Ethan Fowler

Amigos

What LIVE is celebrating with you today is no less than the official upload (courtesy of DLXSF) of "AMIGOS", the Forties Clothing video originally released in 1995.

Forties was Tommy Guerrero's garment company - under Deluxe - nurtured by the talents and legacies of many a San Francisco skate legends at their peak; in particular, the ones who tended to be more into speed, feels and amplitude, still paving the way for the original Stereo's trademark image, as opposed to the technical juggling and copious ledge innovations then still reigning supreme over the bricks of the classic Justin Herman Plaza, also known as the Embarco...

Here, the residential areas - and their hills - are the focus, only for the entire City to turn into a playground dominated with style (that era of Ethan Fowler was quite something else...), all paired up with experimentation on the visual side but also as far as the soundtrack goes, marking Tommy Guerrero's earliest (recorded) adventures into jazz - a whole new direction when compared to his former punk sessions as the bass player in Free Beer - contemporarily to other iconic bands such as Los Olvidados, McRad or Drunk Injuns, just to name a few. Those very new trackable beginnings would then turn out to be what motivated Thomas Campbell to have Tommy record his first album on Galaxia Records : "LOOSE GROOVES & BASTARD BLUES"...

So the question remains: relaunch, no relaunch? Tough to say as of now, given the impact of the current context on the economy worldwide. But either way, as of now, we do get to watch those fifteen minutes on loop and in pristine quality - a pre-solo sesh win-win!

Catching up

All right, everybody, get your pen out and take notes! So, in 1994, the relatively young brand Stereo Skateboards was dropping its first full-length, in the direct line of its magazine advertising and board graphics, in between a vintage imagery and a full on jazz soundtrack, a first in skateboarding. Rubbing the –rather tech– times the wrong way (or the right?), A Stereo Sound was putting style, flowing in the city, and once again style, before all. The line-up was quite perfect for this, with a young Ethan Fowler filming his part in a couple weeks or a Jason Lee, not an actor yet, at the peak of the art of flipping his board the backside way. Everything else is in the same vein, with notably a Mike Dasher whose skateboarding has not aged one bit, and the integration of the photography of Ari Marcopoulos and Tobin Yelland that help the video turn into way more than a collection of footage put together. A classic, for real.

#stylematters

So, in 1994, some skaters were hauling ass, filming themselves on Super 8, taking analog pictures of each other and, mainly, mainly, were skating with absolute class… Funny, that reminds us of something… What you think? For the younglings, this footage is coming from A Visual Sound, the Stereo Skateboards very first full length, mostly shot on film and containing a part that should be studied over and over by any street skater of any era: the one of Mike Daher.

Ethan.

One could regret this compilation of one of the most talented skaters of all times kind of misses the true genius of Ethan Fowler, by forgetting the spontaneous lines in San Francisco, to focus on the hammer times, but, even there, the absolute finesse of the man transpires… One of the greats.

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