‘You’re Ruining The Aesthetic’ — Five Videographers On Skate Video Music Supervision In 2019

Graphic by Requiem For A Screen

Skate videos have long been a portal for musical discovery. Except in recent years, it has began to almost feel like …filler. If one editor finds success with an untapped genre or artist, there is always an avalanche of imitators. If you find that “how has nobody skated to this?!”-song, the answer to your question is often “someone has, it was just in some video you missed.” And a popular song? Forget it, it has been in twenty kids’ IG edits since the day it got uploaded to YouTube.

(Don’t even start with the dude editing his “Trip to N.Y.C!” video to Big L right now.)

Choosing a song that makes an impact, and gets people tracking it down is hard when our attention spans are their fickle 2019 selves. We reached out to five people who routinely put out edits (i.e. not the guys dropping one full-length every few years) to get their thoughts on how the process of selecting music in skate videos has evolved.

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Put A Date On It

T.F. Global. Photo via Claudio Majorana’s book, Head of the Lion.

Is there a compilation of board flip challenge fails yet, or are we going to have to assign that grueling job to an intern?

Looks like the solid barrage of upstate New York videos is gonna keep rolling in 2019 (see #5.) The Seasons guys have a new ten-minute video on Thrasher entitled “Albany 2.5” with tons of Empire State Plaza footage, and a mini S.F. section at the end.

Wasn’t really sure what to expect from this upon click, and it thankfully ended up being smiles the whole way through ♥ Here’s a good seven minutes of Fred Gall iPhone footage at some D.I.Y. spot and a bunch of typical New Jersey crust.

ICYMI: Cooper Winterson unlocks another dimension of ConEdison Banks in his Skating Is Easy part.

Had a bunch of “wait, that spot’s been gone for years” thoughts watching this, and then realized it’s more of a remix than a new part. Either way! Any B.A. is good B.A., and Grant Yansura was nice enough to pull together a bunch of his [mainly New York] footage from SB Chronicles 3 and onward for a new-old “Slappy Seconds” edit, which includes a handful of unseen clips.

Theories is doing another “Underground Skater of the Year” thing this year, and we’re writing in a ballot for Jawn Gardner.

“Oh, you were just skateboarding? That’s weird. You can leave.” Solo has an interview with John Shanahan, and Skate Jawn has a lil’ feature on his photos.

Haven’t had a chance to listen yet, but Tim O’Connor posted up an unreleased episode of his podcast with Ricky Oyola, and Steve Brandi has a “Skater’s Favorite Skater” TWS vid where he talks about how Ricky influenced him over the years.

Not a lot of content like this going live on the skateboard internet in the age of Instagram Stories: the Village Psychic dudes drove from Minnesota to Memphis to escape the cold and did a long[ish]form blog post with photos about their journey.

One of those “I’m not really sure wtf this is about” Boil the Ocean posts: something about testing for weed and the Olympics ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Forever love that double noseslide line. Or any double noseslide line, for that matter. Matt Velez uploaded three minutes of Mark Wetzel raw files to his YouTube.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Gotta be that Kyrie v.s. Iggy highlight — no, wait. J.R. Smith’s hat. Yeah, J.R. Smith’s hat is the play of the week.

Quote of the Week: “OVO is the new RDS.” — Torey Goodall