Here’s an ABC video from 1987 for a song called “The Night You Murdered Love.” It’s an unlikely pairing, and I never saw this one. This band really annoyed me in their heyday. You could say they got under my skin. However, I found their story as read in Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984. There was a lot more to that band than you might think. This was the case with a lot of those types of bands from the UK that I couldn’t stand at the time. The book covers a lot more than ABC, and if you are a fan of “Our Band Could Be Your Life”, I highly recommend it. It’s very similar. Right, check out this horrible video with a wacky ABC licensed skateboard. It looks like a production model, or would appear to be since it’s in shrink wrap still. That’s just the kind of clueless thing you might expect in a video from a band that likely had not step foot on a skateboard prior to the video shoot. Graphics on top of the board too, so that makes sense in the context of a board that has trucks assembled after the shrink wrapping. It does have some bizarro aftermarket rails added on. It looks like they were designed to make the board look swanky. The skateboard in the story line of this video makes no sense whatsoever. There’s an anorexic chic with a fancy slingshot following the band around Paris with her skateboard in hand, except for a brief, and stiff ride. That’s luxury and decadence for you. I would have liked to hear how they sold that one.

– Thanks to Matthijs van Wijk for the tip.

I’ll take the Chuck Mosley incarnation of Faith No More over Mike Patton any day. According to Wikipedia, the original lead singer was actually Courtney Love! Who knew? I saw Mosley fronting Faith No More at the Metro in Chicago. At the time there were rumors floating around that he had narcolepsy or something, and maybe that was why he was sacked from the band. Although there were also rumors of “substance abuse,” and I suppose a good heroin fix nodding off might have the appearance of narcolepsy to someone very naive. In any case, Chuck did not fall asleep at that show, and Mike Patton is for the birds. Introduce Yourself was a Slash records release, what a cool label that was. Every punk in my high school had a copy of that Slash Records: The Early Sessions compilation on cassette tape. I’m pretty sure I’ve told this story already. I’m turning into one of those doddering old fools/punk. Let me bore you with tales from my youth. I was the best poser out there. I guess they were back in business for a while., but I can’t find them anywhere now.

The video for We Care a Lot has a couple split second shots of skateboarding in it. I remember being very frustrated by this when it was current. I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t include more. What a tease.

Newsflash. We won’t tell you how much your board is worth if you want to sell it on eBay, so don’t ask. Also, don’t send me a link to your auction or unless it’s freakin amazing, or weird, something like Stacy Peralta’s scalp from the 70’s or the bronzed fire hydrant that Nataas sessioned on in Streets on Fire. That being said, here’s a new one. I’ve never been asked to facilitate a trade, but I was looking for an excuse to post this Variflex advert I found in a circular for a local discount sporting goods chain. I’m going to beat this dead horse. Variflex used to be a legitimate skateboard company as late as the early, early 80’s, and well before this. And now they make trampolines. Right. Tom Livemore has some old Variflex connections trucks in pretty good condition, and he’s looking to trade for a decent set of OJ superjuices (I have some, but you can’t have them.) or a set of multi colored Panther wheels. Whaaaa?????

As seen on the Berrics. This is a poster for an adult film from 1979 titled Female Athletes. The folks at the Berrics have not “seen the ‘film’ and have no plans to,” but they did appropriate the image for a t-shirt. Come on. If you are going to rip off the poster, at least watch the movie, or don’t pretend to be so demure about the whole thing, Here at S&A, we’ve got no such hangups. I found the whole thing online and skimmed it for skateboarding scenes, but saw none. I had to skim it, the damn thing is 80 minutes long, and that’s way to long for an adult film. Although you have to admire how they at least try to be like a real film, with a story line, acting and all. Nice original soundtrack too.

– Thanks to Mike Estes for the tip.

From the Duke University archives, as found on Flickr under the headline Cowabunga! It’s not dated, but I’d place it around 1965.

Ultra Flex. I’ve never heard of this company before, but they made skateboards and Primo brand wheels. The parent company was actually Special Products, a division of something called I.I.I., located in San Diego. I couldn’t find anything definite for them via google. They must have spent some cash on this brochure though. In the 70’s you couldn’t get a 1000 full color brocures for $100. First you had to have a photo shoot in a studio. The you had to pay for professional film developing, type setting, ad layout, and mechanical color separations. Plus there was stat camera graphic work too, none of this scanning and resizing in Photoshop, and then emailing a PDF. It was all done mechanically, and this would have been expensive.

UPDATE: Added pictures of an old Ultra Flex board.

Axl Rose. Get it? Get it? Ha ha ahw haw, har hardee har har. I’m watching Glee right now. Kind of phoning this one in. Is this really Axel Rose? I mean it’s implied that it is, but I’ll be damned if I can reconcile this picture with my hazy memory of the late 80’s and early 90’s. I’m going to take this opportunity to talk about my friend Don Gerard. Picture this: It’s 1987 and there’s a house in a college town that is half filled with students, half filled with dropouts. It’s called “Ten Shitty Guys,” but there are about 14 people living there. My roommate Don walks up to our front porch, where a few of us are sitting next to one of those giant console stereos from the 60’s. We had one on our front porch. It’s where we rocked out. Fresh off of work, Don strolled up and started to slide some vinyl out of a paper bag as he walked up the steps. “Check this out you guys. These guys are going to be HUGE.” And then he slaps Appetite for Destruction on the turntable. And this is early, because these guys are still unknown outside of LA, and it’s the original cover with the controversial Robert Williams painting. At first we were like ” Are you kidding? This is heavy metal bullshit. Nobody is going to give a shit about these guys.” But within a week it was regularly featured on the playlist of the radio station that was our front porch. Don was right about these guys. They did become huge about six months later. As right as he was about Guns and Roses, he was just as wrong about R.E.M.. He was a huge fan, and I was giving him a hard time because at the time it seemed like they were releasing an album every eight months. He replied “These guys have to strike while the iron is hot. An indy band like this is never going to be popular for very long.” OK. Maybe he didn’t actually say “strike while the iron is hot,” but uh, if I had my druthers…. Yeah, so. Axel Rose and a Mike McGill skateboard, plus an official licensed Guns and Roses skateboard that is disappointing, like most licensed band boards. At this point in my rambling I’d liek to mention that Rich from EPM used to actually skate with Axl in Indiana when he (Axl) was known as William.

I hate martinis, actually. Except on one occasion I had some chocolate martinis that were good. Real good. I like liquor in the form of girlie drinks. Cosmos, lemon drops, anything sweet. I wish I could say I had a few in me when I bought this “vintage” cocktail napkin off eBay. It was staring at me. Mocking me. If iwas in AA it would be mocktail-ing me. Still, it was a $2 “buy it now.” Right now there’s an unopened pack of 16 for $13. It says right in the damn listing that “This package of napkins is very collectible.” So it has to be. I mean, I collected one, so they aren’t exactly lying. I’d like to think this vintage napkin was of the vintage from when the office Christmas party was a punchline for a gag involving some poor schmuck with a lampshade over his head, and that would mean 60’s or 70’s if I had my druthers. Coincidentally, that was about the last time someone used the phrase “if I had my druthers.”

We had a sparse couple of days this week, so I thought I should do another Saturday Starrs, Digging into the Scott Starr archives this week for a segment from a news feature show called Evening Magazine that originally aired in 1983, two years from the release of the Bones Brigade Video Show. Peralta was one smart cookie. I’m sure he engineered getting this thing on air. There’s about the same amount of footage of Stacy talking about Rodney as there is actual footage of Rodney. Two points of interest: This is possibly the first public video evidence of the flatground ollie, and Rodney Mullen sounds a little like Michael Jackson in these clips. Listen to the squeaking of those truck bushings.

Thing is, I get distracted easily, and to me, the internet is like a strobe light for epileptics. While trying to track down a copy of the Carvells L.A. Run, I accidentally learned about a Danish relic from the past known as Mabel. These guy look like a bunch of Rod Stewart clones from the Hot Legs era. never heard of them? I guess they didn’t make it that far out of Denmark. Turns out it’s not that expensive to get 7″ vinyl records from Sweden, where I ended up getting this one. I got the hideous cover on the bottom right, which is so bad that it’s actually better than the understated one, which is a full length album. There’s also a Japanese version of the Skateboard Rider single, but the only place is turns up on the internet is a postage stamp sized dead link on someone’s very extensive Mabel fan page. Calling 1978.