Skateboarding
Skateboarding
Listen to Mikey Alfred and the Illegal Civ crew talk LA skating and music
From Long Beach to Venice and on up into Hollywood, meet some of the people at the intersection of LA’s skating and music scenes.
The intertwining of skateboarding and music is a long and storied relationship.
We shouldn’t be surprised, really - when you think about it, skateboarding is just our way of expressing something from within us that was hitherto unsaid.
For some souls, that is not the only thing they're trying to say, or is indeed being said, through them.
That’s the soulful side. From a commercial viewpoint, skating is the most globally-influential youth culture of the last 30 years, besides rap.
To call up from your memory, bands whose career trajectories were certainly not hurt by their associations with skate culture either as skaters themselves or iconic soundtrack providers include: Fu-Schnickens, Operation Ivy, Pennywise, Beastie Boys, Rage Against The Machine, Souls Of Mischief, Dinosaur Jr and countless others.
Race Nagel carving
© Anthony Cabaero
Anaiah Li
© Anthony Cabaero
Music of the spheres
© Anthony Cabaero
Illegal Civ crew
© Anthony Cabaero
Likewise, there has always been a cadre in the professional ranks of skateboarding for whom virtuosity with one great gift is only part of the music inside them.
We might think here about Steve Caballero in The Faction, Matt Hensley in Flogging Molly, naturally the sublimely gifted Ray Barbee and Tommy Guerrero, Matt Rodriguez and the countless bedroom jammers that new technology has engaged, also.
Fast-forward to today in Los Angeles, a city where the question ‘so what’s next?’ is never far from the collective mind, and the story continues for a new generation doing it on their own terms.
Our short documentary snapshot of that nexus in LA today features the entrepreneurial nous of Mikey Alfred and the Illegal Civilisation collective and includes The Bots’ very own Anaiah Lei,Chelsea Castro and Hesh as we roll from Hollywood to Venice talking to the people who make up that scene right now.
LA: Skate + Music was part of the recent Illegal Civ Movie Motel all-dayer in Los Angeles. Watch it in the player at the top of this page.
