplanting over a curb-tailsliding Tom Knox. Anyway, bullshit-ish philosophical considerations aside, A Reason For Living also had of the best, most classic skate-rock soundtracks ever. Here are three out of the many albums that made this venerable 1990 film a reason for not leaving your living room.

The Weirdos: Weird World 1977-1981
Tune used : Solitary Confinement (Kendall / Hannan)

They say that in LA, it’s who you know. Ah, the clichés… Well, sometimes they’re true. Without their number one fan/friend Flea (of Vision Red Hot Skate Rock fame, or that one local LA hair-funk band), The Weirdos would never have recorded a proper album (Condor), even if it happened almost 15 years after they originally broke up. Oh well. Sounds like the fate of a lot of the LA early punk bands -think Crime, The Screamers…- that ability not to be able to get a record deal in a city that hosted pretty much the whole record industry of their time.

No worries, though : thanks to their numerous singles, four drummers, five bass players and unique frontman John Denny’s throat and disturbing antics, The Weirdos’ four-years stint made them 80s skateboarding’s deities, therefore a skate vid music staple -they also landed a tune in Sick Boyz’ soundtrack, remember? For those who didn’t know, the real antiheroes of LA’s true punk-rock, from before the suburbian/Oxnard wave that is, got summed-up on that more-than-decent 14 tracks album.

Naked Raygun : Understand?
Tune used : Treason (Kendall/Salba)

It’s always painful to hear people like Fallout Boy mention who their local hero band was when they grew up: Naked Raygun, they always say. But oh well, that’s the price to pay when you play with fire and start mixing punk-rock with pop-er, more melodic, influences. Exactly what Chicago-based Naked Raygun did. Only, since they and say Hüsker Dü were pioneering the genre, it sounded good.

The problem is that Naked Raygun opened the door in the process for all sort of OC apprentices, think Pennywise, Big Drill Car, or any punk-ish band involved in Questionnable or your average FMX TV show.

Anyway. The second to last album put out by the band in 1989, Understand?, was and still is a gem, and happened right before some of Naked Raygun’s members went on and experienced different fates, rolling with Big Black for guitarist Santiago Durango (good), and joining mid-90s 411-vids heartthrobs Pegboy for singer Marko Pezzati (not so good) *.

Of course, as everybody else, Naked Raygun reformed in 2006 for a bunch of shows, but I’ve always felt uneasy with older dudes shaking their bellies on stage -reminds me too much of when I go to the skatepark these days. On a side note, that tune Treason was also on a 12″ on Caroline Records, 2500 of them got printed. Good luck with that.

The Cyberflesh Conspiracy (compilation)
Tune used : Needle Park, by Diatribe (Natas)

With its tribal-like percussions and random vocal samples, it’s pretty safe to assume that Needle Park by San Jose-based industrial band Diatribe, contributed to the then-unsolved mystery surrounding Natas Kaupas, back in a time when when his latest move, pants, and Venice-curb dancing was scrutinized to the fullest. As his later 101 satanic model, this tune is as hard as it gets to find, as it appeared only, correct me if I’m wrong, on a joyous compilation of industrial rock called The Cyberflesh Conspiracy.

A few years after an industrial-ish incursion in a Santa Cruz video, via the Ministry/Ian Mc Kaye project Pailhead in Streets On Fire, A Reason For Living kept the genre alive in the skateboard world. Not for long, though. Soon after the admirable swan song that SMA’s Debunker was, Santa Cruz jumped the ship straight into a pair of giant trousers and offered the world the infamous Big Pants Small Wheels video. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It just felt a bit contrived.

* : See comments section. Or even better: www.punkdatabase.com/wiki/Main_Page

A whole lot more

From Sub Society to Operation Ivy, the Five-Percenters of skateboarding, yes you, the dying breed that looks back on a time when skateboard decks used to look like suppositories, might also remember that there was a pre-accordion, pre-Flogging Molly Matt Hensley. Not that there’s anything wrong* with the current Matt Hensley.
Having said that*, I recently got to ask the former Vespa Boy from Vista’s The Upsetters crew a few questions regarding his musical past. Which is still very much part of the present for a lot of people, it seems.

*****

“Shackle Me Not was all Mike Ternasky’s roommate’s music, he was a budding hip hop, electronic kind of guy. There were a couple really great bands in there, other than that it was mostly this dude’s music. A lot of that was that weird electronic sound going on. I didn’t pick the song out for my part. To be honest, that first video, noone knew that it was gonna do what it did, you know what I mean? Maybe Mike knew, but we never thought that a year later we’d be in Europe watching it in movie theaters and doing these huge demos.

After that, you can probably tell from the music in Hokus Pokus, the music was way more in tune with what everybody was doing. NOW you cared. It was like, ‘Now I’m pro, I wouldn’t skate to that song but only to this song.’ People got more involved. Sub Society was a band that someone at H Street, I forgot who, knew. When that song [A Whole Lot Less] came in, we listened to it and thought it was a great song. There were a couple songs I got to pick from, I can’t remember what the other ones were but Sub Society’s was really the best, it said San Diego, everything made sense about it. I did know some of the members, like I’d see them around the music circles, couple of them skated I think, but that’s not how it came to be. Separate kind of circles.

I used to be in a ska band around the same time caled the Spy Kids, I was the guitar player. It wasn’t that great of a band but we got to epen for The Selecter, which is cool. It was around for a year and a half, and the keyboard player went on and played with Unwritten Law later, which is a pretty popular band. Anyway, it was around that big ska period that I decided, ‘I want fucking Operation Ivy’ on my next part. From the Spy Kids I was already into ska and stuff, and I loved how Operation Ivy would play ska in a different manner. I’ve been a big fan of Tim Armstrong period, and Rancid, and that band. Actually on the latest Rancid album I’ve had the privilege to play accordion and banjo on one of their song.

I think Tim never said if being in skate vids ever helped them selling more records, he said something to me about skateboarding once, I think Lars might have said something, but it wasn’t bad, I hope we didn’t bum anybody out, because you’re not getting paid for it. Noone really understood the rights of musicians until you become a musician. Now I’m in this business, man, so if anybody just wants to rip a song and doesn’t get the rights for it, our agents and the people who work for Flogging Molly would freak out. That’s too bad but that’s the way it is. I really hope that Operation Ivy sold a lot more records because of H Street. And if they did, that puts a smile to my face.

I’ve had so many people come to me and thank me for making them discover these bands, that’s really cool. You gotta learn somewhere, I mean, no matter how you get it or where you get your sources. Cause again, all this was pre-internet, you had to work hard to find cool stuff, you know?”

Top 5 Hensley tunes (according to yours truly)

1. Patife Band: Teu bem (Shackle me Not)

2. Sub Society: A Whole Lot Less (Hokus Pokus)

3. Operation Ivy: Knowledge (Not The New H Street Video)

4. The Jam : News Of The World (Questionnable)

5. The Pogues: Sunny Side of the Street (Label Kills)

* Just came back to the US after my half of the year in Marseille, and first thing I had to do was to watch the whole latest season of Curb Your Enthusiasm in one serving. Might show in a few references here and there. Sorry.

A list supreme

If you kick it long enough, this blog might still be alive -barely, I know. Time flies, huh? Anyway, here’s a little treat for all you death metal heads out there.

As you know from visiting his studio with Slap, Ian Johnson is a lot into jazz, he also artistically directs Western Edition, has pretty bad-ass books out and we happen to be occasional contributors for Wax Poetics magazine – Ululation reissue coming soon, I swear. Here are few lists I forced him to work on…

Top 5 jazz albums for beginners

1. Jazz At Massey Hall
2. Kind Of Blue
3. The Greatest of the Hot Fives & Sevens
4. Mingus Ah Um
5. A Love Supreme

Top 5 jazz albums, ever

I couldn’t really say what the top albums of all time are, the five on the
previous list is probably closer to that,
but 5 of my favorites are…

1. Money Jungle
2. Live At The Circle Room
3. Everybody Digs Bill Evans
4. Nina Simone At Town Hall
5. Sleeping Beauty

Top 5 jazz tunes that would fit a skate flick, and for what skater

1. Song For My Father by Horace Silver for Chico Brenes in a Love Child /Finally hybrid
2. That’s How I Feel by Sun Ra for Drake Jones in Non Fiction
3. Poinciana by Ahmad Jamal for Gino Iannucci in Chocolate Tour
4. The Creator Has A Master Plan by Pharoah Sanders for Matt Field in then Cosmic Experience
5. Dear Old Stockholm by Miles Davis for Bobby Puleo in Static 2

Top 5 jazz artists to draw a portrait of

1. Eric Dolphy
2. Ornette Coleman
3. Art Blakey
4. Sun Ra
5. Don Cherry

Top 5 weirdest jazz tunes’ titles

1. Psychicemotus
2. Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues Are
3. All The Things You Could Be By Now If Sigmund Freud’s Wife Was Your Mother
4. Dunkin’ Bagel
5. Tapestry from an Asteroid

(If you consider Anthony Braxton to be jazz in that case probably all 5
would be his, like N-M488-44M-Z or those equation ones)

Top 5 “jazziest” skaters, ever

1. Mark Gonzales
2. Jason Lee
3. Bobby Puleo
4. Mike Carroll
5. Jovontae Turner

 

One ecumenical love

You know the good old musical interlude trick? Well here it is, old friends. French unknown aspiring rapper Sonikem proclaiming his ecumenical love for “extreme sports” from surf to roller to skate. Wish I had the courage to go through the whole tune and then the patience to translate all the lyrics, but I’m sure you’ll get it. Thanks Soma blog!

You, the people

Back by popular demand (actually one question), our feature called “Ask a question and we’ll get somebody that actually knows the answer to reply, ’cause I don’t” is back! This time it took the form of a request from Steven, following the Battle in Stereo post. Goes like this:

Steven: “Hey there is a new one up for Tony Karr, I’ve been trying to figure out the song,and no luck, PLEASE HELP ME!!”

The use of upper case followed by two exclamation points required a drastic response. Here it is, from Bryan Lint at Stereo, in person:

Bryan: “The song is called The Traitor and it is by Menahan Street Band on the album ‘Make the Road by Walking.’ It is the same band that Jay-Z used for the song Roc Boys (and the winner is…) when he sampled their song Make the Road by Walking.They are a really sick live band from New York in the vein of Breakestra, the Dap-Kings and El Michels Affair.”

Et voilà!

AVS 13⎜Deathbowl to Downtown (2009)

(Very sadly and coincidentally dedicated to the memory of Andy Kessler. Also, the DVD apparently ships next week, so just order it)

The lost art of skateboarding documentary is definitely demanding. So demanding that most of them tend to go the easy route : drama. Trying to make you cringe, or cry, or feel, to keep you interested. Jay Adams should have had it all, but he went to jail. Gator had it all, but he went to jail. What about Hosoi? Well, he went to jail -but he did have it all before. Jason Jesse? Let’s voyeur a bit into his depraved mind in order to feel safe and fuzzy, outside. And so on. At some point, some mental imbalance is required, it seems.
That’s why Deathbowl to Downtown is so refeshing. No rise and fall of a pop hero here. Just a straight-up journalistic tale of how New York City (and city in general for that matter) skateboarding was born, period, by the dynamic Rick Charnoski/Buddy Nichols duet. To top off all the early Shut footage -James Brown “Superbad” board reissue?- and rare sightings of a talkative Ryan Hickey, it’s a documentary with a more thoroughly thought through soundtrack than the usual litany of Top Of The Pops hits from whatever period it’s talking about. Peep this…

Antibalas : Liberation Afro Beat vol.1
Tune used : Battle of the Species

Hard to surpass Fela Kuti’s mastership over the Afro beat genre. Even his own son Seun gave up and just chose to imitate, to the perfection by the way, his dad’s music, frantic dancing and tight, red pants. Seeing a Seun show, at least, ships you straight to Lagos (Nigeria) thirty years ago for cheaper than investing in a time machine -ask Dyrdek, these don’t come off cheap. Anyway, it could have stayed this way forever until a Brooklyn-based, 11-members bulletproof (“anti-balas”) outfit decided at the end of the 20th Century to incorporate some originality in Fela’s legacy, using jazz, funk and improv elements, and not having listened to Eddie Palmieri’s Harlem River Drive Orchestra with adeaf ear, it must be said.

After the initial 7″ Uprising in 1999, Antibalas released their first album the following year, probably their most iconic so far. Funny how slept-on Afro Beat has been as far as skate videos go.

Drunk Injuns : From Where the Sun Now Stands, I will Fight No More, Forever
Tune used : Question Authority

When a band’s first LP is called Frontside Grind and was recorded in 1987, just expect exactly what it’s supposed to mean : classic, lowfi skate rock, in the Thrasher Skate Rock cassette tape sense that is. No wonder, as the Drunk Injuns’ singer, a certain Mofo, sort of directed and created the Thrasher Skate Rock series in question, and even coined the term “Skate Rock.”

Urban legends aside, taking bits from this one plus pieces from their original 1983 tape My Bad Dutch, not to forget two tracks from Ancestors : Gods Of Sound, this album with a title of Morrissey-esque proportions itself is kind of a documentary about the masked band’s early career -the only one they knew, as of course they only recorded four albums. From Where the Sun Now Stands, I Will Fight No More, Forever will pose as the perfect, semi-comprehensive compilation of the band’s statements. And will also remind to those who forgot that Mofo’s actual name is Mörizen Föche.

Fallin Off The Reel vol. 1
Tune used : Mas Y mas (Bronx River Parkway)

It’s pretty sad, but a lot of people in the highly intellectual skateboarding circles will never know anything more about the NY-based label Truth And Soul than this : it’s one of the radio stations in Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars. The fact to even know that is scary.

Anyway, if DFA label’s honcho Tim Sweeney still has a hand in picking the music for the GTA series, it pretty much can’t go wrong. Exhibit two, all the Truth And Soul tunes present in Deathbowl to Downtown, and particularly the Bronx River Parkway’s Mas Y mas, out of either their Deixa Pra La 45’s B-Side, or, for the poor turntable-less souls -the ones who probably invested in GTA instead- from T&S’s 2006 compilation CD. Whatever way works though as a reminder that latin music got soul and makes sense in a skateboard video, even if it’s been thirteen years already since Chico Brenes skated to Joe Pinto.

The Battle in stereo

You might know the co-captains, but the lieutnant isn’t bad either… A strict behind-the-scenes kind of dude –think Karl Rove, but in a good way– Bryan Lint has been working at Stereo for two years, and did you notice? The funkyzeit it’s been? All the good music in all these trailers? Well, dude’s been collecting records for a good 16 years so it had to show at some point.
“Back in the day I used to hunt so many skate tunes down”, he remembers on a side note. “Some ones that had some real impact on me were Survival of the Fittest by Mobb Deep from Tom Penny’s part in 411#2, Blue Train by John Coltrane from the Subzero video, 007 Shanty Town by Desmond Dekker from Keenan Milton’s part in Las Nueve Vidas De Paco and I Wish by Stevie Wonder from Jovontae Turner’s part in Love Child.”
This said, and in one more desperate attempt to shift million clicks from more notorious websites this way, I asked Bryan to talk about the tunes you hear on the Stereo commercials at the begining of each Battle at The Berrics -and a lot of times it happens to be the most exciting moment in them (*). Here’s his little spiel…

El Michels Affair: Enter the 37th Chamber
Tune used: Shimmy Shimmy Ya (Danny Supa)

“We had recently got turned on to this album by the art guy at Stereo, Jeff, and once we heard this instrumental album of Wu-Tang Covers, we knew immediately that this was going to be used for Danny’s commercial.

This hopefully familiar Old Dirty Bastard track is covered by the band, El Michels Affair, that actually backs Wu-Tang live when they perform. The whole album is a banging collection of classic Wu instrumentals performed by a live band, so make sure to cop that disc.”

Bob Dylan: Dylan
Tune used: Lily of the West (Clint Peterson)

“This Bob Dylan song was Clint’s choice and I think it represents him for sure. It definitely has a down home feel just like Clint’s rad wood burn artwork and like Stillwater, Minnesota, the town where he is from.

We were actually going to go with another song at first but Clint called last minute and told us he wanted to use this track which worked out really well.”

The Seeds: Self-Titled
Tune used: Can’t Seem To Make You Mine (Benny Fairfax)

“You can’t go wrong when it comes to mixing classic garage rock and skating and Benny’s style of skating is timeless for sure. You could place him in the early 90’s and he would fit with his super clean style and pop which is why I feel he totally embodies that “Stereo” style of skateboarding.

This Seeds track is one of their best and was actually brought to us by Ben Gore since he had the whole psych rock box set, “Nuggets” on his laptop.”

La Kabala: Self-Titled
Tune used: Azucar Quemada (Ben Gore)

“Ben had just went back up to San Francisco as we were working on his commercial and I had hooked him up with a bunch of jazz and Southern soul albums from the 60’s before he left.  Our filmer/editor, Matt, asked Ben if he had any preference for what song to use and Ben told him to just ask me because he knew I had some rare funky jams up my sleeve.

I chose this track because it had a funky psychedelic feel to it and because I thought the group was from Florida like Ben since they have a song called “Miami Beach”, (they are actually from Peru). Big ups to Orb, (dude that played the “Maps to the skater’s homes guy” in Animal Chin), who hooked me up with this track.

Taj Mahal: Self-Titled
Tune Used: Leaving Trunk (John Lupfer)

“One thing you gotta know about Johnny Lups is that he gets down on the skateboard and he definitely keeps it dirty! Known to rock the same outfit for weeks at a time, we had to go with a track that represented that down and dirty personality that John fully lives at all times.

If it was up to him, he probably would have picked a Lil Wayne song, (John once told me that he downloaded 500 Lil Wayne songs in one day!) but this raw blues jam definitely did the trick.”

Beck (Boards of Canada Remix): Guerolito
Tune used: Broken Drum (Josiah Gatlyn)

“Josiah is such a rad addition to Stereo and is undeniably amazing on a skateboard. He is such a motivated person with an abundance of natural talent so I can’t wait to see what he will bring to the upcoming new Stereo video.

He picked this Beck remix himself and had actually edited a version of his commercial on his own while he was hanging at the Stereo office but we had to cut it down due to time restraints. The intersection where he does the trick  in this commercial is in Downtown Los Angeles and there is always cars zooming by so that makes the trick even gnarlier.”

(*) Mandatory old fart slash “Back To The City contests in that empty fountain were better” rant.