Can you guess?
Does it amaze you, as it does me, the power of song to elevate a surf film? The opening piano chords of Life on Mars for Creed McTaggart’s section in Cluster acts on my brain like a narcotic every time I hear it.
Other times, songs can feel like wedges being hammered into your neck.
And so I wondered, what is the best surf movie soundtrack, ever?
A Kai Neville film? Maybe something further down the timeline, a Jack McCoy movie?
Taylor Steele’s punk lite scores?
What songs have stayed in my head the longest? What songs accompany my own jams on a wave?
In the very distant turn of the century there was a Volcom movie, made by Australia’s Ozzie Wright, that became the template for almost every surf movie, and for every hipster, since: the super eight footage, the static landscape shots, street painting, goofy tricks.
Do you remember 156 Tricks?
With a soundtrack populated by Sonic Youth and Iggy Pop, among others? And pivoting the movie around a punk ska track called Arsehole?
It’s a ridiculous, trivial soundtrack, absurdly insignificant, that works better than anything before or since.
Here, taste.
(Oh, and there’s a song by a band called The Line in there that lives in my head, too. Goddamn, if I could find it. Anyone help?)
(The section with Arsehole, by Snuff)
And this is what Snuff look like. So not surf!
A little Sonic Youth
Yuh, yodelling…
The closing hit.
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One for Maurice. Love it!
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
From 5:33 Love Peace & Happiness – Chambers Brothers
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
From the fossil era, Fluid Drive & Cosmic Children had great bootleg soundtracks. Scorpion Bay lame surfing for the soundtrack (from 1:40). MP needed to be there.
https://vimeo.com/89525751
https://vimeo.com/89456447
@The Bitchy Crab
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
lost across america volume 2…. Screeching weasel “sunshine” with Strider stretching out a pipeline funnel ,,,,,,, sick still repeat that song in my head before most surf’s ,,,,, that or Wilson Phillips “Hold On”
Lost – The Decline.
old bong soundtracks,and black and white,that shit had some interesting arrangements even for now,hypnotic almost the trestles section.
i also like Powleys section in Feral Kingdom to that Grinspoon track.
Old school billabongs pump and filthy habits!
Also Hawaii 9-0 with the Angels and Johnny Diesel…
Snuff makes me think of the Mack Dawg snowboard flicks and Jeremy Jones jibbing away…
While Iggy’s Passenger is one of my favorite songs of all time, Dear Suburbia has by far my fav soundtrack (skate movies included!): it starts out with Brian Eno, goes into Nick Fucking Cave’s Red Right Hand, hits White Fence, another Iggy masterpiece (Mass Production), has that incredible Japan section set to Bauhaus’ Dark Entries (good lord, it’s so perfect), and ends with The Jesus and Mary Chain and Joy Division. For fuck’s sake, whatever your feelings of Kai’s crew or movies, that shit is absolutely unimpeachable.
Personal favorite is the Still Filthy soundtrack. Watched it so many times those songs just melted into the surfing and I love hearing them outside the movie
The decline by lost is my personal favorite soundtrack, still have it as its own playlist on my itunes. Gorkin to frank black, rincon set to where is my mind, sonic reducer, nada surfs Iggy Pop cover is beyond good, there’s not one bad song in that movie.
queer suburbia had the best Kai Neville soundy
Andy to Refused in Under the Influence will never be beaten. Honourable mention to Kai’s pairing of Jack Freestone & australian crawl in cluster, pure unadulterated beauty.
Fuck i loved “the passenger” as the closer in this movie! Lost Atlas was a fave in more recent days.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
I’ve watching this a lot lately great surfing before Ando and Dion were super flaming hipsters
“Motherfucker from hell”, The Datsuns, Doped Youth, with Ozzy Wright throwing his frame across a limpet-encrusted rockshelf for kicks.
…and then there’s ‘Simple Ben’ of course.
Super Session by Hal Jepsen. Music was done by Dennis Dragon (who went on to found the Surf Punks and is the brother of Daryl Dragon–aka the Captain to her Tenille–Montecito kids from the Greenough – Dora neighborhoods and era). Raw 70s rock.