A new documentary from punk-and-hardcore archivists Trust Records — the label that has delievered represses of Ink & Dagger, SSD and more — is tracing the history of skate-rock via luminaries like Minor Threat’s Ian MacKaye, Rage Against the Machine’s Zack de la Rocha and more.
Titled Intense Energy: The Sound of Skateboarding, the short film was directed by filmmaker/skateboarder Coan Buddy Nichols. It arrives through a partnership between Trust and VANS, and a press release says the 22-minute doc “explores the intersections of skateboarding and underground music, where it started and how it evolved into what it is today.”
It includes interviews from old school skaters like Steve Olson, Tony Alva and Steve Caballero, up to contemporary boarders Beatrice Domond and Atiba Jefferson, and likewise features talks with musicians like MacKaye, de la Rocha, X’s Exene Cervenka, Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament and more — who all discuss the connection between skating and music.
Intense Energy begins by noting Ted Nugent was the “beginning” of skate-rock in the Seventies, because he was “playing the loudest and the fastest and the hardest.” It then features anecdotes from photographer Glen E. Friedman talking about Tony Alva’s love for huge over-the-ear headphones, while Cervenka recalls how she met the legendary skater through late Germs frontman Darby Crash.
Likewise, de la Rocha discusses the subversive rebellion of riding your board in a rich person’s empty pool. Pro skater Caballero discusses playing bass for skate-punk unit the Faction in the Eighties. Minutmen bassist Mike Watt talks about trying to work his fretboard like a landplank.
Many discuss how hip-hop made a massive impact on skate culture in the late Eighties and into the Nineties, especially through skate vids. You also get a blip of a Trash Talk concert, references to Suicidal Tendencies’ “Possessed to Skate” and more.
You can watch the full film via the player above, while VANS and Trust will also be holding a free screening party November 21st at Brooklyn, New York’s VANS Skate Space, with the event also featuring performances from Somerset Thrower, SPIN and DJ Marc Sinclair.
You can RSVP for the event over here.