In with the new, funk with the old

Two things keep me sane when I’m working hard: music and milkshakes (well, the second is optional). Here’s a couple of tunes that have melted my ears recently: one from a recent release, and one from the 70′s that you’ve probably never heard, but should have.

This is the stunning title track to City and Colour’s new album. During the slow build, Dallas weaves his usual melancholy magic, but the soaring choruses at the end give me chills.

And this is a change of pace. A chilled out 70′s funk tune from Cymande, I heard this at a house party last Friday and freaked out. It was used on the bodyboarding DVD Supastars 2, and featured in a section where two guys found and surfed a spot in Western Australia. It’s a ludicrous wave, breaking almost straight onto a rock ledge, but the tune and the tone of the clip were just about having fun and going a bit nuts out in the wilderness. Here’s a couple of shots of the wave, by Peter Quinn:

The pulled-back view.

And getting inside a crystal clear, flaring barrel. How shallow is it!

The swimming pool has come alive and wants to eat me

It can be hard to see, in real time, just how much water is moving when a wave breaks. This video gives a hectic insight into the dynamics of a heavy shore-break, and shows just how insignificant the surfers are when they’re caught up in the force of a wave. Remember, these guys are having ‘fun’! Nicely shot too.

Too much ‘serious’ this week. Literally. Here’s propaganda

Click on the text to keep reading the rest of the comic...

It’s literally amazing. Though I know many of you will have seen it before.

Moving on, here’s a literally mind-melting piece of bodyboarding propaganda from Mitch Rawlins…

The sunburn thing captures the essence of surfing – you are so intimately in the moment that breaking that, to go reapply sunscreen, is too much to bear. The future becomes a time that is not now, and that is enough to make it unimportant.

The anticipation is killing me

Don’t you just hate it when you are waiting and waiting for something and it just doesn’t seem to happen?

Mitch. Please get this film out soon. It looks like it could be one of the best surf vids ever made. I know you don’t want to rush it and create something you’re not happy with, but I’m practically dying here!

While the trailer could look a bit like a random selection of nice clips, for me it captures what it is to bodyboard in Australia – it’s not just about waves, but the adventure and experience of nature that surrounds the endeavour. Plus Mitch is a freak, especially the wave at 2:00.

Flashback: Byron Bay Bodyboarding

Why do I bodyboard instead of surf? Actually I’m not even going to try to answer that question… but there are certain advantages. One, which is often touted by surfers as way of slandering bodyboarding, is that the learning curve for bodyboarding is shorter (to a certain level of competence… at the top level there are some of the craziest human beings on the planet, watch if you dare).

But how is that a disadvantage? The guy in the first picture wasn’t as good a wave-rider as the guy in the second. Despite that, the bodyboarder is tucking into a perfect, glassy barrel, while the surfer is steering out in front of a closeout to preserve himself and his fragile board… click to view these large; the textures of the waves are very cool (I reckon)!

I wish I was this guy right now. Dreamy wave… stall, barrel, out!

Now if he was a bodyboarder, he’d be using that impending closeout as a launch pad for an aerial…