Week 3 Readings

Tom Stone’s story seemed to be a very classic tale, sounds like someone who should have always been surfing and kept finding obstacles in the way of this desire. I find the fact that he had trouble conforming into the army very interesting, his experience stands somewhat as a metaphor for the struggles that many Hawaiians had in the advent of colonialism. Being used for their resources and claiming no benefits for supporting their new allies. There seems to be a constant divide in his life between going the predetermined route for money, fame and glory and sticking to the true passion of surfing, his family and livelihood. I admire the fact that he can have this incredible life and be happy to live humble with a plate of food and a few beers.

I had seen Bruce Brown’s documentary a few years ago and forgot how fun the two main subjects, Mike Hynson and Robert August were. I often wonder if the footage they managed to get really contributed to the films mainstream success, especially after all the staged cheesy surf movies with cheap effects. Watching it again another element that I really dug was the soundtrack by The Sandals, it just perfectly compliments all the images on screen. I saw a few more surf documentaries a while ago that aren’t on the syllabus, if anyone is interested I would recommend Riding Giants and Surfwise. Just did some reading up about the movie and was happy to see it has also been entered into the National Film Registry meaning that the board have deemed the film to be historically and culturally relevant. I can really see why the film is still so popular, it has a kind of unrefined freshness that you can feel the filmmaker wasn’t simply imitating a style of capturing surfing on film he was kind of creating one.

As for the listening’s this week; Richie Valens was interesting, Buddy Merrill was awesome, “Buddy’s Boogie” especially, you can really hear it’s influence, the tone, notes and speed really have that kind of mainstream, 50’s surfing, American cheese sound. Jerry Cole’s stuff was pretty interesting, kind of big band soulful stuff.