It’s the summer holidays and skaters are born travelers. Here’s a couple of fine concrete specimens Crossfire has heard about on the old Continent.
The guys from Tyrol and Muckefuck skateboards got down in the muck for a 5-day 14 hour sessions of sand, gravel and cement mixing under the pouring rain of Wörgl, Austria. That’s dedication that you don’t see often! Check out the pictures here.
Elsewhere, the Belgians go from strength to strength with yet another banger of a plaza/bowl complex in Hasselt. A ¾ cradle, double kinked hubbas, banks, banks to ledges, grass gaps- the whole shebang! For pictures visit www.concrete-skateparks.com and pick the Hasselt article with ‘Overview’ for ce-ment-al madness!
Pink Floyd belting out over the speakers and a backing group wearing school uniforms aren’t exactly the setting you’d expect from the hip hop chart front runners Gnarls Barkley, but that’s the introduction they got when Cee-Lo bounded on stage in shorts and a school blazer. Dangermouse, the silent partner in the group, slunk from the background to the raised pedestal and manned the decks and other gadgets he had ready to roll.
Black Flag. Black Sabbath. The two blacks. What more do you need in life? But hey, this is about Black Flag, we’ll move onto Sabbath next week. Find me a band more hardcore than Black Flag and I’ll call you a liar. Led by guitarist Greg Ginn, these street punks terrorized the world throughout the eighties with the most ferocious bursts of noise to rise from the punk underground then or since.
Thousands of Britain’s heavy metal fraternity may be currently pitching tents and sinking pints at Donington, but there’s still enough eager beavers packed into the Underworld tonight to send temperatures soaring to almost unbearable climates. So scorching in fact, that it’s difficult to say whether there’s more free-flowing liquids coming from the beer taps at the bar or the foreheads of those presently in attendance.
What is This’N’That?
What struck me immediately was that this year’s Urban Games was nowhere near as packed as it has been for the past few years and it was a strange sight to see hardly anyone milling around. Even from the start when we went to watch some of the skaters practise runs, walking past the BMX and the vert ramp, there weren’t many people watching and it felt as though we’d turned up a few hours too early.
The UK b-boys were out in full effect on the Friday and despite the lack of crowd, the energy levels were high, the music was bumping [maybe Wireless can learn a thing or two from here about how to make the music sound loud] and everyone involved seemed to having a load of fun. Whilst Derby’s Trinity won the UK event, big props need to be given out to Flow Mavericks and Ghetto Lowlifes.
Besitval has added to its line up for 2006 and it promises to be a brilliant time! Rob Da Bank has been booking the best bands around, including no less than 14 local bands from the Isle Of Wight. The added bands are:
The Hedrons are releasing their debut single Be My Friend, on July 31st, which will be taken from their upcoming album, due in August. Make sure you catch them at one of the following dates:
Take one multi-Scribble Jam winning emcee, one member of exquisite turntable crew Animal Crackers and mix them up with the beats of a prolific and forever-innovative producer and you’ll get Glue. Rapper Adeem proves time and again that he’s not just limited to battling, with his well thought out and always interesting lyrics, flowing over Maker‘s incredible beats and with DJ DQ up on the cuts, you can’t go far wrong.
Those of you who skated in the early 90’s with Zac, Richie Hopson, Gorm etc may well have bumped into our friend Richard File skating curbs and ledges schralping in Sutton and Croydon with Curtis McCann and Paul Shier. Since then, he has shared duties with James Lavelle on the U.N.K.L.E project, released a bunch of stuff on Mo’Wax Records and has also co-written the film score to cult film Sexy Beast.