How Skateboarding Shaped My Taste In Music

I’ve been skateboarding since I was 11 years old. I’m now 26, which means that I’ve been pissing off pedestrians for more than half of my life. Being a skateboarder changes your perspective. I still can’t walk past a set of stairs without imagining how it would feel to jump (or ‘Ollie’) down them. Being a skateboarder also changed my taste in music. In my teens I spent countless hours watching skate videos, discovering not only my new favourite skaters but my new favourite bands, too.

Here are some of the songs/skaters that helped shape my taste in music.

Minutemen - "Paranoid Chant" (from Santa Cruz's Streets On Fire, 1988)

On a family holiday to Truro, Cornwall, I found a little surf shop that was selling old VHS’s in a shoebox by the counter. The only non-surf video was a bootleg of Santa Cruz Skateboards’ Streets On Fire. I bought it for £4 and they let me watch it in the shop. The film’s half-baked plot about a young man sentenced to death for skateboarding in public was entertaining, but it was the catchy, aggressive LA hardcore soundtrack that thrilled me. Hearing bands like Black Flag, Descendents and fIREHOSE for the first time felt otherworldly and taboo. Minutemen’s "Paranoid Chant" scored Jason Jesse’s skating perfectly. Clanging, razor sharp guitars, a flurry of bass and tom toms and D. Boon’s truly paranoid vocal delivery matched Jesse’s furious grace on a vert ramp. “I try to work my bass like it was a skateboard” says Minutemen bassist Mike Watt. “I like the idea of expression, using the moment and what’s immediately available”.

John Coltrane - "Traneing In" (from Blind's Video Days, 1991)

Before YouTube one of the only ways to see old skate videos was to download them via file sharing programs on slow dial-up connections. One of the most widely seeded videos was Blind Skateboards’ classic Video Days. The soundtrack exposed me to some indie rock greats (Dinosaur Jr, Hüsker Dü) and also to one of Jazz’s greatest saxophonists, John Coltrane. "Traneing In" is an early Coltrane composition that served as a counterpoint to Mark Gonzales’ loose, improvisational style on a skateboard. The music moves with a natural, syncopated swing as Gonzales weaves through pedestrians on LA sidewalks, hopping and skipping in and out of time with drummer Arthur Taylor’s off-beat snare drum hits. After watching this video I bought Coltrane’s iconic Giant Steps and started playing drums for the high school jazz band.

Mazzy Star – "Halah" (from Landscape's Portraits, 2003)

My VHS player was a spiteful little machine and it really hated my copy of Portraits. Nine times out of 10 the tape reel would get stuck in the machine and I’d have to fish it out with a coat hanger. Every so often I’d get lucky and it would play to the end, and when it did it was magical. Mazzy Star’s "Halah" lazily cruised down the backstreets of South London alongside skater/carpenter Toby Shuall. The splashing tambourine, Velvets inspired guitar and Hope Sandoval’s lilting drawl appealed to me instantly and I began listening to their debut record obsessively. Check out Cigarettes After Sex for more Mazzy Star inspired dreaminess.

Portraits is a film by Chris Massey, 1977 – 2015.

Tortoise – "TNT" (from Alien Workshop's Photosynthesis ,1999)

(Skip to 30:37)

This was one that I borrowed. My brother and I taped it and gave it back to my friend the same day. The video is strangely nostalgic, full of romantic Super 8 footage and NY cityscapes. The finale of Photosynthesis features Jason Dill, whose inventive and chaotic style meshes well with the melodrama of Radiohead’s "Polyethylene". Dill’s section concludes abruptly as skittering cymbals start to wash in the background. A beautifully simple guitar figure announces itself quietly and "TNT" (by Chicago post-rockers Tortoise) begins. Two drummers playfully dance around each other’s grooves underneath warm synth leads and swelling bass lines. Footage of skaters plays at half speed, exaggerating their movements. As the credits roll, the music builds and reaches a triumphant, atmospheric crescendo just before the last flicker of Super 8 footage burns away. Listening to Tortoise led me to artists like Slint, Papa M, and The Breeders.

These days I am not as consumed as I once was by the magazines, message boards and minutiae of skateboarding, but I can’t shake the impact it has made on my life. Skate video soundtracks don’t have a direct influence on my music taste anymore, but the music I make is always trying to recreate the kind of euphoria I felt watching those seminal video parts. I’ve never dreamt about ‘topping the charts’ or even selling a lot of records, but my music being part of a skate video soundtrack would be something I’d be really proud of.

My goal for 2016 - Write the perfect skate video song.

Francis Lung recently release his Faeher's Son EP. He plays our new music festival, The Five Day Forecast, on 15 January with Postiljonen and IIRIS - tickets are still available.