M-ROCK – Airborne LP
To keep the discussion “What is Skate Rock?” alive, we now have some obscure vinyl from Sweden for you. At first I thought someone just put a late 70´s / early 80´s photo of a skateboarder on the front cover to gain a bit more attention.
But after contacting the artist, I learned that it´s him riding that incredible concrete skatepark in Göteborg, Sweden around 1980/81. M-ROCK, who´s real name is Emrik Larsson, and his brother Torsten were among the top junior vert riders in Sweden at that time, as Emrik told me (check the video of “L.A. Run” below). Over the last decade, Emrik has competed in numerous slalom skateboard competitions and is currently ranked about number 40 in the world as a pro-slalom skateboarder.
I would file the M-ROCK album under Indie-Pop/Rock. If you are old enough to remember MTV´s “120 minutes”, that would have been the perfect place to present M-ROCK´s music. Emrik and his brother are pretty well-known in Sweden for their main band, the Stonefunkers, but you can slightly hear any funk influences on the M-ROCK album, although there are many different influences.
M-ROCK also played a cover version of THE Swedish skateboard song, “L.A. Run / Skateboard” by Magnum Bonum, a song that was originally performed by The Carvells from the U.K.
Whoaaa! Obscure-o-rama. What year was this released?
It came out in 2010 on Emrik
Did they ever release that version of LA Run?
As far as I know, they did not. But I forwarded your question to M-ROCK and will post the answer here.
Nope kilwag, that song was never released on vinyl or CD.
As a Swede I find this version of LA Run the weirdest;
http://youtu.be/iPzOjRm8dpw
Great post about Emrik, I didn’t know that he’s in Stonefunkers
Thanks for your kind words, Jake!
The Kenth-Erics version was the first version I ever heard of “L.A. Run”. Back then I thought they wrote it and noone knows them, haha.
How many versions do you know? I have six versions from Sweden from the 70s plus the one from M-ROCK.
Emrik just gave me the following extra info:
“The skating in the video is more 82 83. But the pic [from the LP cover] is earlier. Me and my brother Torsten were among the best skaters in Sweden at the time.”