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Song List:
Daryl Angel #1 – The Amps – I Am Decided
Daryl Angel #2 – Soulja Slim – Me And My Cousin
Shane O’Neill – The Stone Roses – I Wanna Be Adored
John Motta #1 – Stereo Total – Heaven Is In The Back Seat Of My Cadillac
John Motta #2 – Lykke Li – I’m Good, I’m Gone
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Skate Mental – Am Chowder: Initial Remarks
Skate Mental has released their first DVD, titled Am Chowder, focused purely on the amateur skaters under the groups umbrella. Rumored to be the predecessor to a follow-up video with pro parts from riders Reese Forbes, Brad Staba and Matt Beach, Am Chowder doesn’t hit on much as far as skate videos go. Solid skating in the second half of Angel’s part, some notably smooth stuff from Shane O’Neill, and a solid Motta part are all that makes up this video, along with some basic titles and no credits. The video evidently was supposed to be a bare basics skate video, but in todays world, bare basics doesn’t ring too true for a company endorsing Nike almost exclusively. However, the skating is still worth a watch, if only for Motta.
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Daryl Angel
Opening up with the boring style of titles that invade the short 13 minute video, Daryl shows off his nikes as he rips through the California landscape with lots of backside tricks and blazers. His style seems to continually get cleaner, but so many of his tricks just seem basic in comparison with other Ams of our times, as we see in comparison to Shane O’Neil. Skating to a wretched first song, the first trick that really catches my attention is a switch crook on a bank to bar, followed soon by a fs pivot stall pop to fakie. I must note, does Daryl think fakie bigspins are cool? there are two in the first minute twenty of his part, which is odd for such an ugly trick. A frontside wallride is notable, and a ride-on 50-50 back 180. I also have to say, his pushing is better than half his tricks. He should be one of those guys they film pushing through a city, without doing anything else. He does however loft a huge switch backside 180 near the end of the first song, which is nothing short of wild. The second song I like much more, and a Matt Miller-esque rail pop to ledge fifty stands out, along with a ridiculous frontside wallie and a wallie back tail, effectively my two favorite tricks of his entire part. He has about seven other notable tricks, some of which cast some doubt on the sickness of recent enders such as Dylan Reider’s five block fakie tre in Alien Workshop’s Mind Field, but I won’t spoil any of these purely so if you view the video, you will still have something to enjoy. Last word on his part: even though I like the song, it still doesn’t fit the part. And so goes the rest of the video.
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Shane O’Neil
Well he looks exactly like Daryl Angel, except goofy-footed. And he’s much more interesting. Tre nose manual flip out, bigspin front board down a handrail in a line, back 180 5-0 flip out, bigspin back tail on a ditch, and the most perfect frontside bigspin boardslide I’ve ever seen are some of the early highlights. The song fits better this time, but still not wonderfully. The dicks also managed to ruin a kickflip back smith by having the word ‘Slo-Mo’ pasted on the frame. Whether that clip was meant to be throwaway or not, I’m unsure, but it pissed me off all the same. Lame joke? indeed. Even though the kid lands perfect on just about everything AND can nollie frontside flip properly, he seems to have an odor of fake steeze going on in about half of his part. But then if you can manage to land tricks that hard that cleanly, kudos to you, who am I to judge. A little nugget bounces across the screen at one point in his part….. hit enter on your remote or something, see what it does, and let me know, because I didn’t care enough about this video to find out for myself. Nollie crook halfcab flip, proper switch backside flip flicks, and some generic enders round out the end of his part.
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John Motta
He opens with another lame Skate Mental joke, hereafter known as a LFSMJ (lame skate mental joke….. you can figure out what the ‘f’ stands for). Talk about a bad song, this one really takes away from Motta’s skating. And he’s gapping over flyouts into lipslides on curbs six feet below him, that’s saying something if a song can ruin that. Now I don’t really have much to say about Motta other than he skates spots in the coolest ways, and he has one hell of an original ledge trick in the early half of his part. As I said in the Happy Medium review, you can tell this guy thinks about his tricks. I love the skating in his part….. but the song. Big no to the song right there. I cannot stress that enough. There are also some stupid effects inserted into his part, that I could have lived without. On another note, he does some tricks I definitely have never seen before *cough* wallie nollie back 180. The second song would have been a better choice for his overall song, although again not really a good one. But he only has about 10 tricks in the second song, then it goes to a title and a screen announcing there are basically no credits. They are quite correct when they say ‘who cares who edited it’, because I certainly don’t. Oh, and by the way, the website they list at the end? It doesn’t work.
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Final Thoughts
I hope this video doesn’t cost much, I borrowed it from a friend and was utterly disappointed. Skating is awesome, but awesome songs and feel of a video make it so much awesomer (not a word, kids). This video pulled that off to the absolute largest negative integer you can think of. Give it a spin just so you can say you’ve seen Motta’s part, and so you can toss O’Neil into your guys-to-watch-for-the-future list. Or maybe someone out there will think its awesome. The skating is good, great in parts, but overall the eleven minute and thirty-six second video (not counting the blank space they left at the end to let the song play through) is a bit too long for the lack of creativity put into its production, and much of the skating felt like filler, or throwaway parts, possibly because of the horrid music. Not a video I’d be proud to own.
