It’s 11.08 PM in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, my new video releases in less than an hour. I find myself for some reason reflecting on all the past releases that my brand has done. I mean, I’ve been in this game for a while now, Good Shit, our first video that I edited with Alan Glass came out on VHS in 1999. I’d been given a video camera for free from someone who “liberated” it from a tourist in San Francisco around 1996 and found out that PAL cameras don’t work on NTSC TV sets. So for some reason I ended up with a video camera. I filmed my friends for a few years, got them to film me, and made my first crash edits using two Video players and pressing play and timing the record on the other one to try and make my own videos. They came out good, super raw, I should dig them out. But I knew I needed a professional to help me, so I called Alan Glass out of the blue, never having met the gentleman, and after two weekends of editing in Brighton, we had made a curious little video called “Good Shit”. VHS was king in 1999. We did a run of 1000, and sold out, and I think we either did another 500 or 1000 after that. All PAL format, all sold in the UK only. The video featured myself, (my first Part) Rough Mike (a nutter from Portsmouth, who had recently moved to London and was ripping my local park Stockwell) and a young up and comer from Lancaster called Snowy. With plenty of friends along the way, VHS was the way to go, and music? Friends bands, stuff that I wouldn’t get in any kind of trouble for using, but stuff that I really liked. London’s Flying Medallions, Leeds Hardcore band Voorhees, Japanes punk kids living in London, Doku Dango (Weirdly a band that I would later join and be the singer of for a couple of years) and a few other bands really pulled the soundtrack to this one together.

Our next video, Everything’s going to be alright came out in 2002. VHS again, Alan Glass again, the old camera died right at the end of filming Good Shit, and I was using a new Hi-8 that I’d gotten. Towards the end of this one though, I realized I needed to upgrade again and picked up what would become my favorite camera, the Sony TVV 900. I describe this one as our emotional video now and then, a lot of folks say it’s their favourite. We used whatever music we wanted, whatever we were listening to at the time, BRMC, Crass, Iggy, I skated to Tom Waits, we just did it, put out some VHS tapes and that was that.

Live from Antarctica came next. Our first DVD, Alan Glass on editing and filming duty. The name was a homage to Gwar, we wouldn’t watch skate video’s before we went out filming and skating, we’d watch the Live Gwar Video, to get juiced to skate. We went all over for this one, Japan was a regular destination for us back then, we got to France, Spain, the Czech Republic, the USA, all over really, with the trusty TRV 900 thrown in my backpack and staying on Chopper’s floor for a few weeks at a. time. That’s where I picked up most of my Japanese that I know. The Osaka Daggers part, Chris Pulman and Howard Cooke parts are still talked about from this video. We made a decent amount of the DVD’s, and it was the first time any of our video’s would get seen in the USA.

Magic Sticky Hand, our second DVD came hot off the heels of Live from Antarctica, we had a new rider from Boston called Colin Fiske, a hungry young guy from Preston called Rogie, we’d just added John Monie from Paris and Deer Man of Dark Woods from Canada, plus a lad from Gravesend called Chris Ault. These guys were all keen to film and we had such great momentum that Magic Sticky Hand dropped just two years after LFA. DVD’s again, a run of 1000 this time. I barely managed to keep one for myself.

Soon after MSH released we did another DVD called “Everything” which was a compilation of all the videos that we’d put out previously on VHS, trade show special edits, trailers, some of our friends independent vids (Osaka Dagger infection video) Limited to 1000, I still have folks ask me for this one, but again, I just kept one.

I moved to Los Angeles on 11th of November 2011. We’d talked about making a new video, Ault, Casper, Deer Man, Howard, it never really materialized and it took me a little time to find my feet in the USA. But working with Rogie and some other filters, we put out our first fully Internationally released DVD “Video Nasty” Gou Miyagi graced our screen with that one and gave an incredibly memorable part, Rogie edited it and was too humble to give himself last part, so Deer Man of Dark Woods got the ender and rightly so. Craig Questions had a stand out part, and this was the last part that I myself filmed. I used music that the bands allowed us to use, and we managed to make Video Nasty one of the every earliest skate videos that was available on the ITunes Store. That was in 2013. Our last video on Mini DV or SD, The TRV900 had lasted well but I’d knocked the lens off the front of it on a trip to Japan one time. Onward and upward to a new format called HD.

I worked with Cody Thompson on our next video, Bath Salts. DVD and iTunes releases again, cleared music throughout, mainly hitting the bands and friends. This was 2015, it was essentially a 55 minute long Am video. I don’t know what I was thinking, I should have split it up a bit, made two video’s from all that footy. Lee Yankou, Craig Questions and Tony Karr all went pro off the back of that video though, and Tom Day a little later. Our first fully HD video. Weird times though, half the people still wanted to film in SD and half in HD, it was confusing all round. This one posted on the Thrasher site too.

I worked with Cody again for Magic Sticky Hand 2. Anaiah Lei, the return of Pat Franklin, Logan Devlin, and Zach Riley. Craig Questions also put a part together for this one (He says it’s his favorite part to date) There were two versions, the online one, and the DVD, we had a song change for between the DVD one and the online version due to music rights. This was a super fun, short video, it made me feel like this was a much better direction to go in the future, short, fun video’s that make you want to skate. Sadly most of the riders from this video ended up leaving shortly after a disastrous skate trip to the desert, but the good thing about that is that it made way for a lot of new riders to come through.

Earth Goblin introduced Zane Timpson to the team. I’d been a fan of Zane’s for a long time, and he’d showed us around SF on a skate trip one time, he asked me to get on the team a while back, but we were stacked at the time, so he rode for someone else for a while. That company fizzled out and he was in limbo and asked for a few boards, I asked if he wanted to film a part and get on the team and it was on! It’s funny cos basically the same thing happened with Dead Dave, he’d asked about riding for us, we had a full squad, then after folks quit, I saw a photo of him riding the roof of a motorway bridge and I decided to start sending him boards and said the same thing “Put a part together and I’ll put you on the team”.

Earth Goblin was also the first time that I sat down and edited a video and it was to my exact specifications as far as the edits and the music. I’d argued with editors in the past about music stuff, and I was over it and didn’t want to compromise my vision. Case and point on this was Dead Dave’s Earth Goblin part, a part that Forde Brookefield shot and that I edited. I love this part, after the desert team exodus of 2018, I was a bit down about it all, and I can categorically say that editing this part from Dave to that amazing Viagra Boys song restored my faith in skateboarding. I had no backup, I didn’t know the Viagra Boys, I loved them, I’d edited that part to each beat of “Sports” it had taken months, if they didn’t want me to use the song, or wanted $5000 for usage I was fucked, I would have had to put out the part with no music, but it turns out they’re cool as fuck and were super down for me to use Sports for Dead Dave and we now have an iconic part to show for it. This video also introduced Frank Shaw properly and Drew Dezort, we premiered it in January 2020, right before the pandemic hit. It released on Thrasher, we cleared all the songs for it, and we made DVD and VHS editions too. Stephen Malet made the Goblin character for the intro. I have no idea where the name came from, maybe Craig, maybe Stephen, maybe both, it just seemed to work though. This was the first video that I’d used footage that I shot on my phone, phone’s were getting good around this time, and the idea of not having to bring out a whole filming kit was kind of nice too. I’m particularly proud of our Earth Goblin video, and Zane edited his own part which was mind blowing.

Oh, and some background on the fun and enjoyable and never frustrating as fuck world of music rights, I’d edited Frank Shaw’s part to Buffalo Run by Orville Peck, it was fantastic. Orville was kind of around the skate world, I knew folks who knew him, he was into us using the song, I hit his record label up to confirm and they wanted money for the usage, more than I could afford. I explained that, and asked if we could come to some sort of arrangement and didn’t hear back for weeks, so I had to switch the song. I did a whole new edit, which had Colossus by IDLES which was also fantastic. I hit the band and their record label up and we were all good to use it, and I got a lovely DM from Joe, the singer later thanking me for using that song in the part and that they were stoked to be involved. Orville’s label hit me back eventually and said we were cool to use that song after all, but it was too late by then, the DVD’s were already being made. There’s a version of the original up on my Vimeo account if you wanna check it. The IDLES version is great though, I adored that album and the way that the song goes straight into the credits worked so well.

So Earth Goblin to me was a milestone, my first time really editing, the premier at the now defunct Independent downtown theater was epic.

Dead Dave came over in 2022, August, it was a heatwave, it was 114 degrees every day, we skated every day that he was in town, it was brutal but amazing. I had ten days worth of footage, I just needed to sit down and edit it. Then one day, I was headed out to meet the crew and carry on filming for Swolan and my wife was recovering from Covid, we’d been quarantining inside the house, I was sleeping in my office, we’d wear masks in communal areas, so I took a covid test despite feeling totally fine and it came out positive. I headed up to the mountains for ten days, brought my desktop computer, sat down and edited Dead Dave Live from California. It was originally intended to be a Snot video, the guest riders in there all ride for Snot, (Vinny, and Jud) and the first edits were all Snot Wheel branded, but then I had the idea to make it a spin off of “Live from Antarctica” and it would only really make sense as a Heroin video. This was our first one that didn’t get a hard copy release, didn’t partner with Thrasher or another site, and was just on our social media, Youtube and Vimeo. Songs were all good except that end title Sigue Sigue Sputnik “Atari Baby” one which got flagged. I didn’t really care too much though, YouTube always blanked out the audio on older video’s I’d put up like LFA and EGTBA, so I never really thought of it as a workable platform for my video’s. We couldn’t monetize anything there anyway, and it was never something that I wanted to pursue. So I like Vimeo, and a lot of our video’s live there in their originally intended form. Technology is all happening so quickly these days, streaming services, music algorithms, when I started this thing it was VHS tapes, then DVD’s, those are both vintage formats nowadays, as much as I love them.

SWOLAN. Three years of filming for this one, all I knew was that Swampy and Nolan ripped and I said “Film a part and I’ll put you on”. I figured that they would get their friends to film them and shoot me over the footage so that I could edit it, but we ended up going out most weekends and shooting stuff on my phone for it. I got to know these guys really well and we formed a super tight little crew. I have a Deathlens pro that I use and love it, makes things so damn easy. I don’t miss logging footage from tapes, digitizing stuff, I open my photo’s in my computer and everything I shot that day is there already, I drag it into Final Cut and edit, it makes everything so easy. Stephen Malet is in Paint Boys and Arthur J Reptillian, I listen to those records all day long, so it made so much sense to use those for the intro and end credits. Swampy rolled up to the spot one day and was blasting Amyl and the Sniffers, I heard “Freaks to the front” and it sounded like it was exactly about Swampy to me, being short and sweaty and going to shows, I had to use it. It worked perfectly for his part. The rider montage, I used my summer jam, “Dread” by Thank, I found out about them in a Yard Act interview, but I think i’d heard some of their stuff before, Dread is wonderful, I contacted them and they were super cool about me using it, we even have a graphic coming out by one of em next year. I found this band called the Bobby Lees by seeing a sponsored instagram post. It was for their new song “Dig Your Hips” and it was fantastic. I put it on the timeline of Nolans part and it worked so well, fast bits, quiet bits, ending in a fantastic crescendo, I had just seen them play at the Echo, they are fantastic live. I hot them up about using the song for Nolan and they were down. I gave Nolan a sneak peek of his part at some point, to make sure he approved the music and he loved it.

I’m really happy with how Swolan turned out, I put it up on Vimeo last night at midnight, the response has been great. I knew it would be, Swampy and Nolan rip, it was a pleasure working with them on this one, Swampy said yesterday that he’s keen to get started on whatever is next, so that’s nice. Super thankful to all the bands who let us use songs for this one, if you haven’t seen it, it’s on Vimeo now.

The wait is almost over, I’ve decided to upload Swolan at midnight tonight. Very stoked and excited to share this one with you all.

I didn’t know what this video was going to be when I first started this project three years ago. Swampy and Nolan had tagged me in a few really good clips and I’d started flowing them boards, and it really grew from there. I told em “Film a part and I’ll put you on the team". I do that with most potential riders. The funny thing about these lads though is that despite them filming with their friends at their local parks and putting clips on instagram all the time they will admit that they didn’t really know how to approach filming an actual video part.

Here’s where it got fun, we started going out and filming with em. Now I kind of envisioned a joint part that has a couple of doubles tricks and runs for about three minutes or so, I mean we could have just released the intro video credits really as an intro video, but the more we skated with them and the more stuff that we got, the video started to have a life of its own a little bit, it made sense for them to have separate standalone parts. As time went on, somewhere along the line we needed to figure out a name for this one, it was a fairly simple idea really, Swampy + Nolan = SWOLAN.

There were a couple of hurdles along the way, that’s why it took so long, Nolan got hurt right away, and then there was a global pandemic that you may have heard of, so that slowed things down a bit. In retrospect though, I think this is coming out at the exact right time that it needed to. Having the name in place and a deadline helped a lot with finishing this one up, lots of stuff was filmed in the last few weeks and it replaced older footage. I think it really does their skating justice and captures them both so well. Eternal thanks to Swampy and Nolan for working with me on this project and being patient and trusting my vision for it. Means the world to me lads. Thanks to all the riders who sent in footage and made it possible to make a really great rider montage/friend part. Thanks to Arthur J Reptillian and all the other bands who let us use songs on this one. (It’s not out yet, so I don’t want to give too much away) Thanks to all the filters who contributed clips too. And thanks anyone reading this, does anyone still read stuff on websites? Anyway, you’ve all been very patient about this one coming out.

Facebook

Instagram