The Book of Sifty

Three things.. 11:37AM

Three things to mention today:


The Thievery Corporation album, The Richest Man In Babylon, is very good. I've had it for a couple of weeks now, and am only just really starting to like some of tracks. Phat and moochy. Helped by the micro system I've put on my desk at work. All good, and the packaging is pretty cool too.

Rhombus album - Bass player. Wellington choons on a slightly similar but more up beat funky tip. Also highly recommended.

The movie Dog Town and Z Boys. I'd wanted to see this for quite a while but I missed it in the States and the UK, when I got back here nobody seemed interested. So last Saturday I got it and another movie (K-Pax) out. Dog Town and Z Boys is documentary about the rebirth of skateboarding during in the 70s in California, with lots of original footage and 70s rock soundtrack. The Zephyr surf team (Z-Boys) managed to pretty much redefine skateboarding into what we now take for granted. Mostly because it was something to do when the waves were flat. These guys rode around on home made skateboards, constructed out of old roller-skates and recycled timber. During the major drought of the seventies they rode around in the dried up swimming pools, and pioneered riding vert and defining what in now know as half pipes almost totally by accident. ('we just started going further and further up the walls of the pool until we started getting above the edge.. we didn't know what we were doing.. just kind of making it up').
If you've ever skateboarded, ridden a snowboard in a half pipe.. or wherever or even owned a pair of skate shoes see this movie and understand where it all came from.