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.

Sick of documentaries about skateboarding and/or punk? I don’t care. You must watch this feature on the legendary Big Boys. Don’t worry, it’s only 10 minutes and 33 seconds long. Some early Big Boys records are being rereleased on vinyl this year, and Conspiracy is going to do a limited run of a Big Boys deck. The first true Skate Rock band? Let’s argue about it.

If you would ask me, what is the best-known song out of Germany with a connection to skateboarding, I´d say “My god rides a skateboard” by the hardcore/punk band Spermbirds from Kaiserslautern.

I finally found a board of my favorite band, McRAD. The board is produced by VILA Skate out of Sao Paulo, Brasil and is available in different sizes and shapes.

After two 7” records, the first album of San Francisco´s Hot Lunch was finally released. Germany´s Who Can You Trust? Records put out this vinyl only record.

Konstantin Butz is probably the first person ever who tried to analyze the phenomenon skate punk from an academic point of view. He wrote his doctoral thesis about it, which – in a slightly revised version – became this book, entitled Grinding California (transcript Verlag 2012).

Gang Green out of Boston have been around since 1982, skating, rocking and drinking, splitting up and reuniting again many times. They have a new album in progress that was once announced for the year 2007! Last year saw a little teaser, a 7” single with the songs “I fear” and “The other place”.

HOT LUNCH from San Francisco is one of the hottest Skaterock bands around at the moment. Their label describes them as “heavy, hard-driving punk ‘n’ roll” and I have nothing to add there. If you like heavy rock from the 70s and Skaterock from the 80s, I am pretty sure you will love HOT LUNCH.

Kilwag already posted the musicvideo for EXCEL´s song Unenslaved about two months ago. Their Dogtown connection started a couple of years earlier. There first album was produced by SUICIDAL Records (owned by Mike Muir, also singer for Suicidal Tendencies). On the thankslist you will also find Jim “Red Dog” Muir, Mike´s brother and founder of Dogtown Skateboards. EXCEL also had their own boards that – unlike the S.T. boards – weren´t sold through Suicidal Records. But I guess they were also produced by Dogtown, but that´s just a guess.

… this is Doc Skaterock a.k.a. Flow writing from Germany. Kilwag asked me, if I wanted to be an author for sna, and hell yeah, I want to be a part of that site. What an honor, thank you Kilwag!! So what am I going to write here about? Skaterock? Yes! Skatesploitation? Yes! And for sure some other trash, too. We will see. For those who don´t know me so far, I´ve been writing about my passion Skaterock for more than one and a half decade now, starting with my own fanzine in 1996 (simply called “Skaterock”) and then writing and photographing for the German skatemag Boardstein from the beginning (2000) till the end of it (2008 or was it 2009?). This year I finished and self-published my book about what I dared to call “Vintage Skaterock“, the skateboard music that was performed and recorded before the term “Skaterock” was officially created. I hope you are also interested in that kinda stuff. Please fell free to comment, sent tips, leave feedback, give away your record collection….

… enjoy life!

yours sincerely
Dr. Skaterock