Besides an awkward title, what you get with the new Conspiracy video Die… Skate or Die is just over a half an hour of no-frills skateboarding action from across the country. It’s fast paced, but thankfully does not suffer from nausea inducing short attention span hyper quick editing. Imagine if you spent a year or so traveling and skating with your friends and edited together a “best of” video. This would be result if you and your friends were rippers, or in this case, the Conspiracy crew. But the action is not restricted to Conspiracy team riders. In fact, one of the best sequences is from the 2004 Oregon Trifecta jam sessions. Of course we are partial to Oregon in our “offices” but this contest footage should help give you a little bit of an idea of how intense that series was, especially in little ole West Linn. Props on being first to video with the Trifecta. Aside from Oregon, there is lots of Colorado coverage (duh) like Carbondale et al. Other locales include California, Vegas, Louisville, Florida, Kansas, Texas, blah blah blah… The action is mostly concrete skatepark based with some wooden bowls, vert ramps, ditches, full pipe, and the occasional pool thrown in for good measure. Oh yeah, there’s even a slappy or two, and a split second, death defyingly low speed coffin run. Mix it all together and you’ve got a super solid skate vid instead of a half hour long commercial for a skateboard company.
The title and the cover art might suggest some kind of high concept or at least campy art direction theme, but mysteriously, that’s the last you’ll see of it after the intro to the disk. It’s a low budget affair to be sure, but it’s still very entertaining as a meat and potatoes skate video. The footage looks like it was shot on your typical consumer grade digital camcorder, so it’s got that quality to it, which is not bad. The few titles present are basic text with no superfluous effects, giving it a very heavy home movie feel. The soundtrack is mostly hesher oriented, but there is some good old fashioned punk rock in the mix, including the always appropriate Big Boys. There’s even some cowpunk thrown in.
At $20 delivered to your door, Die… Skate or Die is a good deal. I don’t know what it goes for in a skate shop. Also available is a 18″ x 29″ silkscreened poster from an edition of 99, signed and numbered by Conspiracy artist/skater L. Kuhn. It’s basically the cover of the video, which is done in the style of the classic exploitation films of the past, half Reefer Madness and half Surf Nazi’s Must Die! The poster is available individually for $15 post paid or for $30 with the video. It’s a good way to get some low-brow Juxtapose style art without getting gouged for it.
Runing Time: 33.22
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