Feature Song: Institutionalized by Suicidal Tendencies (1983/Frontier Records/Venice, CA)

Skateboarding evolved out of surfing in the late 50s and early 60s, as something for surfers to do when the waves just weren't there. The skateboard itself began as the crate scooter, a plank of wood with some wheels and a crate on top to serve as ersatz handlebars. Eventually the planks were replaced by something more akin to a board and the crate was removed to make it more like a surfboard. Early skaters (or 'street surfers') would often make their own boards, which they would ride barefoot to emulate the feel of surfing. Accordingly, all of their moves were based on surfing moves. The first manufactured skateboards came to us by way of Bill Richard's Val Surf in 1962. Originally Val Surf sold only the parts to build your own skateboard, but by 1965, Bill had assembled a team to begin assembling ready-made skateboards. Meanwhile, Larry Stevenson, publisher of Surf Guide magazine, began publishing articles about this new pastime hoping to hook more surfers on the hobby. Eventually Larry started Makaha Skateboards, a company still in existence today. A competitive skateboarding scene started to pop up in Southern California, and many of them got sponsorships. In 1965, the city of Tuscon, Arizona constructed Surf City, the world’s first purpose-built skate park, with more to follow. The following year, the Van Doren Rubber Company would begin selling shoes designed for skateboarding, and The American Skateboarding Championships in Anaheim were broadcast nationally on ABC’s Wild World Of Sports. With the national exposure, people around the nation took up skateboarding only to discover an unfortunate truth about these early boards: It was really easy to get hurt on them.

Skateboarding is always going to come with the potential of injury, but there was a far greater number of far more serious injuries with these old boards. The design of a skateboard was still evolving, with boards only gaining a tail at the end of the 60s. Wheels were made of clay, steel, or even wood, all of which had a tendency to skid and break. That all changed in 1972, when Frank Nasworthy produced the polyurethane skateboard wheel, which offered greater traction and better performance at high speeds. Fewer wipeouts meant fewer injuries, and less time spent recuperating meant more time to practice. Downhill and freestyle skateboarding started to grow in popularity. Then, in 1976, a terrible drought hit Southern California, meaning lots of pools were kept dry in the summer. These empty pools became bowls for the new crowd of skateboarders. It was this second wave of skaters who embraced punk.

So what did skaters listen to before punk? Well, since the surfers were the original skaters, there was a lot of surf rock in the beginning. When skateboarding became its own thing, the music tastes of skaters began to drift away from their surf roots. Hard Rock and early Heavy Metal became popular with the skateboarding crowd, along with Southern Rock. But when Punk Rock took off in 1976, it seemed to fit perfectly with skateboarding culture. Skating is about going fast, unwinding, and working through confusion and aggression. Skaters also had an antipathy towards authority, as police often hassled those who practiced on the street. Punk was about all those things, too, and the relationship between Punk Rock and Skateboard culture only deepened when SoCal punks invented Hardcore.

Oxnard, California, about an hour West Northwest of Los Angeles, opened their first skate park, Endless Wave, in 1977. This place was a magnet for local youngsters, many of whom were falling in with the burgeoning Hardcore scene in the LA suburbs. Among the earliest Punk acts from the area were an outfit from Moorpark called the Rotters, who pretty much just aped the Sex Pistols, even going so far as to pretend they were from London. They played to mostly teenage audiences, most of them skaters. Among them were Mark Hickey and Henry Knowles, who seemed to understand the style immediately. In 1979, they got together with SIMS skateboarding teammate “Big Bob” Clark to become Agression. Through late ‘79 through early ‘81, Agression would replace the Rotters as the hottest punk band in Oxnard, followed by the likes of Dr. Know and Ill Repute. Mark and Henry would get the Oxnard Hardcore (or Nardcore) scene noticed late ‘81 when they became some of the earliest members of the Better Youth Organization, a collective founded by Shawn and Mark Stern of Youth Brigade. While BYO released much of the early work, things really got going when Mystic Records founder Doug Moody discovered the Oxnard Hardcore scene, bringing further bands like Stalag 13, False Confession, and Rich Kids on LSD, most of whom knew each other through skating. Recording for Mystic Records meant going to Los Angeles, so they would come to mingle with newer LA Hardcore acts like Suicidal Tendencies, Minutemen, and Bad Religion. Along with a couple outsiders like Gang Green (from Braintree, MA), Big Boys (from Austin, TX), and Jodie Foster’s Army (from Phoenix, AZ) these acts would later go on to lay the foundation for Skate Punk, a subgenre of Punk centring specifically on skateboarding.

Except it wasn’t called Skate Punk, yet. Most of the time it was called Skate Thrash, as a nod to Thrasher magazine, which began publishing in 1981. Through Thrasher, skaters found out about the scenes sprouting up in various locales across America, which often led them to discover new bands. It was also a shout-out to the then-emerging Thrash Metal scene in Los Angeles. Thrash Metal is what happened when Americans got their hands on The New Wave of British Heavy Metal. While bands like Motorhead and Iron Maiden were spurred on by having to share venues with Punks bands, Metallica and Slayer were playing in venues that also hosted Hardcore acts. As such, they also inherited the ‘louder, harder, and faster’ mentality that drove the LA punks. For a little bit, Thrash and Hardcore were sort of the same thing to a lot of people, separated only by the technical proficiency of Thrash. Sometimes, however, a Thrash Metal band would strip out the intricacies, or a Hardcore Punk band would introduce something more intricate, giving us Crossover Thrash.

The connection between Punk and Skateboarding reached the mainstream imagination thanks to the video for Institutionalized by Suicidal Tendencies. The song was likely the first true Hardcore music video to get significant airplay on MTV, and featured singer Mike Muir walking through a makeshift skate park at the beginning of the video. This was a nod Muir’s affiliation with the Venice, CA skate crowd. Not only did Mike skate but his older brother Jim was on the original incarnation of the Zephyr Competiton Team (or Z-Boys), the team that pioneered vertical and aerial boarding in the late 70's.

Skate Punk would come into its own as a discrete genre thanks to Bad Religion’s 1988 comeback album Suffer. Their 1985 album Into The Unknown saw the band embark on a progressive rock-influenced flight of fancy that didn’t go over well with their fans. Guitarist and producer “Mr. Brett” Gurewitz joked that they sent out 10,000 copies and had 11,000 sent back. The reaction to the album was so poor that Bad Religion disbanded, and Gurewitz closed the doors on Epitaph Records. Two years later, Gurewitz and singer Greg Graffin would reunite Bad Religion and reopen the label. Suffer would be a return to the hardcore format but with added attempts at melodies and occasional vocal harmonies. Suffer became arguably Bad Religion’s greatest success, re-invigorating the the SoCal Punk scene and laying a lot of the groundwork for what punk would become in the 90’s. But those stories are still to come.

Next time: Things are about to smell far, far worse.