Concussion 24 by Davoud Kermaninejad

97377 96425

When we first started doing Concussion, I used to go through Transworld and Thrasher (and Cosmo) and count how many ads they had in relation to how many pages of editorial content they had. It was a long time ago and I don’t really recall what the percentage was, but the ads definitely outnumbered editorial by a healthy margin. Apparently that is one of the keys to running a profitable magazine, since advertising generally pays all of your costs incurred (printing, salary, etc.). One of our initial goals with Concussion was never to be more than 25% ads I believe. Something like that, very idealsitic and high minded. Of course this was back when we couldn’t get 25% ads if we wanted to. But in the interest of saving you all some time on the crapper so you don’t have to count pages yourself, our crack team of interns have compiled a handy pie chart breaking down what percentage of the magazine is devoted to editorial content as well as advertising. Our latest reader survey indicated that you, the reader, are interested in these kinds of things, so here you go. You ask and we deliver.

Cover: Whoa, isn’t that like the seventh backside Smith we’ve had on the cover? Maybe. Whoa, isn’t that like the 233rd rail shot on a cover of Transworld? Probably. Jamie Weller doesn’t give a fuck. Photo by Brendan Klein.

1. Editorial Rant ..... 12 2. Product Reviews ..... 16 3. Skatepark Reviews ..... 18 4. Zine Reviews ..... 22 5. Bad Tattoos ..... 24 6. SPB’s Gone Wild ..... 26 7. Non-Video Premiere ..... 28 8. Friendster Exposed ..... 30 9. Vagabond/Fresno ..... 32 10. Ten Photos ..... 36 11. Punker Matt Interview ..... 37 12. Photography of Brendan Klein ..... 44 13. Seth McCallum Interview ..... 61

14. Dave Nelson Spotlight ..... 69 15. Archy Interview ..... 73 16. Evan Hecox ..... 76 17. Devon Green ..... 80 18. From Ashes Rise ..... 82 19. Hellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Belles ..... 84 20. The Fuzz ..... 86 21. Book Reviews ..... 87 22. Video Reviews ..... 88 23. Record Reviews ..... 90 24. Slams ..... 94 25. Advertising ..... the Rest. Sort of.

We didn’t really feel like writing an editorial rant this time so there isn’t one. I mean it would probably just end up being some whiny bullshit or something stupid anyway, right? So we’re going to follow the old adage “If you don’t have anything nice to say then don’t say anything at all.” It’s much better that way, really. Because who wants to bother starting rumors about our stupid magazine, or talk shit on padded up old man barneys, or cry about how nobody loves us. I suppose we could talk about how everybody thought we were going out of business because we didn’t put out an issue for like, six months or some kind of shit – the kind of shit that Juice does. And Heckler, before they went out of business that is. We were just on a little vacation. I went to Costa Rica, Jonathan went to South Africa, and Lee was in Luxembourg. We all came back with great tans. So here’s your editorial rant, asshole. Flush the toilet and go do something with your day.

Concussion Staff Senior Editor Davoud Kermaninejad Associate Editor Jonathan Hay Fart Director Lee Charron Video Production Dave Amell Director of Development Jason Murray Photographers Brendan Klein Bryce Kanights Charlie Middleton Jon Steele Rhino Contributing Photographers Greg Hall Dave Nelson Brian Fick Andrew Hutchison Joe Hammeke Adam Conway Steven Karl Metzer Jermaine Mann Patrick Trefz Holly Anderson Jason Kenworthy Chris Boarts Kim Bae Writers Paul Morrison Chris Tobias Holly Anderson Mickey Stamm Christian Hurst Rob Krautheim Brian Fisher Cody McClintock Jason Murray Don Frenchy Dave Nelson Contributing Archivist Stacie Vereuck Contributing Art Dude Orr Menard CONCUSSION MAGAZINE IS COPYRIGHT © 2004 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 NATIONALLY 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 70535 RICHMOND, CA 94807 OR EMAIL CONCUSSION@CONCUSSION.ORG. WHILE WE WELCOME UNSOLICITED EDITORIAL SUBMISSIONS, WE CANNOT RETURN YOUR SUBMISSIONS 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, DUDE. 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. OPINIONS EXPRESSED HEREIN ARE THOSE OF THE INDIVIDUAL AUTHOR AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE OPINIONS OF THE CONCUSSION MAGAZINE STAFF. ANY SIMILARITIES BETWEEN FICTITIOUS PERSONS MENTIONED IN THIS MAGAZINE AND REAL PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL. Concussion is Made on Apple Macintosh computers, dude.

Concussion Magazine PO Box 70535 Richmond, CA 94807-0535 14

WWW.CONCUSSION.ORG

Want to send us some stuff to review? Send an email to reviews@concussion.org and we’ll give you a physical address to ship to. We promise not to sell your shit and not review it. Pinky swear.

Unbelievers Skateboards www.sillypinkbunnies.com The Unbelievers are a little company run by Systems Distribution out of Pinole, which is actually just up the way from my house in Richmond, although I have never been to their warehouse. Our friend Jud Hertzler recently got a pro model on the Unbelievers, which is pretty rad. Jud’s a really good skateboarder, but he has had unbelievable bad luck. First he was about to go pro a couple years ago and instead got kicked off Foundation. Then he knocked his girlfriend up and was stuck with a lousy baby. Maybe that was intentional, I’m not sure. And then he was going to go pro for the Unbelievers but due to the shitty economy he had to defer his pro status for about a year because if he would have turned pro they would have gone out of business paying him or something. I saw Jud at the park the other day and now he’s pro, but his knee is jacked and he can’t really skate! He had some of these boards with his first graphic on it, which kind of reminds me of a Dan Drehobl graphic or some weird Krooked art or something. Anyway I like it, and what was even better was the fact that the boards were 8.1” wide, just the size that both myself and Jud ride. It was amazing! Jud says their wood is actually really good, and I believe him because he would have told me if it wasn’t. Jud’s that kind of guy. So I was all hyped when Jeremy gave us some of the Jud decks, I thought that I was gonna be the same deck and I was gonna set it up, but it turned out we got the smaller 7.65”s. Bummer. Now I gotta go up to 510 and hope they have the wide deck so I can make a trade. Anyway, here it is kids, the first Unbelievers Jud Hertzler pro model. Go get it, it’s the hot shit. - dk

Avid Clothing When I think of Avid Clothing I think about Jahvis. Jahvis is the owner/designer/sales rep for this shit and we hung out a little while back. We went and had Mexican food and then went to see that movie Super Size Me. As we waited for the movie to start Jahvis made a comment like he was going to shit his pants or something. A minute or so went by and Jahvis commenced to throw down some serious ass throwing. His fart reminded me of the JFK shooting because so many people in the audience theorized where it came from. Well, I where knew it came from, god damnit — it came from the grassy knoll — I saw it go down. This is all beside the point, Jahvis makes nice clothes that don’t smell like his ass, which is lovely, trust me. He has many styles of clothes to choose from, so it’s for sure that he makes something that will drive your wrangler butts nuts. Rumor is he will have some awesome jeans coming soon, too. Well, word to the wise Jahvis — if you make those — you better put like a poo-panty shield in them because one of these days your gonna push too hard and shart your pants. - LC

No Fear Pinball Machine

Smith Sunglasses smithsport.com

I feel like a complete goon in sunglasses. I used to wear $6 gas station sunglasses sometimes, but I kept losing them, and eventually I would just pull my baseball cap down low to keep the sun out of my eyes. The hats were a lot harder to lose. In any case, eyewear is an important fashionable and functional accessory for the modern urbanite, and so you need to know about sunglasses. Smith sent us a couple pairs from their recent line, and I must say they are rather high-end. I always knew Smith as a goggle company (you know, like the goggles you’d wear when you hit the slopes, bro), but I guess they make sunglasses too. And these things are definitely no $6 gas station sunglasses, they’re more like “I just passed the bar and now I think I’m a swanky lawyer driving a new car and screwing hot chicks from the office” kind of glasses, if you know what I mean. Sporting high quality lenses and construction, they even come with their own carrying case so you don’t scratch them. Since I am no attorney I felt awkward wearing these glasses, but they did keep the sun out of my eyes and it was hard for other people to see if I was looking at them. When I was wearing the black pair with angled rims, I felt like a surfer. When I was wearing the other, aviator style pair, I felt like I was a police officer or perhaps an undercover agent. It’s weird when people can’t look you in the eye, it’s a whole new dynamic. The surfer slyly looks down chicks’ blouses, the police officer makes people nervous, and the undercover agent pretends he’s drinking coffee and reading the paper. And the skateboarder? Well they broke their glasses because they hit a crack skating down the street and slid on their chin for five feet. But thankfully, due to the fact that they were wearing Smith eyewear when this happened, at least they looked good doing it. – dk

I moved to SF a little while ago . I moved to this Yuppie/Lesbian/Dog Walker neighborhood that seemed fine. To be honest it was the first placed I looked at and I wanted out of the East Bay so badly that I took it. I learned later that when you live in San Francisco people judge you by the neighborhood you live in. Like if you say you live in Mission then people are like, “Oh, that’s cool, the Mission’s cool!” But if you say that you live in my neighborhood it’s like, “You some kind of fuckin’ lesbian?” Anyway, you always have a neighborhood bar, even when you live in a Yuppie/Lesbian/Dog Walker neighborhood, and when Davoud would come out to work on “magazine business” we’d go drink at this place called the Valley Tavern. One night we realized it had a pinball machine. The No Fear pinball machine, no less. When first approaching the machine I was all, “Damn straight, no fear bro, I’m totally gonna rape this pinball machine in true jock fashion.” The multiball was ridiculously easy to get which was nice, but then again it’s not too hard to get multiballed in Noe Valley. The graphics on the machine itself totally pumped my nads to play more. Fucking like skysurfing and rockclimbing and orange mohawks and shit, totally Xtreme. I loved it, go get yourself one and fuck yourself with it. - LC

HAY

This is dry as the bowl ever got for me, and even then it was hella rad. Cardiel would have torn it up, but me, it was all backside scratchers. How typically lame.

Just on the other side of that pipe is where Red looped it frontside. Find that video on the internet, watch it, and then go to this park and look at the pipe again.

Lion’s Park Skatepark

Arenal Skatepark

Reedsport, OR

Lake Arenal, Costa Rica

Dead center between Brookings and Lincoln City, Reedsport is the latest stop for skaters hitting up the coastal route for Oregon’s gnarly cement behemoths. The park is divided into two sections: the “street” section is setup with a 9 foot quarter pipe, several 1/4 bowls with coping, a 10 foot vert wall, and the deep end of a pool with its very own death box and hand made pool coping. The better half of the skatepark hosts the “funnel tunnel,” a varying radius (cone shaped) full pipe, and a 13 foot extension with tiles and coping. Dropping in, you can bank off the top side of the full pipe and then whip around the hairpin turn at full speed with g-forces pulling your face back like some self-propelled roller coaster that you control, and then you’re flung right into the full pipe; a few turns through the pipe then out the other side and back around if you can. Despite the fact that he didn’t build this park and will probably never skate it again, Mark “Red” Scott of Dreamland Skateparks showed up and was the first person to loop the funnel tunnel, which must’ve been a blow to the ego of Geth Noble of Airspeed Skateparks, who built the park. Either way Red’s loop has got to be one of the most amazing transition stunts to ever go down in skateboarding history, and it went down at Reedsport. I almost forgot, this is a Concussion skatepark review – time to talk about the negatives. The section with the pool and pyramid has poor flow. Without any good lines, it’s hard to get enough speed to carve through the pool and grind the death box. That whole section of the park isn’t really that great, as there seems to be way too much flat ground in the middle. On top of that, unless you are Bailey or Pete the Ox, connecting from one section to the other isn’t really happening, resulting in two separate parks, which really makes no sense to me unless you have a kiddie section and a big kids section. The other major problem is when you come out the narrow end of the full pipe you go up hill, and if you’re not careful, you’ll hit a hidden cement launch ramp, which is the last thing I’m ready for when exiting a full pipe. Once you get used to the park, it’s probably insanely ripable, as I have heard that watching Geth skate his own creation is something to be witnessed. —JH

I typed in “costa rica skateboard” into Yahoo and this is what came up first. Judging from the photos I saw on the internet, this skatepark kind of looked like a gnarly pit, maybe a Costa Rican version of the Crocker park in SF. In person, this park is actually pretty damn good and doesn’t have anything in common with the Crocker park, or pretty much any other skatepark in California for that matter. The Arenal skatepark is located on the property of Hotel Tilawa, which is a very nice hotel located on the hill above Lake Arenal, Costa Rica’s largest man-made lake, which is directly below Arenal Volcano, Costa Rica’s most active volcano. Apparently Lake Arenal is also the most consistently windy place in all of Central America, so it attracts windsurfers from all over the world, and Hotel Tilawa kind of caters to the windsurfers, sort of like a lot of other places around the lake. Except none of the other hotels on the lake have a 9’ bowl with vert and cement coping, and all of the other little hips and dips that you see in the photo. There’s a well designed funbox setup built into the bowls in the middle of the park — it even has a bbq/fire pit built into the middle of the fun box — and a kinked quarter pipe with a good five or six feet of vert at the other end. There’s also a 6’ square bowl that ends in a 7’ almost vert spine that connects to the kinked vert wall. I thought maybe you had to stay at the hotel to skate the park, but apparently they’re hyped for anyone to come skate it, and it’s open to everyone. Unfortunately during my short visit to the area, it rained pretty much every day. Tropical rain is warm and blows through quickly, so I would run out of the hotel and up the hill to sweep and dry out the bowls. Every time that I’d almost get it dry, it would start raining again. It kind of sucked, but in the end I just decided to ride it wet — it was pretty rad and not too sketchy, or at least I didn’t slip out and crack my head open. The waterfall in the bowl looked steep but actually wasn’t too bad, not nearly as steep as the one in the bowl at Medford. The whole park actually seemed like a Southern Oregon park or maybe something Dawkins or Geth would have built. Apparently this American guy named Cyrus Watson came down and lived here for four years, and ended up building this park. I don’t know who he works for in the States, but he did a pretty good job on this one considering it sounded like he built it by himself or with very little help. The weekend before I arrived at Lake Arenal, they had a contest at the skatepark, and it didn’t rain all weekend, go figure. I got to ride it in the rain by myself, and it was still rad. They’re going to have the contest again next year — the first weekend of May — so if you’re thinking about going to Costa Rica anytime early next year and you skateboard, consider bringing your board and spending a few days at Hotel Tilawa, it’s most definitely worth it. The skatepark is also in a very nice area of the country near the volcano and the cloud forest, and there are plenty of other things to do besides skate, so it shouldn’t be too hard to talk your girlfriend/wife into agreeing to stay a few nights at Tilawa. —DK Check it out: http://www.hotel-tilawa.com/activities/arenal_skate_board_park.html

Did you know street courses have doors? Eddie, grinding over the door thing. Photos by Adam Conway.

Whiting Skatepark Whiting, Indiana The new Whiting park is the wrad. Originally slated to cover a modest 4,000 to 5,000 square feet, the Grindline guys essentially doubled the area of the park to 8,000 square feet once they took stock of material supplies, and space available, and decided to add the "street section." This "street section" - a bowl - has six corners, three hips, two over-vert pockets, an 8' doorway/deathbox, and a continuous concrete lip throughout. The big bowl is, of course, the jewel of the park. The elevations change from 5' to 9' to 11', lines are endless and speed is yours for the taking. The trannies are tight, which makes for more vert and tons of speed. A gnarly concrete lip tops this bowl, as well. "A little lacquer and a lot of liquor" is the mantra of the day. Big bowl has a 5' open-ended capsule bowl, two tight 9' pockets, two 12' square corners, two waterfalls, and plenty of flat wall for long grinds and tall air. Marty Jakubowski is the man. A local for life, pro boxer for 17 years, and all around great guy, Marty has been working tirelessly to push the positive aspects of having this incredible park, and the locals are responding. Parents and local politicians show up everyday to gawk at this concrete monstrosity in their backyard and walk away stoked on the whole deal. Thank you Marty. Whiting is a small blue-collar community that borders Chicago on the south side. People say it is quaint; tree-lined streets and single family houses with flower beds abound. A number of Chicago skateboarders have been rumored to be looking at houses in the area. In addition, two bars are conveniently located across the lot from the park; one is a sports bar, and the other a dive — Spebar's — 70 years old, currently owned by one of the city board-members. We are working on a $1 PBR Skateboarder Special. There's even a fishing pier and a small beach only three blocks away. Whiting Skatepark, home of Grindline's handy-man's dream, is located a half-mile east of 119th and Indianapolis Blvd., sandwiched between the little league diamonds and the sprawling BP/Amoco plant. —Matt Wagner

This is the street course, no joke.

by Fuckface and Shithead

Black Thorn #3 Black Thorn is a political newspaper by a punk collective from Portland, which presents an overview of radical DIY culture. It starts out with an editorial rant about how difficult it is to put out a publication and how they went about getting the funds through punk/hardcore benefit shows. Other topics covered are the end of the wild Buffalo, Bush’s drive to war and the opposition against it, and overdose prevention, focusing on saving heroin addicts from the deadly combination of mixing depressants. Artistic political wood cut prints give Black Thorn a memorable and visually appealing style in each issue. #3 was dedicated to Rachel Corrie who died in Palestine after being run over by an Israeli army bulldozer while trying to stop the demolition of a house in a Palestinian refugee camp. Help make the next issue happen. Send your submission to PO Box 11046, Portland, OR 97211

Lowcard #5 A shitbag skate zine out of San Francisco, Lowcard has been one of my favorites lately. It probably helps that I get a lot of the inside jokes, but it’s still pretty raw and radical no matter what. Frequently sporting covers of people passed out, Lowcard #5 has got Pete the Ox doing an eggplant at Crocker, which is hot. It’s also got some pretty good Berkeley Park photos and some other shit that I forgot because I was too zombied out when I was looking at it last. If you’re a drunk, shitbag, lowlife, zombie, or lurker with a couple extra bucks, send ‘em to 530 Divisadero St. #298 San Francisco ,CA.94117 and you won’t regret it.

A Fierce War in Miniature #1 A zine that was never intended to be a zine, a Fierce War in Miniature is a collection of random headlines and photographs collected from the mainstream media about the war in Iraq. There are 60 pages full of headlines and articles that are used with war photographs to show the contradiction between what the media and/or government states, and 22

what is really going on. Depicted through gruesome photographs of Iraqi civilian abuse and murder and destruction of innocent Iraqis’ homes by the US led “coalition,” this zine follows the timeline of the war and tells a desperate tale of the reality of the U.S. takeover of Iraq, the opposition by the Iraqi people, and the unilateral cowboy antics of Bush’s death squad. For a copy of this powerful and thought provoking issue contact 818 SW 3rd Ave., PMB 354 Portland, OR 97204 or afiercewar@fusemail.com

Self Inflicted Is this Self Inflicted #2 or #3? I don’t remember and Brendan doesn’t number ‘em. Brendan Klein is the kid who shot like 65% of the photos in this issue. Kid is coming up so watch out. Brendan works in the darkroom of Transworld., skates a lot of hot shit, and takes some damn fine photos. When he gets around to it he puts some of his latest prints in a zine and it’s like the best thing ever. My favorite part was “What would G-esus do?” Half of the shots are in this issue but whatever, there’s some even better ones which he didn’t send. He also poached a classic shot of Neil Blender at Del Mar from the Transworld archives. As far as quality skate photo zines this is probably the best thing going on, and who knows how long lazy ass Brendan will keep doing Self Inflicted before he blows it off, so send your $3 to Self Inflicted 1496 Avocado Rd. Oceanside, CA 92054. Brendan will get some beer money and you'll get a zine. Adios.

Out Like a Mullet #1 A zine/mini book from a kid named Tree from Lincoln City, Out Like a Mullet contains about 20 or so stories about mullets. The way Tree describes these mullets creates a perfect vision of each individual mullet scenario. The NY Post are all up on Tree’s nuts, according to the reviews printed on the back page. They think that he’s some up and coming writer. You just might want to pick up a copy so you can read about the variety of mullet species that are out there, including but not limited to: the Tweaker Mullet, Accidental Mullet, Payphone Mullet,

Mermaid Mullet, Well-Dressed Mullet, NY City Mullet, Blockbuster Mullet, and the Eighth Grade mullet. Or shave your own mullet and send a photo to Tree for his next addition. Do it puss! Contact Tree: tree_is_the_bomb@msn.com

Totally Harsh on your Mellow Chortle Scene #1 Straight from Cayucos, CA, long time Concussion art contributor Orr Menard has created a sick zine. Road kill, a fake Black Fly’s ad (little sunglasses that make you look mean are for weenies), an article about getting Neil Heddings the fuck out of jail, Cardiel all fucked up checkup, PCP vs. Beer and Weed skate check outs, Pabst 12er backgrounds, a sad tale about Ozzy on amphetamines, and an essay about satanic ghouls and goblins. Don’t forget some controversial flaming Fresno skate action at the Vagabond (RIP). All of this excitement adds up to make Totally Harsh the most creative and entertaining zine I’ve ever checked out. For a copy, send a few bucks to #55B Cayucos Dr. Cayucos, CA 93430

Cold Ones #10 Andy Cold Ones is a good natured fellow who works at a copy shop (all great zine publishers have to work at a copy shop, right?), likes to skateboard, drink beer, and is a funny ass writer. The back page with Lil’ Chubbs the rollerblader is always good for a laugh, and Andy’s observations on the scene and his life are always amusing. #10’s got Andy’s first time to the Glory Hole where he fell in the mud and the river a few times, and some other things which I can’t remember because I left my goddamn copy at Jonathan’s house. I’ll bet you next issue will have some photos from the EPA ramp cuz that’s going on again. No matter what Cold Ones is always entertaining and funny, and covers the Bay Area scene with an amusing angle that will make even the most grizzled, hardcore SF cool guy street dog crack a smile. No address so you’ll have to figure it out for yourself how to get a copy I guess.

Bad wizard tattoos seem to be in lately, it must be all of the residual Lord of the Rings hype. “What I want is Frodo battling Golemn, with Gandalf in the background casting a spell on the Orcs. And a unicorn.” Highlights this issue include Shane from Hightower’s back (middle row, left) – way to go man, you made it into the mag two issues in a row! All photos courtesy of Henry at Everlasting Tattoo.

Photo: Yaccarino

on went to the SPB convention in Long Beach California. Don rode in a mini-van and smoked weed and watched The Big Lebowski while traveling there from San Francisco. When Don got there he went skating at the Chino skate park for a couple hours. Don went bowling and got shitfaced at the bar. Don only drank White Russians. Don broke a table. Don puked in the parking lot. Don stayed up till 4am playing the radio loud on a weeknight in a residential neighborhood. Don had a good birthday. Don skated the San Pedro skate park at 9am and fell a bunch, cause he hadn’t skated transition in a long time. Don then went back to the house and fell asleep on his board. Don drove to the skate park and saw the locals fight each other. They body slammed each other in front of a girl who kept yelling, “Fuck him up, beat his ass.” Don thought that she looked like she was 12 and the dudes looked like they were 18. Don’s van then blew a rod. Don was bummed. But Don got in another car and went to a reservation and watched a bunch of sick old geezers skate the fuck out a pool. Don smoked lots of weed. Don slept in a car and then went back to Long Beach and relaxed until it was time to go to dinner at Buca De Bepo. Don dressed up in his finest and had a wonderful time at the establishment. Don was a little shocked at the $2,000 bill, but gladly paid it, because Don had stole one of the statues from the restaurant. Don had also put up a lot of stickers too. Don painted it pink and disposed of it in an undisclosed location. Don went to a bar and had a high kick contest with the bathroom door. Don busted his ass when he drop kicked the door. Don laughed his ass off. Don stayed up late drinking and playing the radio loud. Don pissed his pants cause he was so drunk. Don lost his voice because he yelled so much while drunk. Don started a fire and kept himself warm. Don slipped down the stairs and fell to the bottom and put a hole in the wall with his head. Don got up and had a beer. Don listened to the radio and drank until the booze was gone then stayed up till 6am so he could go to a bar. Don got rowdy. Don would not stand for this aggression. Don chilled out. Don went to the Bellflower skate park and skated and bar-b-qed, drank and smoked and didn’t get hassled by The Man. Don skated the bowl and got really sun burnt. Don got new stickers and a new shirt. Don was most pleased with the new belt buckle he was given. Don skated more and ate a hot dog. Don skated the fuck out of the bowl. That night Don received the Repper of the Year award. Don was stoked! Don got drunk, made out with three ladies, set his shirt on fire, saved one arm of the shirt and is currently using it as a headband. Don got more drunk. Don tried to walk home but couldn’t. Don tried to pay a cop $20 for a ride back to the house. The cop just shook his head and drove on. Don stumbled home past the million dollar homes of the Long Beach elite. He pissed on one of their lawns and smiled. Don slept in a hotel room and got a good nights sleep for the first time in four days. Don woke up, smoked, and took a shower. Don went to Disneyland for the first time. Don rode Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Don thought it was epic. Don saw lots of kitty titty. Don felt like a perv. Don still looked at the kitty titty. Don rode a bunch of rides and had lots of fun. Don drove back to San Francisco a well rested person. Don hated going back to work the next morning. (Names have been kept out of this article to protect the lives of the innocent, and avoid any pending or potentially pending litigation or paternity suits.) The silly pink bunnies are a mean gang somewhere between the daggers in thrashin and the nerds in lamda lamda lamda. this year we celebrated our 13th anniversary with our annual easter convention in long beach california. Only a small portion of the gang made it out this year, roughly 100 dudes. A fine time was had by all, here are some pictures of our festive celebration. we would like to thank don sargeant and the rest of the southern california chapter for hosting in such a righteous way. Congratulations to Don Rucker as the first non skateboarding member of the clan to claim the glorious hardest repper award. It was a lot of hard work. Please feel free to enlist and join us in sunny New York City next April for a convention to end all. Do yourself a favor and skin up a massive one right away. —The Notorious SPB

he Chicago premiere of Damaged gets the award for best damn video premiere in Chicago, winter division. Were there other nominees? Dunno, but it took two tries and two parties to actually show the video, and they sure were good parties, so it gets the nod. Joe Suta hosted everything at the South Side ramp house. People skated the living room mini, people lurked, people partied. Down in the basement Raise the Red Lantern, Monster Trux, and Sweet Cobra rocked the shit out of the place. People skated, lurked, and drank some more. By 1am, so much rocking, skating, lurking, and drinking had gone on that we never got around to actually watching the video. D’oh! If there’s a video premiere with no video, is it still a premiere? It’s like that tree falling in the woods thing. Think about that. Heavy shit. You could be having a video premiere right now, right where you are, if you think about it a certain way. See, there’s the part with the guys leg looking like it’s falling off. And there’s the part where they play Slayer. It’s like a permanent premiere, maaaan. There could be a premiere going on in New York right now, dude. Tokyo. London. Baghdad. Dig on that. Joe digs it and he’s a good guy and so he hosted a whole new premiere party the very next weekend after the original premiere party. No bands this time, but the skating was even better. Jackson Taylor, Grumpy, and Peter Chrapkowski were just killing it, killing it. The drinking was heavier, the lurking was heavier, and everybody dug the video and had a good time. Just like the Special Olympics, everybody was a winner at the Damaged Premiere Party. – Mickey Stamm / Photos © Steven Carl Metzer

In an age when you can do most anything on the internet, it seems only right that you can have friends on the computer. I mean who wants to go outside and associate with real people when you can keep your fat ass in your comfy chair, eat twinkies and have a whole bunch of computer friends. The idea of Friendster seemed harmless enough, an internet community built on the idea of networking and meeting new and interesting people. As with all things though, there is an underlying darker side of Friendster that people don’t talk about. The first word that comes to mind is sex ring, but if I thought about it more I suppose I could come up with something more clever. For a while there it seemed like I knew of multiple people hooking up through Friendster coming back with crazy stories of stalkers, nutbags and sexual intercourse. The most disturbing came though from an individual we will call Mr. X. Mr. X is a successful individual with a good job, good friends and a generally upwardly mobile existence. The following is an interview with Mr. X, and against my better judgement I will preface this by saying that this interview is not meant to degrade women, it’s the facts and as they say it takes two to tango. So with out further ado, I present you with Friendster exposed: How did you first start meeting girls on the internet?

It started about two and a half, three years ago, somebody was telling me about Face The Jury and I had no idea what it was, Do you know what Face the Jury is? No.

It was like one of the Rate my Face things but it would have peoples IM (instant message) names so you’d just like look through it and find peoples IM that were in your area and I’d write them and I found a girl. I’d never really considered this too greatly, I was just doing it because it was funny. This girl was 18 lived sort of near me and came to my office one night because I was living with my girlfriend, so she came to my office, she told me she was coming over strictly to have sex with me and absolutely nothing else, which I didn’t really care about obviously. It was pretty much straight sex, nothing too crazy. I tried to meet up with her a week or two later and she had changed her status to married and blocked me from her IM. And this was Face the Jury, not Friendster?

This was before Friendster. I think Friendster was super new at that time but after Face the Jury, my friends were telling me to get on Friendster. I wasn’t into it at first, I didn’t care, and then I finally got on it and girls just started writing me. There was this one girl that was in the Army she was about 30, she had me meet her at a monster truck rally because they were having a demolition derby which is way out in the middle of nowhere. She was with a friend that was super hot..and 8 and half months pregnant, I just tried to hook up the pregnant girl the whole time but that didn’t work out and then I went out with her again (Army lady) and we were at

her friends house out in the suburbs somewhere and she ended up blowing me in the back of the car..oh, and she had a sling on because she had hurt herself somehow and the sling kept getting in the way. So, she took the sling off and ended up fucking up her arm again. We didn’t hook up for a while after that, then she came over for my birthday in October at like 4 in the morning. She had to report for duty at 5:30 so she literally had like 15 minutes. She gave me an “I love Jesus” tie and then she said “I have ten minutes, fuck me now” and starts yelling at me and throws me on the bed. She got really mad in the middle of it for some reason and starts hitting herself while she was fucking me. She was totally crazy. So Internet hook-ups aren’t all fun and games; sometimes you get yourself in crazy situations?

Yeah, but I mean it was fun. Then she literally threw on her pants and ran away because she had to report to duty. I mean she came over in her army outfit. She’s in Iraq now. She actually sent me an email the other day. How many girls have you slept with strictly through Friendster?

Through Friendster and My Space, about ten. There was this chick Theresa, I’m not sure which one I met her on. We went to Dave and Busters, and then she gave me a blow job at my friends house, and then I met her at a hotel room out in Virginia that was super, super ghetto. It looked like it was designed by Mr. Furly from Three’s Company – I’m not exaggerating. It was like the cheesiest motel ever. I made her pay for it. I did really dirty things to her, took pictures of her, got bored half way through and took a break to eat some food. It was funny. Tell me about the “Danzig incident.”

Oh, I forgot about her. I think I met her on My Space. She was 18, she had just graduated high school, she actually went to my old high school, and some of my interns actually knew who she was. She was definitely not an attractive girl. She lived down the street from me. She started emailing me so we went to scope her out because she told me where she worked. So my friend saw her and he was like “Oh, she’s not that bad... at all.” I went to pick her up at work and it wasn’t her that my friend scoped out. So I pick up this really gross girl that I would have never hooked up with out in public otherwise. We go out to dinner to this place that no one will ever see me, we come back to my house and she’s telling how she’s a total drug addict.... But you don’t do any drugs.

I don’t do any drugs. So I get her back here and I got her trashed. I got a whole bunch of coke from one of my friends cause I never had a girl do coke off my dick before and I thought it would be pretty funny. So, she’s doing line after line and I just put some on my dick and

she just did it, it wasn’t like it was something I suggested. Then we went up to my room and I was like I already bought the coke so I might as well go through with it. I get up to my room and I turn on the stereo, I didn’t know what was on, turns out it was Danzig. So she’s like, “Oh I love this song!” and starts doing this really retarded strip tease to it. So here I am, there’s a fat girl in my room, all coked out, doing a strip tease to Danzig...then I have sex with her and she’s like “Pin me down, I like that stuff,” and I was like absolutely not if you like it. Last I heard she was in rehab. I have like six more stories just like that. If you had to breakdown the percentage of girls that you meet on Friendster that are mentally unstable, what would it be?

That’s a fair question and not a fair question because I’m really not looking to meet new friends on Friendster. The people that I target aren’t stable to begin with, but just out of all the people on there it’s probably half and and half. But the people that I’ve actually met up with or to go after – because I know what I’m after – I know I don’t want to take them to dinner, I want them to come to my house at 2:30 in the morning have sex with me and go home, which has happened several times. I don’t want to hang out with them for three hours before hand. I’d say with the girls I’ve hooked up with through friendster were probably 75% mentally unstable.

What advice would you have for somebody just getting on Friendster for the first time who is looking for love?

Don’t try with a girl that has like 75 friends because they’re going to be too busy to get back to you. Don’t come on too strong in your first email. Don’t try with a girl if they have a nudey picture or a bikini picture or something as their front shot because often, so many people have written them that it’s not really worth your time. Lot’s of times girls that have some stupid drawing as their icon or some picture that has nothing to do with anything – if you get into those girls files, they’ll end up being pretty hot and probably not getting that many emails. Also remember you should actually lower your standards by about 50% if you’re picking chicks up on the internet. Because if you’re picking chicks up from the internet first of all, it’s totally not hard. You can do it whenever during the day or night, whenever you’re working on the computer. You can be anywhere. I mean for the most part you don’t have to go out in public with them so it’s not like you picked up some ugly girl at the bar in front of all of your friends. You don’t have to go out in public with them at first because you can totally control the situation. I mean I don’t really care, one way or the other it makes it funny. I think you gotta throw some fucked up shit in the mix anyway to even out the ratio. It’s like doing community service. Fascinating.

This page: Vagabond then and now. Rare postcard photo and an attempted recreation of the same shot, but the cradle got in the way and I didn’t have the right lens. We wanted to get Lincoln and Holly to pose holding hands in the shallow end but Lincoln was at work on the day we came through. Had to settle for a shot of Farmer cracking the deep end for the 674th time. Photo Davoud. That page: Coping bandits took a ten minute break. Evan “Wet Dog” Becker gets his last licks in, about a month before the pool fell. Feeble to fakie. Photos: Fick

Wednesday May 5th, 2004 a new ownership group took possession of the Vagabond property. Early that morning crews were on site erecting barbed wire fencing, and 24 hour security has since been in place. I rode it for the last time the day before. It was mellow, no big blowout farewell. As usual, it was mind-meltingly hot, I drank 100 Tecates, and in the end had more fun riding Ray’s little kidney. As night fell, a full moon rose beside the iconic Vagabond sign. We jumped in the car and listened to the Cure the whole ride home. Sad. On Thursday June 3rd, the shallow end of the Vagabond Motor Hotel swimming pool was bulldozed. The deep end went the next day. I first heard about the Vagabond during the fall of 1997. Neeley came back raving about it being like a skatepark bowl. Even better, he’d met some Rastafari kid who’d invited him over to ride his little kidney. Me? I’d just blown out my ankle, and figured I’d never even get to ride it once. I was wrong. Over the next 7 years we’d all get more than our fair share. My first trip out was in early ’98 with Rube, Royce and Swope. It’d been raining and we were set to lift a lot of buckets. Upon arriving we found the courtyard flooded, water everywhere, but not a drop in the bowl. Baffled, we’d started riding when in walked Matt Howe, who at this time was “one of those guys living in a van in Fremont.” Homeboy was jonesing to ride, rented a pump and handled the whole trip, fucking solo! Matto is always down to make shit happen, whatever it takes; driving, gas money, beer, a place to crash, etc. From then on, Fresno became a sort of Mecca destination for any and all pool heads, especially those of us in the vert-starved Bay Area. And it’s been a go pretty much nonstop ever since. Other than a few months in mid ’99 (see FOTV), and the episode with the river rocks, the place has basically been a hassle-free public skatepark. And while the Vagabond has always been the centerpiece, it’s the scene that sprang up around her that’s kept me coming back. Dready Matt’s pit is always on, plus the never-ending assortment of trippy permission setups (Oakie, Pear Camp, Hogan’s, Villa, etc.), and of course the straight up sketchy barges. Matty’s always calling, “I found ANOTHER one! You have to get out here.” And we’d go. Some trips out we’d ride 5 or more, and not even bother with the Vagabond. That’s the thing about Fresno. It’s always been more than just the Vagabond. Let’s face it — it’s the most overrated pool since the Pink Motel or maybe even the Nude. Fresno’s been the spot because of the people. First and foremost being Matt Soria. That is, when he’s not off surfing. What a Mexican Rasta surf-brah is doing in Fresno is beyond me, but let’s hope he doesn’t figure it out and leave. Obviously, the Pear Camp crew has been amazing throughout. Love and respect to Lincoln, Holly, Scooter and Flea. Their hospitality and generosity know no bounds. RJ, that goes for you as well. And the list goes on... So what? It’s been fun, and fuck it, it’s not over. The crew out there will have the damn thing rebuilt under a bridge somewhere before you know it. Just hope they put some tranny in the shallow end this time, eh? In the meantime, don’t think I won’t be rolling out there whenever possible. What’s next, Matty? —Tony Farmer

Pool gone, Vagabond leaves irony By Bill McEwen The Fresno Bee Someone broke into a steel storage container Thursday night and stole the last 14 blocks of coping from an empty downtown swimming pool revered by skateboarders. In many ways, the theft supplied the perfect ending for this chapter in the tale of the Vagabond Motel property, which graduated from a funky little protest story to Exhibit A in efforts to build housing downtown and attract more young professionals to Fresno. First off, the thieves took only the coping — the prized smooth lip of the pool on which the skaters performed many of their tricks — and left behind an expensive generator belonging to the contractor clearing the site of asbestos. So the contractor is happy.

You have to believe that the property owners, Granville Homes, are happy, too. With the coping gone, there’s no reason for the skaters to hang out at the site. As for the skaters, they will come to realize that if they had saved the Vagabond pool, it would have lost much of its underground intrigue. The motel was empty. The surroundings were a mess. Part of the lure of skating there was you had to get through a fence. Duplicate the pool in a municipal skate park, and the romance would be dead. The skaters had to know the Vagabond eventually would come down and the pool would be filled, and that’s why they traveled here from across the country. Now that the pool is no more, its legend will grow. Every time the skaters tell their stories, every jump will become higher and every routine riskier. The irony of the Vagabond is that the property is being cleared for a city-subsidized project aimed at capitalizing on Fresno’s growing arts and music movement and appealing to young, creative people. In other words, a skateboarder lamenting the demise of the Vagabond pool might end up living in one of the 38 lofts or working in the commercial space going

up at Broadway and Amador streets. Fresno City Council Member Henry T. Perea spearheaded a “Creative Fresno” summit last month that brainstormed ways to make the city more alluring to young professionals and to end the “brain drain” of college graduates. Perea, 26, says there was a consensus that many people his age want to live in an area with a lively arts and entertainment scene that’s close to their work. “They want an urban playground,” Perea says. “It’s all about quality of life.” Perea says he saw the brain drain firsthand after graduating from California State University, Fresno, when friends moved away to begin their careers. “I’m the only one who stayed,” he says. If successful, Perea says, the revitalized Vagabond property could be a model for future projects that inject new life into downtown and entice small-business owners to give Fresno a try. “This is going to be the spark that lights the fire,” he says. “Other developers will see there’s a market for downtown housing and jump in. “I don’t have any doubts that after two or three more city-sponsored projects of this type, the private sector will take over from there.”

espite the fact that the Vagabond is gone, other pools in the region still thrive, as evidenced by the superb Double Rainbow pool. Farmer, Royce, Bryce, and a bunch of the Fresno loc’s got popped at this pool early on, and the angry owner tried to say they vandalized the surrounding house and whatnot, which caused extra hassle and lawyers fees. But this thing was damn near perfect, with two loveseats, good coping, a mean deathbox/steps combo in the deep end, and a shallow box that was so good you could do it every time. The scene mellowed out and some heavy sessions went down there, and then the demo crew moved in and dozed the pool. Easy come, easy go.

Box, steps, loveseat. Can’t ask for much more.

How do you turn dirt into mud? Add beer. How do you make dirt cry? Add more beer. How do you make dirt jump into a pool off a pile of dirt? Add even more beer. Maybe the order’s mixed up but it’s close enough. Just kidding Dirt, no hard feelings now. Next round is on me.

I thought that Mad Mike ruined my photo by being in the frame, turns out he improved the composition, go figure. Ryan Abruzzi with the biggest frontside air of the day.

35 Dude Crew James getting some licks in, Smith grind on the loveseat.

by jonathan hay

"Skating the homes of the rich makes a mockery of private property." Photos by Jermaine Mann, Rhino, Bryce Kanights, and Davoud

n the middle of April Punker Matt asked Jimmy Moore to do an intro for this interview. In the middle of May Jermaine Mann emailed:

Jimmy is a dimestore whore. Here is Jimmy’s part, I have to type it for him because he is retarded:

My friend Matt is a good man, used to be that’s all that mattered, but it doesn’t seem quite as cool anymore to be a good man. Maybe some day you can meet Matt, or maybe you already have, either way, you’ll probably feel the same. He somehow brings shit out of you when you can’t find it and in turn I try to do the same. Some people have a Yoda

effect on others, and inspiration comes natural, but unfortunately my power wavers. If it weren’t for great friends and good insight, I’d be cooked. Also family and honor taught me how to truly stand on a frontside grind, and Mattso is a true brother of mine. Rip, ride, or die. —Jimmy Moore So there you go Matt. Oh yeah, this is Jermaine again. I made fun of Jimmy because if you look at what he wrote, it is more about him than it is about you. Jimmy wants to add that he thinks it is brilliant. He talks about how he loses himself and people like you bring it back. Once again, it’s all about Jimmy.

And now he is trying to justify it with some cornpone logic that I just ain’t gettin’. I can’t deal with this. Oh yeah, now Jimmy is telling me that I stop the program, I stop the progress, I am scared, etc... Great. I am such a fucking critic, I am a critic for judging his “paper,” I think he means what I transcribed for him above. I am sick of this shit and want to work and go to bed so I am signing off now. Jermaine Mann and “JNCO” Jimmy Moore

-oop feeble grind, and I Matt was calling this an Alley looks like a frontside sorta also it but was, guess it it’s rad. And check out is it r teve Wha . cane hurri ow end like a rollerblader. Farmer lurking in the shall Photo Davoud

your real/full name for the Why didn’t you want to use interview? What are you a fuckin snitch? Bush in 2004. Will you share I hear that you are voting for logic behind that? amy kam coc the with the readers Democrat back in office will a ing gett it, Well, the way I figure system works, and that we the only make people think that Democrat in office is the a can change it by voting. To me, a friendlier face. Bush’s with and er slow but on, essi same repr outrage in America and ilize mob to e mor e don machismo has 100 years. If Bush gets last the in st rchi the world than any ana is sped up. He’s got my ire emp the of into office again, the end vote! rioting against Bush during But didn’t you get in trouble for in 2000? ion vent Con l ona Nati the Republican rent Punker Matt . No, that must have been a diffe officer of the peace broke an that d That’s funny, cause I hear you? on it ed blam they and arm his about, next question. I’m not sure what you’re talking Is that a criminal syndicate ? ders grin h slas with So what’s up of some sort? define criminal. I guess that depends on how you ing to do with an act that “hav as, inal crim nes defi ’s ster Web violates the law.” Then yes. 38

that there are no cops? don’t want to depend on the many pools have you skated in You’ve essentially said that you you want to move off the Here’s the compulsory “how that and gs, thin . government for your life” question any negative aspects to doing s maybe. grid. Do you think there are Well over a hundred, hundred ys? Z-Bo and n tow se in the woods catches on Dog hou re that? What happens if your Did you skate backyards befo tly mos was I n, mea I fire dept or forest servlife! d my would you refuse help from the Hell no man, that shit change ie. When I say hun- fire, mov town Dog the re befo et ice? skating stre st service from the fire departtown. But I’ve been hardcore Hell no I wouldn’t refuse fore dreds, I mean since I saw Dog one of the few things that the is ent ever since. gon ment. The fire departm Ore al rur in n cabi a in But even if my house burned . live state does that I agree with But you hardly skate now? You still again without pern I could still build it again, and could never be as bad now. Explain that. e controlled or spon- dow here stat se ng hou ythi n ever dow of ed off burn get a to mits. Even I’m trying water and their wars. I’m trying sored. Off of their energy, their governsystem as Fallujah. the if cted affe be ’t won I h e are any positive things that to create a place in whic with Do you think that ther brings? ds woo the in town ll sma a ment or organized society crumbles. Right now I live in Yeah, food stamps. zero cops. y? hipp ways, or do you feel that if you are a Is it possible to have things both everyone should fend for So you’re basically saying that ely plet com ent ernm you reject gov No way. hippie? of their own problems? How is what you are doing not ory themselves and take care tes way more problems than it hist the in dle swin est bigg the crea ent rnm gove like feel I Come what May I get out of open containers, busted a cabin on land that a friend es. Think about it, driving tickets, spectre of prison. Does of the world rent. I’m building off of the owners. The solv ing land loom the the r, buy poo to the get I on war then , sessions owns, and safer? How around there are setting up a war on the world make you feel people who live in the woods say that a , growing the White House’s kers estly thin hon can free I as ? cop dren a chil see r new society, raising thei e do you feel when you Com life were s. my way in ble had aina sust have in I es that hom majority of the problems their food and building their tion men I Did ie... hipp d goo on now, we all know that the only

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The only ad I ever got was an ad in the paper for my arrest.â&#x20AC;?

Self explanatory. Arizona. Photo Rhino

r Pick. off the fence at the Guita Precarious footplant to fakie Photo Kanights

gentlemen’s . We had enjoyed a few myself, and Orren Harold rcey says “We are more than just for w cre r you in st Pea powers that be. Tru drinks that morning, and , and he starts writing it on the derived directly from the your crew well. nks ose cho drunks, we are Piss Dru ng him that it needs an “X” on the ce, dan do gui but and s, p itic hel and I start coachi probably related to pol is Ali k ge. roc frid k “No way man, pun alike sep y ms It see are the Drunksx.” We were like, your skateboarding or end, so he spells it “Piss So he changes it, and that was the your politics mix with .” ‘ks’ y 30, INSTEAD of the rate entities? ve for aggres- an ‘x’ from work later with a dirt othSkating is a release val ing. Orren came home e Totally separate entities. same time, you can take the boy beginn came up with the symbol. Of course there wer l, the and then I the description pretty wel sion, slash and burn. At ’t take the riot out of the boy. neck of the woods who fit they were absorbed into t can tha in you ers but , riot the out of of time before about Piss Drunx? and it was only a matter shirts made with the names of the So what can you tell us had was thunk up. Piss Drunx it wn en Spa wh m. re yhe front. the s ma wa I t the maybe 98. I can tell you tha with a PD symbol on the ch, on Warner avenue in w written in a 40 bottle started in Huntington Bea nce. Aaron Pearcey, Ali Boulala, early cre nda Three or four were in atte 40

then, but as have been added since I guess a few more people rt has the names of all the OGs. t shi far as I’m concerned tha ters? Who are your favorite ska ore, Colvinetics, Red, Smilin‚ John Mo Texas Dinkins, Gimmie Youngblood, t, Dyck, Farmer, Oxford, Casner (R.I.P.), Shag, Boa s. 602 hoods, PDs and SG , Discharge, Favorite Bands? es, Immortal Technique Anti System, Wolfe Ton Police, Sick Pleasure, Subhumans. Antisect, Triggers, Call the Any words of wisdom? E KUK!! Up Slash Grinders, FRE

box. rizona r an A e v o Crail nn Ma Photo

Backside tailblock. Photo Mann

ath Falls may While the skatepark in Klam pool at the have nice transitions, the t is no joke. Rivers Inn down the stree Light and box slide and roll. Photo Davoud

It ainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t an issue of Concussion without a frontside air, right? Over-vert at Klamath, bitch. Photo Davoud

hances are, you’ve probably never heard of Brendan Klein. He’s a pretty rad kid. Maybe he’s not so much of a kid, but he’s pretty young considering how well he shoots photos. Brendan is from Oceanside and currently works at Transworld in the darkroom, where in between naps he prints photos. Actually he doesn’t take naps in there, I was just kidding. But since Brendan works at Transworld, he gets a lot of photos printed in their magazine, and I would say that he is one of the best photographers they’ve got. He’s also gotten pretty damn good at making a nice photographic print, as he shoots mostly black and white. In a recent issue of Transworld, they printed a sequence Brendan had shot of Sperm frontside to fakie over a set of shallow steps in a pool, which is pretty much unheard of. Insane shit. Brendan hangs out with some of the best skateboarders in San Diego, so it isn’t much of a surprise that Brendan also rips - he can do crailslide reverts in pools. We also like Brendan because he hits his head pretty often but refuses to wear a helmet, and at this rate is well on his way to the Concussion hall of fame. Brendan does a zine called Self Inflicted which often has better photos than you’ll see in Concussion. This is a sampling of Brendan’s recent work. He gave us a shitload of photos, and he shot the cover, the center spread, and most of the slam photos. Most of the photos are black and white prints but there were a few digital shots which were too good to pass up. In typical Concussion fashion we decided to cut the street sequences he submitted in lieu of a couple frontside airs and crails, because we know how to get the rad.

Davey Presley got in a fight with some mean dudes and got sliced down the middle, San Diego gangster style.. I think he looks ashamed of himself, but Linda says that I am projecting my own feelings onto the photo.

Poolism tattoo by Lincoln. Shattered.

Justin Hindry, big ass lien over the steps at Donald. In case you missed it, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a big ass lien.

Skatopia graffiti.

Here: Neal Mims kickflip to fakie. There: Bailey and his tailblock. Spot: Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not telling. Even if we knew. 48

Jon Ponts, frontside ladder air. Photo: Brendan Klein

This guy is only identified as â&#x20AC;&#x153;James.â&#x20AC;? Crail in a big spit gutter.

Rochie gets his own spread. Frontside D in a fire pool amoeba (above), and frontside slider on a Jersey barrier.

Above: Due to space constraints, this is the closest we get to a street photo this issue. Bud Poe, makeshift tranny helper to 5-0. Left: Dober and a gnarly frontside wallride yanker at Washington Street.

Brendan sez: Possibly the biggest shallow steps ever done? You can tell how gnarly it is by the looks on their faces. Spit gutter makes it hard too, I think. Peter Hewitt gettinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; it done with a 50-50. For another angle of how big these steps are, check the center spread.

HAMMEKE

irst things first: name, age and sponsors. Seth McCallum, I’m 24, and I ride for Fobia Skateshop, Consolidated Surf Skates, Spitfire Wheels, Krux Trucks, and Nixon Watches.

Yeah, he would write me postcards from around the world and said stuff like, “I’m skating the best skate parks in Australia with Cardiel and Julien Stranger…keep ripping”. That kind of thing made me who I am now.

What’s up with the whole “Zed” thing? And now you guys are on the same team.

It’s just a dumb little nickname. We kind of started using it for ads cuz every time I get a photo in a mag, or get mentioned, my name is spelled completely wrong. So Zed just seemed a little easier—its just three letters. So how long have you been skating?

Yep. It was rad because not that many pros would even take the time to talk to kids-let alone, be friends. I think he could tell that skating was really important to me. I try to do the same thing when I visit skate camp now. You can tell which kids really love skateboarding and those who are just into it because it’s the cool fad now.

I started in 1989, so it’s been 13 years now. Do you feel skating owes you anything? Is it still as fun today as when you first started?

Where do you live?

No way, never. I think as soon as you feel skateboarding owes you anything, you should just stop. Skating isn’t for people who are just trying to juice it for material purposes, it’s free, just leave it be. Skateboarding’s allowed me to travel though, so if anything, I owe skateboarding.

Minneapolis, Minnesota. The honey-sweet Midwest.

What are some of your favorite spots you’ve been to?

You haven’t always lived there though, right?

I got travel around Spain for about a month. Spain has every dream spot you could imagine. Consolidated rented us a van and Roberto lives there, so it was totally hooked up.

Definitely. I’d say it still gives me that feeling I had when I was nine years old.

No, I moved north from Kentucky when my mother died. I lived on a small farm in the middle of nowhere. Totally secluded in a mass of hills and woods. What was it like growing up in the middle of nowhere?

We were very poor and basically lived off the land. You know, a garden for produce, chickens for eggs and meat, goats for milk — just living and working for the necessities in life. That’s a lot different than how most people grow up nowadays.

Yeah, people usually have all those things handed to them and don’t realize the basics of living — you know, food, shelter, warmth, and whatnot. It always makes me think about what would happen if society were reduced to those basics. So many people would have no clue as how to survive. Okay…so you’re one of those dudes that skates everything — vert, street, pools, parks — who influences your skating?

A.P. has always been a huge influence for me. Also Cardiel and Gonz. Just anybody who skates everything and isn’t locked into somebody else’s styles and trends, but just ripping and having pure fun. Wasn’t A.P. a visiting pro at skate camp when you were a camper?

Yeah, like in 1991, over 10 years ago. It was so rad because he was super nice and showed me how to skate, and just stoked me out with his insanity on his board.

And that’s the van that got broken into on the last day of your trip?

Yeah, the van got robbed and everyone except Karma lost all of their valuables — cameras, cash, passports, and plane tickets. The highlight was that we lost a month’s worth of footage — the main reason we went in the first place. It fits into the typical Euro vacation story — it’s almost mandatory that you get stuff lifted. A thief is an occupation in Europe. Okay, so between me, Frankie, Billy, Gary, Clint, Hutch, and you, there is a lot of Midwest/Minnesota people that work at or ride for Consolidated. How’s that?

It makes it nice when I come to Santa Cruz and stay at Consolidated for large chunks of time because a lot of the people here, I already know from back in the day. And as far as skating goes, it’s easy to rip when you have your homies on the same team and are with you on trips. All right, so to end this, what’s your favorite thing about skateboarding?

Having fun. Just being with your friends and enjoying what you’re doing. Thanks to everyone that makes this fun so possible: everyone at Consolidated and Fobia: Birdo, Leticia, Todd, Joe Fobia, Mariah, and my family.

Any good A.P. skatecamp stories?

There’s a bunch, but I think they’re pretty normal A.P. stuff. I remember seeing him skate gnarly padless vert lines, while it’s sprinkling rain on already flaky masonite, so it was really slippery and dangerous, but he just kept going off like a madman with complete control.

HUTCHISON

That sounds like the typical A.P.

All these photos are pretty much self explanatory, so weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not going to caption them. Seth rides goofy foot, so one of the shots on the next page is a switch front board. Other than that you should be able to figure them out. All photos this page by Hutchison.

ALL PHOTOS THIS SPREAD BY HAMMEKE EXCEPT FOR THE LARGER PHOTO WHICH IS BY HUTCHISON

ave Nelson has been providing South Bay skateboarders with crazy trannies to ride for years now. The last five years or so his downtown San Jose crazy ramps have given everyone a chance to ride his shallow end creations. Really fast trannies and crazy obstacles are part of his ramp building formula and no one skates them like Nelson.

philosophy on life?

His room is outfitted like a MTV Crib for the gnarldog generation. Nelz lives it up in this basement that is equipped with: a pool table, a bar, hot tub, turntables, computer cozy, a canopy bed, and a drumset in the restroom!! Can you beat that? Well Nels can, because he also has a ramp that runs the length of his basement. Is it crazy/gnarlacious/ingenious? Yep, but if you are a tall guy, watch your melon. Besides all of the gnarly-ness of Dave as a skater/builder, he is also one of the coolest guys in the kitchen. He is a chef at a swank French dining establishment and has been recently featured on a talk show. The man is also a gifted artist and a best friend to many. It is always beneficial to have him around on road trips, he is mellow in a gnarly way, or gnarly in a mellow way, whatevs. Nelz has a zen like flow to the crazy way he skates, he musta made a deal with gravity or something. He is up there with Curtis Hsiang, Pete The Ox, San Francisco Tim and Louie Barletta in the ‘Quick and Crazy Dept.’ Is that a Nor Cal thing...I guess it is!! He gets flowed by Black Label/Jason Adams, Emerica, 1984, Halos, Circle-A Skateshop and deserves everything he gets! He also get’s a lot of coverage on wheelbyte.com Hook it up! - RSII

I can be pretty spontaneous at times, ending up in some messed up situations. I rely on friends for help a lot. They are still taking my phone calls, though, so it’s not that bad...YET. I can be pretty cynical at times, too. I don’t know.. Self-awareness and change is good and all, but you can’t let it take away from who you are either. Personal flaws add character. Besides, If we were all saints, life would be pretty boring.

Hey Dave, how old are you now?

What have you done for skateboarding/skateboarders?

Twenty-eight.

I build crazy ramps for people to skate and hurt themselves on. I am a big fan of fucked up shit, so I try and make different stuff that you wont find at the skatepark. I built the Hook Ramp at my old house with a vert wall, window deathbox and no flat bottom. I had to make it by myself cause nobody would have anything to do with it. Right now I have a backyard ramp with pool coping and pool trannies. I live in the basement of

“Do it now, could be gone tomorrow,” “Don’t sweat the small stuff,” and “Be Yourself,” are a few of my favorites. Do you have any vices?

The world is one big blue marble, isn’t it? Where have you set your wheels down on it?

One summer in London, One year in Spain, two trips to Amsterdam, Brussels, Ireland, France, Canada, Hawaii,Mexico, Back to Spain, Brazil, Costa Rica in June, then Mexico for Day of the Dead. Roadtrips: San Jose to Skatopia, Kona, and Stone Edge. San Jose to Vancouver, San Jose to Wyoming, San Jose to Oregon a couple times.. I don’t know gotta be a few more in there somewhere. Travel is one of the best parts of skating for me, getting to meet rad people and skate new shit is the best...period.

this old Victorian House, and I always wanted a house with ramps going through it, like Lance Mountain’s in the Powell videos, doing rock n’ rolls on the couch. So I made an indoor mini ramp with vert walls, bumps between pillars and a hip. People trip out when they come over for the first time. They open the front door and it bangs into a vert wall going up to the ceiling. Its a skate house, and anyone that comes through San Jose will usually end up at my house to crash. I have always had people hook me up while traveling, so I return the favor whenever possible. What is ‘one true rush’?

Pretty much anything that scares you. Overcoming fears and trying new stuff is a huge rush. I took my girlfriend skydiving for her birthday last year. I think it was 15,000 ft with a 60 second free fall before the chute opened. It was pretty rad and she was so stoked, she bought me a ticket to go with her for Valentines day. What does ‘solid gold’ mean to you?

Moments in life that feel so good you just want to hold on to them. Hangin with friends, a ripping session, and memories that last forever. You look at each other and just know, that shit is...Solid Gold. Does the ‘Skateboard Jihad’ have any special meaning to you?

How many years do you have under your skateboard belt?

Eighteen After all that you have experienced now, do you have a general

True friends, backyard pool missions. Getting down and dirty. Doing whatever it takes. Piracy of the concrete jungle. My Friend Kal Gettle is into real estate and he had access to all the ‘for sale’ houses with pools, he would always come through with pools for us. I think that’s what started it. We just started calling each other ‘Jihads’ after a while. – Interview by Ray Stevens II – All photos by Greg Hall

From Wave Warriors to The North Shore and everywhere in between, Archy has been blowing the collective minds of the surfing world for over 20 years. While most other surfers his age have moved onto cushy industry jobs trading in their boards for seats on the board, Archy continues to kill it in everything from 8 foot Indo to the smallest of beach breaks. He can still air with the best of them, catch the OTW bomb or is happy just to throw some tail at home. Concussion caught up with him to see what he’s been up to recently and what he has in store for the future, because at this rate, he’s going to be around for a while. —Jason Murray Photos by Nellie except where noted

Getting some satisfaction in front of a trailer park in Laguna Beach.

Archy, high and dry above the lip. Photo: Kenworthy

What’s life like for Matt Archbold today?

I stay really active, probably more than early on in my career. I am always busy with either surfing, family or huge projects that I’m making slow progress on. I work really hard on staying straight and I’m slowly smoothing out ruts in my life that came from some bad choices. My son Ford and daughter Ruby are what is truly important to me. Ford and I surf together a lot and are really good friends. God, coffee, surf, my kids, Willem da’bro, music, my hot rod and my broad are the things my life is all about today. I live my gift and hopefully inspire others to live theirs, whatever it may be. What’s your best injury story?

I broke my leg in Brazil really bad when I did an air and came down on backwash as it was coming up. I watched my bone come out the side of my leg as I landed. I ended up with a compound spiral fracture. The bone in my leg broke in four places and I shattered my ankle at the same time. The ride to the hospital was totally bumpy and we were stuck in traffic. When we got to the E.R. I had been there waiting on a metal gurnie for hours until my friend saw me there who was friends with the mayor. He called the mayor who called the hospital and got me seen immediately and I got the royal treatment. I was out of the water for a year. I went crazy. What are your plans for the future?

I am going to continue to travel and surf. I have been working on getting my website going lately and I plan on working on that a lot over the next couple of years. I’m just trying to get together a good way for surf fans to kinda track my career through the years by being able to go on to my site and check out old pictures and miscellaneous stuff. Mostly my future looks like this: surf, hang with my family, travel, rock with the Stones in London, cruise my car, get dirty in the garage, hassle the kids, sleep and love my girl.

STEELE

I know you have a model coming out for Santa Cruz Surfboards. Tell us about it? When does it come out?

“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, well you just might find, you get what you need.” Archy, painting it black in the tube. Newport, CA

I have two models coming out and they should be available this summer. One is a 6’1 round tail and the other is 5’11 double wing swallow. Both the boards will be insane. I am really stoked I was able to do something like these epoxys that’s going to bring me the consistency in boards that I have always wanted. I was able to work with amazing people in the process of creating my models from the shaper, to the artist (Jimbo Phillips Jr.) and the guys up at Santa Cruz. Every one did a great job and my boards are going to rip. Any advice for all the groms out there?

Don’t wait for anyone to go surfing, just go!

It felt really good to get Evan Hecox involved in this issue. He’s one of those guys that if you follow the arty at all you have to have a lot respect for because the guy has such a large impressive body of work. From the work he’s done for Chocolate Skateboards to the album covers to the print work, he makes a lot of stuff and still maintains a look that remains his own. We had more images and more interview text but we ran out of room. Anyways, here’s a peak at Evan Hecox, do yourself a favor cut out one of these full page arty shots and hang it up somewhere. WHO OR WHAT WOULD YOU SAY INSPIRED YOUR ARTISTIC AESTHETIC? I’ve taken ideas from a lot of different places and melted them down into my own style, I think. I liked Escher a lot when I was a kid. I used to try to draw like Egon Schiele. I loved the flat colors in Tin Tin comics, German expressionist prints, skateboard artists like Jim Phillips, and Neil Blender’s drawings. Later on I got into old Russian and European poster graphics and older designers like Milton Glaser, Paul Rand, Alexander Girard and I started to gain more of an appreciation for simple colors and forms. I like photography a lot too but I’ve never really tried to do it directly, I go around and take a lot of photos and then use them for reference to draw and paint from. A lot of stuff inspires me which is probably why the style of my work varies quite a bit. 79

Kids are always kids, but fucking kids like Devon are hard to find. He is a hater, but deep in his heart he is a super good guy, and always fun to be around. He has to change his diet ‘cuz he only eats candies and bagels. Try something else son, you’ll like it! He is very creative. Keep being yourself Devon, you are the best. —Roberto Aleman

I first heard about From Ashes Rise from my brother Simon, about 4 years ago when they were playing a benefit at the needle exchange in Santa Cruz. He told me I better go see them or I was blowing it. Luckily, I took his advice and witnessed one of the best hardcore acts to play in santa cruz. Last year they went on a California tour with my brother’s band Bacteria and I had the chance to witness their brutal hardcore onslaught once again. I had been asking Simon to interview them for over a year, and probably because you feel like an idiot interviewing your friends like they’re some kind of rock stars, it never happened. So a few months ago i made the road trip up to portland to skate, hang out with my brother and his punk friends, and to make this From Ashes Rise interview really happen. i caught up to them at their house, still sweating from band practice, bribed them with a case of pabst, and it was on. - Jonathan Hay

Who are you and what do you do?

John - I play guitar and sing. Brad - I play guitar and sing, as well. Dave - Billy’s in the bathroom and he plays bass and doesn’t sing and I play drums. What about that guy over there?

Jon - That’s Derek, he’s playing bass on our US tour. How did you come up with Derek as choice of replacement for Billy?

John - Because he’s handsome [laughs]. No, because he’s a cool guy and probably the most appropriate of anybody in this town that’s capable of playing bass and can handle going on tour. Dave - I think we should let Billy take that one. Billy - Because he’s much more handsome than I am. Why aren’t you playing bass?

Billy - I am playing bass, just in a different band in a different continent. I had prior obli-

gations by the time the tour was planned. I play bass in Tragedy. I had a tour planned and then this tour came up suddenly and they wanted to do it and that’s it for right now. John - And he’s left handed so that kind of breaks up the all right handed band. Brad - John got tired of getting hit in the head by a guitar. So you’re going on tour?

John - Yes, we’re going on tour for a very long time. We’re doing the US minus California. It’s the fourth time this year and after that we’re going to go to Europe for 6 weeks. [Billy’s over it and leaves the room] Why aren’t you doing California?

Brad - We’ve already done it like 9 fucking times. Dave - It’s really easy for us to go on a weekend and hit most of California whereas to hit the East Coast or to hit Europe it’s more like, Ok we’re going on tour for 4 or 5 weeks. We just went to California a month ago, and within 2 months before that we’re in Berkeley, but we did LA earlier in December too. How was the California tour? Did a lot of people come to your shows?

[Clockwise from top] Brad and Billy. Photo: Chris Boarts. John in Vienna. Photo: Kim Bae. Brad in Postojna, Slovenia. Photo: Kim Bae. Dave on the drums. Photo: Chris Boarts

Dave - Yeah I mean we play the Bay a lot so I feel people definitely come out there a lot. John - Someone smoked speed right next to us when we were playing in some art space in downtown LA. That was interesting. I was like, “What’s that weird ass fucking smell.” Then right after that someone was like, “Stop smoking speed!” So apparently the dude right next to me was smoking speed and blowing it right in my face. Brad - It smelled like something between plastic tires and hair burning all at the same time. John - It has some kind of weird old grandma roses kind of scent like some kind of flavor. It was a good show. San Diego was great and then we went to Tijuana and that was awesome as always. We played at some space our friends had just opened up in some shopping enclave in the basement - total Tijuana special. Everyone got wasted and it was a good

time. What was the worst place you’ve ever played?

Dave - Akron, Ohio. John - Lincoln, Nebraska. No, Omaha. Dave - We just do it. Why?

John - Because that’s what we do. It’s almost like a job now. It’s a job we do for free. We got our first check and it was for $75 so I’ll be living for a couple years off of that, thanks to Bam Margera. What did Bam do?

Dave - He played us on his show 3 times and we got $100 per play, divided by 4 is $75. John - So we’re on the Viva La Bam show, and he played about 9 seconds of 3 songs. Brad got some new shoes. Brad - I’m leaving… What kind of shoes?

Brad - Nike Air Jordan’s. [Laughs] John - You come and see us play and all you’re going to see is Brad’s shoes shimmering in the night. Let’s talk about something else…like skating. Do you guys skate?

Brad - No. I’m too scared.

Dave - I’ve got no hand eye coordination. John - I skate, not very well, but I’ve got a slipped disc, I think, in my back from it. But I’m just too old and if we tour I can’t go skating because if I break my fucking arm… Dave - Then we have to replace him. How’d you slip your disc?

John - At that buddy ass park in St. Johns, there’s this nasty little 3 foot bowl thing. Everyone: Buddy?? [Ignoring the heckles about his use of the word buddy]

John - It was made by the National Guard. It’s the worst park. Every transition is totally different and there’s these weird things that look like a wheelchair ramp, which is all you can think that it’s for, because it’s like, why? I mean, I suppose people on wheelchairs could trick out or something. It’s a wheelchair park?

[laughs] John - No. There’s no use for it. So why’d you skate it?

John - Because it’s close and the bus goes there. Closer than Burnside?

John - Well I can’t skate that good. All those guys rip that are down there. Anyway,

yeah I slipped my disc in this little 3 foot bowl that I ate shit in. Have you ever had a Concussion?

Brad - I had a Concussion once but it was from chopping firewood. I hit myself with a sledgehammer. I didn’t hit myself with the end of it, I hit myself with the handle. You take an ax, you split the wood, you put a wedge in there, and you hit it with a mall, and it splits it more. I missed the wedge and it bounced off the wood and came up and hit me in the head and it gave me a concussion. Dave - I get hit in the head a lot, but I’ve never had a concussion. John - You didn’t get a concussion when you malled your head in? Dave - Yes, maybe. I wrecked my bike not too long ago and fucked myself up really bad and scared my face all up and I might have had a concussion. Did you go to sleep right after?

Dave - No. I stayed up all night and whined. John - I got mine in ‘96 when I fell off a curb. I couldn’t remember a god damned thing. I got up off the ground and we were skating around underneath a building, and I start pushing around, and I’m like, ‘This is like a movie dude,’ and I looked down and saw a skateboard and I’m all ‘a skateboard! I don’t ride skateboards’. And everyone was like, ‘what the fuck are you talking about’? I was like, what happened man, skateboarding, where are we? Then I was like, “I’ll be fine, I’ll drive.” I get in my car and start to drive off, and then this I barely could remember when it came back to me like two weeks later, but I was just convinced, I was like ‘take me back to my girlfriends house’, and they were like ‘dude, you guys just had a big fight, you don’t want to go back there.” So I was like, ‘OK, we’ll I’m just going to drive’, and I don’t know where we’re going, and this guy flags me down to jump his car, and I was like, “Yeah man, do whatever you need to do”, and he’s done and I get back in the car and start driving with the hood up, and my friend pulled me over and said, ‘man, we gotta go to the hospital’. I got scared shitless and I didn’t skate for a while after that. I lived with my parents at the time and they gave me a lot of grief for picking me up at the hospital at 3 in the morning, and they were asking me what happened, and I was like, “I don’t know, I was skating and now I’m here.” And they said, “That’s all you do! Try and hurt yourself on that stupid fucking thing.” You guys all from the South?

Dave - Yeah we all are. Every single one. We’re Portland transplants. Where did you come up with the name From Ashes Rise?

Dave - We were a band in the 90s, and emotive long names were very popular in the 90s, and that’s pretty much why we have it, and it’s a good name, and it means making something out of nothing, when things get really bad, there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel. John - Is emotive a word? Dave - Emotive is a word. You don’t want to know what we were going to call ourselves. I found a list of names not too long ago, but From Ashes Rise was on this list. It was like 7 or 8 names. Brad - Heavy Duty was the front runner for a while. John - No it wasn’t. Dave- Heavy Duty Attitude was after Heavy Duty. Brad - Then Heavy Duty Attitude Krëw. Dave - Did we circle the A in Attitude? Brad - Oh yeah and we circled the A in Heavy. When did you guys last go to church?

John - [Laughs] I haven’t actually been to church since I was 4 years old. Brad - Everytime we play Philly we play in a church, so technically a couple months ago. John - Yeah we play a big ass Unitarian Church in the basement. They’re one of the main punk venues in Philadelphia. How many records do you think satan has sold for you?

Brad - Woah woah woah woah woah woah. Like he’s the guy behind the counter at the record store saying, “Hey have you heard that new From Ashes Rise”? John - No I think he’s saying the power of the dark lord. There’s a guy that works at a bookstore here that looks like satan, but I don’t think he sells From Ashes’ records. Brad - He sells Depeche Mode, Bauhaus, & Sisters of Mercy. John - I don’t know man. You can ask him, he’s really easy to contact, he’s always there for you and he watches over you at night, with his cloven hoof. Dave - I told my parents I was an atheist in the 4th grade, and they were like that’s cool, just don’t tell anybody. John - And you did it because you were into Deicide. Dave - No it was just because I didn’t believe the hype. I was much more down with Dungeons and Dragons. Brad - There’s lots of churches in the bible belt, so they’re kind of easy to ignore, they’re Continued on page 87

Photos and words by Holly Anderson

pon entering The Catalyst one Saturday evening, I was quickly immersed in the most random group of rockers ever to bang heads together in Santa Cruz. The all female AC/DC tribute band, Hell’s Belles, were playing to an almost sold-out crowd. College jocks, aging hippies, Hell’s Angels, surfers, homeless folks, metal heads, skaters, mall chicks, and even a 20-something buff guy wearing a skin-tight Britney Spears t-shirt, fused together in the name of rock and roll. The accidentals came out of the woodwork as a preexisting AC/DC fan base. They were Hell’s Belles fans long before there even WAS a Hell’s Belles. That’s the glory of the tribute band, they don’t mess around with frivolous details like writing songs and lyrics. Their job is to play songs with precision, recreate the band’s energy, and lead those Hell’s Angels down that 1979 Highway to Hell. If a tribute band has the balls to get on stage to play homage to the legendary AC/DC, the Aussie rockers who shaped the landscape of rock and roll as we know it, their asses better be good, son. Damn good. So all you loyal Bon Scott-ers, don’t get caught up in gender politics. Hell’s Belles is as close to the real thing you’re gonna get, but The Belles are much easier on the eyes than the real AC/DC. Never have I witnessed five such feminine frames personify ROCK, the way Hell’s Belles does. Period.

Hell’s Belles has an explosive energy that embraces the crowd, guys and gals alike. During, ‘For those about to Rock,’ all fists were clenched and raised all night. The Belles play songs from both the Bon Scott & Brian Johnson eras of AC/DC. Hailing from Washington State, they started back in 1999 and have since toured every state west of the Rockies, Japan and Canada. They’ve opened for acts including Megadeth, Ted Nuget, Joan Jett, Pat Benatar, Blue Oyster Cult, and Loverboy. In a 2003 issue of Blender Magazine, even Angus Young endorses them. The energetic, dread-locked, school-girl outfit wearing Adriane Conner takes the roll of, you guessed it, Angus Young. She whips around stage head banging, raging, and firing up the crowd. She moves like Angus, runs like Angus, and I am told she drops her pants at encore like Angus. Master of the split vocal personality, Om Johari has the ability to effortlessly meander from Bon to Brian faster than you can say ‘Back in Black.’ Om likes both eras of AC/DC, but prefers Scott’s lyrics to Johnson’s. ‘I like them both. You have to have both (Brian & Bon),’ explains Om. Bon’s lyrics are kinder and gentler on the ladies, in my opinion. And Brian can sometimes be difficult to sing. As a matter of fact, there are some songs that I don’t sing, that are just too crazy. The reason I was into AC/DC was because of Bon.’

Johari has an uncanny approach to revving up the crowd. There was a point in the show when she encouraged a large group of women to step to the front of the crowd (and the men to step back). The Kiwi stage bouncers were stoked to look into a sea of sweaty, frenzied women rocking out to ‘Shook Me All Night Long.’ The rhythm section is headed up by Bass guitarist and one of the band’s earliest members, Mandy Reed, who takes the role of Cliff Williams. Her stoic stage presence is enchanting, while Conner and Om whip around her. Lisa Brisbois plays rhythm guitar as Malcom Young while Melodie Zappata completes the rhythm section as drummer, belting out the powerful beats of Phil Rudd with precision and style. For The Belles, it is not just about playing the music to perfection, although they are amazing at that. According to Brisbois, it’s more about embracing a mood the way AC/DC once did. ‘We are all really true to the energy of AC/DC,’ Brisbois explains. ‘It’s very fun, and very sexy, but it’s also very tough. We still stay true to ourselves and to our gender’sometimes it feels like we assume [AC/DC’s] characters, without even really realizing it.’ But for those of us in the crowd, it’s hard NOT to realize it, and enjoy the ride.

he Fuzz is from Livermore. They play punk rock music. The first time I saw them was in Concord, at the Time Out with my friends The Dot Commies. I remember meeting Tony T, he was guzzling Wild Turkey like 10 minutes before his set and then commenced to rock the house. The Fuzz in a nut shell, are the quintessential punk rock band because you could get excited watching them, spray beer at them and they would keep playing, they wouldn’t be like “Dude, what are you some kind of fuckin’ child or something bro!” Tony T’s also got a skateshop in Livermore called Unity, you likey the skateboard? Go there. Tony’s also got more plans than an architect regarding taking over the world and creating more all age venues in SF. So here you go, take a minute to get to know the Fuzz, you’ll be glad you did. Who’s The Fuzz? Tony T: vocals Aaron: guitar Damon: bass Larry: drums

rockers. It almost seems easier these days in the East Bay because a lot of the clubs have closed since then and then new clubs drop each year but new one’s come up and you have to make new contacts. Tony T: We’ve got some new stuff coming up in the San Francisco area. We’re working on some all ages venues around 11th and Folsom area. We don’t know what we’re going to call it yet, but I book and promote shows at the shop, and I have a little bar next door that I run too so we’re always looking for good bands to come out and play with us, and we treat our bands well. We have all ages shows at the shop, it’s a skateboard shop/all ages music venue. We have bands coming out from all over the country and we’re just expanding our operation out into all the areas, Santa Cruz, San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and the East Bay. Worldwide. Oakland world wide. What’s up with you, you haven’t said much. Larry: I’m Larry. I’m the youngster in the band. I’ve only been playing for a year with these guys, I’m ju.. Who’s getting the most tail in the band here? Not you, because you’re the rookie, but you will man…at the all age venues, they’re going to be checking you out,

Aaron: We’ve actually got this album out called Raise the Flag, that we’ve just putting the artwork together for, and we’re hoping to have it out by summer. It’s been a long time coming, we’ve been playing off the same album for days, so to get this one out will be nice, and we hope to follow it up quickly with something else later. It’ll be a box set [laughs] Rarities and B-sides? [more laughs] Tony T: We should just record live at all our shows and we can put out the live box set. [even more laughs] Any thank you’s? That’s pretty much the last thing we do.

[Beer cheersing clinks and clanks] Any people you guys want to thank?

[laughs] So you guys have been around for a while, have you been on any long, extended tours?

How hard is it to be a punk rock/skateboard band in Livermore?

Aaron: We’ve pretty much kept it in California so far, mostly small trips. The best small trip was to Reno. It was hell when we were there but we came back with so many stories that all of a sudden it’s evolved into a life of it’s own.

Aaron: It’s not that hard. I never really associated with the social lives of the normal people out there so when I moved out there I would just hang out with the skaters and the punk

Damon: It’s hard to be punk rock in Reno. We’re driving down the street and people were like, “You fucking asshole, cut your hair!” and all this shit. It was just years behind.

So what’s on the horizon, do you have any albums you want to promote? Now’s your time.

Concussion. You guy’s rock. Love the photos.

How long have you guys been around for? Tony T: We’ve been playing since ’96. We started playing and booking our own shows and putting shows together back in the Livermore area, in the tri-valley area. We would rent out halls, invite our friends down and we’d have punk rock shows. That’s how we started and things kept going from there. We made enough money with some of the shows we were doing so we opened a skate shop, in Livermore California, Unity Skateshop. We just love playing, we’re a punk rock, rock ‘n’ roll band we love doing what we do.

Aaron: We did a lot of skating. We went to the Reno park and we went to the Sparks park. The Spark’s park is cool, that bowl there is gnarly.

Aaron: Just all the local bands and clubs. More than anything keeping the local band contacts, you always have shows to come, and just everyone that’s booked us some nights. Tony T: I want to thank all the guys at Consolidated, Deluxe, Thrasher, Concussion, all the distributors out there that have helped the skate shop and the band out, because it’s all kind of coming together, and just be on the look out for the Unity stuff because you’ll see The Fuzz there and you’ll see a bunch of other good, good skate rock bands and punk rock bands, rockabilly, psychobilly, it don’t matter. Check it out. —Don Frenchy

Gigs From Hell True Stories from Rock & Roll’s Frontline Edited by Sleazegrinder

Do our “readers” even read books? We’re not entirely sure, but people sent us some shit, so here you go.

Life & Limb Skateboarders Write from the Deep End Edited by Justin Hocking, Jeffrey Knutson and Jared Maher I’d like to start this off by saying that I’m not terribly fond of skateboard writing, or writing about skateboarding, as it may be. It’s one of those things that I’d rather go do than read about, and so a lot of books that contain skateboard fiction don’t really do it for me. That being said, Life & Limb is thankfully nothing like that at all. This book contains a series of short stories that are all written by skateboarders, but few of the stories actually talk about skateboarding or use it as the focal point of the narrative, which was a pleasant surprise. In fact many of the stories have nothing to do with skateboarding at all. There are some “big names” featured here like Mark Gonzales, Scott Bourne, and Ed Templeton, but while those names might be good selling points to get a publisher or reader interested in this book, the best stories were written by relative unknowns. A few of the things in here are reprints which I had already read, which was a little disappointing since I do enjoy reading things by Wez Lundry and Dave Carnie, but so be it. Thrasher’s Mike Burnett wrote probably one of the only skateboard-related stories, but it’s just as much about growing up as it is about skateboarding and either way it was good. Jared Maher’s interesting thread on anti consumerism “The ULF Does Not Exist” was a well-written highlight, as was Justin Hocking’s entertaining short on a Phoenix roadtrip. One of my favorites was “Ovenman” by Jeff Parker, which is sort of a food industry story written from an almost obsessive compulsive perspective, which anyone who has spent any time working in restaurants will be able to realate to. Overall there is probably something for everyone in here, and the editors of Life & Limb did a good job in bringing a diverse collection of stories together, and more importantly, helped dispel the stereotype that not all skateboarders are brain dead dolts who can’t write a cohesive paragraph or engaging narrative to save their life.

From Ashes Rise Continued from page 83 on every corner. Do you think moving to Portland helped your relative success.

John - No. Not at all. Dave - No. I don’t think it changed or helped it at all. Do you guys get shit for how well produced your album is?

Dave - Even before our albums were well produced we got shit for them being well produced and spending a couple of thousand dollars on them. Brad - The money’s there. The money’s always there. It’s expensive to press records, so the money is somewhere. Whether you’re on a label that invests the money back into pressing the records or a label that invests the money into paying off credit cards, the money is always there. John - It’s like an artist that wants to do something beyond magic markers and crayons. If they have a vision, they want to make something in their mind, they can only do it with this. We feel like there are only a few places to record where we want to do it, where we can capture what we want it to sound like. Brad - I’m out. Hey, do you guys still wanna go rollerblading tomorrow? So how do you see yourselves involved in the skate world?

Dave -Well we ended up in a skate compilation, 411. John - And in the Concussion Video. When I got into skateboarding, I had a Lance Mountain Future Primitive mini, with OJ teamriders and Independent Trucks. The culture that was associated was the punk culture. You’d open Thrasher in 1987-88 and there’d be Pushead’s column about music and stuff, and people like Bill Danforth and Jeff Phillips, you know, punk fucking dudes that skated. And that’s what’s cool about it now, there’s still that punk element. In the early 90s it was total hip hop and boards got to be like 6 inches wide, and wheels got to be like 30 mm bearing covers. Then everyone started learning the flippety shit, and I was like, “I want to learn the flip shit,” but now all I want to do is just carve. Like the Newberg park, I love that park. It’s like an old man’s park, you don’t have to do anything, you just glide. But you see,

This book sounded quite promising, billing itself as “a wild ride through rock ‘n’ roll’s nightmare moments” or something. Horror stories from the road and whatnot, distilled into a nice sized book certainly is a good idea. Unfortunately the final results were disappointing, as the book suffers from a number of faults. First of all, it seems that everyone has a drastically different idea of what a nightmare rock and roll moment is, as what is supposed to be a bad scene or bad occurrence often turns out to simply be the highlight or funny vignette of many a shitty band’s career. For example, the “most horrible” thing that happened to one band manager was that he got into a drug-addled threesome (foursome?) and almost stuck it in the bass player’s ass in the dark on accident. Humorous? Sure. A gig from hell? I think not. Other stories are simply driven by someone in the band’s oversized ego and the story starts out, “Our band has been around since you were in diapers, and we’ve toured 200 days of each year since ‘78. Think we’re hardcore? You betcha,” or something like that. Another gig from hell was some crappy show some band played in Florida and got heckled, and the notable thing that happened was that Iggy Pop was in the audience and liked the band’s set. Cute story to tell the girl you’re hitting on at the bar? Sure. Gig from hell? Probably not. The other main flaw with this book is the editing, or lack thereof. Now I most certainly can relate to the problem the editor faced, having to deal with submissions from non-writers of varying educational backgrounds and varying levels of sobriety. It is a very challenging task, especially considering the number of submissions in this book (hundreds), but that is the editor’s job – to clean up and make pretty the sometimes shoddy or questionable work of the writers. In this case the book read like a second draft that needed a few more revisions. Flaws were across the board, from plain old poor writing, dumb grammar and spelling errors, to copy editing errors such as having no space between a period and the first word of the next sentence. It’s almost as if the editor was too busy living his own rock and roll lifestyle as well, and did nothing more than run spell check a couple times. It is possible that I’m being a little harsh in this critique, and there certainly are some funny, horrible, and horribly funny rock and roll moments hidden in this book. There are enough stories that it’s simple to pick up and read one at random and then put the book down again, which makes for great potty reading. I just wish that there were a few more stories from bands that I knew have good stories, such as the Dwarves. They did get Vadge Moore to write a foreword to this book, but aside from sweeping generalizations, he doesn’t talk about the Dwarves at all. Too bad. Anyway, good concept, poor execution. It’s not too late to send it back for a second edition and do the job right this time.

Burnside’s intimidating because there’s always people around when you eat shit. There’s never a time you can practice if you suck. And when I moved out here I wasn’t used to transition, and then you got people from out here like [Punker] Matt , and you’re like, ‘What the Fuck!?” What’s the gnarliest thing you’ve ever seen at Burnside?

Dave - I’ve even seen some incredible shit there. I used to go sit there at night, I lived right up the street. It’s even intimidating just to go there even not skating. There’s these burly guys with their shirts off, stonewashed jeans, like high top unlaced shoes, you know what I’m talking about, like nasty dudes. They’re rad though, they’re pulling all these old school crazy tricks, and they look like wild dudes from off the streets with shaggy long hair, they look like they’re in DRI or something. Ok cool, enough about skating. You guys have a lot of apocalyptic, the world is fucked, everything is going to hell lyrics. But you guys don’t seem that angry and evil as one might think from listening to your music?

Dave - There’s this handful of From Ashes Rise questions that we get a lot of, and this is one of them. ‘You’re very anti-technology, you’re anti-christianity, you seem all gloom and doom’…because on tour we probably do see more gloom and doom, but you see us at home and we’re sitting around drinking beer, tired as shit,,,,oh wait, no we’re a straight-edge band. That’s the other conception…misconception. ‘You’ve got a Budweiser, I thought you guys were straight-edge’. We’ve never been straight edge. But isn’t everything fucked and just the truth distorted and everything’s all crazy and it’s a bleak world out there. Do you think it’s getting worse?

Dave -When I look around, what I really want to do is get as far away from the United States as possible. That’s a very frightening thought for me, I just want to get out. Why don’t you?

folks in Portland because it’s our pre-occupation. I think everyone I met in Portland is in a band. So what are the top 5 things fucked up with the world right now?

John: 1) Consumer culture - everybody wanting to buy the same things and the same dumb shit. People completely sell their souls and their identity just to walk around in garbage or buy garbage. 2) Television culture - which is fun and amazing. I can’t believe some of the shit they put on there now like “My Littlest Groom”. 3) Pop Music - how fucking bad every song is on the radio. The hook is like 9 times. There are no verses anymore, it’s just a chorus like hook for modern pop. It’s awful. 4) Religion - my biggest beef with religion is the way it mentally divides people and kills people. Whether it’s through wars, or famine, or death, it’s all done over some dumb prophetic lord that sits up in heaven and watches over us. Come on, that’s aliens that watch over us, not god. Fundamentalist Christian and Islamic faiths have been terrorists throughout the world killing each other for territory forever. What’s the worst political war going on right now?

Dave - I’d say the so called “War on Terrorism”. It’s just a weird front to just blow up whoever, wherever. It’s a weird, strange thing. The list of targets is like, why are you attacking such random small places except to take their culture and natural resources? John - They should just be up front about it and say ‘Yes we’re bombing people so America can live for the next 300 years.’ I think if the president was like, ‘We’ve gotta have oil, we’re the greatest country on earth, let’s fucking take them, we’ll give swords to whoever wants to go over and help us,’ then they’d get a lot more people signing up. Every dude in the middle of nowhere that hates his life and can only watch TV will be like, “I’ll go do it too!”

Dave - It’s not a very acceptable thing for me to do. I have very selfish goals and desires of being a band dude, and of rocking and playing so I’m trying to avoid it. Yeah, I said band dudes. Yes. It’s a common word among our 87

SCUM LINE by Josh Henderson Josh is a skater from Fresno, so you’d think that this video would have a shitload of pool skating in it. And you’d be right, that’s exactly what this is, and it’s good shit. Featuring many of the well known pools in the Fresno area including the Vagabond, Hogans, Peach Pit, Pear Camp, etc., Scum Line is shot and edited like a home video except these dudes rip harder than most of your friends, even when they’re not wearing shoes. Now that the Vagabond is dozed, this video is even more important, and you’ll see some of the loc’s including Lincoln, RJ, and others rip the shit out of this place. There is also the Fresno-Santa Cruz connection via Hwy 152, so you also get some Santa Cruz pools and spots, as well as some good Andy Roy footage. The only bad thing I have to say about this video is that I didn’t really need to see the Ricky Styles footage. That guy is a good skateboarder, but watching him (or anyone, pretty much) ride pools fully padded just doesn’t do it for me. Josh should be finishing up his second flick, which is sure to have some epic footage of the Double Rainbow. But for now send $11 for a copy of Scum Line to: Josh Henderson POB 25141 Fresno, CA 93729

BEERS, BOWLS AND BARNEYS Thrasher Magazine We don’t usually review Thrasher videos (they ban us from their zine review page, we ban them from our reviews, it’s a nice understanding), but this one was the exception to the rule. This is the long-awaited Thrasher pool skating video, filmed and edited by P-Stone, Thrasher’s resident video roam who lives in San Diego and travels his ass off. P-Stone is an all around great guy, and he films and skates with some of the gnarliest skaters around, which is exactly what this video features. Pools being ripped apart by Hewitt, Hitz, Childress, Bailey, Ox, RJ, Cardiel, Lance Mountain, and many, many others. There are some humorous cartoons which divide the video up into like five sections, but they’re all pretty much the same. So much gnarly shit goes on that you’ll find yourself rewinding and slow-mo’ing tricks over and over. You can’t even tell how gnarly a lot of the shit is, and the fact that there are quick edits between tricks (not too many lines) makes it all the easier to desensitize yourself to how sick the footage is you’re watching. Anyway whatever, this flick has a ton of good stuff in it. As an added bonus, Concussion readers may recognize the corresponding video footage of a lot of the photos that have been printed in our mag, as P-Stone and Rhino often travel together. This is a great DVD, although the bonus New Zealand Hellride footage isn’t all that exciting, but whatever. Definitely worth the $10 or whatever I paid for this, you can pick this up at your local shop or order it online from the Thrasher website.

ILLEGITIMATE BASTARD CHILD Natural Koncept Stunt skateboarding, huge gaps to slams, train graffiti, guns, sawed off rails, puking, Hawaiian pool skating and the gnarliest of slams that break bones, make up the raw meat of this fucking punk video from NK. Pool segments dominated by Kale Sandridge and Craig Whitehead along with Burnside clips of Caz blend like gin and juice with street segments from Brendan Leung, Dave Davis, Chris Kays and Josh Zickert, all who are ripping street skaters who destroy or get destroyed by anything in their path. Katch’s animated marching armies and wolf dudes running from the police add stoney interludes between insanity such as Choppy’s psycho leap of death from the 5th floor of a hotel room into a pool and another guy who gets towed full speed by a car to a ramp that launches him off of a terrifying 100 foot bridge drop. A musical variety from Eric B & Rakim to 7 seconds to Toots and the Maytals, appropriately mixes up this motley crew’s skateboarding styles. Whether these hoodlums are slamming at Wallos, busting nutters down 10 stair rails, or launching homemade roof roll in gaps in Hawaii, the skateboarding and stunts are hardcore. I’ve watched this video about 10 times already, and the skating is brutal. The NK crew barge hard, and don’t give a fuck about anything. Sure you see rails in all the latest street videos, but something about the street skating NK finds is super gnarly. But what remains the most nauseating of all bails is when graffiti artist Katch, looking like a prisoner at Abu Ghraib, bails off of a roof drop by snagging the gutter and falls and breaks his leg, only realizing his demise when he stands up and his weight buckles out his leg. Sick, gnarly and raw, not unlike the film quality in much of this video. But then again, this is a skate video, not a Discovery Channel video on the Black Mambas deadly venomous bite. Illegitimate Bastard Child is one of those “must-see” skate videos.

MORE CONCRETE Conspiracy Skateboards More Concrete is a skateboarding video from Conspiracy Skateboards about skating cement transitions all over Colorado, the state with more skate parks than anywhere in America, featuring dudes like Wrex Cook, Bryan Pennington and contributing Concussion photographer Brian Fick. Replete with cheesy video effects, shaky cam, and more old school tricks than you can shake a 9” board at, this video shows that the boys out in Colorado are more concerned with their skateboarding than with their filming techniques, and that’s fine with me. With Pabst hand off roll ins at the Denver bowl, crails, Smiths, fast plants, drunken doubles, hand plants and airs over thousands of hips, most of the skating isn’t much more than you’ve seen at any of your local cement parks, but there’s a lot of it and just checking out the possibilities these parks offer makes me want to take a long road trip out to the Rocky Mountain state. Apart from the Colorado footage which is aplenty, other spots visited include a wooden bowl in Texas, the Louisville skatepark, and a caboodle of vert ramps and bowls in Texas, southern California, and of course Oregon’s cement parks, which a video named More Concrete wouldn’t be complete without. Some of the skating in More Concrete is heavy duty, while other parts are like filming your buddies at your local bowl at a Sunday BBQ, but that’s what gives this video part of its appeal. Instead of watching some kid switch heel flipping down a 20 stair, you see skating that you might actually be able to pull yourself, maybe. Check it out if you want to see what skating Colorado is all about, or get in your car, steal your boss’s gas card and check Colorado out for yourself. This DVD is available for $20 through conspiracyboards.com

Tent City Anti Hero Skateboards Here it is, the long awaited Anti Hero video done by Rick and Buddy. Filmed entirely during several weeks in Australia, it is no surprise that this DVD watches more like a Rick and Buddy “documentary” (such as Fruit of the Vine) than a traditional Anti Hero flick, so if you’re expecting the classic choppy editing and random shit that Fucktards, et al. featured, you might be a bit disappointed. Not to worry though, they still deliver the goods where it counts. It’s also notable and interesting that this video includes ripping by dudes who don’t even ride for Anti Hero, or even Deluxe. Whatever though, these dudes are all bros and that’s really what it’s about I suppose. There are ample interview/voice overs during the footage, which is cool to watch once or twice, but starts to get old during repeated viewings. There is a ton of rad footage in here – too much to mention it all – so here are a few of the highlights: Gnarly, grizzled cement parks that looked better seven years ago than they do now. This ain’t no Oregon buttery smooth shit, that’s for sure. Everyone rips that stuff, but especially Cardiel, Bailey, Trujillo, Larry Stranger, and Tony “two beer” Miorana, the latest addition to the Anti Hero roster. They ride a couple tight little full pipes, and Hewitt disappearing up and into the elbow of one of them is insane. A little bit of street skating never hurt anyone, right? Well that’s what you get, a little bit. A sketchy downhill in which Cardiel pretty much slides a couple of his wheels down to the bearings is good stuff. The traveling “Tent City,” where everybody got their own one man tent, except for maybe Bailey who seemed to prefer to sleep outside most of the time. Funny footage of Hewitt in his tent. “I got my boomerang, my sack of weed, and my plastic bag,” is hilarious. All of this (and more) culminates at this huge-ass full pipe in the mountains (bigger, smoother, better than the Glory Hole) for pretty much some of the best skateboarding footage ever captured. Who ever thought a kick turn could be so gnarly? Hewitt and Trujillo step up and show you how it’s done. The bonus features include like eight or nine featurettes which are all worth watching: “When Tents Attack” is edited more like an Anti Hero video for those who are jonesing for that style, and the extra Big Pipe footage leaves one speechless. This one is pretty much a must-own, so find it, watch it over and over, and then file it in between to Fruit of the Vine and Northwest.

BONES BRIGADE VIDEO SHOW, FUTURE PRIMITIVE, ANIMAL CHIN Classic Powell Reissue DVDs This is the shit that I grew up watching, the original skate videos that got me and probably hundreds of thousands of other kids stoked on skating in the early to mid-eighties. Lance Mountain’s footage in Future Primitive was the stuff that got me hyped on street skating — not lurking at some rail or stair gap, but cruising down the street hitting whatever is in your way. Lance Mountain is one of my favorite skaters of all time, and remains so to this day, and he still rips. But yeah, Bones has reissued pretty much all of their old videos on DVD, and they’re exactly how I remember them. You’ve got Del Mar footage, epic backyard pool sessions with Lance, Cab, etc., and of course the classic Search for Animal Chin. If only they could have digitally removed Mike McGill from this stuff then it would’ve been perfect. Sorry, but I gotta take my jabs at that kook when I get the chance. Anyway this stuff is pretty much must-own, whether you grew up skating before or during this time, or were born in 1990 and have no idea what I’m talking about, these videos are pivotal in the history of skateboarding and the skateboard video. I guess they’re going to re-release Animal Chin again with an updated Bones Brigade section, but they have to get all those dudes together in the same spot at at the same time, which isn’t that easy.

sure you are paying attention. The second song “Lose Every Battle” reminds of Social D from Mommy’s Little Monster. The strong will survive, the weak will die, now I know what it is all about: rad freaking lyrics! Also included is a video for your CD rom. — Casper

Chrome Pistola Belly of the Beast

Adolescents

Live at the House of Blues Kung Fu Several years ago I was lucky enough to catch the ADZ at the Lava Room in Costa Mesa. The dance floor was super slick with beer. Meatheads lurked the perimeter. One guy there was so punk he was disco dancing in the center of the pit with pegged, plaid pants, busting move after move until being repetitively flattened onto the concrete. The worst part of the night was when a small riot happened and the 300 pound bouncers got their teeth kicked out, doc martin style. But the music was so good. The Adolescents self—titled album, released in 1981, remains as one of my top favorite records. Their newest 2004 release further proves their place as one of the most talented punk rock bands to have graced the auditory canal. This reunion show featured most original members, talents which played in other great bands such as Agent Orange, Social D, TSOL, and DI to name a few. To be honest, I missed hearing Tony Cadena (Montana Reflex)’s snide, throaty, youthful vocals. His delivery has gotten tons more metal and heaps less sinister. Even then, he must be in his forties now and is still punk as fuck. The rest of the band continue to play and sing with edgy precision and have written new material that compliments the amazing old set list. I guess Tony used to play Tupperware, and pots & pans in his first band in junior high. Now he’s a third grade teacher who also writes desperate, tender poetry. Adolescent or not, the music is. —Hurst

The Beauty Pill

‘The Unsustainable Lifestyle’ Dischord I picked up this album based upon simple name recognition of the Dischord label. Knowing absolutely nothing about this Washington DC based band, I must say I love the packaging and the presentation of this album and did find a few gems of listening pleasure. ‘The Unsustainable Lifestyle’ will probably not end up being in heavy sustainable rotation on my disc changer, though I definitely enjoyed more than a few of the tracks. The first few songs I can only categorize as set— back, almost sleepy. The opening track Goodnight For Real, which carries the album’s title lyric, rides well on the hollow chorus: “There’s only so much oxygen ...in the room.” About track five things started clicking and further enjoyment commenced. With a woman playing bass there is bound to be some magic. This album is rather eclectic in nature; alternating from guitar rock to a piano sample to Mr. Rogers and flight attendant sound bites. All I can imagine is that there was some sort of compromise taking place in the song selection process. With lines like, “There are no black ops and nobody is reading your mail,” I find this album growing on me. Rachel Burke, the female lead hailing from Seattle, does an amazing Liz Phair rendition. I would have sworn it was Liz, if the liner notes hadn’t said otherwise. The male lead vocals of Chad Clarke hooked me at times with off—beat simple lyrics, but I never could quite find universal common ground with the songwriting. If you like the bass heavy plucking simplicity of say a mild Pinback, with a splash of Pixies style coed vocal interludes, and have a fetish for Liz Phair, then this may just be the album for you. I hear a lot of potential in the music and get a sense that they might be best viewed up close and live. — Cody

Broken Bottles Drinking in the Rain

TKO Records This EP was sent to me for free when I ordered Fang’s “American Nightmare from Interpunk.com. All I can say is: thank you Interpunk. The first song here is called “Drinking in the Rain.” It starts out with rain and then thunder rumbles, then, before you know it, you wake up in a car, hung—over, from a night of drinking your pain away. A whinny voice (that reminds you of Mike from the Stitches) suddenly is ringing in your ears and snaps you out of your dizziness. Broken Bottles comes at you with an abusive husband attitude. First they are sweet and nice, then they bust you right in the eye to make 90

Mindless Records This is one man playing all instruments. It is a throw back to the old style of rappin’. You know, when there was actual talent playing the music. Not like all the bands nowadays with their constant loop and no real musicians. Outkast are the only black rap group that put any effort into their music. They are musicians. This guy is a musician. I don’t like most shit that sounds a lot like this, but he’s got it down. Good luck Chrome Pistola. Five songs, three remixes, two originals. — SB

Ciril

Hysteria Driven Know Records Pleasantly surprised with this crazy art damaged hardcore. A lot of similarities to Rudimentary Peni. Even the album art is in a Nick Blinko vein. I do hear some old Industrial punk in there too. There are 14 tracks and I listened to them all. I suggest this to anyone who has liked Rudimentary Peni or Christian Death. Gitane De Mode from Christian Death even does some backing vocals on this. Again, I was won over by this. Worth the time spent. – SB

The Code

Rhetoric of Reason EP Jump Start Records / Morphius Powerful and solid, The Code beats out their positive political message in a forceful manner. The variety between songs is massive. The first song, “Know your Enemy” is East Coast style hardcore punk with a few 000—ohhhs and aaa—aahhs, while the next one is straight up skankin’. Rhetoric or Reason is produced by Bill Stevenson (Descendents/All) so it’s definitely a clean production. The third song is back to the EC hardcore style, but not as gnarly or angry as a lot of EC/HC. The last song is a cover of OP Ivy’s “Unity,” who they share some musical similarities with when they’re doing their ska thang. This EP was over before I was ready for it to be over. I want to hear more. — JH

Condemned 84 No Way In b/w Battle 7”

Haunted Town Records This infamous band of hooligans from England are back at it. These guys have put out a few of the most essential Oi albums of all time. They’ve always had a Nationalist leaning. I love the violence on the record covers. This is a two song 7”. It’s on clear vinyl. Both songs are right up there with the older material. I just love Haunted Town Records for, as this 45 says, “We Don’t Pose”. Killer band, great label — a collector’s item. Seek to worship. —SB

Crime in Choir The Hoop

Frenetic Records Well it seems you never can go wrong with an album on Frenetic records. Bands on Frenetic sound different from all other types of music, yet share some subtle sound with their label mates, while each holding their own originality. Crime in Choir’s sound is full and ethereal, syncopated and melodic, driving yet kitch, new wavy, slightly techno, but not obnoxious or overly repetitive. Cool organ(ic) sounds key in lethargically while a building, slightly invasive flanger guitar overtone takes over and then jumps right into a Devo—esque dance number. Words can only do so much, or so little, for this style of music. I will end by saying Tim Green from the Champs appears on this recording and he recorded the album. — JH

Cripple Kid/ The Little Dipper Split CD

Microcosm Records There seems to be a common thread running between these two bands and that is probably why they decided to put out a CD together. What is that thread you ask? Neither vocalist can sing in tune for very long. The result: Ass Crap. I feel sorry for the other members of the bands because their overall playing is really not that bad. This CD is nothing to write home about (unless of course, you are writing home to tell them that this CD is nothing to...well, you get the idea). — Sgt. Scrapes

Degenerotic Doses

The Electric Pro-Vel Records These guys sport saucy moustaches and look sexy in black. This first full length album comes clad in 80’s fluoro green and pink, carrying me way back to the sixth grade, when girls in similar colored Guess shirts kept me all hot and bothered on the handball court; deflating my slider, ruining my waterfalls. Much time has passed, Madonna looks so old, ET had a twentieth anniversary. The St. Louis band have no real new wave, but if you want some 70’s rocking good times, here’s your fellas. — Hurst

Die‚ Hunns Long (Live) Legs

Disaster Records New name, new bass player (Corey Parks—ex Nashville Pussy/Duane’s Old Lady), and a brand new spanking album from The King Of Skatepunk, Duane Peters. The album consist of songs of old, which are redone to bring a new twist to the songs you may have grown to love, like “War of the World,” “Surf Sacrifice,” and “Animals.” Also included is a cover of “Time Has Come Today” in which Corey sings with Duane doing back up which is a kickass version and “I Got Your Number.” The new songs on here rock with the addition of Corey Parks doing a lot of the back up vocals and although I dig this album, I would have to say that I like some of the original songs better than the newly done Hunn songs, but nevertheless it is a delight to have a new freaking Hunns album. Also included on the CD is a quicktime video of “Hate & Love,” which is an awesome song. So eat up, my dirty scuzz pirate skatepunks. — Casper

The Dirtbombs Dangerous Magical Noise

In The Red Records Great Dirty Rawkin’ RhooooL!! I heard these guys on a few different comps. I’ve always enjoyed their Rawkitude. If you like it dirty and Rawkin’, then look no further. The Dirtbombs are all about it. 13 tracks — all solid grooves. Dig? — SB

The Desert Fathers The Spirituality

Three Spheres Records How’d you like some pasta without the sauce? Maybe cold noodles stuck to a slimy colander, scooped with your bare hand? That’s how I felt with this album. My friend Jeremy showed me a good fix to this problem a few months ago. If you don’t have any sauce, melt butter on the noodles, add ketchup. Stir it up — bon appetite. I mean, really, ketchup can fix anything. With only ketchup and duct tape you can glide through time. — Hurst

Edison

Back to the Plant Damage Press Another band hailing from Orange County bringing you some good Skate Hardcore music to frontside grind to. Sounding something like a cross between Cro—Mags and Dead Lazos Place, Edison hit hard with harsh, tumbling vocals with some chants to get you involved. There is a total of 13 songs here that kick your ass all the way through. I can’t say much more, but I will say, if you miss good old hardcore done up you must seek this band out. NOW! — Casper

Eggplant Queens

Curses Self Released0 The Queens have several interesting features. Firstly, they have seven members. NO, not that kind of members, sicko. Secondly, they all bear cool titles like Eggklair and Sunnyside, so they got that going for them. Bluesy, 70’s rockish go ahead. Nothing new here, except for maybe the omelet theme. — Hurst

Fang

Live Cheap CD Malt Soda Recordings I was at the show that this was recorded from. Actually, I only think the first half of this disc is from that show, ‘cause Sammytown talks about meeting me on stage. Soon they’ll be an interview. If you don’t know who Fang are, then wake the fuck up. These guys are what punk rock is, was, and will always be. This disc is 6 bucks and has 31 songs on it. You would be a fool, fake, and poser if you pass this up, chump. This is PUNK ROCK. Few can contend. — SB

Find Him and Kill Him Cut Them To Pieces

Happy Couples Never Last Records There are so many cool things about this CD. First off, the cover art is very cool. Then the disc is see—through with Cut Them To Pieces written all over it. The actual disc looks like it has been formatted in MP3, yet it plays in my old CD player. Technology is crazy shit. Then there’s their lyrics which I really like. It harkens back to yesteryear where every punk was pissed and ready to fight. This is current day TRUE Hardcore. Not some hippidy hop hardcore crunch shit. I’m talking like real Hardcore from the days of yore. So if you like real fast songs with pissed off lyrics and a screaming singer, look no further. One of the better of their flock. — SB

Fire Season Return

Reaction Records This isn’t my cup of whiskey. It is pretty good for what their doing. It would be labeled something like: NoiseArtPunkAlternative. Some people listen to Sonic Youth and they think they can build on their sound. It’s a bad idea. 12 Tracks. Not Horrible. — SB

Franz Ferdinand S/T

Epic/Domino US Go out and get this album. Catchy Scottish good ole rock and roll. I have had this CD in the disc changer for about a month now and I am still not sick of it. The only thing that I have a problem with is song two, which doesn’t really go with the rest of the album. With the harmonic sound of that song, you can tell that they are not from America. — BF

The Frequency S/T

Noreaster Failed Industries If you’re at all familiar with Trans Am, you know that they sound like some white trash techno music. You would not be surprised at all by this release with the singer of Trans Am. What’s up with every band having “the” in front of their name. It’s just so cool to be in a band nowadays. This band definitely has something to say to its audience. And this message is go out and buy a keyboard, and make music. — BF

The Hangmen Promo

Acetate Records I first heard these guys on a compilation record from 1987. It was called,Scream. It has a lot of Mad Mark Rude art in it. The track they did on the album was “Rotten Sunday.” The album was put out by Geffen records. Their song was produced by Keith Morris and engineered by Mr. Brett . So what that tells me is that Epitaph was going to put out The Hangmen way back when. Yet, they didn’t. Well, that’s the story of The Hangmen’s life. They were on the verge of becoming widely known several times. If you go out and get one of the best rockumentaries on the L.A. scene called, “Badsville,” you’ll hear from all the bands that have been slugging it out down there since the 80’s. So my point is this: here I am, reviewing a promo of a band that has influenced several hugely popular bands. I believe these guys have three full length albums out there. On this promo you get two songs from an upcoming album, two songs from the album, “Mettallic I.O.U.” and two songs from “We’ve Got Blood On The Toes Of Our Boots.” The latter album has the song, “Rotten Sunday.” That album came out last year. Eddie Spaghetti helps out on this album as well. I know the Supersuckers got a lot of their style from The Hangmen and Lazy Cowgirls. The Supersuckers are superstars, but the other bands are still ground level. What the fuck happened there? Either way, if you like anything connected to what I’ve spoke of, then Go buy The Hangmen and enjoy. I’ve never heard a release of theirs that I didn’t like. — SB

The Horror

Insobriety and Insubordination Signal Path Had never heard of these Floridians and was expecting metal from the look of the cover and photos. Turned out it was pop punk and it kind of threw me for a loop. Most records like that would just fly into the pile for that kind of transgression. A couple songs were good, so I let it go. This record actually turned out to be pretty damn good. I’ll even listen to it again a few

times, I reckon. Those of you who have never reviewed a stack of records have no fucking idea how rare of an occurrence that is. Rad sloppy big guitar pop punk with soccer chant choruses and all sorts of yelling about drinking and being pissed off. No So Cal precision pop punk bullshit either, where the drummer sounds like a Genesis fan slumming. Good job Florida, keep it up. Just try and get your election right this November this time. — Mickey

own thing going on... The playing is skilled and it is apparent they are having a great time with the material. The music is humorous, but not in a Weird Al sort of way. Simply put, this album is great. I recommend this to anyone with a short attention span who likes music that is off the beaten path and a bit tongue in cheek — especially bass players. Check out www.officerroseland.com for some free mp3’s and directives. — Sgt. Scrapes

Manic Hispanic

Oppressed Logic

BYO Records Mexican Power! It seems to me that everyone is doing the support your race thing, except whites. The truth be told, this is a great album. A reissue from the 90’s. The only problem I have is that it has become alarmingly evident that the balance of equality is leaning heavily away from the white race. I support different cultures empowering their people to become the best they can be. Though, when it comes to my race, Whites, we are denied the right to pride. I’ll get off my soap box now. This is the first Manic Hispanic full length. It has some of the best punk songs ever written and then re—written by these cholo punk rockers. I see it more as a comedy punk album. Extreme talent in this band. A super group of latino punks. Again, I encourage you to better your race. Why can’t I do the same? The bands that were reworked here are: Black Flag, Wire, X, The Clash, Sex Pistols, The Damned x2, Iggy Pop & The Stooges, Buzzcocks, and five So. Cal. bands all wrapped together in the song “Medley” (Rodney on the ROQ). If you are at all interested in any of these bands above, then seek to own this. You won’t be disappointed. — SB

Blazing Guns Records I saw these guys here in Reno with Fang. They really impressed me and showered me with gifts. Although these guys are a bit more thrashy than I prefer, I still really like them. I discussed my disgust over the P.C. mindset in the scene with the lead singer. He agreed and then showered me with gifts. I’m telling all you fuck wad poser shits out there we’re taking it back. PUNK ROCK was born of offensiveness and that is what it is. 13 Asskickin’ tracks. These guys are the real deal. Don’t fuck with US Punks, we will kick your ass. — SB

The Menudo Incident

N.E.R.D. Fly or Die

Virgin Records It’s nice to see that the N.E.R.D. crew has swapped the gangster posture of their last release In Search Of in favor of a more Funkadelic inspired genre—hopping rock

One’s That Control

The Orphans Drowning Cupid

Goodnight Records Besides the lyrics being completely retarded, there’s a nice fluffy pink album cover and, you guessed it, a pink cupid drowning. I have now decided that this band pretty much sounds like every other indie rock band out there. Don’t buy this. I don’t even think that Streetlight will take this one. Better luck next time, idiots. — BF

Phonocaptors Call it what you want

Pro—Vel Records This is actually an alright CD. The music seems a bit rock—starish, but its melodic and catchy at the same time. Some of lyrics kind of blow, but what can you expect from Minnesota anyways. Actually, take that back. Sometimes I like cold weather. — BF

The Skin Cloak Magic Machine Wizards and Trolls Forelorn Records This is Skin Cloak Magic Machine’s third release and it is by far their best. It’s true that they basically created the goth rock/rap/folk/jungle scene and being pioneers is not an easy task. As their singer Chris Cringle Pringleface said, “We didn’t ask to be the gods of the goth rock/rap/folk/jungle scene, it just happened, so we will give 110% until we can’t create the best goth rock/rap/folk/jungle songs out there.” Wizards and Trolls is exactly that, an amazing album track after track. My favorite songs include the bone crushing “Pansies are God’s toilet paper,” not to be outdone by the haunting ballad “Jon Ritter, Nazi Thug or Bug in a Rug.” Some of you out there will remember that Skin Cloak’s last drummer, Pigeon Magoo, was admitted to a mental hospital last summer after his tragic breakdown. Well no need to worry their new drummer, Chaz “Jazz Hands” McRad fills his spot with overwhelming enthusiasm. This album is pure bliss. Go get yourself a copy. — LC

sound. While not entirely capturing the stank of the funk, they do get credit for stepping to it with style. As per usual, the drums are solid, the keyboards twisted and the production top notch. But what else would you expect from the good fellows who brought you such classics as “Shake ya Ass,” “Grindin” and “Slave 4 U”? While the lyrical content doesn’t always live up to the backing tracks, Pharrell William’s falsetto vocal style is pretty soulful and a nice change of pace from the usual top 40 drivel. Tracks like “Don’t Worry About it” and “She Wants to Move” are guaranteed to get the ladies up and wiggling their jiggle—ables. Can’t say this is a must have, but it does make me curious enough to want to hear the next one... — Sgt. Scrapes

Officer Roseland S/T

Goatman Records There are many acts that dabble in the genre— splicing category of music but only a scant few stand out from the pack. Too many times the changes sound forced or the overall effort is reduced to a cheap imitation. Such is not the case with the Pennsylvania—based outfit Officer Roseland. You can hear the influences of bands like Primus, Ween and Mr. Bungle throughout, but their sound definitely has it’s

Purpose

Songs at Ground Zero Reaction Records Tight, quick, punky and utterly predictable. A little like Alien Ant Farm, but with a lack of variation between songs. Same time, same sound, same tones all the way through. The overall musicianship is OK and the drummer is actually very good. Nothing new, but not too bad for what it is. Your little brother may like it. — Sgt. Scrapes

Rajiv Patel Obey The Cattle

Sunset Alliance Records Spark up the incense, seep the chai, pass the Hookah, and prepare to open your sensory perception nodules and your auditory canals to allow Rajiv to pour into your soul. A prophetic culmination of traditional Middle Eastern music, blues, folk and indy rock, Rajiv Patel combines a rare blend of ethnic musical styles and brings them into the modern realm. An experienced musician, Rajiv’s apparent mastery of the string instruments proves this is no amateur effort. Obey The Cattle, Rajiv’s debut solo album, is a must have for anyone intrigued by the traditional music of different cultures, and how they can be incorporated into modern

sounds. Thankfully, another predominantly instrumental album where the intricate sounds and tones are not interrupted by an awful singer, allowing the listener to come up with deep thoughts and visions of their own. — JH

and 6 of them are covers. Cool artwork and TKO rules. Go get it, sucker. — SB

Revenge Therapy

Seventh Rule This record is awesome. This band name is awesome. Whoever came up with it should get some sort of metal merit badge. That would be kind of rad. Metal merit badges. Metal Scouts. Upside—down crosses for good behavior, you get a church on fire patch when you light a church on fire, everybody can be in Troop 666, old metal dudes can take advantage of their positions of authority and fondle little metal kids. But wait, they wouldn’t be able to let Rob Halford in. Well, fuck it then. A pat on the back will have to do for the naming of Sweet Cobra. Genius. I was thinking the name as this record reminds me a lot of High on Fire, and that name has always confused me. Are you “high” on fire, like stoned? How do you get high on fire? You can’t really smoke it. Or are you like high AND on fire? That sounds more emo. High on Fire at least sounds pretty metal to begin with. So yeah, confusing. But Sweet Cobra, man, that’s right on. Pretty and mean, polite and vicious. That’s the record. Sounds a little like High on Fire, maybe some Helmet, some Neurosis, but also a lot of just straight— up old hardcore. Just riffs, man, no solos, just kicks yer ass and smiles on the way out, like a Sweet Cobra. Beautiful and brutal. — Mickey

S/T CD-EP

Amendment Records Screamin’ Hardcore. Six tracks. If only there was something to differentiate these guys from the other 1000 bands that sound just like this. Oh well. — SB

The Richie Whites Snitches Get Stitches

TKO Records I have no idea how I feel about this band. I had a 7” of theirs a ways back, but I sold it. I just couldn’t find the groove. It’s similar to punk from the ‘77 era. Yet, it lacks the punch that I desire. Good heroin music, I guess. They get points for the album title though. I live by that and die by that. — SB

The SCABS

Outlaw Corporations Rhythm and Booze Records I stumbled by these guys on a fluke. I was in Las Vegas and I ended up going to the Double Down (legendary dive bar) and it just so happened that some OC bands were playing. The Scabs just so happened to be one of those bands. God Damn it if these guys didn’t have me sweating and dead tired lying on a pool table after their set. I bought their album after I rested for a second and the next day I popped it in and I was happy that it still sounded good even though I wasn’t pissed drunk. So The Scabs are hard and very fast. The singer sounds like the singer of Agnostic Front if he had grown up skating in Orange County. The music is fast, fast, fast and with some nice breakdowns but not too heavy. The lyrics are very politically driven such songs like: “Corporate World,” “This Means War,” and “Taxed” are fueled here. My favorite is “S.C.A.B.S.”: “We’re the Scabs on our skateboards drinking brew / We’re the Scabs, so fuck you!” — Casper

Splitting Seconds Self Titled

Lyon Entertainment This album caught me off guard. I had no idea who, what, or where these guys were about. A lot of it is alternative borderline hardcore with a great amount of unfocused talent. They can dive into a Rush jam then transition into an Iron Maiden drama song. I don’t personally care for them, but I do respect their talent. I think through trial and error they will find their sound, at which point I can tell them that they rocked me. Until then I have respect with no care. — SB

Street Dogs Savin Hill

Crosscheck Records I wasn’t in a hurry to hear this album. See I hold Dropkick Murphy’s first album, “Do or Die,” in high regard. So when the lead singer that left that band and another old DKM member put together a new band, I was unsure if they’d live up to what they once were. Well, I’m here to tell you Mike McColgan and Jeff Erna still rock. It’s a departure from the Dropkick days, but the spirit is stronger on this release. Not so heavy with riffs, their power is in the style of presentation. There are 15 tracks, about 40 minutes of music. Vocals by Dicky Barrett (Bosstones), Al Barr (Bruisers, DKM), and Ken Casey (Dropkick Murphy’s). They cover Sham 69’s “Borstal Breakout” and change it to “Boston Breakout.” Great shit here. A great deal more pride, honor, and respect in this style of blue collar punk n roll. The CD has a video on it. Truly a band that deserves your attention. I’ve been listening to it over and over. My kid knows the lyrics and sings along. Highly recommended. — SB

Strychnine

Oakland Stadtmusikanten ‘Live’ in Bremen Germany TKO Records I like these guys. I mean personally. I hear of their doings here in Reno and they are decent guys. They can rock you, too. I tried to figure out their sound and all I could say was Dirty Trashy Rock n Roll. Which for those in the dark, that’s Punk Rock. This is live in Germany. The recording is very clear and nice to listen to. That might be their only downfall. They are too nice to be Rockers, ‘cause everybody knows Nice Boys Don’t Play Rock N Roll! Besides that, I really like this album. 20 tracks

Sweet Cobra Praise

Systems Officer Self Titled

Ace Fu Records Right off the bat, I have to give credit to Armistead Burwell Smith IV for writing, performing, and recording this EP all by himself. It takes a great deal of talent and discipline to conceive and execute a halfway decent album on the companionless tip. More often than not, the solo effort winds up being a masturbatory charged exercise in self—indulgence and not much more. With Systems Officer, Armistead has found a nice clean sound and stays true to it all the way through. I can hear shades of the quieter songs from the Police and Porno for Pyros with a bit of Geggy Tah and Tortoise mixed in. All the songs are good, but “Signature Red” stands out as my favorite. www.systemsofficer.com. — Sgt. Scrapes

Texas Terri Bomb My Ass...Your Lips

TKO Records I am going to be honest here. I am a little bit biased when it comes to TXT. Yeah, sure this album is over 4 years in the making. It is produce by Jack Douglas who has produced some great bands like Aerosmith. There are guest appearances on this album from Marc Diamond (of Motorchrist/Dwarves), MC5’s Wayne Kramer, Alice Cooper band mate Ryan Roxie and Dickies’, Dave Teague. Sure, that’s nice and all. Not to mention that the album is full of raunchy, dirty, heart wrenching raw rock n‚ roll songs. This is all fine and dandy but I would just like to add that this release is great because we have missed the fiery red head. SHE’S HOT! And she is back, back with the bomb, ready to explode! — Casper

Texas Thieves Forced Vacation

SuperSpeedway Music I reviewed these guys about three and a half years ago. They had a three song promo out called, “Lie, Cheat, Steal”. It was pretty good skatepunk. This release has two of the songs from the promo. Both “Crucifixes are for Kids” and “Born to Bleed” are on here. They were re— recorded with a bit more power. I see these guys close to where their labelmates The Cliftons are at. Kinda The Faction meets Motorhead. Or Agent Orange playing Black Flag songs. Very talented guys here. This Superspeedway label is getting a group of great bands together. Expect greatness from these guys in the near future. There’s 10 tracks and kickass four horsemen art inside. If you skate and you like punk, then here you are. — SB

Towers of Hanoi Self Titled

Barracuda Sound Very hard to stay objective about this disc after reading the write up that they chose to include with it. I mean, unemployed dudes with cable modems stroke it less than these guys. Either way, this 4 song EP is recorded well and it makes me think of what it might have sounded like if Blondie, The Pretenders and Husker Du went out for a few drinks and then shacked up

for the night. The rhythm section is sufficient and the singer spends most of her time reaching for notes that aren’t quite there. All in all, it’s not the worst attempt at melodic poppy punk I’ve ever heard, but it certainly isn’t the best. To quote that frog faced goofball from American idol, “I dunno, I’m jus’ not feelin’ it dawg...I mean, ya doin’ ya thing and all, but it’s jus’ aiiight...ya feel me dawg?” — Sgt. Scrapes

Tregenza S/T

Bigger than the Barn Sounds like the New Pornographers gone emo; not bad, just a little wanting for energy. What could be done? Hmm. A duet with Rappin’ 4—Tay? What happened to that guy? Are the Playaz Clubs still open? They had them everywhere: PA, V—Town, Richmond, Sacramento. Are they still sucka free? Man, I miss that guy. I hope he’s okay. Tregenza plus Rappin’ 4—Tay, that’s a million dollar idea. We could put that shit on the “Judgment Night II” soundtrack. — Mickey

The Undead

First, Worst, and Cursed LP Dionysus/Death Records I wish I had owned a copy of this when I was younger. This is exactly what I loved like mad when I was a kid. This isn’t former Misfits’ Bobby Steele’s band from New Jeresy. This is a band from Culver City, California. They were around in the days between1977 to 1982. To explain their sound, I will tell you who they thank: our old friends in creepy crime — The Damned, The Ramones, The Misfits, The Cramps, 45 Grave, and Gene Vincent and The Blue Caps. Fuckin’ A, what a perfect combination of sounds. I can simplify the sound by saying it sounds like The Misfits doing Ramones and Cramps songs. Remember these guys all knew each other and worked off one another. What these guys did was very unique. There’s been tons of bands that have tried this formula since then, but none of them attain this greatness. I thank Dionysus for reissuing gems like this. The band was: Sid Terror (vocals), Joe Dirt (Guitar), Elmer Dud (Bass), and Bond Cobby (Drums). 16 songs. One of the best of ‘04 so far. Worth whatever price, well almost any. — SB

V/A

High Volume: The Stoner Rock Collection High Times Records I actually thought this might be a good compilation when I heard about it, but then I realized that 70% of the “stoner rock” bands kind of suck, and that one person’s definition of stoner rock is subject to interpretation. If the song you write is about smoking weed, does that automatically classify it as a stoner rock song? Who makes up these rules? Anyway the disk opens with the clichéd sound of a bong bubbling, and then you stumble into the plodding groove of a song called “Too Stoned,” by Gas Giant. The first half of the disk, including a disappointing Nebula song, is similar in its mediocrity. In fact two thirds of this disk kind of sucks, but you’re going to have to get this if only for the Unida and High On Fire songs (tracks 6 and 9), which are both excellent and do in fact deliver the stoner rock you are looking for. High On Fire is probably the best metal act around these days, and whatever John Garcia is involved in always rocks. So if you do end up buying this, make sure not to pay with a credit card because the DEA might show up on your door with a search warrant and shit. I mean they busted Cheech, who’s next? — DK

V/A

Midwest Rules II You’re Weak, We’re Strong Haunted Town Records This is obviously the second part to the kickass comp. Midwest Rules. I must say that the first one is better than this one, but that’s not to say that this sucks. There are songs on here that are beyond good. Daggers start this out with one song then at the end give two more songs. I like the Daggers a lot. Another favorite on here was Grendel. They only have one song and it rocks, yet, it isn’t enough for me. They should’ve had at least two songs on this. I’m a new fan of those guys, they are all really great bands. I just think that the first comp was done with more flow. So here’s the rundown on the bands on here: Phenoms do two songs, Almighty Hangovers have two songs, Bump N Uglies are in for three, Nine Pound Hammer do one...should’ve been four, Mashers one, Roustabouts two, Gotards one, Southpaw

Manners two fist swingers, Tanka Ray two, Forgotten Four have one, and the Brassknuckle Boys end it with a rocker. I truly am a fan of this label and most of their bands. If you think you rule, then you must learn. — SB

V/A

How’s my Driving ?? SuperSpeedway Music Killer cover art. Some of the most legendary bands in Skate Rock. Produced by Jonny Manak. 16 tracks. There’s only one band that didn’t fit: SLOE. They just weren’t right for this comp. I could go on all day about how cool this comp is, but I’d rather you just go get this thing. You like SKATEROCK? Then you’ll love this. — SB

V/A

Snake Oil Supercharm Sleazegrinder Records I must confess that I am not a fan of Zodiac Mindwarp or any of those heavy metal—esque faux—biker rock bands. At the time, I was more of a Primus, Fishbone, Butthole Surfers kind of a guy. With that said, fans of Zodiac Mindwarp will probably like this tribute album for it is well produced, chock full o’ songs (23) and I believe that the majority of the tunes are meant to sound exactly like the originals (without all that artistic interpretation getting in the way). If I were you though, I’d listen to Motorhead instead. — Sgt. Scrapes

Vext

Cast the First Stone Lakeshore The sticker on the cover says “Brooklyn, NY’s next generation of urban metal.” So was there a previous generation of Brooklyn, NY urban metal? And what was wrong with them? Or is this the next generation of urban metal? Was there a previous generation of urban metal? Is that like Biohazard? I’m going to excuse myself now, as I am neither familiar with a)the older generation of Brooklyn, NY urban metal; and b)urban metal more generally. I’ll take my metal suburban, thank you very much. Got to go, Jamie’s cryin’ and I can hear the ice cream man. And I can never find a place to park my Camaro in the city. — Mickey

The Wretched Ones Less is More

TKO Records These guys follow one of my favorite styles of Punk Rock. It’s the “We’re going to Rock your ass in the toughest way we can ‘cause we’re badasses.” I just like tough singing. It sounds a certain way and makes you feel that way too. Blood for Blood are a tough band, so are Scissorfight. The Wretched Ones fit perfectly in there. Good hard rock. No deep thought, just power, violence, and fun. TKO Records are grabbin’ all the good bands. Hopefully, they’ll scare all the posers outta the scene. Life is tough, so get with the program. — SB

ZAO

Legendary (The Best of ZAO: 1997 — 2003) Solid State Records Being that I was unfamiliar with Zao’s legacy prior to hearing this CD, the fact that it was a collection of their best songs was just perfect. This is the real deal in all its heavy, thrashing, hardcore glory. Big drums, huge necksnap riffs, speed, diversity and great vocal treatments ranging from guttural growls to urgent howls. Very convincing. Early on in the disk, I got a bit worried when there was singing similar to Life of Agony, Godsmack, etc. during “Suspend Suspension.” Luckily, this was the only occurrence, and they more than made up for said infraction by ending the song with a lengthy soundscrape of strange and interesting noises. Very cool. Also, I must give a nod to the unique package design — all white, everywhere. — Sgt. Scrapes

Reviewer Key: Brian Fisher >> BF Lee Charron >> Lee Jonathan Hay >> J. Hay Christian Hurst >> Curst Paul Morrison >> Sick Boy Davoud Kermaninejad >> DK Rob Krautheim >> Sgt. Scrapes Cody McClintock >> Cody Mickey Stamm >> Mickey Chris Tobias >> Casper

Look, Brendan shot 3/4 of the slam section, too!

Sequence: Sperm ollied the barbed wire only to slam in the pipe. Ow. Left: Slob slip sliding away at Washington Street. Photos: Klein Above: Davoud failing miserably at the box-steps combo at the Double Rainbow. Photo: Farmer Right: Tony Farmer and the agony of defeat. Photo: Davoud 95