This is issue #48 of Reggie’s Wise Guy Jokes, published in January of 1979 by the Archie Comics Group. It’s got skateboarding on the cover as well as two single page stories that feature skateboarding, including what just might be the first ever guitar-as-skateboard!

Here’s more guitars made from used skateboards, this time from Prisma Guitars. These are more common now, but Prisma looks like they’ve taken the craftsmanship up a level. I was going to hassle Nick Pourfard about showing no love for bass players, but he can do them, and has done them for Steve Harris of Iron Maiden no less. Even if you don’t like Iron Maiden you should check out Iron Maiden: Flight 666. Those guys are surprisingly down to earth and funny. It almost made me want to listen to their music, but it definitely left with respect for them as human beings.

Haroshi makes lots of cool sculptures out of used skateboards, including this forthcoming electric guitar collaboration with Deluxe and HUF. Pretty damned cool, although what does Deluxe need to be involved for, other than to provide pre-recycled skateboards? Maybe they are seconds. Rock on.

I was digging around for more skateboard guitars and someone mentioned the Ben Harper video for Ground on Down, which led me to the SK8 lap guitar from Cole Clark Guitars on some sort of loosely affiliated Ben Harper web site that isn’t the official one. That lap guitar has the good sense to have Indy trucks coupled with a poor choice of World Industries wheels. And then there’s the Ben Harper longboard, with artwork created by someone you’d never guess… Winston Smith, the man behind the Dead Kennedy’s logo and accompanying photo collage artwork.

An unnamed Domino Records band wants to shoot a music video in an empty pool in the L.A. area. They say it will take a good day of shooting, so it sounds like it will need to be a permission pool. I told the rep that it sounded like a lazy scam to find an empty pool to skate, but he assured me it was legit. They need skaters too, and there will be some sort of compensation involved. You can contact Robert Nell if you want to hook him up. In the mean time, let’s revisit a brief (incomplete) history of skateboarding in pool like structures in music videos. In the top row there are two shots from the current running band AFS (Arthritic Foot Soldiers) that has a video shot in a wooden bowl for the song “Chicks, Beer, Fame & Money” off the album Immature Nobodies. Check out the longboard guitar. It’s an interesting application, but not nearly as well done as the one featured on the cover of the Surf Punks first album My Beach. Then of course there is the grandaddy of all bowl riding skate videos, any of Agent Orange’s segments from SkateVisions. Another…