Concussion 18 by Davoud Kermaninejad

97377 96425

Concussion Number Eighteen Table of Contents

On the cover: Craig Whitehead, feeble grinder to fakie on some larger cockblock coping. Photo by Rhino

Editorial Rant That’s it, last straw, we give up. Everything has fallen apart. The multi-media giant known as Concussion Magazine has thrown in the towel. We had a good run though, we got our share of free shit, the cars, the ladies, it was a dream come true. The thing about us is, we know when to say when, and after all the bullshit leading up to this issue you have in front of you, we say whole heartedly “when”. We learned some things along the way though, we learned that jokes aren’t always funny to everyone, and that you have to be sensitive to other peoples feelings sometimes. A good example is “your momma” jokes, sometimes people really love their mom and take it pretty personal and don’t find it funny one bit. So if you say something like “Your momma is so fat it takes her two trips to haul ass”, you might find the recipient of your joke not laughing and maybe a little pissed off. This was the case for us after we ran some art in the last issue as a joke towards another skate magazine and as you might have guessed, they didn’t laugh. So, let that be a lesson to our readers; Unless you’re some kind of shitbag, don’t go making fun of people, because jokes hurt sometimes. So on top of that business, all kinds of stories for this issue fell apart too. And when stories fall apart at the Concussion offices, dreams fall apart too.

We had this Grime interview all set up and when we found out it wasn’t going to happen, it was a bad scene. All I can say is that we all ate ice cream on the couch and watched soap operas for like 2 weeks, we were bummed. We also had this thing we were going to do with this kid Brenden who has “mad skills” on his skateboard but we lagged and BOOM, that’s another two weeks on the couch. It’s just been really emotional for all of us here. If I had to think of a movie part that symbolizes our feelings, I would say it’s like that part in Top Gun, right after Goose dies and Mavericks all sad. It’s like that. So farewell dear readers, thanks for everything, and if your subscription has not run out, you will be refunded the difference shortly. To all the girls we took naked photos of and promised we were going to put in the magazine, sorry–please don’t call the police. I just hope in 100 years, when people look back on our little publication they can say “Man, that picture would look rad in color”. Because that’s all we ever strived to be, a crappy black and white magazine. So this is it, the final hoorah, the big adios. It was fun while it lasted. Some of the time, at least. - The Editors

Concussion Staff Senior Editors Davoud Kermaninejad Jonathan Hay Senior Art Fag Lee Charron Photographers Jason Murray Charlie Middleton Bruce Rodela Terry Roland Contributing Photographers Rhino Bryce Kanights Jonathan Steele Paul Wingert Matt Ballard Chris Ondercin Uri Korn Eric Gonzales Greg Hall Chris Anderson Sarah Harron L. Pazdirek Rob Taylor Video Editor Dave Amell Writers Ari Evan Gold Jonathan Steele Paul Morrison Salba Dave Amell Chris Romero Eric Gonazles Chris Ondercin Blake Hemi Peter Connelly Matt Ballard Chad Godett Zach Geddes Jason Diogiardi Artists Bob Brown

FINE PRINT: CONCUSSION MAGAZINE IS COPYRIGHT © 2002 BY CONCUSSION PRODUCTIONS. NOTHING FROM THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE USED IN WHOLE OR PART WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM THE PUBLISHERS OR COPYRIGHT OWNERS. CONCUSSION AND THE CONCUSSION SKULL LOGO ARE TRADEMARKS OF CONCUSSION MAGAZINE DISTRIBUTED BY DESERT MOON PERIODICALS, SANTA FE, NM. - WWW.DESERTMOON.COM DISTRIBUTED BY TOWER RECORDS, WORLDWIDE - TOWER.COM CONCUSSION WEBSITE: WWW.CONCUSSION.ORG SEND ALL CORRESPONDENCE TO: PO BOX 1024 SANTA CRUZ CA 95061-1024 OR EMAIL CONCUSSION@CONCUSSION.ORG. WHILE WE WELCOME UNSOLICITED EDITORIAL SUBMISSIONS, WE CANNOT RETURN YOUR PHOTOS OR WHATEVER WITHOUT A SELF-ADDRESSED STAMPED ENVELOPE. AND THAT DOESN’T MEAN THROWING A FEW DOLLARS IN WITH YOUR PACKAGE, IT MEANS WRITING YOUR ADDRESS ON AN ENVELOPE AND PUTTING STAMPS ON IT. DOMESTIC SUBSCRIPTIONS ARE $20 PER YEAR CANADIAN AND MEXICAN SUBSCRIPTIONS ARE $30 ALL OTHER INTERNATIONAL SUBSCRIPTIONS ARE $40. SINGLE ISSUES CAN BE ORDERED THROUGH THE MAIL FOR $5 IN THE CONTINENTAL U.S. OR $10 ELSEWHERE. FOR ADVERTISING RATES, PLEASE CALL 510-236-3922 OR 831-345-7832 OR VISIT OUR WEB PAGE AT WWW.CONCUSSION.ORG FOR MORE INFORMATION. ANY SIMILARITIES BETWEEN FICTITIOUS PERSONS MENTIONED IN THIS MAGAZINE AND REAL PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL. Concussion is Made on Macintosh. Concussion Magazine PO Box 1024 Santa Cruz, CA 95061-1024

Product Reviews

Blockhead Skateboards Blockhead is back. Drug back into the garage, as they say. I used to have a Sam Cunningham board back in my younger days, and now I skate with the guy at the Berkeley park. And you know what, he still rips! But I guess if your pro model is being rereleased you better be on your shit, huh Sam? Anyway Blockhead sent us a box with pretty much all of their models, and in addition to the nicely shaped, slightly square tail Sam Cunningham board they’ve got the “Hard Times” shape with a pointy nose, and the “Hard Times” kitty board with a more traditional Blockhead shape. The “Nothing is Cool” board (not shown) is a standard 8 x 32, and should satisfy most street grom’s needs. Anyway, all these boards are pretty cool, and some of them are signed limited edition first runs, which makes them extra cool. Oh wait, nothing is cool. So now what? I’m confused. Ah fuck it, I’m going skating.

Powell Park Rider Wheels

Bones Swiss Bearings

Have you ever had your friends tell you how great a movie is and then when you see it you’re dissapointed? Well luckily that wasn’t the case for these Powell park rider formula wheels. Some friends of mine had told me how rad they were and how long they last – one guy even claimed a set lasted him an entire year. So being the skeptic that I am I wasn’t expecting my experience to be anything like that, but these wheels proved me wrong. They kind of have an almost generic Kmart cheap urethane look to them–you know kind of off white and almost rubbery looking, which was another draw back for me. I am not gonna claim they are the best thing since sliced bread or anything like that but these wheels worked really good for me, of course I did ride mostly skateparks so they have lived up to their name. I did ride a pretty fucked up pool though with cracks and holes everywhere and they worked killer in there, they also felt really good just street skating around so they seemed like fairly all around wheels although I didn’t get too tech with ‘em. The set I was riding were 58mm, which may not be so great with getting your flip on but I probably wouldn’t know. Anyway yeah–really good wheels, I will probably end up telling all my friends how rad they are too. Oh yeah I am still riding them (two months) and no flats–so that’s always a bonus!

Bones Swiss are the best skateboarding bearing ever, period. You can talk all about ABEC ratings and removable shields and extensive lab testing and all kinds of shit, but if you’ve ever ridden a set of Bones Swiss (not the China Reds, not the Ceramics) you will agree that they are worth the extra $10 they cost over other bearings. Powell sent me a set of the Super Swiss, but my regular Swiss–which have been in my board for 6 months–are going faster than ever, so I don’t even want to take them out to test these new bearings. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? I can’t imagine how the Super Swiss are better than the regular Swiss though. These bearings are fast, they last, and you’re never stuck on some road trip wondering where the nearest skateshop is because you blew out a bearing and one of your wheels won’t roll. That shit sucks.

www.blockheadskateboards.com

DAF Accessories We have multiple items to review here, so I will just start with the coozees. I have seen plenty of coozees or cozies (depending where you are from) and for the most part they are all the same but these ones are extra super. They have this ribbed inner part that holds your beverage snug inside, no slippage, very nice. Another bonus is the hard plastic bottom which adds to the sturdyness of the coozee, you can tell that DAF really went that extra mile and we appreciate it. Next on the list is the glass “tobacco” pipe, this pipe came pre-loaded with “special” tobacco, which we smoked and it made us feel funny. So funny in fact that we stopped working on the magazine all together, played hacky-sack and started a wicked drum circle. We gave the pipe a red-eyed thumbs up. The last item was the thong undies and well, we don’t have any ladies at the offices here, so we never tried them on. However, we did sniff the crotch area of them quite often and we all agreed that they smelled new but who knows. Thanks DAF.

Sacrifice Skateboard So I was all ready to set up a new deck and this package from Sacrifice happened to come in the mail the same day. And what do you know, but it’s an 8.25” deck, which is what I ride! So I gripped it, set the bad boy up, and off to the park I went. I don’t really drink PBR too often, but whatever, I’d rather have a beer logo on the bottom of my board any day over a fucking Angel or a Devil or a Leprechaun or some other cartoon shit. Remember that scene in Blue Velvet where Dennis Hopper is screaming about Pabst Blue Ribbon, man? That’s what this deck reminded me of. Anyway the concave is good, the shit’s got pop, but I’ve only ridden this deck for a couple of days so I can’t really tell you how it has lasted just yet. Still it’s pretty good considering the fact that we don’t even ride half the shit we review, and I’m actually riding this deck so that should tell you something. www.sacrificeskateboards.com

skatepark Reviews Wheeler Skatepark Aurora, Colorado Colorado just keeps on getting better. The Aurora park adds to the abundance of bitchin, skateable concrete terrain on the Front Range. The park has bowls, a mini Derby-esque snake run (but with metal coping), and a not so great street course. The bowl is definitely the best part of the park. The deep end is 7’ and the shallow is 4’. The concrete is smooth, but the coping is sunk in a bit too much. The design is slightly square on both ends, yet the corners are nice and speedy. The hips are good for boosting if you’re one of those able to take flight. My major qualms with this park are the lack of shade, the fucking crowds after school gets out (it’s ridiculous), and the fact that the surrounding area is overflowing with kids. You can’t miss it, just keep an eye out for the skatepark next to the baseball fields, roller hockey rink, weirdo blue sculpture thing, and handfuls of lurkers who are too burnt out to partake in any of the above activities. – Sarah Drexler

Welcome to suburbia, Aurora, Co. Ben Lomond, Ca street course

We were emailed a bunch of photos of this park, but couldn’t open the files on our computer, so we stole these shots off their website. Probably makes it look better than it is? That’s the word on the street at least.

Rattlesnake Mountain Skatepark Reno, Nevada Let’s start this with all the hype being pissed on. For some reason it is printed everywhere that the park is the largest public skatepark on the west coast. That is a total misconception. The whole park is pretty big, but what they are saying is the parking lot and all the square footage of smooth black top that surrounds the actual skatepark. It is kind of like a roller ring around the park. So it, the actual park, truly isn’t the biggest park on the west coast. It has several fun things to play with, they were just layed out wrong. Plus, we seem to have a problem with our concrete layers around here. The last few parks have been uneven on the transitions and pockets. They also do this thing where they push the coping out and dip the lip in. So that they are 1/2 inch exposed, but the problem is they scoop out the lip to make that measurement, leaving too much coping exposed with a quick dip before and after hitting it. As you walk into the park from the parking lot there are two quarter pipe banks connected by a two step, metal edged, grind obstacle. In front of that are three bowls connected by a spine into one another. Both the small and the middle bowl are useless except for pumping through. The bottom bowl is decent. I haven’t seen any big air out of it yet, but it's fun for lip tricks. Beyond that things get weird. There’s a 9 foot left hand kidney bowl sitting in a raised area with quarter pipe banks and stairs around it. The bowl is supposed to have 1 foot of true vert, but as I said before there are dips and bumps which screw it up. Also, the waterfall transition within the "pool" is so steep it will screw up any good run you are having. I enjoy quick little runs in it, but I can understand how shredders could be totally turned off by it. Supposedly, the waterfall is to be fixed. We’ll see. From the big bowl you look over and there is a totally useless tiny deep bowl. It has rounded-lip/hip type things, is 6 foot deep and 6 1/2 feet in diameter. Stupid, huh? I pull air out of the square bowl next to it, but this bowl is truly useless. Speaking of the square bowl, it is the deep end of the snake run. The snake run is 170 feet long and the last hip is 6 feet high. Probably the best concrete in the whole park in there. That opens into the street area which I can praise and haze. I don’t know why people put pyramids in front of big transitions. For big transitions you need speed. Pyramids take your speed. Don’t put pyramids in front of transitions. There’s a 9 foot "tombstone” with 3 feet of vert. Unfortunately, there’s no straight approach for optimum speed. Next to it is a 6 foot volcano which has no coping. That doesn’t take away from the gut turn when you’re up on the lip. On the other side of that is small transition to coping. It also has a bit of a hip on the side of the tombstone which enables me to launch to wallrides. Fun shit. In the middle it has a pyramid with an adjustable rail. Great idea until somebody comes along and bends it up. Now the support leg floats above the ground and it bows down as you are riding it. On all sides of you there are lips for lauching, grinding, carving, and whatever else you can find speed for.

Ben Lomond Skatepark Ben Lomond, Ca Finally, over 20 years since the last halfway fun park was built (Derby), comes another cement skate park in Santa Cruz County. Nestled up in the redwoods away from animal sanctuaries for snowy plovers or red speckled ducks, old people complaining about noise, or other anti-skate park whining assholes, a fun looking bowl has been created. You probably could have guessed that Santa Cruz’s Zack Wormhoudt built this one, and he seems to have done an alright job with the bowl, especially in the small amount of space provided. The park isn’t skateable at time of writing, even though the bowl and the street course are complete, because it seems to be constantly guarded by the workers, and without lights it’s pretty much pitch black after the sun goes down. The bowl is 5 feet in the “shallows” and drops down only to a 6 foot “deep” end, but it still looks like it’s going to be fun, especially considering the alternatives for skating around these parts. The coping looks like it’s set alright, maybe a little low, the cement looks even, and the transitions look too mellow and not steep enough which will effect the flow a bit, but I assure you that people will be ripping around this long mid sized bowl at mach speeds. I can already see some speed lines to airs over the round hip, and transfers out of the bowl into the street course. Speaking of the street course, there are way too many ledges crammed into a small space with no runway to get up to the ledges, and they appear to all flow into a cement wall congestion zone of imminent collisions. We’ll see. It’s no Marseilles or Ripon by any stretch of the imagination, or anything close to the Oregon and Colorado skateparks, but it’s something, and it’s all we got in these parts. – J. Hay

Again, skaters showed concern for certain aspects in the building of this park and again the concerns fell on deaf ears. This is just another example of people not listening to skaters. We skate 'em, we know what works. If they could just pull their heads out of their asses maybe we’d get a solid park. I truly enjoy this park for its diversity in terrain. It is the best park in Reno...Although that aint saying much. Oh ya, and we don’t have to wear pads. HEE HEE, HA HA. I believe it could’ve been a great park. As it stands, I give it 2 1/2 skulls. - Sick Boy Ben Lomond bowl. Looks like it is similar to Novato, perhaps. 24

chemistry of choas by blake hemi this isnt poetry. this isnt fiction or fantasy. this is just a documentation of chaos.please note, im aware i dont capatilize and i cant spell and my grammer sucks but if thats the kind of stupid shit you base a story on stop reading now and .......fuck off. i lived in the yellow house for a while, at least 2 yrs. i liked it for the most part, it was a single story place with faded blue carpets, rose bushes in front and what was left of a lawn in the back. what i liked most about the yellow house was the people that came to visit. the place was a magnet to strange misfits and social outcasts due to the inhabitants. the place was rented by a six foot two half mexican half oakiee(or however the hell you spell it) named rick. he had black hair and the whitest skin ive ever seen. he had a mean temper but ive never seen violence (alot of times the biggest dogs are tamed by the sound of their own stupid bark.) his girlfriend was a strange bird too, built all weird, skinny waist large tits and a tummy that looked too long for a girl that short. basicly all of her parts looked good just not on the same package. she looked pretty good if she was sitting down and diddnt open her mouth, she had very crooked teeth and they diddnt match her face or mind. in short she looked like a anorexic she-ape with knockers. she was raised in a sheltered enviroment by a father that held mass in their back yard which diddnt do her any good because she did drugs every day and cheated on the he-ape oakiee. her sister was a lesbian and her girlfriend lived in the room next to mine. we decided to have a moving in party, i got the pool table ready and made a vat of jungle juice in the green cooler. vodka, brown rum and a bottle of 151 just to make sure the girls get drunk. i put all this flamable stuff in the cooler with watermelon, honey dew, strawberrys and grapes, let it sit in the sun for two hours and then added the punch mix, lemon and pinapple juice ice and 7-up. if you havent had this stuff its alright but all the alcohol ends up in the fruit so you get all these “ i dont look fat do i?” bitches munching away at fruit....and this is the first element in the chemistry of chaos. so i started making calls. i called my brother, the dreadlock juggling hippy that works in the herb store. rob and donald who would be naked without a bottle of wild turkey, all my old skate friends varying from 34 to 17 but they all act about the same age, old enough to drink all night and young enough not to care. and some other artists, musicians, weirdos and misfits. time for music. i only have a six disc changer so i put in black sabath, chokebore, some hard to find tom waits, a compolation of punk someone had givin me. one of my favorites lately doo rag and some elvis just to mix shit up a bit. music is the second element in the chemistry of chaos and i knew as the night would go on id loose control over the stereo and thats o.k. because im the over seeing sensor and i had to rip out a dam def tones tape later on in the evening. she was whinning “ohh comon this tape is sooooo cool” “then go and listen to it in your car and drive away” it was getting dark and people started showing up. the first to arive were six

gay men, one in a dress, the dress looked good...he diddnt. they came in and i was introduced, two mikes, frank, one chris, james and maria(james was in the dress).next came rob and donald. donald is wearing a shirt with the rainbow flag on it with a red circle around it and a red line through it like a nonsmoking sign. i dont think donald is for or against anythig he just likes to piss people off. they came in. “you ready to fuck sweety?” “only if im driving” i say. he smiled that fuck you smile and walked into the pool room. he says “there are two guys suckin eachother off in a car out front and there are two girls in the front seats, i waved to them and they just stared back lookin all scared, i dont know what the fuck those guys are thinkin doin that with all that perfectly good vagina in the front seat, im a big fan of vagina!” “ya im one for the vagina myself” i say the house had a pool room conected to what was supposed to be a dinning room. and it had a kitchen that connected to another family room with a fire place, a paint easel, a broken swamp cooler, a couple of couches and a rocking horse with james and maria sitting on it. people were ariving in droves now and i found my brother talking to barry marquez. barry was a gifted artist that goes through distinct phases of jesus freak and just freak. he did all his peircings himself including his cock, his face looks like a tackle box and he has the smallest hands ive ever seen. barry is one to get possessed by genius, not that he is one theirs a big differance, if you are a genius its like lassoing it and ridding it like a lightning bolt into the ground. barry just gets possessed by it which is like being struck by the lightning and the buzz lasts a little while and thats the best time to be around him, he gets all half crazy and tells animated storys and its fun to watch him walk the tight wire between the sane and blackness. right now hes got my brother by the coller and going back and forth between jesus and japanamation. he must be in transition one way or the other from jesus. then tim edwards arived hes 34 and looks 20 his girlfriend is 19 named emily and has one of the biggest mouths in the world both physicaly and socially. they have brought a couple of people one of which looks just like stone cold steve austin, i cant remember his real name but i dont care. stone cold looks over at the now large number of gay women and men freak dancing in the other room. “whhaaat the fuuuuck” he says quizicly and kinda angarly. “i live with a lesbian and these are her um.. friends.” i hand him a beer and he can see im straight and stone cold walks off. “dont kill anyone” emily says leaning on one leg and smileing more teeth than face and then i found out he had just been released for manslaughter. i diddnt ask anymore questions but later on in the night he would get in a confrontation with my dreadlock juggling hippy brother but ill get to that later. well all the elements of the chemistry of chaos are in place and taking hold, all movements are different now, theres cigarette ash on the floor and in all the empty bottles and some of the full. the emptys are stacking everywhere and everything is getting blurred, the music is inconsistant and everything is getting louder, its not like other partys, too many different people under one roof, under MY ROOF... jesus christ. what are the chances its like hells angels and the care bears, MTV and S.F. and power puff girls, low brow and make up and im just wandering in the thin grey area between black and white. a girl i had met recently came and grabbed my arm. shes going to remain nameless not because i cant remember or just simply make up one, but thats how she is. quiet, dull and almost socially invisable like a song youve heard a thousand times but still cant remember how it goes, its the same with her face, body and soul. she drags me off to my room and starts rummaging through my shit and mumbling somethig about something flat.she finds a c.d. case, its a early beck import,she starts talking and asking me questions and i cant answer or talk because she just keeps skipping around and interupting me while shes digging in her pockets. she finds what shes looking for and pulls out two huge blue hoarse pills and starts crushing one up. “its oxicodone it will blow your mind”she says “just what i need another habit, whats it like?” “smack only a little different” “great” i say and suck one line up and she says “no there both for you for giving me advice” “i dont remember giving you any advice” “ohh.. you wernt talkin to me you were talking to that guy with that hair and you were talking about god and quantized music and about theres no such thing as perfect” and bla bla bla. and i stopped listening and sucked up the other line with the only 5 bucks i had, it tasted ugly and burned a little but not bad. she just kept talking and talking and then i heard a crash in the other room and i took my opertunity to leave. as i left the room the shit started to kick in, it hit my head first in a blast of pleasure, it felt like a combonation of god and don juan, all knowing and a kiss of devil, all waves and greatness, and one hell of a false sense of well being. i started to walk to the back yard and stopped between the pool room and the fireplace room and just kinda watched both at the same time. in one room i had 15 to 20 men and women (sometimes hard to tell the differance) freak dancing like patrick swazie and that girl with the big nose, all on eachothers legs and hands going everywhere. people on the couch getting very close, and it all looked like a rave without the black lights, stupid hats and bad music. in the other room i had 15 to 20 guys and girls from some sort of skate punk mutation, smoking and drinking whiskey out of the bottle and chasing it with cheap beer, ice house, natty ice and mickeys. all of them swearing, boxing, wreastling (pent up gay energy?), blocking pool shots, tearing my music collection apart, writting on the pool table which seemed to turn into a unofficial guest log of graffiti and slander, and the last of them trying hard to score with what selection of STRAIGHT women their were. i felt good and kinda sick so i went outside for air. i found out what the noise was even though i had forgoten all about it. someone had walked right through the screen door, so i just walked on through too and there was rick the he-ape and the anorexic she-ape with knockers trying to fix the door. “HEY YOUR FRIENDS ARE ALL DRUNK AND STUPID FUCKIN EVERYTHING UP” and she stopped mid sentence seeing i was in no state to hear it. i walked over to rob and donald “whats new uncle creepy?” rob asks. “i went to a massage parlor today”

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“no shit?” “no shit” “were they hot?” “uhh..yeah....” “you dont sound so sure.... did you fuck em?” “no... i had a stressfull day and had to go get a motor that had been rebuilt and had a hour to kill (people were gathering to hear the story, i was on stage with all my intoxicated glory or at least it always fells like that) i wandered down to the corner and saw a massage parlor, it had three windows with open signs that looked like they never moved. i decided to go in and check it out. i could use a massage and i felt kinda rich, you know that feeling you get on payday inbetween the time you cash your check and the time you get home and look at the bills on the cork board. so i go in and ring this door bell. im in a very small room in front of a iron security door and i cant see through it, then this little voice comes through and says “yo bein hea b fo”, “no”,”oh yo big boy huh ha ha ha ha” and the door opens.(now even rick and the she-ape are listening....in christian disaproval) anyway the door opens and there is this beautiful little asian girl thats about seventeen, 5 foot 2 and wearing a bakini top and a wrap around dress. shit! i thought i might blow my whole check. i sat down at a desk and payed my 40 bucks then followed her down the hall a long hallway of doors with locks on all the knobs. i decided to go to the bathroom first and put most my money in a secret compartment in my hat. i was no longer sure if the iron security door was to keep people in or out. i went back to the room and sat down on a chair there was a doctor like table in the middle of the room and a sink and a locker with no lock on it and on the wall was a upside down picture of a flower with a quote “to make a flower is the labor of ages” by some guy who shouldent have ever been famous to begin with. “get back to the story pork chop” robbie says “a old asian lady walks in about 40 yrs old old! aggg!!! my half chub hard on falls down like a cowering puppy. she motioned at my pants, “off wit does” i took my shirt and pants off and left the boxers. “all dat too” she said quickly and i could hardly understand her except for the motions with her hands, kinda a twisted game of naked sherades. i take it all off and lay on the fresh?, new?, CLEAN? towels on the doctor looking table and realize this used to be a doctors office or a dentist place. “get back to the story chub rock” “yeh yeh this is the story i kept hopeing the old lady was just the towel lady but no she came back in and placed a towel on my bare ass and asked me a question i couldnt understand, she asked another 2 or 3 times before i understood she was asking me if i was a cop “ no i fix ovens” (like under cover would take time to get grease all over their hands and get a uniform....their not that smart) i said my profession proudly for the first and last time only because it was in comparison to a much worse one. about this time in telling my story i was starting to feel sick from the pill the nameless girl gave my but at the same time i feel like god slinging lightning bolts on acid... its a difficult feeling to describe, unless youve done it. “well she started into me and pours a bunch of hot oil on my back and my god! this girl has a gift no, shes a genius, jesus christ and god dam shes got the moves and im just sinking further and further into nothingness jelly, shes working my shoulders, my back, my legs and in between my toes and butt crack. all this time shes talking and asking questions and i just keep agreeing with her like when your at a very loud show and the dumb ass next to you keeps talking to you and never realizes you havent heard a god dam word of it. after about 12 miniuts of this she washes her hands heads out the door and says “ro ova” and motions with her hands over each other so i can finally understand something she says. so i roll over on my greasy back on the fresh? new? clean? sheets and there i am to the world mr. limp and his friends just hangin out. so i grab a small hand towel and put a blanket on the guys and it barely fits and i feel like the cover of a porn mag where they air brush the tips of the nipples out. so she comes back in and goes to work and shes asking questions again and on the third time i make out “you big tippa” and i had noticed the sign on the wall EMPLOYES KEEP 100% OF THEIR TIPS. but this question seemed strange to me its like the waitress asking how much the tip will be before the food is served. yeah i tell her, and she keeps on working. as shes going the hainkerchif of a towel on my package keeps getting bumped off little by little until it just hits the floor and now im not as much sinking into nothingness jelly as much as im just naked, limp and strange. so as shes going back and forth between my stomach and legs she keeps bumping mini me and im getting hard so she puts my hand on my cock and i just shrug my shoulders and give her the “hes got a mind of his own look”, well she keeps bumping and bumping until shes just on it and goin to town. and let me tell you she is a multi talented, multi tasking, magic handed genius lady. well to save you the details and mental imagery of a hand on a cock she finishes and says (quite clearly) “its yo birt-day” and the show is done. well its tip time and i hand her a 20 and she gives me that cross browed disapointed look, i give her another 10 and its the same, i show her theres nothing left in the wallet and shes happy and i realize its a game for the first timers, hook, line, and sinker. i win with 930$ still in my hat and nobodys going to jump a guy with nothing in his wallet” now ive finished the story and feel sick in a enjoyable way and make my way to the side of the house and let it go in the small space in between the house and the fence and theres some noise so i look up and theres the she-ape sunday christian making out with one of the gay guys. “hey guys dont mind me just continue on i wont be long” i say i heard a shout in the house and came around the corner and saw a group of people in a circle the way they always do for a fight and i thought of stone cold steve austin and i ran in. im going to leave off here. ive already wasted enough of concussions space i think this is a one time thing in the mag but if enough people write in maybe it will continue so if you like it write or e-mail or whatever. if you hated this and your still reading im glad ive wasted your time.

photo: chris anderson photo: pazdirek

I’d never been to Chicago before. In fact, I’d never been anywhere east of Montana in my adult life. Pretty lame, I know, but that’s how it goes when you’re broke most of the time and when you do get the urge to travel, it usually involves getting in a vehicle and driving a couple of hours or days to ride your skateboard. My friend Mickey has lived in Chicago for several years and I kept saying, “Yeah dude, sometime I’ll come out and visit you,” thinking I’d barge a crosscountry road trip and end up in Chicago. Well due to the same factors which had kept me on the west coast most of my life, that never happened. But thanks to 9/11 and our depressed economy, plane tickets have gotten exceptionally cheap, and $200 later me and Linda had booked two roundtrip tickets to Chicago in late October. Timing a visit to Chicago is an exceptionally tricky maneuver, as most of the year it is either swelteringly hot or chillingly cold. Fall is the best time of year apparently, since the weather is somewhere between those extremes, but when our flight landed at Midway, it was already starting to get cold. At least that is the perspective of a Californian, who is used to wearing shorts and considers “chilly” to be anything below 55 degrees. Ha! Due to this bizarre climate they have out in the midwest, one is not able to skateboard all year. In fact they told me that you have to find something else to do in the winter when it gets cold and snowy, which is probably why there are so many bars in Chicago. There is a good skate scene in Chicago, but I don’t think I saw much of it. Not only was I traveling with my girlfriend

(which meant it was not a “skate trip”), but it was cold and rainy over half of the week we were in town. Chicago has no indoor park that we were aware of at least, but we did go visit the public skatepark which is out by the lake. I don’t know who was responsible for this atrocity, but whoever it was that built this park is due a beating. Lots of kinks, lumps, and other irregularities that lead me to believe that anyone who can read a tape measure and has a truck can get into the skatepark construction business. I mean this park was shitty, on the same level of shitty as the Dublin and San Ramon skateparks. There was a 6-7 foot little kidney pool replica thing, complete with metal coping, no vert, and the lumpiest hip I have ever seen. The biggest/steepest thing in the park was this wavy hip/wall thing with no coping, but was steep enough to scare you and the kink on one side of it was capable of dealing out a good number of hippers. I’m sure there is a shitload of good street skating in Chicago, but you’re not going to read about it here. There is a good amount of talented street skaters living in Chicago, including Patrick Melcher, Jub, Jesse Niehaus, the Uprise crew, and a bunch of other guys including the recently transplanted Jackson Taylor, but I’m not going to pretend like we really went street skating (despite the photo of Marfa in this article), so if you want to see cool Chicago street skating check out Big Brother or Thrasher or something. Lame, but what did you expect from Concussion?

I think it’s funny that this Marfa photo is leftover from his check out article, but since he sent so many good photos and we had so few street skating photos from Chicago, we ran it with this article because that’s where Marfa’s from. Knowing our luck this photo was shot in Milwaukee.

We were planning on making the drive down to Louisville to skate their fullpipe park, but the weather was sketchy so we bagged it in favor of driving an hour north to Milwaukee to check out the Four Seasons indoor park. Located in an old warehouse by a river, the Four Seasons park houses a good street course, some mini ramps, and a formidable Tim Payne-built bowl. The skaters in Milwaukee were super friendly, none of the California “too cool to say whatsup” bullshit, and we had a good session there. The park was also the home to resident pro Greg Lutzka, who happened to be there, and was gracious enough to let me shoot some photos of him. And goddamn, that kid banged out like 20 difficult tricks in 20 tries, hardly bailing anything. So when we weren’t riding our skateboards (which was most of the time), we took off to explore Chicago. Taking the L everywhere was pretty fun, and Chicago has a lot of interesting architecture to check out. Since they don’t have earthquakes out there, everything is made of brick. The people out there talk kind of funny too. Not funny like how they talk in Boston or Minnesota, but somewhere in between. People in the midewest refer to soda as “pop”, which is can be pretty amusing. And a “road pop” is an adult beverage that is drunk in the car on your way somewhere. Also, not every asshole on the road drives an oversized SUV like they do out here in California. You mean you don’t need a Ford Excursion to drive to the mall? You’re kidding me, right? There are also some very good museums in Chicago including the Art Institute, which pretty much blows doors off of every museum I’d been to in San Francisco. And we went to a

lot of bars. Chicago has lots of bars, did I mention that? Some of them are liquor store/bars, where you can buy booze to go in one part of the store, and on the other half is a regular bar. Other bars we went into included this place the Map Room, which has like 100 beers on tap. I wonder how bummed the bartenders get when someone orders a Coors Light there? One of the most noteworthy bars was a little dive called Tuman’s Alcohol Abuse Center - yes that is actually the name. Let’s see them try and get away with that in California. We also went to the top floor of the Hancock building, which is one of the tallest buildings in the country or something like that. They have an observation deck where you can pay $10 to check out the (flat) view, or you can take the elevator two floors higher and relax with a $7 beer. I’ll bet you can guess which option we chose. So yeah, Chicago was rad. I had a good time and would love to go back and visit Chicagoland and Northwest Indiana, as they say. Who knows, if we go in the summer maybe we’ll actually get to do some street skating. - Words and most photos by Davoud except where noted.

photo: mickey stamm

This photo isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t from Chicago either - this is Milwaukee. The Four Seasons Skatepark to be exact. Greg Lutzga was crossing off tricks one after the other. Frontside noseslide, eight down, four to go.

There have been so many random rippers lurking at the park. Jared Fostino reels in a lien into the deep end. Photo: Hay 42

Yeah the Berkeley skatepark has been open for a while now and it’s still pretty fun despite the fact that I’m getting a little burnt on it. Maybe if I had a real job or some semblance of a life I wouldn’t go there so often. But whatever, it’s close to my house and I’m lazy. The flaws that came with the park are still there, and there are some pretty awful cracks which have appeared, but overall I think most everyone likes the park well enough. Weekends are pretty much zooed with kids until it gets dark, but if you come out to skate during a weekday things can be a little better depending on your perspective. Between 10am-Noon or so, you’ve got your padded up bowl barneys who don’t have jobs and sometimes a lunchtime crowd of dudes who work in the area and skate on their lunch break. The street course is usually pretty empty and this is one of the best times to ride it, or at least to try new things without fear of running into 3 different people at the same time. Around 2pm or so the kids start to trickle in and it gets crowded by 3. The lights go on around 5 (or when it gets dark) and by 7pm most of the kids have started to leave and the older, after work dudes crowd starts to show up. This is usually when the best sessions happen, you get your 22 year old street rippers fuckin it up as well as a variety of sponsored guys and other random shredders. Max Schaff shows up a lot, as does Dan Drehobl, who in most people’s opinion, skates the park the best, utilizing it to its full potential. Another dude who rules this place is Tony Miorana, who is one of the most unknown, underrated skaters in the bay area. The skateparks are getting better around here, but I’m still waiting for the day when there is a Dreamland and/or Grindline park around here, or a park with a fullpipe, or something gnarly, besides Crocker of course. Crocker’s still rad, and I heard they just redid/”fixed” it. Again. Third time’s the charm, right?

Clockwise from top right: This is a classic Dan Drehobl warmup line, ollie over the vert wall into the park. It’s not Dan Drehobl though, some other dude. Jacob Tillman lives three blocks away and kills it when he’s in the mood. Possibly Lil’ John, possibly not. Either way this is the regular foot street warm up trick, b/s ollie from the hip to the perimeter track. All Photos: Uri Korn

Four Concussions by Peter Connelly “History is just as ill determined as the future, so what’s the problem with going through life with your vectors pointed backward instead of forward?” -Richard Meltzer

As I walked Outside Clon followed very closely, closer than I thought. I had not stepped 6 inches out the door when Clon grabbed my hood and “hoodwinked” me.

1. The most recent concussion I had was given to me by a soulless brute with no brains and fists like rocks. He was some blockhead that was seated next to me and my wife, March 7, 2000, Fat Tuesday. We were at some local eatery for the tragically hip and hopeless. The proprietors of this joint have the attitude “Hey we’ll just sit complete strangers next to each other, and they can break bread, share stories, and finally all of our customers will realize they are all in IT together. Everyone will share this bond, a bond which can only be made through the common love and sharing of a meal.”

Stats as of 3.8.2000:

Anyhow, this asshole (Clon as I will refer to him from here on out) was seated next to us as we were finishing our meal. He was seated across the table, to my left, and next to me was this powderpuff I had gone to school with in New Mexico, his name is Pear. Pear and I had had some differences in our youth. We had become enemies through habit, I was a skater and he was, well his name is Pear, you figure it out. Pear hung out with funny kids that liked to wear trench coats and loafers, they listened to the Cure and Morrissey, yet they were always strapped with high-powered firearms. Which left the rest of us in the dirt as what to do with these little men. Needless to say I was surprised to see him in Portland, and felt bad that I, according to the ideals of the proprietors, had to “break bread” with this loser. Clon, his partner, bore a striking resemblance to Pear’s friends back home, fem thugs. Clon took an immediate disliking to me, and I to him.

2. Sometime in July 1998. I was drinking at a bar in New Mexico with some friends. We got loaded and some asshole made the decision to get some stuff. Upon leaving the bar, I pushed my drunken friend and he grabbed me by my hair and slammed my head into a parked car. Asshole.

I tried to get the check, as Pear broke into conversation with me. Same Olds, how are you, oh you are married, oh I remember you, did you hear what happened to her, I am so glad I’m not there, BLAH, PUKE, BLAH, PUKE, SMELL MY FEET, FUCK YOU, BLAH... It turned out Pear had heard of some unfortunate happenings having to do with my friends mountain climbing in Tibet — frostbite and so forth. He asked me for details and I obliged. I explained their circumstances, and to my amazement Clon was the most distinguished mountaineer in the Northwest. LUCKY ME!!! Clon then began telling me, in his ass-ertive tone, that my friends deserved to die, they were tourists (I guess Clon figures only people from New Mexico are considered tourists in Tibet) BLAH BLAH. Where was that fucking waiter with my bill? Clon was relentless in his bantering and knowledge of ass-anine facts, I began to get a little upset, then more, then Clon’s voice was a merely a train of violence surging through my blood. I wanted to kill him. I remarked to my wife, who consequently was being told to shut up by our new and worst enemy, that we needed to leave or “I was going to slug this asshole.”

Severe Concussion Broken Nose Deviated Septum Right eye swollen shut Right clavicle bone broken (eye socket) Little finger on Right hand Broken I will never see him again.

3. One month later. A gallery opening in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Open bar. The same asshole that decided to get the stuff, previously. He was loaded and HE slammed my head into a parked truck. A woman, out of her mind on the evil white beast, was there and started hitting someone, over separate matters, and was thrown into a puddle. Later she tried to accuse all those witnessing of sexual misconduct. Lawyers were brought in, and the ugliness started. 4. Madrid, Spain. July 1997 We rolled into Madrid early in the morning, like 6 or 7. I was with Bryan (my “partner” on the book) and some other chap we met on the train. We all decided to get a room together, for the sake of saving money. We had to wait all morning until we could get a room and put our stuff down. Our first job was to get to San Francisco Skate Farm, home of North Cal Distribution. Luis, the owner, is a good friend, and we needed to get some equipment. Bryan had his board stolen in Marseilles, by a lousy jerk, and we needed to resupply.

Causes & symptoms

Concussion is a trauma-induced change in mental status, with confusion and amnesia, and with or without a brief loss of consciousness.

Causes

A concussion occurs when the head hits or is hit by an object, or when the brain is jarred against the skull, with sufficient force to cause temporary loss of function in the higher centers of the brain. The injured person may remain conscious or lose consciousness briefly, and is disoriented for some minutes after the blow. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 300,000 people sustain mild to moderate sports-related brain injuries each year, most of them young men between 16 and 25. While concussion usually resolves on its own without lasting effect, it can set the stage for a much more serious condition. “Second impact syndrome” occurs when a person with a concussion, even a very mild one, suffers a second blow before fully recovering from the first. The brain swelling and increased intracranial pressure that can result is potentially fatal. More than 20 such cases have been reported since the syndrome was first described in 1984.

The next morning we met with Dani and went to Alcobendas, the red mother. Alco is one of the best parks I have ever skated. Transition, cool locals, good coping, some lights, good fun. Later that night we went to Colon for a street rip ride, We hung with the locals, smoked hash and drank beer. We played a game of futbol. We went to some bars. I had my skateboard. While on the way to the bar we drank the Spanish equivalent to 40s, Maho it was called. These loosened us up and gave everyone the right feeling. We rummaged through someone’s trash and old clothes, finding the appropriate outfit for everyone. It was a sight. We invaded some bars full of Madrid’s hippest, and had those in charge wondering if the lot of us had just been cut loose from the loony bin. After the bar we wandered and I decided to race one of the locals, Mustafa, down a big hill. The hill was fast, long, and made from rocks. At the peak of my run I spied a black curb long and slick. I had skated good all day, I figured I could lock in and hit the 5050, no problem. Well, I did not see the curb was made from stone slabs - although slick, not an even grinding surface. BLAMO-. Concussion #4. Of the places I received my last four concussions, Madrid was the best. It is the only location I will return to, out of the four, and it is the only place any of you should go to as well.

I called Luis from the room and he gave us directions to the shop. 15 minutes later we rolled into the nicest skate shop I have ever seen. Luis took us out for lunch and hooked us up with Dani, a local ripper. Dani was super cool. Dani thought we were affiliated with a big skate company, and he thought we could get him sponsored. Dani has since moved to the US and realized I am not affiliated with any skate company, so he is not so nice when I see him. Dani sucks. Dani showed us the local street spot, Plaza Colon, and we skateboarded there until our feet and bodies were nothing more than shit ready to be reformed by the miracle of sleep.

Definition

Description

Luis had other plans. He took us out for dinner at a fine eatery in Madrid, Bocatio. We dined exquisitely. We drank beer and wine. We figured Tony Alva, Cardiel, Stranger, Shao(RIP), Peters, Adams, Kubo, and the rest of the Z’s were the best skaters in the world. We had a good night.

Most concussions are caused by motor vehicle accidents and sports injuries. In motor vehicle accidents, concussion can occur without an actual blow to the head. Instead, concussion occurs because the skull suddenly decelerates or stops, which causes the brain to be jarred against the skull. Contact sports, especially football, hockey, and boxing, are among those most likely to lead to concussion. Other significant causes include falls, collisions, or blows due to bicycling, horseback riding, skiing, and soccer. The risk of concussion from football is extremely high, especially at the high school level. Studies show that approximately 1 in 5 players suffer concussion or more serious brain injury during their brief high-school careers. The rate at the collegiate level is approximately 1 in 20. Rates for hockey players are not known as certainly, but are believed to be similar. Concussion and lasting brain damage is an especially significant risk for boxers, since the goal of the sport is, in fact, to deliver a concussion to the opponent. For this reason, the American Academy of Neurology has called for a ban on boxing. Repeated concussions over months or years can cause cumulative head injury. The cumulative brain injuries suffered

by most boxers can lead to permanent brain damage. Multiple blows to the head can cause “punch-drunk” syndrome or dementia pugilistica, as evidenced by Muhammed Ali, whose parkinsonism is a result of his career in the ring. Young children are likely to suffer concussions from falls or collisions on the playground or around the home. Child abuse is, unfortunately, another common cause of concussion. Symptoms Symptoms of concussion include: Headache Disorientation as to time, date, or place Confusion Dizziness Vacant stare or confused expression Incoherent or incomprehensible speech Incoordination or weakness Amnesia for the events immediately preceding the blow Nausea or vomiting Double vision Ringing in the ears. Source - Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine

The 2nd annual Donald Pool contest, held Saturday September 21st, was more of a gathering of Oregon’s best pool skaters than a contest. No one person was declared the winner. You didn’t pay to enter and there were no divisions. Prize money was distributed amongst the competitors and spectators in the form of $1 coins. When someone had arun that you thought deserved a coin, you gave it to them. Highlights included the skating of Jeff, Chris, Mike, Lorne, Karen and others. Peter Hewitt showed up and destroyed it. One guy was skating in pajamas and some longhair was skating barefoot. Donald locals Ian and Donavan were ripping hard. Donavan is the fastest skater i’ve ever seen!

This looks like our kind of contest. No banners or Red Bull sponsor, everyone’s drinking beers without getting hassled, and Lorne is pulling a f/s air in the deep.Give the guy a dollar.

Thanks to Dreamland for building the pool. Thanks to the 750 people of Donald, Oregon for supporting their youth and building a public skate pool. And thanks to SKATE OREGON.com for organizing the event. - Words & Photos by Chris Ondecin

the search

by ari evan gold Searching for the meaning of life is a daunting task. The overall understanding of what, when, where and how screams out like a rolled ankle as the searching continues. The journey is more important than the destination. Finding the meaning only murk’s the pools reflection. See yourself grinding, see yourself piling, see yourself getting back up, see the path and the meaning is meaningless. It’s the searching that is important. The intention of finding some curvaceous structure to play in is in retrospect, a metaphor for life. Don’t just complacently cop out for the homogenized park experience. There is more out there than city run skate parks and most assuredly more adventure. Pool skating is the epitome of the search. When looking for that perfect gem, the road is flooded with doubt. Are we lost? Is it a right or left turn on Vale Terrace? Do we need a sacrifice to appease the powers of the pool? Will it be grindable? What’s its shape? All these doubts cum spurting out like an overpaid porn star. Young Jedi, push these thoughts aside and trust in the force. The only thing to fear is fear itself. Let the fear and doubt loose and feel the freedom of certainty. All is well, the pools will find you if you have the right intent. Kinda’ like wealth in its unsaid utopia. Your intentions for searching will yield bliss—like the bliss of a perfectly executed, powerful four wheel carve. Keeping all wheels in connection with the cement is necessary to harness the speed you need to get to where you want to go. That connection with the Earth can free you into the brother element of Air. But, it must be done with the right intent. Our lives our judged by our intentions. If someone is killed by a person who intended to save him or her, it is not murder. Their intention of saving is all that is judged. Keep in mind that intending to sacrifice a pool for the sake of your own selfish manifesto is walking with the dark side. The pool pleasure principle reacts accordingly and will sublimate your sorry ass. The learning and searching will cease and the pools will be filled with mud. But, with the blissful intention of spreading the joy of a new pool, comes others willing to do the same. This path of pleasure grows like a rampant vine as it climbs out of your house of wantonness. Be kind to the pool owners. Respect the neighborhood. Pick up your trash and be selective on who has earned the right to ride them. Once your soldiers have been assembled, the search begins. But, be careful young Jedi. There are many paths to pool skating and many warriors. Watch, listen and learn from the elder ones. Study the curves and lumps to better understand the proper trajectory. Look way beyond the coping to truly grind your mind. Keep foraging for that morsel of mayhem and when you find the meaning, life will begin to blossom from your desert of misunderstanding. And if you are lost at the parks, just keep searching and probing and with the proper intent the path to pool pleasure will light up like the catwalk of a seedy strip bar.

You must unlearn what you have learned—Yoda Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try—-Yoda

I rarely skate the Milpitas Vans park anymore. Not that I don’t like the park; it’s fun enough, but I hate the mall, the blaring snowboard rock, and most of all, I hate the manager of the park. If you’ve ever been to this park, you know who I’m talking about. He has a face like a weasel with big buck teeth, and he usually dyes his hair two different colors to show how “extreme” he is. He’s loves to show off for the teenage mall girls by kicking skaters out of the park. I hate that guy. Anyone who punches him out gets a free Concussion subscription for life. (If you send us video footage of it, we’ll throw in couple of t-shirts as well.) Fortunately I didn’t have to deal with the asshole manager on the day of the Tim Brauch Memorial contest, because Justin Gold and the Sessions crew took over the park for the day, and the day was fun. The day started with the street contest, which had about 7000 entrants, or so it seemed. Jonathan and I were watching it for about ten minutes when some dad accused Jonathan of kicking his son. We politely explained to dad that no one had kicked his son, but dad just wouldn’t believe us, and he kept going off on Jonathan. So we politely told dad that we were going to throw him off the ramp if he didn’t shut the fuck up. At that point dad told son that we were possessed by Satan. Afraid that dad would try to exorcise us, we skipped the rest of the street contest and hung out by the bowl.

photo: hay

Eventually the 18 hour street contest was over and it was time for the real action. The bowl contest had more entrants than ever before, which made things more hectic than ever before. There were a couple of street guys who entered, such as Frank Hirata, but they kept getting chased out of the bowl by Brewce Martin. Brewce was skating tough and fast, but Pete the Ox was skating tougher and faster and unlike Brewce, he doesn’t have a bad yin-yang tattoo. Pete’s out of control skating was a crowd favorite. In contrast, Chad Shetler has lots of control, especially on big airs, but isn’t as smooth as Steve Caballero, but then again, who is. Cab was last years winner, and he did all the tricks he did last year, but only got third place because Jimmy the Greek was kicking ass. Jimmy seemed to be on a personal mission to bring back the footplant with tricks like Texas plants and frontside fastplants. Jimmy did a bunch of other tricks too, which is why he got second, but not nearly as many tricks as Benji Galloway. Benji did every trick in the book. In one run he pulled a McTwist, Phillips 66, and kickflip indy. Benji destroys, and that’s why he got 1st. - Dave Amell

Don’t interrupt Benji Galloway, he’s in the middle of winning.

Matt Moffet’s ass.

Al Partanen’s ass.

I was going to write your standard generic contest piece for this page, but instead I’ve chosen to talk some shit, because that’s more fun. The contest itself went well and was organized better than last year, as far as contests go at least. Instead of having the pro finals last, as was the case last year, they got all the important shit over with early and the non-pro men’s division got the shaft, but that’s fine because nobody cares about that division anyway. If you’re not good enough to pay the $10 fee and enter with the “pros” then you’ll just have to sit and wait buddy. No but seriously, as far as the contest went it was ok. I mean you’ll always have your judging discrepancies (does Randy Katen ever not place in the old man event?), and since contests generally cater to the lowest common denominator, they always attract a fair amount of non-skaters, kooks, and goons. But whatever, if you come expecting that sort of shit, then it is no surprise and you can work around it. Speaking of kooks, those fucking people from Red Bull had painted a garish rendition of their beloved Red Bull logo in the deep end of the pool, so you were forced to stare at that logo all day, especially while skating. The Red Bull people made sure that the only canned beverage allowed in the bowl was their product, and so many of us found ourselves hiking back and forth from the pool to the lodge to drink beers in our rooms. But that was cool, it broke up the monotony of sitting by the bowl all day, not getting to skate because it wasn’t time for your division yet.

Rueler didn’t ruel it quite as hard as he did last year.

One thing that was not cool, however, was the owner of the Strawberry Lodge. After the trouble he had last year after the contest and with our friend Mikey getting airlifted out of the bowl this past spring, no one could have blamed him if he had not wanted to go along with another contest. But he did agree to it, and the fucking guy was a walking bad vibe all weekend, as most anyone that was there can attest to. I mean it’s one thing to say that you don’t want 250 skaters staying in your hotel, cancel the contest, and leave it at that, but you can’t allow them to come, gladly take their money, and then be an asshole about it. That’s not how capitalism works buddy. If you’re taking people’s money, you have to be nice, at least to their faces. And this guy was an asshole all weekend, making rude comments to the guests, and just generally being unhospitable. But whatever - the guy is supposedly selling the lodge this year, so good riddance if the deal goes through. It is possible that the new owners will not take kindly to allowing people to ride the pool and the whole scene will be over, but either way we won’t have to contend with that prick lodge owner anymore. - Davoud / Photos by J. Hay

Upland is where dreams are made of...where you hang on for dear life not pumping because the cement is sooo smooth. It is like marble, or better yet, a naked women’s smooth exposed flesh of her hips and buttocks. It is the anti-pump park where speed just makes you go higher and faster than humanly thought possible because of the downhill grade. Upland is similar to the Arizona pipe downhill section of the late 70’s and site 2’s epic vertical vortex, where the downhill grade carries you faster and faster. Scary stuff, but highly excitable. Upland is so gnar that it has injured scores of innocents looking for the thrill of a lifetime. Pipeline was good but this is better even, though I do prefer the radius of the old hip for lien airs into the pipe. This new one is just different and takes some getting used to. They are coming out of the woodwork like termites looking for daylight. Sprouting wings and attempting to fly before kamikaze turns take them out in a spectacular crash and burn scenario. It is not for novices. But you can learn there for sure. Just ask my son, Jesse Wray. This was the brainchild of city planners and old school skaters who realized the importance of something as historically feasible as the old Pipeline park, where the Hoffman clan babysat all of us little brats who now rule the sk8board kingdom in some shape or form of psycho analysis. I still can’t really believe I can skate there every day if I wished, but I can’t Salba’s little brother Malba doesn’t skate that much anymore. But you can bet he came out for Upland.

take the punishment day after day. My bones are growing weary of throwing my body onto concrete after some 28 years now. But for pure lines and just plain carving around nothing beats it...adrenaline juice galore. People have complained about the no flat-bottom half pipe-ish part but think Mt. Baldy, damn it! Flatwall is for men, not pussies. Why do you think all the Badlanders are so vert crazy? It’s still so scary to grind the 4 ft. extension that I haven’t seen anyone drop in on it yet. It’s not the drop itself, but the fact of shoulder slamming into the upcoming wall with mach 1 speed. Nobody hits it with any regularity except Rune and myself. And Rune just kills the place, but I gotta say Omar the madman rules it like no other. Backside ollies to the pipe with a backside disaster on the way in. Complete anarchy and chaos. Strange guys show up every other day like Lance Mountain, Nicky Guererro, Spidey, Grosso, Ben Schroder, Ma-Dog, old Pipeline locals Ryan and his kid, Robert, Bill Renney, and the Serna clan sk8 a lot. Can’t wait to see Bob and Lincoln sk8 @ Upland. Anyway if you come down to Upland gimme a ring cuz’ I only live 7 minutes from there. You will be stoked, scared shitless and have fun all at the same time. Come and ride the best built pipe for a park yet. Just be ready to go faster than you thought you could go. Go speed racer!

Salba can obviously grind that thing, but can he drop in on it?

- Salba / Photos by Charlie Middleton

Lance was always my favorite dude from the Bones Brigade. He just seemed the most legit. Clicking out of the pipe, 2002 style.

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like it. ’s more Now that

Rob Slob, all up in that shit. It’s a long way down from 10 o’clock.

Mikey Whaleyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bert revert is sick and all, but it kind of seems like he needs a beer in his hand.

When we started this, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. When Joe, Dorian, and I went to Home Depot to price out our idea, who knew it would turn into this. When Sage, Lil Jon and Matt Dyck showed up to work and guide us, we knew we were pretty much fucked. That’s about as good as it gets - it’s all pretty much history from there. One thing I would like to do is take the time to thank everyone who was there under that bridge in Portland who put their blood and sweat into the best park in the world, BURNSIDE. There’s an untouchable level of pride and respect tucked away under that bridge, and this never would have been without you guys. Thanks again for the inspiration. Photos this page by Charlie Middleton

To the crue down south, Pino, Luke, Ballard, Slob, Brute, Whitey, G-Man, Tom, Carter, Sperm, Edwin, Joe, Wes, Mikey & Indy, Led, G.T., Chica, Pepper, Lola, Sarah, Kike, Brian, Nick, Seth, J.C., Davey, Scotty, Lifetard, Scooter, Brain, Erin, Hitz, Partanen, Sleazy, parking blocks, Hewitt, F.C., Gore Wall, Steph, Art, Brendan, Jacey, Ken Lewis @ Hanger 18, Simon, Texas Dan, Nijah, pay stubs, Justin, Dober, Jamie, Kriegs, Chuck, Blender, Zaroosh, hot topic wall, Rob Dykma, Nikki, Matt Ohlin @ Route 44, Joe @ Clairemont Equipment Rental, Twee, Jerk, Robbie, R.C., Delgado, Rodent, Greenspan, Shelly, Kenny, and anyone else who I forgot that has put in their blood and sweat down under the WASHINGTON STREET Bridge. Thank you, and enjoy the years to come. W.S.V.T por vida - Glenn Wagner

“The spine-splitter. A must use.”

G-Man takes his job very seriously, testing every block of coping to make sure it does not come loose before the public is allowed to ride.

All photos this page by Sarah Harron

This pool is gnarly. 12’ to the drain, spit gutter, cheese grater surface. Royce Nelson bitch slapped this pool around like just like he treats all pools–he’s showing a pattern of abuse. Somebody should talk to that guy... photo by brycekanights.com

t - Mat

Balla

While he waits for the Termite video to come out, Adam Bugler gets his 180 nosegrinds on during recess. photo: blair alley

Jayce Gillett, loveseat grinder. photo: Eric Simpson

Brenden, doing what hippies do best. Not working and lurking in Santa Cruz. photo: Paul Wingert

Jake Nunn kickflip at some park somewhere. photo by that one dude

Jesse Hotchkiss didn’t really like this ledge we took him to, especially after the tree ate his arm. photo: Davoud

Been a while since we’ve seen Texas Dan in the mag. ‘Sup dude? Deathbox grind somewhere in SD. photo: Dietsches

Joey P grinding what appears to be some gnarly Anthony coping. Philly, PA. photo: Rhino

Joel Chavez, frontside air somewhere you wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be riding anytime soon. photo: Davoud

Dave Nelson, fooling around at the Vagabond skatepark. photo: Greg Hall

Brad Johnson, flip to manual at that skate slash Battle of the Bands deal they had at Treasure Island. I heard the promoter ripped a bunch of the bands off at that gig. photo: Korn

This page, top to bottom: If you haven’t noticed, Rhino’s got a shitload of photos in this issue. Besides the cover shot, he sent a bunch of sequences and some hot pool photos. Chet Childress b/s smith is just one of them. I hope Jason Murray isn’t pissed that we ran Rhino’s sequence of Rune’s kickflip backside lipslide at some fuckin Xbox contest shit, because we always tell him not to send us contest photos from these kinds of events. Lots of people have been visiting Bailey since he moved to Algorta, including Rhino. Choos is the dude who built this pool. Christian Fletcher takes the term “slapping a rock” literally as he breaks his board on a skate inspired maneuver and ends his run at a contest at the Lane. Photo: J. Hay That page: The military soldiers unswervingly loyal to the Emperor, stormtroopers represented the most visible extension of Imperial might. They were shock troopers meant to strike with speed and accuracy, putting down frontside airs over the death box and maintaining order on the farflung worlds of the Empire. Stormtrooper: Lincoln Photo: Greg Hall

Charlie Wilkins, backside D in the infamous C pool. Sequence by Rhino.

this is the new deal, low tech design layouts. itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s minimalist, or something. and with this being our last issue, who really cares anyway? 70

If you look closely you can see Matt Dove smack his board on the edge of the channel. Fuckinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; sick, dude. Sequence by Rhino.

Brian Loweâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s frontside airs are not low. What a stupid caption. Christ. Photo: Korn

Damon nurtures his inner demon with a barefoot grind over the steps in Fresno.

And now, a word from Bruce: I apologize for my lack of wit–I know my fans are looking for some humor here–but I’m spent. I just finished my first article for one of those glossy mags–you know the one with the guy everyone talks shit on–and I am burnt on creativity. Whatever look for it, it's dope yo! Nonetheless here are the left overs (SCRAPS) for all you real cool Concussion readers–I would like to say something in closing though, if this really is Concussion’s last issue thanks for everything–it was sort of fun while it lasted. See ya in the deep end. Peace, bitches–rodzillafofo.com Left: Shakey rail, fucked up runway, real bad landing and a minister yelling at us–doesn’t matter when you are DJ Chavez. 5-0 to fakie by the skate world’s next superstar. Right: “Oh, Brian Anderson did that trick to shove it way back in the 90's” Whatever! Brian didn’t run into a cop car when he did it, homey did!

Left: A classic case of the photo not showing how gnarly something is–the rail is taller and the bank in off the meats. Go there, it's off High Street by the 580–you wont do shit! Phil Kent is my hero! Right: Everyone's favorite chronic masturbator Brian “sore hands” Guarisco front boarding in between jack sessions. Yo Brian, where's your keys???

Words by Patrick Melcher Photos by Chris Anderson

icago park. t thing at the Ch per on the bigges Backside crail tap

This is one rail you wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to nut on.

Goinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; back to school for a desk five-o

Who or what would be your biggest inspiration? Traveling, my sex life, & everyday shit. I blow my own shit up. I mean, I live in fucking San Jose for christ sakes. There’s shit out here. I don’t live in Soho or some thriving inspiring art scene. I don’t need to live in New York or be surrounded by dope galleries, graffiti and artists to inspire myself and come up with dope shit. I saw two drooling Dobermans in my headlights running at top speed last night, and two crusty gutter punk lovers handcuffed together talking about how it’s gonna be a long night. Having random street vendors squeeze my tits on the streets of

Tell the readers about your new book. Bruised Fruit is about the trials and tribulations of a 25 year old that’s coming up in the art world, using journal entries, traveling all over the earth, photos, drawings, graffiti, murals, and paintings, but it’s good shit, not that faggot shit.

What’s up with all the whales? They’re fat, ugly and stupid like most Americans and they comment about their surroundings and the world they live in. They’re all beached and scattered all over the streets of America because the water is so fucking dirty, and if you try to roll ‘em back in the water or buff’em out, they just beach themselves again. I’m also interested about who and where they come from. I couldn’t tell you. It’s something like a phenomenon - like crop circles.

It says on your card here that you are a private investigator. Let’s say I wanted to hire you because I think my grandma is a cokehead, what could you do for me and how much would it cost? I don’t like to get out of bed these days for less than 5 g’s. I’m big time now. I used to do anything and everything for bluelight crackwhore specials. Punch an exboyfriend in the face for a cake and shit like insurance fraud. This guy tried to claim he had a busted neck and wore a neck brace to court, then I got this chick to seduce him and get him to eat her pussy. Busted! You can’t eat pussy with a broke ass neck. My specialty is cheating spouses and kidnapping. It involves a lot of sitting in your car with a zoom lens, penthouse forums, coffee and donuts and a lot of talk radio. I also like stalking my friends who have real jobs, or people I just met - see what they’re all about.

Where are you from? Koreatown, Los Angeles, California, but currently relocated to San Jose. I fucking hate southern California.

What’s your full name? DAVID YOUNG CHOE. Some of my really racist friends from Africa call me Nintendo.

What’s up with fanboys? I’m a fan boy. It’s like I said before, we live in a world filled with shit, so when you find that gold corn nugget in the pile of rancid shit, you dig it out and hold it up to the sky, and worship it. The people that worship my shit, I worship them back.

What was the most ridiculous outfit that you saw at the Comic Convention in San Diego? Everyone over 16 who still dresses in that raver get up looks ridiculous, actually, all and any ravers look like shit. A 50 year shriveled up Tomb Raider with the hugest, nastiest fake tits on her pruney freckled frame was pretty gross. Everyone else that dressed up including the hugely overweight man who was a yo-yo expert and made his own transformers costumes out of cardboard boxes was immaculate, you have to love that.

It sounds like you’ve traveled quite a bit, have you ever been scared for your life somewhere? The AK-47’s are a reoccurring theme in my life that I never get used to. Having one pointed at me in the Gaza Strip and Brazzaville central Africa, I was like, my life is over, it’s gonna end now, I’m never going back home, I hope I did ok in this life. Watching beatings, shootings, stonings, lynchings, death from mosquito bites…AIDS and malaria is all pretty scary, but it’s almost like overload, that you’re so scared of everything, that you’re just like, fuck it. You become at peace with dying, and you don’t get scared, or your body drains all your scared fluids and you’re like, fuck it.

I was checking out your website and a lot of the quotes on there elude to you being some sort of, and I quote “arrogant cocksucker”. What would make them say something like that? I’m not the most modest guy in world, but to tell you the truth I’m just being honest. If I do a dope painting, I know how to take a compliment. I know it’s good, you know it’s good, why do the whole “Hey Dave that’s really good!”, “Really, you think so? C’mon really?” I answer these questions as soon as I get them in a quick fast honest way, if I go back and read them sometimes, I sound like an asshole, but I don’t give a fuck. I’m just honest. If a girl is honest, she’s a bitch. If a guy is, he’s an asshole. We live in a world filled with shit; shitty cars, shitty art, shitty music, and there’s people like, “this is good and that is good”. Not everything is good. If every fucking thing is good, what’s bad? There’s no accounting for taste. People are fucking idiots, including me. I watch THE WB and listen to shitty music.

Saigon and doing 360’s on the wet grass at golf courses after closing is my shit.

all sewing by Hilary Sepp

What’s the worst head injury you have ever had? I’ve suffered a great deal of head trauma in my time on this planet. I’ve done very little drugs and drinking, but have received many blows to the head. I got beaten so bad once it looked like I had two rotten plums for eyeballs. I looked like an alien. My cousins Tommy and Johnny from Seaside showed me how to put myself into a self induced seizure. I blacked out for 5 mintues, had a stream of drool all the way up my arm and killed how many brain cells? I always go for insane air right after I learn how to ski or snowboard, and end up eating it, and going into seizures. Last time it happened my brother put me up on his lap, and I started chewing on the strings on his hooded sweater, it’s always the most insane feeling to just wake up and have no fucking clue how you just got where you’re at.

Is this the worst interview you’ve ever done? No. I love being interviewed. It’s therapy for me because I don’t get out much.

What are your plans for the future? Early retirement, have my kids hate me and teach 4th graders how to harness their art and keep on private dicking.

Spike Lee or Stan Lee? Spike lee. I like how he has all his characters floating in his movies, he’s a USC art fag. Stan lee is a fucking idiot that should’ve gone away a long time ago. He did a signing at a comic book store I worked at after high school and he was signing whatever you put in front of him, Ren and Stimpy DC shit. Everything he did in the last 40 years is complete shit. He talks to everyone like they’re little kids.

This is the hardest question so far , I’m struggling with this one. I guess I’m gonna say half empty most of the time, because I’m a conquerer type, and I rarely enjoy what I have because I’m worried about how much more I could’ve got and how much more I can get. But it changes from time to time, right now I’m very happy, so at this moment I’m half full. Whenever I look at my gas meter in my car I think half full, not half empty.

Did comics evolve into fine art for you or was it the other way around? To me, and most kids, comics and cartoons were always the art, and the shit in the museums was like whatever. What has shaped your life more: The Simpsons or Mondrian? Batman or Warhol? Is the glass half full or half empty?

this girl is straight up posing like she did this piece, she didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. poser.

Andy Jenkins brought down some mad skills to the party. werd.

Bigfoot with a big painting of big foot that was big with people with big feet.

how embaressing me and Tommy G. wore the same shirt.

the art was nice at this show, but also nice were the frames. breathtaking..

this painting ruled cause it had Archy Bunker in it. ruling.

this was my date for the evening, she was also working as security. lucky me.

another art poser, jesus this is some kind epidemic, beware....

you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t describe a show like this. the sheer volume of pieces was mind blowing if not bordering on ridiculous. the fact that every piece was on a skateboard made it that much more personal. any skateboarder who didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see this show blew it because you probably will never see a show like this again.

I knew this day would come, the day that I had to transcribe the Queens interview I did a couple of weeks back. I’m looking at the little silver recorder and all the memories come flushing back. Probably the first thing I remember is meeting Nikki Persnickety and her telling me that I would be interviewing the band. I was a little blown away. My first thought was “I am too big a fan to sit down and grill these guys without having them sign my tits or something.” At some point I convinced myself that I could pull it off. Let’s jump to the night they played the Fillmore, insane show, from the music, to the crowd, to the light show, to the whiskey I was drinking, the show was amazing. That night, after the show, we had strayed from our original party posse and had gone to drink beers and do drugs in a hotel room with some fellow Santa Cruz heads, it was there that I met my inspiration to make it happen, Katie. Katie and I were talking about Queens of the Stone Age, and I mentioned that I was going to interview them the next night in Santa Cruz. I told her she should come along, for moral support, so I didn’t lose my non-bias approach. She happily agreed. I had told her that of all the dudes in Queens I was probably the most interested in interviewing Nick Oliveri because that dude has been in so many kick ass projects (Kyuss, Mondo Generator, The Dwarves, Desert Sessions etc.) he must be crazy or something. I had imagined how the interview might go, I had some loosely put together questions, I would bring in a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, I figured I would ask him about playing with the Dwarves and then just funny shit like if he ever killed anybody. He would say some off the wall shit and we would laugh and drink whiskey together. It all worked out perfect when I imagined it. Reality, I learned, is very different, much more brutal. The night of the show came, I showed up a little late, semi-nervous, but still pretty confident that I could pull it off. I ran into Katie and she said she had seen the band go into the upstairs VIP area of the club and that we should just go up there and make it happen....OK, this is very crucial point in the night, I should have high tailed to the liquor store for the bottle of booze, instead I put my dick in the wind and was like “Yah, let’s go up there, fuck it.” Our arrival into the VIP room was unusual to say the least, one second everyone was drinking having a good time and then the moment we arrived in the room everything got real quiet, all eyes on us. The vibe in the room was “Who the fuck are these people and why are they up here?” This is where we begin, Nick is sitting on this couch with two hot blond girls, so what do I do? Cockblock him of course, “Hey man I’m from Concussion magazine, you interested in doing an interview?”, he reluctantly says “Uh, sure man”....

Concussion: Alright, you ever kill anybody? (I knew after I asked this question I had already blown it) Nick Oliveri: No C: You ever thought about killing anybody? (I am on auto pilot) N.O: Nope One of the hot blond girls gets off the couch and walks away, Nick looks at her, looks at me and looks at the ground like someone just killed his dog. C: I kind of want to talk about The Dwarves a little bit, what's going on with the Dwarves right now? N.O.: I don't think there is anything going on with the Dwarves right now, you know what I mean, Blag's not really doing it now, it only really happens when he wants to do it. I think he's trying to do some new shit right now. C: How's this tour been so far?

N.O: It's been great, you know, it's been a lot of fun so far. C: So this is the third album for Queens, how does it feel third time around? The second hot blonde gets up and Nick is left on the couch by himself. I'm chain smoking cigarettes and sweating like a pig. This is exactly what I didn't want to happen, I had completely lost my cool and I'm sure at this point Nick is thinking of ways to destroy me. Brutal. N.O.: I like this record man, I feel good about it. C: I mean you do so many projects with Mondo Generator and Desert Sessions, would you say this is the best music you guys have put together so far? N.O.: I think so ya, I definitely think this is the best stuff yet. C: Being involved in so many projects, what do you do to chill out. N.O.: Uh, I just sit there. At this point I confess to Nick that the "Have you ever killed anybody?" question is probably the best one I've got and it's all going down hill from here on out. I think he understands at this point that I am a dip shit and we keep going.

Josh Homme is saying â&#x20AC;&#x153;fuck, fuck, fuck, mother, mother, fuckâ&#x20AC;?

Mark Lanegan takes a wittle nappy nap

Katie and Troy. Katie, in the immortal words of Bette Midler you were the wind beneath my wings.

On October 29, 2002, Concussion caught up with Devo at the Tony Hawk Boom Boom Huck Jam in San Diego. In addition to the bmx, skate and moto-x, those in attendance were treated to the sounds of Devo.

by Jason Murray

Concussion: Please state your names: Devo: Jerry, Bob 2, Bob 1, Mark. C: How did you decide who would be 1 and who would be 2? D: I think it was the way we lined up the first night. C: In addition to the two appearances on the Huck Jam, are you planning any other tours in the immediate future? D: There is no plan but there is discussion to make something happen. Something could happen. If we can work Moto-X into the mix, maybe if we could play guitar and ride the bike at the same time, we would do it. C: Which one of you would drive the bike? D: We would have to get a bike built for four across so that we could all ride together. Jerry: I’m really impressed with the heights that the moto-x guys were getting to in practice, they we’re brushing their heads against the arena ceiling. C: Is that a distraction to have them launching 50 ft over your head while you are playing? Jerry: It’s actually great. Usually, when you are out on stage, it’s all up to you. Nobody’s helping. This is different, the pressure is off, there’s some additional support. C: Have you ever toured with a production of this magnitude where there is such a cross section of events going on simultaneously? D: No. That is what made us interested in doing it. We never did anything like this. We did Lollapalooza but that’s all bands. There wasn’t the diversity that you see here. Mark: We did do a show in India where they had guys that we’re eaten by elephants three days before the show and they shit them out during the show and that was kind of exciting. C: That sounds like that could be the highlight of any tour. Did you ever see anything

else shit out on tour of that magnitude? Jerry: Just me when I ate something bad from this one deli. Bob 2: I think it was when you ate that midget. C: What was your favorite video you ever made? Jerry: That’s tough, For me, it would be it’s be “Beautiful World” because it’s still true today. Bob 2: “Freedom of Choice” Bob 1: “Happy Ending” C: We always like happy ending’s. Has VH-1 approached you to do a “Behind the Music” yet? Jerry: They didn’t even ask. All they did is talk about us and didn’t involve us in research or anything. C: What about an “Osbournes” type style reality show where you all live together? Devo: laughter Jerry: We already did that, it was a long time ago. C: And you didn’t get paid for it? Jerry: No. Devo: more laughter… C: What was it like working with David Cassidy and the Spirit of ‘76 ? Jerry: Wow! Mark: It was an honor. Jerry: I like David because he was taking it very seriously. C: What are your e-bay id’s? Jerry: more laughter Mark: Mutardo. C: Are there any bands or other things that you look to today for inspiration? Jerry: It‘s tough with bands. There are bands like Creed that make me sick. The preaching makes me sick. I think Eminem is funny and I like his videos a lot. C: You must be looking forward to his acting debut as well? Jerry: I am. Other than that, I think that what inspires me is not rock bands but other stuff like the themes for cable news. I like that. Ice machines and refrigerators……industrial noise.

C: Who’s idea was it to sell “Beautiful World” to Target? Mark: They came to us. Bob2: It was their idea. C: Was it the red hats? Jerry: Yeah, one more theme they could incorporate into their marketing campaign. C: Who came up with the idea for the red hats/flower pots? Jerry: They we’re really inspired by two things. One was a ceiling fixture in my grade school that we turned upside down. The other was a Nancy comic book. C: What is your best Concussion story? Jerry (to Mark): You got plenty as a kid. How about when you drove the go-cart into the Toyota. Mark: We we’re all in Devo outfits at the time. Luckily, we all had skateboard gear on at the time so it saved us. Jerry: The only concussion I got is when we we’re on tour and I got into a fight with our manager backstage in Berkeley. It was dark and there was this big iron-ceiling pipe that was hanging down with a turnbuckle on it and I smacked my head real bad. C: Did you win the fight? Jerry: The dark won. C: Did you ever party with Wendy O’Williams? Mark: Not party, but I did get to go shopping with her. We we’re in NY recording our second album and I had to buy sheets for our rental apartment. Jerry: We hung-out backstage at the Whiskey and I was glad that there was tape over her nipples. C: Aren’t we all? Devo: more laughter……. C: Thanks guys, have a good show. We enjoyed the warm up. Devo: That was the show.

Devo’s super rad and all, but man, look how old that one guy is right there. Whstsup gramps?

photo: rob taylor

Interview by Chris Romero This interview was conducted over a twelver of Bud as the Dudes were putting a new alternator in Kevin’s Trans Am....

giving into the pressures, you know, buying $100 jeans, listening to gay bands, getting fancy haircuts with bangs, and kind of just hiding who they were. Pete: Drinking microbrews and wine...

Pete: Nah, but he brought something back to our lives so we figured we owed him that much to put his name in lights. When he rolls back through town he’ll be up on stage with us. Johnny had a tough voice, kind of like the dude in Molly Hatchet.

Kevin: Yeah, shit like that.

Q: So why the band without Johnny?

James (wrenching): C’mon, bitch, there you go.. I got it! Anyways, he kinda brought the pride that was lost in being a dude. Q: So where is Johnny now?

Kevin: Well we figured somebody had to spread the word, there have got to be dudes all around that are keeling under the radar. It’s pretty well explained in our song “Dude Pride” where we talk about bringing the dude pride back.

Kevin: Fuck, that’s a good one. He kind of had a little problem hittin’ the foil, you know, and he just kind of took off in his Camaro one day, said he’d be back soon. I think that was in February.

Remember the days when dudes were on top. Van Halen ruled the airwaves before Hagar made it slop El Caminos roamed the streets, primered Novas too. Throw in a Trans Am or three, and a cold sixer of brew.

Q: So he’s not in the band?

Q: Where’s the dudes now, are they all underground?

Q: So first off, who the fuck is Johnny and where is he? Kevin: Johnny is the guy who showed us what the fuck is going on around us today. He basically came outta nowhere and met up with us in various places. James: Remember the first time we met him at the Oakland pick and pull? Kevin: Yeah, I think he was pulling a radiator for his Camaro. But anyway, he came around at kind of a dark time for your regular Joes, and showed us that we were legit and that we should be proud of who we were and how we live. At the time, in this area, we were getting a lot of static for just being dudes. A lot of our friends were 96

Where’s the dude pride that once ruled this town? Kevin: Besides, aren’t you tired of all these gay ass bands out there? We figured we might as well make some songs that dudes can relate to. James: It’s like there’s no more Van Halens or Skynyrds, the only newer shit that we listen to is Slayer. Q: What are some of the names of your songs? Pete: We got Dude Crew, In the Shit, New Dude, Fake Dudes, Whipped Dude, Dude for Life.... James: Jesus is American, Dude Pride, Gay Blade. Fuck, there’s a lot of songs all of a sudden. Q: What is the Dude Crew? Kevin: That’s basically all of your dudes around here that are rockin’ their dude pride, we get together for barbeques, meet up at the bar, work on cars, drink Bud, just do dude things. Q: What about Whipped Dude? Pete: That’s about a friend of ours who will go nameless, but all dudes have a friend like this. He just kinda disappears when he gets a whiff of pussy and you won’t really see him until he’s through with the whole deal. He used to be our bro until he met that ho He’s makin’ plans, he’s holdin’ hands Things took a turn for the worse And now he’s holdin’ her purse He’s goin’ on walks, he’s havin’ long talks Whipped dude, whipped dude James: Hey hand me the 9/16th open end... Kevin: Sometimes it happens to the best of us, but you can’t just turn your back on the crew. Q: What is Gay Blade all about? All: Gay ass rollerbladers (laughter). Kevin: Man, you definitely ain’t no dude if you’re rollin’ on the gay blades. Q: Do the Dudes have anything recorded to spread the word? James: We’ll get around to it eventually. I gotta get the El Camino painted first, the rust is startin’ to come up through the primer. Kevin: Just listen to some Skynyrd or DAC and you’ll get the message soon enough. Q: So I hear you’ve got a song called “King of Beers”. James: You know what that’s about. As a matter of fact, hand me one right now. Kevin: That’s about the King of Beers, check the lyrics, that will tell you what’s up. All those gay boys claimin’ Hamm’s or PBR, they’re on the right track I guess, just a little misguided. I mean at least they’re not drinking some raspberry double hops microbrew. When you’re a dude, you’re a dude all the way From your first can of Bud until your last dying day Bud is the best, nothing compares You can keep all the rest, you’re all fuckin’ squares Bud’s what we drink, end of fuckin’ story Red and white ‘til the end, death or fuckin’ glory Q: Anyone to thank? All: SLAYER!!!! Q: Any last words? Pete: If anyone sees Johnny make sure you smoke him out and tell him we said “Supper”. James: I think it’s in, start it up. Kevin: Don’t be thinking this shit’s a joke, it’s how we live, dude fuckin’ pride.

video Reviews Playing in Traffic Thrasher Video #19 I’ve been kind of liking the Thrasher videos that I’ve seen lately, so I was kind of stoked to get a copy of this new video. It starts off with some street “bangers” and some pretty mediocre emo tune, but I forgot all about the music when Cardiel came on the screen. The music was tolerable, although the only song I actually liked was the Clay Wheels surf tune. At least the other shit wasn’t hip hop. Greg Lutzka has a mini part in here, as do some other ripping street dudes like Steve Nesser, Emeric Pratt, and Josh Falk, but fuck man, y’all gotta cut out with the death lens handrail footage. I mean how many times can you see the same angle on a trick and get stoked on that shit? Straight lens shots let the viewer see the real perspective of the terrain, while death lens shots make wack shit look bigger than it is. So come on, cut it out. So yeah, back to the video. Good clips from the Europe contests, a little bit of Neil Heddings footage, and some clips of the Algorta pool that Bailey’s been lurking at. There’s some sick footage of Chet Childress and the San Diego crew skating some pools and on roadtrips, and probably my favorite footage was of Hewitt skating the cradle in Europe. Can you say fucking gnarly frontside carves completely upside down? That clip pretty much made the video for me, but there is enough other good stuff to recommend this video. -dk

Krux April Fools Tour Man, those Krux dudes are pretty funny and they skate pretty good too. The team has a good line up and as the kids say "they throw down some hammers". Not just rails and flippy flappers either, I distinctly remember Donald footy and some crazy ditch action as well. Other great highlights include: a man with boobs, Ronaldo Whalebone's swollen purple ass, AP's slamma-jamma-ouchy, roadkill and smoking (mainly by Caswell). I also believe after seeing this video that Louie Barletta should have his own cable access show, like you'd just follow him around and he'd be all funny and stuff... Maybe not. There are some funny parts but there are also sensitive moments, maybe a little too sensitive, dare I say "homo-erotic" but mainly because of the editing. Who ever did that, ohhh boy, they messed up. This video boasted "Feel Good" video of the year, and yah, I guess I felt alright not like gooood but alright. One things for sure, I didn't feel bad, so go check it out. -lc

2001 Skate Odyssey With Beer Ratings This video is a great idea-it’s like a video skatepark review guide. And since it’s the same dude skating all of the parks, you can get a sense for how good the parks are by how much shit gets thrown down at the spots. If that isn’t enough, they rate everything in Milwaukee’s Best beer ratings. Fantastic. Put together by that Science Fair dude and some of his friends, this video is essentially a roadtrip across the country, where they did a good job of hitting a SHITLOAD of skateparks, with the better ones being in Colorado and the Pacific Northwest. You get to see some of the best and worst parks in the nation, plus some other random ramp spots and shit like that. I might disagree with some of their ratings (they gave poor ratings to some parks that looked pretty good) and this video was seriously long. So long I had to watch it in two sittings. Like it needed another good edit. And after a while you kind of get tired of watching Science Fair do hop around bonelesses, frontside pivot grabs, and his other tricks, but I think you’d probably get tired of watching any one person skate for over an hour. Still he’s pretty rad and doesn’t get naked–too often. At the end he slaps over 100 rock n rolls on a mini ramp, which was another marathon of endurance for the rider and the viewer. Anyway overall this shit was rad, if taken in small doses. I think someone else could take this idea and seriously make some money out of it if they released tapes for different regions, mixed up the riders a bit, packaged it with a pretty cover and got some good distribution. This shit blows doors off of websites that rate skateparks. Still, these comments are no slight to the producers of this fine film, and I look forward to seeing Science’s next roadtrip. If you’re taking a roadtrip to Colorado or Oregon anytime soon, watch this video before you go, and you’ll know what’s up. http://www.negativeion.com - dk

Fruit of the Vine DVD Nichols/Charnoski I’d like to start off by saying this is already one of my favorite skate flicks ever. That said, this is the first DVD we’ve ever reviewed. DVDs are the wave of the future, dude. VHS is like, so 90’s. Luckily, I have a DVD player on my computer so I could watch this flick (which I already own on VHS) and the extra footage that is obligatory with DVDs these days. In this case, there is a pool menu and you can skip to different parts in the film if you just want to see one particular pool. And there’s extra footage, which is longer, unedited interviews with Salba, Tony Alva, and Pat Quirk. But the DVD is worth it for the footage of the “Q-Man” alone. Man that shit is funny. “This shit’s for real, dude. All those snowboard flunkie junkies trying to come up on our scene... this ain’t no airbag landing.” Along with the extended interviews are extra clips they didn’t show in the original film, including some good footage from Belmar’s. And some of the stuff Salba says is pretty cool. But the Tony Alva part, whatever man, he was there, and you weren’t. This shit’s for real dude, this ain’t no airbag landing. - dk

Interview at The House of Blues in Anaheim I first saw these guys’s in Seattle at the Graceland with The Load Levelers. The Graceland is one of those rad places where everyone big and small has played and been played out. It reminded me of a cross between the old Cattle Club in Sacramento and my basement in Portland, Oregon; dark and dingy with the smell of rotting sewer pipes blocking the sweet effervescence of Pabst Blue Ribbon from obtaining it’s final resting place in my nose. Ah…heaven! This interview, however, took place at the very posh House of Blues in Anaheim, CA. Here are a few excerpts from a conversation I had with Sean and Craig of Throw Rag.

Concussion: How did Throw Rag get its start? SEAN: I started this band with a couple of partners of mine in Palm Springs about eight years ago. For five years it was slow going, but the last three years it’s been a well-oiled machine. It helps to have the right guys. Concussion: Well oiled? Wesson, Pennzoil… SEAN: Craig, what kind of oil do we use?

by Eric Gonzales

Concussion: I guess this question would be for Craig. Where did the whole playing-a-washboard-in-a-rock-band idea come from? CRAIG: It all started with my family, who are totally rooted in Skimple music. It’s basically English hillbilly music. My Granny and Grandpa were a couple of drunks who used to play in this Skimple band and they played pub music. It’s all about the pub culture over there. Their whole mentality was to make all the instruments yourselves and get fucked up. When we were kids we used to go over there and they would show us how to make a stand-up bass or make a washboard sound good. My Grandma would sit there and put that shit between her legs and play and get drunk. Concussion: Grandma was big on putting shit between her legs? CRAIG: Oh yah, she likes to put shit between her legs! So while my parents were getting all embarrassed, my drunken grandparents were influencing me. SEAN: When I first met Craig, he told me that he was an accordion player.

CRAIG: Chocolate syrup, that’s right. I run on pure cake.

Concussion: Can he play the accordion?

Concussion: So…you’re a real health nut then, huh?

SEAN: Fuck no! (Laughs) So I asked him what he could play and he said the washboard, so I said, “You’re in”.

(Just then, everyone in the room erupts into fits of rage when it is announced that there is no more beer, and I can’t hear shit)

Concussion: On your website it says that you guys are the pioneers of “Sailor Rock”. Is that anything like Turbo Negro’s song, Sailor Man?

Concussion: Sean, tell us a little about the whole Palm Springs scene.

Concussion: Craig, that’s not a desert accent?

CRAIG: Yah, I love Turbo Negro but the term Sailor Rock came about because everyone was trying to typecast us in a certain genre. We got pegged with the Psychobilly label because we had an up-right bass in the beginning. We don’t sing about going down to the swamp or riding on a ghost train or any shit like that. We are just a rock and roll band. So when we were first asked what we thought we sounded like, we said Sailor Rock because no one was claiming that genre.

SEAN: He’s Australian! (This seems to piss Craig right off)

Concussion: What were your biggest influences coming up?

CRAIG: No, no, I’m not Australian…I’m like, English.

SEAN: Skateboarding, drugs, punk rock, drugs and rock and roll.

SEAN: LIKE English! (Laughs)

Concussion: Any last words before I get smashed and they put me in Disney jail.

Concussion: You guys ever play any of those crazy parties up at Nude Bowl?

SEAN: This is for the kids out there. Don’t share needles. If you do, use a bleach kit. Don’t listen to radio. Wrap your wiener. Pull out and cum on her back. Take as many Polaroid pictures of girls as you can (Sean had a Polaroid camera with him the whole time). Drink Pabst Blue Ribbon, always.

SEAN: A bunch of us are from the desert and I chased an ex-wife to Orange County and another guy ran from a wife to Orange County and that’s where we all met. Craig, who is from England, we also met in Orange County.

SEAN: This band never did but I’ve played in other bands up there.

When you sport a Concussion shirt or hat, you are 33% cooler than dude next to you. Unless heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wearing a Concussion shirt too. Then you guys are twins. How cute.

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QOTSA cont’d from page 92 C: What's the worst head injury you ever had? (This question is always the best fail-safe for an interview going downhill.) N.O.: Shit man, I guess this time I got kicked in the head. C: Did you get a Concussion? N.O.: I guess man, I just got fuckin' beat down by a bunch of guys. C: How long did you play with the Dwarves? N.O.: On and off for a long time, probably from the Sugar Fix tour on. But I haven't toured with them in forever, it seems like, I did the last record with them and the record before that and all the Blag Dahlia stuff. C: The Dwarves seem so different from the stuff you play with Queens. N.O.: And you know I played with Josh in Kyuss. C: Yeah, I mean you are involved with all these phenomenal bands. So with Queens, is this it? I mean is this like the culmination of all the bands you've played with? N.O.: This is the band I like the most, you know, it's fun to play in this band because musically we can do more, there is no formula to how we play a song, we can play however we want to and that to me is pretty cool man. C: I was totally blown away at the Fillmore show because the place was packed and it seemed like everyone was singing along to every song, is that weird to you at all? N.O.: Fuck, I didn't really notice. C: How was touring with Trail Of Dead and Peaches? N.O.: It was fun playing with those bands for the second half of the tour, the first half we played with Burning Brides and they were good. I think it was good man because all the bands were different. That's what it breaks down to, man, you know what I mean, everybody was different and does their own thing. C: Do you prefer to play the bigger venues like the Fillmore or smaller clubs? N.O.: I like playing big shows but smaller clubs can be a lot of fun too, you know gettin' down in the dirt with the band. C: How do you like the current line up with the band (QOTSA)? It seems like you guys have changed it up a lot. N.O.: I think we are gonna stay with the line up, with Mark and Troy and Joey and -[muffled] - it's a good band, super tight. C: It seems like over your 3 album history the band has been rotating guys in and out. N.O.: Yeah dude, since it started really, Josh sort of set it up that way, like the Desert Sessions, so it was a good time man, playing with different people. Like on the Rated R album we had three different drummers, and that's cool, but I really like the band as it sits right now. C: I really fuckin' appreciate you taking time for this Nick, thanks. (Translation- Sorry for breaking up your party and cockblocking you with the hot blondes, please kick me in the face, I deserve it) N.O.: Cheers.

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Record Reviews

scenesters. This band probably has a

Think your band has got what it takes? Send CDs, tapes, vinyl, etc. to: Concussion PO Box 1024 Santa Cruz, CA 95061

great deal in common with them. I

A HiFi Serious

these guys switch up their sound as this cd rolls on. It

The Coalition of Independent Record Stores said, “A is poised to be huge!” I can only assume this is because they borrow heavily from several other, already huge bands. One of the few things I found interesting about the Hi-Fi Serious LP is the range of bands the British popsters plagiarize. The opening track is such a blatant Poppa Roach rip off, I thought I had bought the wrong disk. From there, they continue down the road to stardom on the backs of bands as diverse as At the Drive-In, Blink 182, and Radiohead. I think I might have even heard a little Sting in there. I guess I have to agree with The Coalition of Independent Record Stores. A probably will be huge; just don’t think that means this record is any good. – MD Christina Aguilera Stripped RCA You know you run a big magazine when The Record Industry starts sending you cd’s like Christina Aguilera. It was going to go straight to Streetlight, but the cover has Christina topless with her hair covering her boobies, so I had to delve in. 9 hot photos of Christina naked, or mostly naked. I start to read the lyrics. She’s pissed. She wants you to know the real Christina, not the media created, Britney rival, Christina. Well, I don’t listen to much dance pop, except occasionally when it’s on the radio, but this isn’t that bad. It’s got way more soul than the pop I was expecting. OK, I feel lame listening to this now. I guess I better turn it off and go sell it so

Concussion Pick of the Litter

can’t count the number of times

starts out with an acoustic guitar and then lee ways into a Pennywise style hardcore song with soaring harmonies. They stick with this style for a few songs, then in steps the Reggae. It then jumps from surf guitar to reggae to hardcore to weird

Hermano Only A Suggestion Tee Pee Records I don’t understand why people send us all of these shitty albums, and the ones we actually like, we’re forced to go out and buy. Anyway, the record that sounds most like Kyuss this issue sounds like Kyuss for good reason-it is John Garcia’s band. Or Garcia sings in the band. And they sound like Slowburn and most of the other heavy, desert rock bands Garcia has been involved with, which means it sounds more or less like Kyuss. And I paid $15 for it or something, because it’s hard to find bands I like these days. I’m old and jaded, and recently have been afflicted with “over 30” syndrome. Anyway, Hermano is a fine album, and kept my head banging for the full duration of the music. One of my favorite songs was “Senor Moreno’s Plan”, but I kind of liked them all, and I’d readily recommend this disk to any fan of the genre. Speaking of this genre, I heard that these guys headlined a stoner rock festival somewhere in the midwest or something,

acoustic crap simi-

and Scott Reeder (ex-Kyuss) was playing bass. And they played a Kyuss cover, “One Inch Man”. So who knows, lar to what Sublime maybe the Kyuss reunion is not dead just yet. Either way pick this album up and keep the dream alive. - dk was doing. Ah ha, that’s it. These guys are a wannabe laws” the night before, only to find the same, but most of them are Sublime. The truth is told they are his nostrils blocked, girlfriend sensitive and emotional with syna talented band. I just can’t deal gone, and one hell of a mess to thesizers backing some light power with their fishing for styles style. clean up. This album makes a good chords and a full range of susSo if you want a Sublime-like band soundtrack to be depressed to. tained one-noters… - JH whose songs average out to about Which, when you really think about 3 1/2 minutes each. Well then, it, is a nice thing to have. If you’re Buckethead here’s your band. I’ll stick to Rebel a fan of Beck and feel you don’t Bermuda Triangle Rock. - SB like this album at first, keep lisCatalyst Entertainment Beck Sea Change Interscope It seems all his life Beck has been haphazardly searching for the blues. With Sea Change it seems that he’s finally found them, and frankly, I don’t think he’s too happy about it. With song titles like “Guess I’m Doin’ Fine”, “Lost Cause” and “Already Dead”, Beck makes it clear that there is a very present weight pulling him down, way down. Gone is the sweatsoaked funk of Midnight Vultures. Gone is the passive optimism of

no one finds it in my cd collection.

Mutations. Gone is the innocence of the once blissfully naive manchild, Beck. This album is gritty and raw, yet somehow refined.

I only listened to the first 3 songs, I promise. – JH

Strings accompany most tracks and give the album a lofty vibe. Credit

Authority Zero A Passage in Time Lava Records I am going to rip this band up so bad; I need to listen to it one more time, so I don’t feel bad after the fact. Sure as shit, I was right. I don’t know what to think of these guys. They remind me of a band that came out of L.A. in the late nineties. They were called, “Goldfinger”. They were exposed for the posers they were by L.A. 104

is due, in part, to “Nigel Goderich” (Mutations, Radiohead) who provides subtle sonic nuances and echoplex textures that really round out the songs. Beck has all but abandoned the riddle-speak that peppered his previous efforts in favor of clear, down to earth vocals that are easily understood and felt. A very welcomed change, if you ask me. All in all, this album does make perfect sense in the Beck lineage. It is the sound of a man waking up the next morning after “defying the logic of all sex

tening. Sooner than later, it’s sure to hook you. - RK Blue Collar Special S/T Destroy All This band grew on me like the fungus around my genital area. At first I was like “Ok, this is nothing new. I’ve had this before in my life. No big deal”. Then a couple days went by, I looked at it again. It’s growing bigger, I’m starting to trip on it. Oh yeah! I’m scratching at it. That feels real good! Alright, enough of that. This is skate rock at it’s best. When I listen to them I think of Active Ingredients. I like Active a lot. With that said, I recommend this band to all you crazy skaters out there who love this thing called skate rock. Viva La Skate Rock! Casper Brazil Dasein Fearless Records A combination of run-of-the-mill indy rock mixed with untraditional instruments such as the viola, violin & cello. Some of the songs are spacey, slow and weird while some are a little more melodic rock. The singer sounds like a less frantic version of the guy from At the Drive-In. All the songs don’t sound

Mysteriously lost somewhere in the realm of techno, hip-hop doom beats, trance exotica, and Satrianiesque guitar foolery, Buckethead creates a wacky synth-laced groove of eclecticism. Buckethead used to play with G ‘n’ R and the dude Brain, current G’n’ R drummer plays one song on this album. So what I guess, I could have left the name-dropping out, but some people like some point of reference. So there it is. Brain played with Primus too. And the DJ, Extrakd, mixes the shit up while playing some trippy instruments. Definitely worth listening to if you like any form of experimental craziness, beats, a ripping guitarist, or some combination of all three, and then some. This is the music that endlessly loops through the minds of all the missing souls lost for eternity in the Bermuda Triangle. - JH Busuchan Defrag My Heart Spam 49 It sounds like the Mentors reincarnated. I saw the Mentors once at One Step Beyond in San Jose. It was either opening up for Jane’s Addiction’s “Nothing Shocking” tour, or Murphy’s Law. Yeah, I remember I saw Lars Ulrich from Metallica at that show, and my friend was so into Lars Ulrich (he

played guitar in our lame 80’s metal band), my friend Dave Haucke, not Lars Ulrich, and he asked Lars for his autograph and he wouldn’t give it to him. So he thought he was an asshole after that. I guess he was, that fucking asshole. He got Napster shut down, that little bitch. FUCK Lars Ulrich. Sue me for slander you BITCH ASS!! Anyway, where was I, back in the 90’s, oh wait, the 00’s, ok I’m reviewing this cd. It’s like the Mentors as the sound track to a pinball game. This IS the Mentor’s Pinball Game soundtrack, but it’s called Busuchan. I just matched. Sweet. Now I get to play again. Upon further listen, there’s some crazy stuff on this cd, and it’s way, way out there. I don’t’ really want to explain it. I think you need to listen to this yourself, if you can find it. www.spamrecords.org/bandpages/busuchan - JH Butthole Surfers Humpty Dumpty LSD Latino Bugger Veil Long ago, in another place and time, The Butthole Surfers were a force to be reckoned with. Their early albums and live shows were incontrovertible proof that insanity could be delicious. A sound splattered on an all-too familiar canvas wrapped in a tapestry of psychedelia. It was a place where reason was second to impulse. Inhuman sounds emitted from man and machine combining to form live, gritty, raw and very, VERY scary sounds! Then, as time went on and the executives crept in, the Buttholes started contracting. Squeezing the portal shut if you will. Their guerilla approach to songwriting was slowly replaced by a poppy radio-ready drum machine-laden single-driven format. Such is the tragedy of a lot of “good bands” now-a-days. I’m sure you can think of a few. Yes, there are glimmers of hope in the later albums, but the landscapes have grown stale, tired and all but see-through. This is how I felt when I first bought Humpty Dumpty LSD. I was so ready for disappointment that I almost didn’t give it a chance. The other day though, I put it on and (much to my surprise) was truly taken back to the glory days. I began to cringe from the out of sync click track accompanying the sweet guitar on “Night of the Day”. I felt dirty inside. Corrupted. Violated even. It was great. Turns out Humpty Dumpty is a collection of outtakes and different versions from some of the Butthole’s best albums. It

made me want to listen to all of their old records in a row. Trust me, fans of the old Buttholes will not be disappointed! - RK The Chop Tops Evil Six Swill Billy The Chop Tops have done their time, they’ve been together for 6 years now and become a staple if not a standard for rock-a-billy in Santa Cruz. So, what can I say about the new album? It’s the same sound you have come to expect from the trio, blistering guitar, thumping rhythm section and vocals reminiscent of “the killer” Jerry Lee Lewis. The fourth track, “I’m a rocker” damn near blew my socks off and the title track “Evil Six” had me imagining I was in the wild wild west killing people at random and stealing the woman and putting them on the back of my horse and riding off into the sunset. Bang Bang; go get this album partner or next time I won’t miss. - LC Dr. Chunk White Zombie meets Limp Bizkit. Bad rap metal. Turn this shit off. SH Dropkick Murphys Live St. Patricks Day Hellcat records Some Guiness would be nice, thank you! A hot Irish chick would do me fine as well, appreciate it. A parade with the sounds of bagpipes and a few thousand screaming, drunken freckeled face folk passing me by, that’s cool. Something seems to be missing from this Irish day weekend.....Hhmmmmm, what is it? That’s it! Those damn Dropkick Murphys would do the trick. This live album recorded on St Pattys Day weekend is the Dropkicks first live album. It catches the energy and power that they have. With the crowd getting involved with the chorus many times, the listener can get involved and sing along as well. - casper

jacket and Simms gloves”. Go skate! - Casper Electric Frankenstein Listen Up, Baby TKO This album’s apparently been out of print for over three years, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before. I do like Electric Frankenstein though, they remind me of many of the things I liked about the Supersuckers before they started getting old and slowing down. Now that I think about it, on this one recent Supersuckers/Electric Frankenstein split, the Electric Frankenstein covers of Supersuckers songs sounded better than some of the originals. This album is great, why have I never heard it before, was it super hard to find? Was I not cool enough? Either way I’ve got it now and that’s all that matters - dk Foo Figthers All my Life 7” Sessions Records Containing the radio hit, “All My Life”, this Foo Fighters record should be collected if you are into collecting 45’s. Otherwise I guess you could just listen to the radio. But listening to the radio alone would not get you the B side, Danny Says. That song is like a slow “Ramones tea bags the Beach Boys” song. It’s really surfy and I’m enjoying it. Stop imaging the Ramones tea bagging the Beach Boys you sicko. After reading the fine print on the record sleeve, the song isn’t by the Foo Fighters at all; it’s by a coupla fellas named Douglas Colvin, John Cummings and Jeff Hyman. You’re probably going, duh, you don’t know who they are, that’s the so and so’s. I never seem to know who so and so is. I always feel like I’m supposed to, and kinda just nod my head and go ugh huh, yeah them, they were cool. I suck like that. Or maybe I just don’t care who anyone is, just

me and I fucking sold it to get like $6 which I probably wasted on a “kind” sixer. Well, I remember that it started with the “All My Life” song from the radio and from the Sessions 7”. Then there were a bunch of other songs that were all pretty damn good, but at the same time really tame and commercial. I’m not the biggest Foo Fighters fan, but I remember I bought the demo ep in New Zealand when I was down there like 6 years ago, and it had that song about “finger nails are pretty, finger nails are good, but all I really wanted was a brother”, in that whiny yet very catchy and addictive tone. I also know that the one Dave Grohl guy, that also occasionally plays drums for Queens of the Stone Age and used to play in Nirvana before Kurt killed himself (or was it Allen Wrench) is the main guy from Foo Fighters. Since that original purchase of the demo tape, I kinda just ignored them and saw them out of the corner of my eye on MTV jumping around or something. Anyway, now that you know what a big Foo Fighters fan I am, I could have kept it and listened to it, but now I remember, I figured I have so many cd’s I’d probably never really throw it on, so I sold it to Streetlight and bought some beer. But, if you like tame “grunge rock” you’d absolutely LOVE the new Foo Fighters, and while you’re at it, you should probably get their new limited edition Vinyl on Sessions Records as well. - JH GBH Ha Ha Go-kart Records You say you’ve heard GBH before and you know their style? Well, that’s what I thought as I walked into this disc. Although, I have never heard their last release, punk junkies, I believe this is the first time GBH has sounded like this. I’d put these guys in the same vein as Electric Frankenstein or

what they do. Get this, you Foo Figthers fans, you need it, because

Candy Snatchers. It is plain and simple Punked up Rock n Roll. The songs are driving and memorable.

it’s rare, and the b-side isn’t on the album. - JH

This is the best thing I’ve heard these guys do since City Babies. Get this cd, you’ll be pleased.

Duane Peters & The Hunns Wayward Bantums Disaster Records This band that Duane formed is a step above the US Bombs, with more energy and angst. This album sounds like they’re getting more comfortable. Touching on 9-11 and surf sacrificing, this album is a must for any skate Session. “Marina del Ray 1978, Tony Alva

Foo Fighters New CD Some Major Label It was overnighted to me from somewhere, I can’t remember where, and I burned it for my friend at work because he likes them a lot, but now I can’t find the damn thing. I hope I didn’t sell it to Streetlight. Shit, well now I feel bad because it was overnighted to

Green house effect Blastshield down The first thing I gotta say about these guys is GO SEE ‘EM LIVE! Don’t get me wrong, this is a kick ass album, but the only way you’re going to be able to experience the force of the sonic fuzzdome is to see them for yourself. This band has a thick heavy sound reminent 105

of Sabbath, but completely unique. After seeing them a few times now, I can honestly say they’re one of the tightest bands out there. These days it’s tough to come across a great band, so here it is! Keep your eye out for these guys. -SG The Headhunters Escape the Grave 7” Haunted Town Records A great label that puts out quality Oi, Rock, and Punk. The Headhunters are Oi, the creme de la creme Oi. I understand how Oi could get boring to some people. After all, it is just Blue Collar Punked up Rock N Roll. As for me, I can’t get enough of the shit. It’s not the shouts of Oi, Oi, nor is it the toughness of the music. It’s the sincerity I hear in the singer’s voices as they share with us their story. Oi is pure, raw, and honest. So many bands out there have done it to perfection. The Headhunters have what it takes to do it, also. I don’t know if you reading this right now have ever really lost yourself in Sham 69 or 4Skins, but if you have had the pleasure of doing so, I’m here to tell you The Headhunters are in the same spirit. If you don’t know shit about Oi then why not start here. They’ve got a bit of a ghoulie thing going. Maybe they can expand on that and create some psycho-Oi. Great band, fantastic 7”, I hope to hear more soon. - SB High Tower Buckets and Brooms 7” Man Baby Records Classic skate metal from this pack of Bay Area pool skaters. On this 45 there are 2 songs worth of quality guitar licks, heavy drum breaks, and skate punk lyrics. The second song is actually a killer instrumental, but the first song sings about skating, with lyrics like: “See it, find it, grind it.” San Francisco Street Metal. Get it if you’re down. – JH High Tower 4 song Demo Just when I was getting bummed that there were only two songs on the 7”, a High Tower four song demo cd appeared out of the same parcel! This cd was released before the 7”, but it has twice as many songs. This was recorded by Lars “Savage” (same as the 7”), and with a name like that, you know he’s good at doing what he’s doing, and it sounds great. I actually liked 106

the sound of the 7” better, but that’s just the vinyl vs. cd sound coming through. These songs aren’t quite as full sounding as the 7”, but they’re just as rocking. Not too heavy, not too light, not too many words, but that’s alright. Sick bass licks always do well in my book, as do their slowed down Champsesque guitar sound on one of the instrumentals, their building crescendo’s on another, and the unstoppable galloping gait of “Statler’s Quest”. I think it’s pretty cool that they don’t have much singing because that’s always the thing that blows it. You’re listening to something that sounds great, and then some whiny screaming bitch comes on and ruins it all and you must turn it off. Not the case here. Way better than the over produced genera-scraps that somehow find their way into the concussion po box these years. Get it while the getting’ is good. Contact hightowersf@yahoo.com for more info. - JH IN DK Kill Whitey! Go Kart Records New sounding youth crewy h/c with whoa whoa parts that sound like they should be from another song. The rest of the cd is melodic and sing songy; its good, just not really my cup of tea. - SH The Kings of Nuthin Shit out of Luck 7” Haunted Town Records My tastes vary vastly in styles of music. Swing is one of them, along with big band. What you’ve got here is a group of punks turned musician. These guys are very talented. They keep the swing flowing through their “charging make you gotta dance rhythm attack”. Similar to what you’d get if you combined Swingin’ Utters, punks high on big band, and Brian Setzer on one stage. I’ll review the full length next and tell you more. This 7” is Damn Good! - SB

to the skatepunks of the world. From the rock bottom to successful. This particular band is beyond talented. My wife stole this from me before I was able to listen to it. She called dibs on it, whatever that fuckin’ means. So once I convinced it away from her, I was overwhelmed with rhythm. At times the vocals are drunken Benny Goodman crossed with Sylvester the Cat. I am truly impressed with these guys. The musical styles are many. They don’t stay in one place for very long. Swing, Big Band, Punk, Oi, Ska breaks, and Rock n Roll. There are 15 songs on this disc. Each one of them is worth the price. Get this because you like music. Love this because it’s good. Die because you have to. - SB Lab Rats Start Thinking New Disorder Records My girlfriend gave me this disk which was passed on from a coworker’s son. Naturally I was hesitant to listen to it, as it could have easily been some Limp Bizkit rap metal, or worse. Thankfully the Lab Rats are nothing more than a great hardcore band. What’s more they’re only 16 and are this good already. Not that hardcore is that technical, but you know what I mean. The singer is a definite strong point, and his snotty screaming vocals carry many of the songs, but the band is solid all around. It’s nice that there are still kids around here starting bands that don’t suck, thank you Lab Rats Keep it up. - dk Man Will Destroy Himself Comsume…be silent…die Extremely Baked Records This is pretty good, but maybe I’m just saying that because you told me there are dudes from Corrosion of Conformity in the band. Sometimes it sounds like later Black Flag, sometimes its more metally, but all the songs are pretty rockin’. - SH

The Kings of Nuthin Fight Songs Disaster Records This one is put out on Disaster Records, which is owned and operated by the Master of Disaster, Duane Peters. I would hope you are familiar with his bands, but I am here to tell you that this man has great musical tastes. The bands that he has put out on his label are all solid bands. That impresses me. Walk it then talk it. A true mentor

Misura The Subtle Kiss of the Sledgehammer Two damn hype The title says it; the entire album says it. Solid metal all the way through; unrelenting. A lot of people might call this “hardcore”, but alas I am an idiot and never really understood what “hardcore” is. I suppose if the singer is all grrrrraaaahhhh, like a demon, then

that’s hardcore, but again I am an idiot, don’t listen to me. The third song is my favorite because there is a sample about God and how angels were always sent to do God’s killing. That’s pretty sweet. Remember that movie where John Travolta was an angel, that movie sucked, but if the movie was him as some sort of angel that killed, well, that would be a movie worth seeing. This cd is good, pick it up or God will rip your face off. - LC Moby 18 V2. I must confess, when I first heard the squirm of “We are All Made of Stars”, I kind of dug it. When I saw Ron Jeremy, Gary Coleman, Todd Bridges, Corey Feldman and Mini-Me in the video, I liked it even more. I must confess, I got a little caught up in the *Flash* of it all. When I finally listened to the cd, I remembered exactly why I don’t like Moby. That damn drum machine. Those predictable MIDI manipulations...so soft, so pathetic. Every song is laced with that minimalistic “bootita-battitah pitita-patitah” of the tireless electric beatbox. Sure, where there’s a will, there’s a drum machine...but Moby does not know when to quit. I see this album as the soundtrack to life on Prozac. It’s said that he recorded 150 songs for this album and then handpicked his 18 favorites. My God! I can only imagine the ass-crap that sits on his laptop. Sinead O’Connor does sing pretty well on “Harbour” though. Wait a minute. I don’t like her either! In closing, stay hard true believers! Don’t let this modernday Svengali fool you. - RK Naam Brigade Early in the Game Artist Direct Records This is a well produced rap album with some standard beats, a little guitar riff here and there, some girls singing backups on the bridges, the usual keyboard stuff, and lots of tight, similar sounding raps by a bunch of different guys. It sounds like most of the other rap on the radio, but its not that catchy. These guys talk about the same stuff that most “gangsta” rappers talk about. They don’t seem quite as hardcore as Eazy E or Too Short though. The album seems generic. Its all been done exactly the same way already. Rap has been around for like thirty years. These days artists need some new angle to catch my

attention. This cd is not annoying, all the voices and styles are “easy on the ears.” It could make good background music for some party where you don’t care about catchy lyrics or new sounds. Personally, I need something new. They should rap over slide guitar or do some offbeat weird timing shit with some exotic instruments or live drums or bongos or whatever. The Puff Daddy formula is getting old. WP Nausea The Punk Terrorist Anthology Vol. 1 Destroy All This is a re-release from an old hardcore band. I had never heard the name prior to receiving this album. And I guess for me, with good reason. I don’t like this style of hardcore. It’s too dark for me at times. It is better in my opinion than the new so-called hardcore, but nevertheless, not for me. The only thing about this band that kept my attention was that a chick shares the vocals at times. Chick singers rule. Second thing that held my attention was that they played with some good bands. Oi Polloi, a member of Bad Brains, Regan Youth, and The Skulls. So I guess they have a little clout. Maybe they should have just had the chick sing vocals. Yeah. I like that idea. - casper Oi Polloi Six of the Best Rugger Bugger disc If you never heard of Oi Polloi get hip all you hipsters. They’re an old Hardcore band from Scotland. They have very strong ideals about how society should be run and they won’t fret to use violence if you stand in their way. From nuclear waste to the usa’s intervention of Nicuraga, they touch base on all of society’s problems. They are hardcore punks who still till this day are involved in activism and protesting. This is a six album mix into some of their better stuff. If you’re a fan of old metal, Oi Polloi kinda gets close sometimes. If you like old UK hardcore and you don’t know Oi Polloi, get this. - casper Plain White T’s Stop Fearless Records I was really going to give these guys a chance, but then I heard the noise. So bad it shouldn’t even exist. I was just going to cop out on this review. Here’s the truth I listened to it for a little over two

minutes. I listened to about 10 seconds from each song. I heard pop sadness with a horrible musical style. There, see it sucks. - SB Puny Humans No one will ever Understand our Genius Harmful records I don’t know how I get stuck reviewing these types of cd’s. I mean, wow, why me? The first song is some kind of psychedelicmetal-grind-core-blues-meltdown. And the craziness does not stop there. Song 2, “Thorax Ho” is straight demented circus music. I find myself asking, “what kind of drugs are these guys doing?” because I will never ever ever do that drug. There are some redeeming tracks that are pretty well rounded metal but in the end this reviewer was left flaccid. One highlight is all the Big Lebowski sound bites; “the dude” is one of my favorite superheros of all time. So I will give the Puny Humans that, they have good taste in movies but the music they create is so whacked out, so Sun Ra, so “what the fuck” I couldn’t really feel it. - LC Sick of it All Live in a Dive Fat Wreck Chords I am familiar with S.O.I.A. I just never thought they were anything special. I am more of a Cro-Mags, Reagan Youth, S.O.D. type of guy. Nonetheless, I threw this into the computer and voila, a quicktime screen appears. I push play and I get a video of the show this disc was recorded from. I also get an interview of them on video. After all of this, I listened to the disc. It took me back to a time where nothing mattered except hardcore motherfucker! I thought the Sex Pistols were pussies back then. I danced around in my living room loving that feeling. This is one of the coolest discs I’ve ever gotten. Thank You, Sick of it All. - SB

drive an 85 Toyota Tercel, but hey this music put me in the mood. I like that! The Slanderin are a really fast paced Psychobilly band. The cover art is bad ass too; an old traditional skull with six shooters behind it. If you’re a fan of this genre then I suggest you hot rod your ass on over to your local spot and demand this album. Psychobillly lives! - casper Slow Jets Good Morning, Stars Morphius Sing-songy melodic Indy Rock. Slow Jets range from really mellow guitar rock to synthed out Pavement rock. Talented musicians that flow well together. If you like bands like Sebadoh & Pavement, but wish they were a bit mellower and less catchy, Slow Jets are for you. - JH Smogtown 3 song EP Disaster Records I can’t help but to think of the Circle jerks, Black Flag, and Middle Class when I listen to these guys. They are truly the So. Cal. Skate/Surf Punk sound. I have been in love with this sound since my inception into this scene in 1983. I saw these punk looking kids and I thought they’d know what was good. So I stole their tapes out of their car. Actually, I only stole three. They were Circle Jerks “Group Sex”, Agent Orange “Living in Darkness”, and Siouxsie and the Banshees 2nd album. I skated everyday in front of my house, going off a launch ramp, blaring those tapes. That is what I feel when I hear this. I feel youth, rebellion, adrenalin, and angst. This is punk for Skaters. These are three songs off their “Domesticviolenceland” album out on Disaster Records. Get it. - SB The Springfields S/T VMS Records NOFX meets east coast hardcore

The Slanderin Psychobillly Lives Destroy All When I first heard this cd I was crusing down the freeway, going home from work. Instantly I was transformed. My elbow hung out the window, cigarette hung from my mouth, dice hung from the mirror, and my engine roared from the pressure of my foot pushing the pedal to the floor. The only messed up thing is I’m not that cool and I

punk. These guys are really funny and their music is good solid Fat Wreck styled punk with a bit more of a hard edge. The funniest song is “I wanna fuck Britney Spears”: “I wanna have sex with Britney Spears, I wanna tongue her twat & butt, wanna put my cock in Britney Spears, that nasty ‘lil slut, that lil’ whore was knockin on my door, on a Sunday afternoon, her clothes so tight, it felt just right, to take her to my room. It wasn’t long before she pulled my schlong, and rubbed

it on her face…” Actually, almost all the songs are about raw sex. Get it if you’re a fan of funcore/punk. - JH Steel Pole Bathtub Unlistenable Self-Produced Alright, right up front, I love this band. I have everything they ever did and when they broke up a few years back I was sad and bewildered. It was a lot like when Godheadsilo broke up, just sad. Well, I just heard they are playing a show in SF this weekend and they have this “new” cd out. By the time you read this the show will be old news but you gotta get this cd. The cd is not so new, it’s the last cd they recorded. The label decided the record was “unlistenable”, dropped the band and never released the album, bastards. Well, Darren Mor-X, of Steel Pole, said, “OK, fuck you guys, I’ll produce it myself”, he didn’t say that, but he did release it all these years later. The album is weird, sure, but far from unlistenable. Go get it because I could talk about it all day long and you don’t want that, or do you. - LC Steve Von Till If I Should Fall to the Field Neurot Recordings This is the first release from Neurosis front man Steve Von Till. I’m told the guy is some kind of Viking. That’s cool, Vikings are gnarly. I didn’t know what to expect from this album and after listening to it, I am still a little unsure. This album really centers around Von Till’s vocals, the tracks are so vocal heavy I can hear the saliva roll around in his mouth. It’s a mellow release, so don’t expect a skull crushing sound like that of Neurosis. This would be a great album to drink yourself to death with and I don’t mean that in a bad way. Haunting is the best word to describe it, very slow and melodic. Go get this album and a big bottle of Jack Daniels.....weeeeee. - LC Steven Schultz I Forgot to Get Rap Name Time Warner Geffen Mcdonalds Microsoft Scientology Records Oh jeezuz christ, I don’t know how the fuck I am gonna review this album, I just can’t stop laughing. Who the hell is Steven Schultz? I want to get a drink with this dude, just to laugh at him, he could just sit there and I would laugh and laugh. He is definitely riding the 107

fine line between genius and retardation, I’m leading toward the latter. Probably, my favorite track is the first one “Call me pinkbeard” in which he is a gay pirate and I ask you, is there any other kind of pirate? This kid is fucked, if you want a copy, I’ll make one for you, don’t bother trying to find it. - LC Matt Skiba & Kevin Seconds Asian Man Records This split could be described as Matt Skiba from Alkaline Trio and Kevin Seconds from 7 Seconds’ combined solo project where both members play most of the instruments and write all the songs. It could be described further as melodic acoustic rock with a slight edge. The first 5 songs, written and sung by Skiba, are light rocking love songs with an early British rock sound to a few of them. He hits different paces from slow to fast and ends it with a lovely 7 Seconds cover of “Soul to Keep.” A perfect intro to the next 5 songs by Kevin Seconds. The next set if more rocking than the first, but Kevin is whining about the same topics of lost love. I’m not dissing by saying they’re whining, but how else can you describe a grown boy crying over his broken heart, other than whining. I’m constantly whining myself and I happen to like this cd. If you feel like whining over lost love, buy this cd and listen along. - JH The Sticthes 5 More Songs Kapow Records One more album from these O.C. locals gets your head swaying back and forth. The Stiches have a ‘77 style that is missing today, but you no longer have to live without. Unlike many other bands, they’re not “indisposable”. – Casper Texas Terri and the Stiff Ones Eat shit

just got around to seeing “Dead Alive” as well (great movie by the way). Anyhow, Joe Preston is an incredible man. What more can be said? What more needs to be said!!! Ever wonder what gave the Melvins the edge that they seem to be lacking now-a-days? That certain something that brought them that much closer to being the “heaviest band in the world”. It was Joe. Without a doubt, the man is a genius. He is definitely one of the most powerful bassists to come along in a while. Sure, the first Thrones album was good, but it really just sounded like Joe, a drum machine, and way too much free time. Sperm Whale is much more like it. Slow, low heavy grooves melded with guttural yowls. Go get this record and feel the undeniable power that is Mr. Joe Preston. - RK Time Spent Driving Just Enough Bright Sessions Records 6 seconds into this cd, it reminds me of Dinosaur Jr, around thirty seconds now and the singer sounds nothing like J. Mascis, that’s OK, I’m cool with that. A minute deep now, I am singing along and feeling good. 2 minutes later and it slows down, still feels good just slow and sexy now, Three minutes and it’s picking up, and up and up, ohhhhhhhhh, 3 minutes thirty and I am singing again, and then boom 4 minutes and it’s over. It sucks that in 4 minutes, I could only type like 20 words. But I mean I only have one arm and only 3 working fingers on my solo limb, so give me a break, sheesh. You goddamn people running around with your 2 arms with all your fingers and shit thinking your all special, fuck you, when I see you on the street you kiss your ass goodbye. - LC Tom Waits Alice / Blood Money Epitaph

Burning Tree Records Although these albums were This chick singer kicks ass! Texas Terri’s style is in the realm of The Plasmatics. Straight spit in your face, cut off your dick Punk rock here. This album even has a gentle side for you pansy ass’ s out there. If you love raw chick singer types, this is your take. - Casper The Thrones Sperm Whale Kill Rock Stars I can’t believe I slept on this album for two years! And yes, I 108

released as separate entities, I choose to lump them together as if they were a double album. For starters, they were both released simultaneously in May of 2002. In addition, they share the same motley crew of familiar musicians backing the schizophrenic Waits on most tracks. Thirdly, Alice was originally written as an opera, and Blood Money, a play. Plus, I tend to listen to them back to back when I am in the right mood. Now, the differences... Alice is a softer, dreamier album with less percus-

sion and more sweet melody. Here we see Waits transform himself from the maudlin vaudevillian on songs like “Table Top Joe” to the magical balladeer on “Flowers Grave” and still have enough energy left to rant like a lunatic on “Kommienezuepadt”. The man is a true showman bending his persona to the will of the song. On Blood Money, we find the grittier Waits. From the opening track, “Misery Is The River of the World” we are immediately immersed in Wait’s brash and most confrontational persona. The line, “If there’s one thing you can say about mankind / There’s nothing kind about man” is spit out with such disgust and contempt that you can’t help but agree. Along the trail of madness, which is Blood Money, there are brief moments of clarity where one can catch their breath. Such a song is “Coney Island Baby”. It’s the kind of tune you wish someone would have the balls to belt out in the bar one night with no apologies. It’s through moments like these that the albums become one. Fans of Mule Variations might want to start with Blood Money, as it is more like it predecessor. Alice is more reminiscent of early Waits efforts like Frank’s Wild Years. In my opinion though, you should get both of ‘em. Definitely worth it. RK Throw Rag Tee-tot Hellnote If you can’t laugh at yourself, who can ya laugh at? Well my friends, Captain Tae-bo was laughing at you when I first saw Throw Rag. Hilarious was my thought as I watched The Captain piss off surfers and party goers alike to almost ensuing fights! This kind of dark sailor rock is rare and far between. Hats off to these dirtbags. None of their lyrics make sense, thus seemingly making them more evil. This 11 song cd should be 13, thus making it cooler, but these guys aren’t worried about being cool, they just want to remind you to only drink on “days that end on y”. Their stage presence was awesome and energetic, rare. They’re on stage, not you. Sit down, shut up and enjoy the show and you might have fun. Punk isn’t for background noise and neither are Throw Rag… So grab your old lady(or an 18 year old), a couple of Pabst Blue Ribbons and off to the dance floor for a “bad liver weekend” and an ass kickin’ good time. Keep an eye out for their new cd, 2nd Place”. Thanks for showing me

a great time… I love these guys. – JS Toxic Narcotic We’re all Doomed Go Kart Records Angry high energy hardcore metal punk. Songs like “We’re all Doomed”, “Ruined”, “Pave the Planet”, “Bullshit Conditions”, & “Shut the Fuck Up” give you the feeling these East Coast boys have fucking had it. Earth shattering drum beats, words of anger and dispair and grinding guitars all crash together like a head on collision to rip apart your misconstrued preconceptions of what’s really going on in this miserable disease ridden, polluted, starving world we rot in. I’m keeping this one for my collection in case I get happy one day, it’ll put me in my place. – JH Unsilent Reign Strangers Amongst Ourselves Earth Crisis meets Get Up Kids. Maybe that was a bit harsh, there are some good hardcore parts. I was starting to think I might like it and then it started the horrible slow part again. - SH Under the Influence A Tribute to the Smith’s, The Clash and The Cure Too Damn Hype When I first saw this cd, I had high hopes. I really used to like these bands. They all had great vocals. Morrissey, Robert Smith, and the Clash singer all had amazing abilities on the microphone. They had good backup musicians and catchy music, but their singing was the deciding factor. This remake cd sucks because the not-to-great singing is consistently drowned out by too-loud guitar. The bands covering these golden oldies try to “rock out” a little too hard. It just doesn’t work for me. The originals were good because of their clean, clear sound. Turning up the fuzz effect on guitar to cover the vocal imperfections just didn’t work this time. Maybe I’m too critical, maybe I miss the “good old days”, or maybe this cd really is crap. I’m not positive of anything these days. My suggestion to these bands covering The Cure, The Clash, and The Smiths would be to turn down the volume, stop screaming the lyrics, and play cleaner, more technical guitar. Johnny could you please give me some good cd’s to review next time. – WP

The Vandals Internet dating super studs Kung Fu

V/A Old Skars and Upstarts 2002 Disaster Records

Well, let me be honest here, I didn’t listen to one lick of this new Vandals cd. The fact is that this cd

When I listened to the first old

was “enhanced” and had little videos of all the dudes in the band

heard. This 2002 comp is no different. It focuses on the ‘77 style and skatepunk realm of things.

out on blind dates. So I will review each date. The first date is for the singer Dave Quackenbush, he gets tricked into going on a date with this 16 year old kid, a boy kid, they went to ice cream and laughed and talked. I think they definitely “did it”. The next date was Joe the bass player. He’s married or something, so he went out with a couple to a Slayer concert. It gets a little weird, all I can say is there are golden showers, dirty sanchez’s and swinging, enough said. Warren, the guitar player’s date was maybe my favorite, because he attempts to seduce a non-english speaking Colombian girl. Josh’s date was gay, he plays drums, had a hot date, but unfortunately she has a baby and she ends up leaving with the singer. Uh, so if you like The Vandals you’ll like this, go get it. - LC

skars and upstarts it turned me onto so many new bands I hadn’t

Bands like: The Stiches, The Briefs, Discontent, Richmond Sluts, the Hunns, Typhoon Motor Dudes, Texas Terri and the Stiff Ones and they even have an oi band, by the Name of Oxy Moron, bash their guitars and scream into the mic on this comp. There are a quite a few bands I hadn’t heard prior to this listening. Now I have some more good bands I can hunt for. If you skate, you need to have this album for any session. - Casper V/A Your Scene Sucks Go-kart Records I’ve listened to this a few times. Only ‘til this last listen did I truly appreciate it. I still dislike a few songs on here, but for the most part it is a great compilation. I’m not really into this modern day hardcore. I might be wrong, but I

feel it has lost its edge. There’s no fear of imminent chaos. Everything is palatable and safe. There are no bands out there that are standing against the flow. Where are the MO.D.’s, S.O.D.’s, Crucial Youth’s, Et cetera? There is no diversity in the punk/hardcore scene. Everybody’s opinions are very similar. No one is “Out of Step”. I give Toxic Narcotic the best song on the comp. award. The song sums up what I’m saying, “People Suck”. Be smart, be an individual, be dangerous. You like fast hard music? Then buy this. 27 bands from the current day HC scene. - SB

“The Flutes of Chi” is a perfect example of their newfound tender touch. Don’t fret, songs like “Bananas and Blow” and “Pandy Fackler” prove that although Dean and Gene have matured musically, their sense of humor is just as ripe as when they recorded “Puerto Rican Power” and “Big Jim”. It’s rare where you can find a band that mixes it up on every album and still comes out sounding like themselves. In an age of cookie cutter pop stars, artists like this are a dying breed and should be supported at all costs. Long live the Brothers Ween! – RK

Ween

MD - Max Dolberg

White Pepper Elektra/Asylum

SG – Scott G. JH – Jonathan Hay SH – Simon Hay

Ya know, the general pattern for most great bands is to start out raw and gradually lose what made them so unique in the first place. (See the Butthole Surfers Review in this very same mag). Anyhow, such is not the case with Ween. Yes, White Pepper glows with the sheen of slick production, but the boys are the same old merrymakers that we feel in love with all those years ago. What we have here is a kinder, gentler Ween.

DK – Davoud RK – Robert Krautheim SB – Sick Boy (Paul Morrison) Casper – Chris Tobias JS – Jon Steele WP – Will Power

This guy on the left here, he tried to get extreme and jump the Great Wall of China on his bike, and didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t make it. And after he slammed, he died. No fucking joke. So after that, looking at these little slams on the skateboard donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seem so painful. Or do they?

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Bone fragments from Joe Fechterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s elbow after he shattered his elbow at the Widowmaker. The moral here is donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t drink and skate vert.

Sean wants to show everyone his ass.

This frame just says it all. 111