Mike Carroll Comes Out of Voiceover Retirement As Niels Bennett Puts On A Transatlantic Pants Clinic

Have all the myths been made, all the great tales handed down, chiseled into stone tablets, and pulverized into a fine powder to be taken up and lilted unto the planet’s corners, crannies and nooks? Sometimes, a bro wonders. Several eons ago, in a dinosauric age, dispatches from ‘the pro scene’ and available industry hype were parceled out in monthly-arriving periodicals and less-predictable videocassette releases, strained through the keyboards and mouse-movements of editors and film-o-graphers. The stories that were had were the ones that were determined to be told, in the decided style and length, sometimes fine-tuned for drama and legendmaking and lulz. 

Amongst the signature tools in the big box of Transworld video production values during their late ’90s/early ’00s heyday was the voiceover, a concept previously explored in such vids as Foundation’s ‘Rolling Thunder,’ and seasoned with that signature TWS Pro Spotlight sauce to deepen narratives and make parts like Henry Sanchez’s ‘Sight Unseen’ comeback or Marc Johnson’s upper-echelon arrival in ‘Modus’ land harder, linger longer. Through the voiceover, Brian Anderson taught a generation of kids the powers of visualization; the story of Cliff Coffman’s kickflip led to a reconsideration of football players everywhere, and Mark Gonzales anointed John Cardiel an ‘Original Coors.’ Around the time of the Great Recession the voiceover lost favour, occasionally resurfaced by the history- and vibe-mindeds such as Pontus Alv and Mark Suciu, but more broadly buried by the cinema verite wave of raw files, video-part commentaries and IG stories of name skaters’ meals and home improvement projects that have torn away the proverbial curtain and obviated much of the more choreographed mythmaking activities. 

Daly City backside smith angler Mike Carroll not only was a prime featuree of the Transworld video heyday, he also for years was a voiceover heavyweight, channeling a uniquely 1990s alloy of sarcasm and self-deprecation to assess his own neuroses in ‘Modus Operandi’, speak on tour life in ‘Beware O The Flare’ and lament slams in ‘Harsh Euro Barge.’ For much of the past decade Mike Carroll has shifted into behind the scenes roles as Girl has installed a new generation, while simultaneously remaining retired from voiceover work. 

Until this week, as Niels Bennett, among the more incandescent lights shining forth from the Crailtap set in recent years, brought forth via Free his spectacular ‘Heroes/Helden’ vid, replete with soulful music, popped tongues, switch bs 5-0s and tricks done the hard way across multiple time zones and tax jurisdictions. The vid makes resourceful use of Niels Bennett’s great fortune in filmers, parceling the Chris Mulhern-filmed US stuff and the Torsten Frank-filmed Euro stuff into halves, which are stitched together via a Mike Carroll voiceover, expounding upon Niels Bennett’s Crail-bestowed ‘Professor’ nickname and what’s described as a questing quality to his choices in spots and tricks. The vid is on the one hand another progression for Niels Bennett, whose tricks and ability never have been in doubt but here look stronger, perhaps elevated by a more grown visage and particularly a baggier cut of pant that seem destined for a @whatpantsarethose feature, or 10, in the days and weeks ahead. It also is a return to form for Mike Carroll’s voiceovering, the years seeming to have slightly weathered his sound but his noun and verb and adjective selection still in top form. 

Did some of Tom Snape’s pants game, long regarded among the sharpest in any hemisphere, rub off on Niels Bennett during the course of filming Adidas’ still super-good ‘Reverb’ video? Did you get the Guy vibes too on those nosegrind revert tricks on the one lil rail? With Mike Carroll having ceded the spotlight to successive generations of Crailtap pros and yungstars, is it nice just to hear his voice? 

Summertime Mixtape Vol. 10 – Devine Calloway, ‘Let’s Do This!!1’

A shining example of classically cornball TWS editing and a ‘big’ song in the post-Ty Evans/Jon Holland era, Devine Calloway launched the second act of his career via Chocolate and DC after previously popping up as a braided City Stars shorty. It was a time when you could kick off a video part with a nollie backside bigspin and pack a suitcase full of New Eras for an international flight, and Devine Calloway was peaking, one of the first dudes to take the recently reclaimed backside bigspin down sizable gaps and making rarely recommended stuff like the nollie varial flip and 360 frontside pop shove-it look kinda incredible. He’s in the breeze, flannels flapping, floating over that SF street gap, board always spinning back to his feet with plenty of time to spare. 

Summertime Mixtape Vol. 9 – Emmanuel Guzman, ‘Let’s Do This!’

In time, yesteryear’s Transworld video voiceovers will be presented in their intended forums: TED-style straight-to-Youtube insisters, purring and pounding atop college lecterns, or directed at bleary-eyed diner customers past midnight in guttural shouts and barks. Santa Cruz A-lister Emmanuel Guzman caught one of the last of a dying breed in 2007’s exhortative ‘Let’s Do This!!1’, an easily paid price for a top-to-bottom summation of his power and range that hasn’t faded as the ATV wave crested and rolled over everything. Here and in the later Thrasher/Cons joint ‘Prevent This Tragic’ you see his puma crouch and forward lean, ready to knock your block off frontside boardsliding a rail or pumping a pool. He looks fearless, hanging onto the board in those queasy seconds he’s transferring from the bowl to the big bowl, or drifting as he pops the backside noseblunt back into the deep end, or jumping off a damn roof into some backyard ramp. This vid opened with Brian Brown, worked in Peter Smolik and Devine Calloway and closed with this Emmanuel Guzman thunderclap, and it’s one of the great sorrows of TWS’ demise that you don’t see many full-lengths offering that type of lineup anymore.

Red Bull GmbH Made The New Transworld Video So American Media Inc. Didn’t Have To

Here he is, teeth beared on the cover of Men’s Journal, Mark Wahlberg, née Marky of the Funky Bunch, sliding now into your brick-n-mortar mailbox with offers. Those biceps, and how to get them. He knows the names of 101 lust-worthy gifts and where they can be bought. LSD, and how it can cure depression. Strong and rich, yet Mark Wahlberg soon will disappear to make way for next month’s displacer, usurper of children’s dreams, as the Transworld subscription that once was runs its course beneath these dominant males’ steely, practiced gaze. So it goes.

Elsewhere, the TWS spirit remains carried forward, if under different corporate stewardship and alternate projects. While www.skateboarding.com continues to redirect toward the remaining staff’s video efforts and daily aggregations, Austrian beverage conglomerate Red Bull GmbH this week effectively released the new Transworld video. Recognizing a gaping hole once filled on an annual basis with slickly produced full-lengths staffed by pro-level grab bags, Red Bull’s ‘You Good?’ release proffers a 2019-friendly runtime while rejecting most current video conventions to throw back toward Transworld’s ’00s video heyday: A trip hop-powered opening montage, copious amounts of slow-mo, ‘retro film effects,’ a title you may well find yourself hollering to your own bros.

With ‘You Good?,’ Red Bull’s controllers seem comfortable flexing in ways accessible to soda manufacturers but not many others in the enthusiastic yet money-poor realm that is skateboarding in 2019. Pristine spots are ripped across multiple hemispheres by power pros, at all times uniformed in Red Bull-logoed headwears, at some times leisurely guzzling from the famed skinny cans — as you do. Husky Rick-flipper Jamie Foy hauls a 5-0 grind over the back and down a kinked rail, and gaps out to a ferocious frontside bluntslide, before tagging in Zion Wright for a long-spun cab over a Barcelona bannister and an immaculate frontside 180 to backside nosegrind down a different one — in this video, he is the lone Red Buller to (briefly) go hatless via a boosted McTwist. ‘Bust or Bail’ loud-armer Alex Midler exhibits his uncanny ability to take awful slams and go up against Jamie Foy for pointer grind distance, and his nailbiting ender builds on Silas Baxter Neal’s own TWS-closer from six years back.

Powered by caffeine and the courage of a cartoon ox with nothing left to lose, Red Bull wraps its carbonated hooves around a moment that would seem to favor the TWS video-making model of old. Adulting and wellness trends, the thrill of the SOTY chase and battery-powered massage pistols now make it possible and even obligatory for yung’n’hungry pros to record multiple video parts in the course of a calendar year. This has helped to fuel the full-length video resurgence as one-off parts quickly pile up and tumble down the timeline, while all the good one- or two-word names get used up. Look no further than Chris Colbourn’s criminally overlooked ‘Peace’ part earlier this year, shoveled off into the ether last January, which one could imagine closing a Transworld-style vid in years past.

Should Red Bull go ahead and expand their print media empire beyond its Red Bulletin title by launching its own Transworld-tributized monthly magazine? By requiring teamriders to wear branded hats — generally speaking an optional fashion accessory — in every clip, is Red Bull subliminally flexing on makers of shoes — which pretty much always must be worn unless you’re Jamie Thomas or Bob Burnquist? Could headwear-compulsory Red Bull sponsorships simultaneously preserve both the finances and vanity of prematurely balding pros?

Boil the Ocean Is Out Here Asking The Tough Questions About The Transworld Vid Dudes

When is a Transworld video not another Transworld video? Why is a raven like a writing desk? Who framed Radric Davis? Should censored Waka Flocka songs be allowed in skateboard videos? Or allowed whatsoever? If this blog website had snappy answers to any of the above it would be a more worthwhile endeavor for all, but like the increasingly malleable nature of the annual TWS video-offering itself, the only true answer may lie in an enigmatic vortex.

Does Mike Anderson embody the Transworld vid in 2011? Multi-platform media company Bonnier Corp may like to think so. Fashionably bearded and blessed by forefathers like the Gonz as well as this-gen figureheads such as Van Wastell, Mike Anderson is doing the right tricks and with panache. His switch 360 flip has meat on the bones and he can face down speed wobbles on hills and waterslides but what got me going more so than footage I’ve seen of this dude in the past is the almost disdainful nonchalance upon doing whatever trick. Thinking here ride-aways from the kickflip 50-50 stall and the frontside flip 50-50 on that humper-doodle. And maybe also the gap to switch backside 50-50, one of the better tricks in the whole video. To zero out the equation we can nod to the quiet gnarliness of the switch frontside 50-50 on the skinny bar, one of those I didn’t really notice the first couple times through.

Almost 30 videotapes/DVDs/mp4 files into the Transworld dynasty the makers tend to dig themselves into stylistic ruts but at this point they’ve got enough well-worn components to flex here and there. Witness the return of the intro montage for this one, with Toy bros trading shots at the same spot, some Leo Romero and a sorta puzzling-looking trick in a line by Josh Kalis. Judicious slow-mo applied to Dylan Rieder’s latest bench-clearing impossible that is as mind-bending as any of his other recent ones. Theotis Beasley and Nestor Judkins make their turns as rookie professionals and in the interest of a Beasley-esque focus on the positive it’s worth noting the thing of beauty that is the handrail kickflip backside tailslide in his part rather than moaning further regarding the uncalled-for censorship of an innocent Waka Flocka.

Was stoked to see Shane O’Neill’s ender-tribute to the Muska’s legendary kinker grind, many a summer Transworld vid ago, but to capture the hazed-out hands-in-the-air spirit of the Muska you really have to skip ahead to Wes Kremer’s fairly brilliant showing here, one of those examples of a dude who can put together a pretty complete skate video part without seeming to sweat it all that much. Shreds transition (pop-shove it noseslide), knows retro (kickflip tailgrab should have been in the section), gets gnarly (kink rail backside 50-50), can slow-float moves like the frontside shove-it over the bench, like how Kareem Campbell used to. By the time he wraps up the hydrant ollie line it’s consistent carnage until the end and if this early-90s get-live hip-hop closing part song thing becomes a trend, at least Wes Kremer is getting in on it while it’s still cresting.

Previously the late-model TWS vids have been compared to recent entries in the AC/DC catalog, with some comfort factor in knowing what you’re going to get, but the flipside is a risk of increasing disposability and fleeting impact — I’d be hard pressed to remember the last time “Hallelujiah” occupied the DVD tray, Tyler Bledsoe backside tailslides and all. Most new TWS vids at least initially seem to improve on the previous one but maybe in the era of daily webclips and internet-only parts the full-length production is bound to have a shorter shelf life especially if it’s a once-yearly affair? With the producers this time around seeming to make more of the fact that each summer’s TWS vid is filmed in “only one year” will they eventually shift the calendar to film for 18 months, or two years, to fully mobilize the hype machine for maximum sales powers? Would the Muska stand for his hardcore lyrics and/or lifestyle to be censored in a DVD? Didn’t say any of these questions would be answered, btw.