Briscoe.

It is a new(ish) year, and I have decided to start a new blog under a new name, which is Big Wow. There were a few other blogs called Terminal Moraine (the name of my previous blog), so I opted to remove myself from that crowded marketplace, and Big Wow reflects the diminished expectations I have about creating and sustaining a readership."Big Wow" was a sarcastic phrase used to shatter enthusiasm in the playgrounds of my youth, and it may articulate the sentiment that forms in the mind of the reader as they alight upon another fucking blog.

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My friend Bart Denaro has a band. They are called Briscoe, and they are great. They have recorded an album, which is not yet released, but my wife's in the band so I have heard it, and I will let you in on a secret - it's brilliant. I love them so much I wrote their name on the griptape of my new board.

Briscoe played their first gig at the Lansdowne Hotel in January, and they smashed it. I was all a-tingle with goosebumps. My objectivity is out of the window with this band, and I can't help but feel excited about them. Early reviews on Triple J Unearthed and some blogs have been very positive, which reassures me that my critical faculties have not been entirely clouded by the affection I have for these guys.

My impartiality is further compromised by my involvement with the music video clip for Briscoe's debut single, Animal. Bart directed Dee, who is the star, and me, who held the camera, and the result should be playable below:

I think it turned out well, and we had a good time making it. Here is an outtake featuring Briscoe bass boss Dave Anderson and Bonnie, who is a dog and a very good girl.

Briscoe are playing Sydney, Canberra and Newcastle to launch the single - the details are here.

WHEEE!

I was a wee boy (on the right) and so was my brother Adam

When I was a wee boy I liked to slide on icy puddles. I knew the best places where water would sit in shallow depressions on the pavement, and on nippy mornings I'd groom the icy puddles, tamping down and smoothing a layer of frost with the soles of my shoes to improve the slidiness of the ice. I liked to learn different tricks, which were essentially stances in which I would slide. There was a head-on slide, a backwards slide, a side-on slide, and there was "the wee mannie" - a slide performed in a crouching position. When I did a slide I would say "wheee," which expressed the way I felt about it.

A Recreation of A Wee Mannie Slide

My obsession with skidding on ice progressed to the point where I snuck out the house with buckets of water one cold winter evening, and splashed these onto the pavement at the foot of the cul-de-sac we lived in, where a downhill footpath terminated in a small flight of 3 steps. This was a precursor to the self-absorption at the expense of personal and public safety that I would later indulge with skateboarding. The following morning I returned to skid along the ice and  leap over the steps at its termination. Wheee! I knew it was hazardous, but I took the risk in favour of that wheee. I'm glad no-one was hurt.

A Skuda Skateboard

I would soon buy a plastic skateboard from a primary school jumble sale. It had the word 'SKUDA' embossed in its top, and a sticker that said 'The Shaggy D.A.' on the bottom. This soon came to replace icy puddles as the source of the wheees. I learned to ride the skateboard down the short length of our driveway, and then I learned some tricks. I also learned to internalise the wheee.

Early Morning Dulwich Hill Shred Sled Session

I'm trying to use my iPhone to film myself skating, and here's my first attempt from a few months ago. It's at Dulwich Hill skatepark, and it's the first time I'd been skating since I got hit off my bike by a car, so I was moving a touch gingerly.
I figure that filming myself helps me set targets to make tricks. Skating's also a part of my life totally distinct from work and from a lot of my friends, so I want to be able to point to something and say, "this is what I do." Until now, I didn't have any video or photographic evidence from over 24 years of skating.
The music is 'Love Came Tumbling Down' by The Monks.
The bird is a Tawny Frogmouth that sat outside my back door for a while.

Annandale Skatepark Bike Trip

A few days ago I rode out on my bike to find Annandale skatepark in Sydney's Inner West. 

I was keen to use my board because I had painted on the griptape for the first time in about 20 years. I wanted to write something antithetical to the gnar-text usually seen on skateboards, so I wrote "BBC Radio 4", which I probably listen to more than anything else these days. Incidentally, Radio 4 are reportedly seeking to reshape their image into something more 'youth-friendly', which is a terrible idea. Radio 4 is something that people will come to as they get older, and that's fine. I wasn't aware of it as a child or teenager, and I would have hated it. But now I love the high-mindedness and seriousness of programmes like In Our Time and Start The Week, I love the news, and I love the comedy, and I would be right pissed off if R4 had its tone diluted with an affectation of youth-speak. Radio 4 is rad, and this is official, cause it's written on a skateboard. I also wrote Dusker (my wife Dee's band) and drew a lightning bolt - lightning bolts are cool.

So off I bicycled with my newly-decorated board strapped to my back, and the first place I stopped is a storm drain that runs through Summer Hill to the Hawthorn Canal. It is near murderous to wish for drought in Australia, but just look at this thing. I wish that trickle of water would dry up and allow a skate.

I rode on, and arrived at Annandale skatepark. It's a piece of shit, but the viaduct is pretty. The skatepark is a modular thing with a few quarterpipes and a little driveway. It's narrow, so there's no scope to carve around. 

The flat bank has a horrid crack across the bottom that my wheels got stuck in, and it chucked my into the bank the first time I rode the park. Shitey.

So I stuck around for a few minutes, then rode off to check out somewhere I'd noticed in the Richard Murden Reserve by the Hawthorn canal in Haberfield. I guess this is intended for BMX bikes. I don't know. 

It is too rough to skate. Maybe some fun can be had with big soft wheels, but there was nothing for me here, so off I rode. 

This is my bike, by the way, it's a 1968 Claude Butler with a full contemporary Campagnolo set. I'll give the full story of losing my old bike in a car crash at a later time, I think.

I hadn't really had a proper skate after all this, and riding home I saw some basketball courts and decided to stop for a little bit of flatland. I like skating around basketball courts, it reminds me of  Rodney Mullen's part from the Plan B Questionable video. It was fun, there were sections of grass between the courts that you could blast across. Wheeee!

And then I rode home.