Summertime Mixtape Vol. 8 – Justin Henry, ‘Mother’

Jazz-funk acolytes Psychic TV used their sunny, swinging ‘Godstar’ to smuggle a dark and conspiratorial fable of Rolling Stones member Brian Jones’ untimely death onto blithely unaware mass media platforms. Justin Henry, Ohioan, drapes an easy grace over otherwise jarring and scary tricks in his big introductory part for Quasi’s 2018 classic, making it easy to gloss over the fact that he somehow didn’t catch a wheel in the corrugated dumpster cover on his backside nosegrind, or slam facefirst into the irate, phoneless SFer’s house on the frontside wallie to frontside wallride, or crush his ribcage dropping from a kinked round bar to another one in the midst of a backside 50-50, and so on. He is here much in the beginning of his arc, a young power with a blue collar name from a blue collar state, shuffling through half the tricks in the book across spots from coast to coast, getting yelled at, yelling back, leaving you to wonder what the hangtimewas on the double rail ollie, or the Mike Maldonado measurements on the hop up and over the tall Florida block. When he pushes you can feel the world at his fingertips.

Summertime Mixtape Vol. 4 – Nate Jones ‘Real to Reel’

Midsummer days hot enough to put the sweat on you by 8 a.m. call to mind the carefree love that can blossom in young muskrats’ hearts, and of simpler and more wholesome times when highlights from a 411 commercial and a nice backside 5-0 on a ledge were legit inclusions for a video-opening, pro-inducing video part such as Nate Jones’ in Real’s century-launching ‘Real to Reel.’ Besides Nate Jones’ immaculate kickflip stylings, the rarely seen overhead angle to a street gap and the rarer-still acceptable varial flip, Nate Jones’s breezy, no-muss part captures him midway between the baggy-hoodied, yellow-teed everyman and the patchouli scented Bay ramblor that would years later claim his pro career. Beyond the snapshot of SF in a more livable time, you can catch glimpses of a spiritual forebear to Brian Delatorre’s GX hills handling and Dylan Rieder’s ‘Mindfield’ ender.