Wind Moon Tide

Too Far Gone | The Ninth Wave

2011-06-21T21:51:00.000-07:00

Australian Surfing Awards | Surf Photo of the Year | Top 20 Finalist

Photo // Mark Onorati

“I’ve been surfing single-fins exclusively for years now. Five, six, seven years maybe? It started with me surfing a couple of my old man’s boards out of curiosity. I was really enjoying the mental battle with the technique required to ride them, a greater focus on functional style rather than full performance. I got TF back into the shaping bay and the first couple of single-fins he shaped me were unbelievable. And once I got onto Terry’s boards all these people started crossing my path, guys who were surfing these TF originals. People were coming out of the woodwork with boards they’d found under houses or at the back of surf shops; winged pins and Drifters and Slingshots. All these people and boards were coming into my life, and we’d surf together and swap boards, and it became like this little fringe cult. I was so into it, that by the time I realised what was going on a couple of years had gone past without me surfing a thruster. I was just surfing my way through all these different boards, and by that stage I was too far gone. I was done with thrusters, done and dusted. I haven’t ridden one since and I don’t miss them. Nah, not at all.

“By this stage my style had completely adjusted to fuller rails and flatter rockers and single-fin drive, rather than the squirtier performance you get from a thruster. The soul arch? Yes, granted, the soul arch has been a part of the Kye Fitzgerald repertoire long before I gave up thrusters, but on this wave it came naturally. It’s pure function here, not for show. I swung into that wave late and had a lot of speed at the bottom of the wave, and I used the soul arch to really project myself down the line into the barrel. The soul arch is a functional part of single-fin surfing; projecting yourself forward to generate speed. I just didn’t know at the time that the soul arch here was so exaggerated, the form through my body. When I saw the photo I was like, ‘Holy shit, I’m really laying that soul arch out.’ I was just utilising a bit of body torque which I inherited from Big T. I’ve got a very similar body shape to TF when he was at his fighting weight, and ever since I was young he was always teaching me about using your hips and your body weight to generate momentum.

“It’s funny; it’s not the difference single-fins have made to my surfing so much, it’s the difference they’ve made to my perspective of surfing. It’s become a lot more esoteric than what it used to be, it’s become so much more about getting out there and not ripping the shit out of a wave. It’s now more about tapping into the energy of the wave and of the ocean. The simplicity of these boards allows that to happen. I’ve embraced a single fin culture and I’m beginning to understand a little bit more about what guys got out of surfing these boards in the seventies. They’ve changed why I surf as much as how I surf.

“But everyone goes through changes in their surfing careers, don’t you reckon? Just like you go through changes in your life. Sometimes they happen together. You surf thrusters as a kid, and you see Kelly and Occy and you want to be those guys, push your performance surfing. But then you come out the other end and you mature and you have different perspectives on life, and it just so happened that my single-fin surfing came along at a time when I was making that transition and it was perfect for me. When you think about the history with my old man, it’s an obvious natural path for me to take, and that’s why it’s happened very organically.”

– Kye Fitzgerald

Single Fin Serendipity | The Unusual Return of Bobby Owens' Magic Board

2011-02-01T16:42:00.000-08:00

Bobby Owens is a gentlemen surfer with great technical focus. Bobby, and the unlikely event of finding his borrowed board, was the catalyst that created this clip. Special thanks to Jack McCoy and the great Dickie Hoole. Kye Fitz.

| Music | Bearhug | Spunk Records

Morning Of The Earth

2010-10-24T23:27:00.000-07:00

Morning of the Earth ( 1972 ) made by Alby Falzon was intended as an e nvironmental statement presenting or suggesting an idealistic world in which surfers lived in harmony with the powers of nature. This was presented without narration or sub titles, and without any attempt to identify the surfing or the surfer’s locations, using music and imagery to provide an emotional context, and the lyrics of songs to reinforce its simple message. Source : Surfmovies | Albie Thoms

In doing so Alby Falzon captured the imagination of a surfing generation, and created a piece, that still speaks in many different volumes to surfers today. Environmentalism, Freedom, Conscience, Peace. Alby lets you decide. KF

Runa Islam

2010-10-24T17:32:00.000-07:00

Runa Islam makes film and video installations to explore notions of truth and fiction, subjectivity and authorship. Her work aims to blur the distinctions between film art and cinema, and encourages a range of interpretations from viewers, Runa’s unsurpassed simplistic focus on her subjects, without narration or titles, lets the viewer see what they want to see.

Trust Directed by Runa Islam, a piece commissioned by the United Nations Office for Human Rights

The Cosmic Children | Dave Brubeck

2010-09-03T00:37:00.000-07:00

The Cosmic Children

1971 marked the feature debut of Hal Jepson, who went on to be one of America’s leading surf movie producers. The Cosmic Children featured surfing in California and Hawaii with established stars such as Hakman , Nuuhiwa, Rolf Aurness and Barry Kanaiaupuni. The film claimed a hippy tagline which it didn’t really reflect, ‘the cosmic children are the dynamic space-age surfers who feel the juice of the ocean swells’, it’s Hakmans surfing in classic Hawaiian perfection that are the honest highlight’s of this film.

The film failed to have much impact on Australian audiences as it fell into a basket alongside other American releases panned by the purists Eflick and Witzig who used Tracks editorial to criticize the commercialism of American surf movies. Source : Surfmovies by Albe Thoms

The opening scene showcases some of the worst surfing in the film, but, perfectly captures the relaxed social atmosphere surrounding a careless sunny mid morning surf session. Dave Brubeck’s track Take Five (1961) could be seen as a risk to open a 70’s surf film, debunking a little of the commercial argument leveled at The Cosmic Children.

Mid Morning Jazz

2010-09-03T00:10:00.000-07:00

Mid Morning Jazz Session | Experimenting with a 5'10 Modern Double Wing Swallow Tail shaped by Terry Fitzgerald set up with a 2 x 1 Single Fin and Side Stabilizers | Mark Onorati Photo's

Little Yellow Big Green

2010-08-05T07:23:00.000-07:00

Max Tag Hawaii | Sean Davey Photo's

Little Yellow and Big Green are two Double Wing Swallow Single Fins that Terry Fitz shaped for Max Tag. Max had both of the boards under his wings for his first trip to the North Shore of Oahu. Little Yellow a 5'10, and Big Green being Yellows older brother, a fetching 6'10. Max surfed the boards low. His center of gravity sat well over the Single working with the Double Wings to hang tight.

Once the boards were home they enjoyed a Northern Beaches morning session together in June.

Double Wing Swallow | NB Session | Mark Onorati Photo's

The Innermost Limits of Pure Fun | Soundtrack by Farm

2010-08-03T06:51:00.000-07:00

The Soundtrack to George Greenough's 1968 surf movie written and performed by Dennis Dragon (before the Surf Punks ), his brothers Doug and Daryl, (the Captain before Tennille ), and Denny Aaberg, (before Big Wednesday ).
The lead guitarist Denny Aaberg was a keen surfer and well known surf writer from Pacific Palisades ("Big Wednesday" was based on Denny Aaberg's surfing youth, with Bill Pritchard who is also in this soundtrack band), while others in the band have been Beach Boys-connected in the 1980s-90s. Ernie Knapp played bass with the Beach Boys for a year or more, while Dennis Dragon did sound work for them.

THE INNERMOST LIMITS OF PURE FUN … DENNY AABERG.

By Mark Bannerman.

The year was 1968. The place, Lennox Head, on the North Coast of New South Wales. A blonde-headed man in a black wetsuit is standing by the shore as a cool, offshore wind combs the top of the waves that wrap around the headland, running down its boulder-strewn point. The world of surfing and surf photography are about to change forever.

The man in question is George Greenough.

Californian by birth, but drawn to the empty waves of Australia. He has a plan. It’s simple really. To make a surf film like no other.

Since the late 1950s, selected surfers had taken their film cameras, set up on the beach, and captured the art of riding waves. What they came up with delighted thousands, but what those films could not capture was the most frequently asked question from a non-surfer to a surfer ... What’s it like to be out there?

George Greenough wanted to answer the question. Not just what it was like to be out there, but what it was like to be in the tube or the “tooob” as Americans preferred to call it.
Strapping to his back what now looks like a very bulky film camera, in a waterhousing, Greenough kick/paddled his kneeboard out into the ocean, caught a wave and hit the button. The results are startling. The movie that delivered this incredible experience to surfers and non surfers alike was appropriately called The Innermost Limits of Pure Fun.

That footage alone would be enough to make this film a must-see, but Greenough has something else to boast of. When he began filming the band of surfers who called the North Coast home in the winter of 1968, the boards were around eight and half-foot in length. By the time he came back to finish the film, in 1969, they had shrunk to less than six feet. As he watched the rushes of his film it became clear he had, by luck, caught what’s now known as the shortboard revolution, in living colour. One more thing needed to happen though.

Greenough was an innovator and eccentric, and he wanted no dialogue, no script. Music would be the narrator. To create a soundtrack he needed a like-minded soul who understood music. For that he turned to a young college student he knew in Santa Barbara, California. His name was Denny Aaberg. George told his friend he wanted a soundtrack that would enhance the movie. Aaberg had no experience at all with soundtracks, and not much knowledge of studio recording techniques, but he wasn’t daunted.

Aaberg immediately contacted some local musicians he knew, the Dragon brothers, Dennis, Daryl and Doug. As he told me this week, “They were real pros. Dennis would sit by his drums with a four-track recorder, hit the record button, count the band in and presto. But there was something they all needed. If they were to do a soundtrack for specific scenes they needed to see the movie. George’s answer was simple. Project the movie on a sheet wherever they set up to record. Sometimes they would convene in a house, sometimes an empty cinema. One some occasions they would record outdoors when the light was right, with George rolling his projector and the band jamming on a musical theme or riff.

They needed a name for the band. According to Denny the name wasn’t hard to find. “The music we had was organic and our crop was music so we simply called the band ‘Farm’.”
It’s a wonderful picture. George Greenough would come to Denny and say, “I want the feel of groundswell coming across the ocean. Get the base to go boom ba-boom, you know Denny?” And Denny of course did know, because he was also a surfer. If you listen to the soundtrack now you can hear the interaction as the music and the pictures mesh perfectly.

In one marvellous scene George Greenough is driving his V-12, that’s right, V-12 Cadillac to the beach. The music drops immediately into 12-bar blues that perfectly reflects the scene before us. Famously too, as the surfers head for the beach, they come across a smashed-up, old car, and the song crumpled car comes to life. At every step the band is right behind the images.

The finale though is creating the music for the scenes where George and his camera drop into the tube, riding inside the wave. Years later Greenough would borrow a Pink Floyd track called Echoes for his excursions inside the tube on a film called Crystal Voyager. Remarkably Farm create a Floyd-type piece of music way before Floyd had done it themselves.

Talking to Denny Aaberg, down a crackly mobile phone line this week, I asked him was he amazed looking back how they were able, with no experience, to do all this. He paused for a moment and said, “The times were different. It was cheap to live, you could try things. Santa Barbara was a good place. I miss those times.”

Talking to him I was keen to know what happened to The Farm. Nothing much it seems. They were offered a recording contract but the other musos said, “No”, they wanted to do other things. Denny himself ended up writing the screenplay for the film Big Wednesday. Daryl Dragon became the Captain from Captain and Tenille ( a ’70s pop act).

“It was a shame,” says Denny, “Everyone went their own way.” His voice drops, and there is a short silence down the line. It’s easy to understand his reflection. The Innermost Limits captures a time, a simple time. It captures too a moment of magic, when people rode waves for the fun of it and fortunately people like George Greenough and Farm were there to document it. It’s now 40 years since the movie was released, but it’s no less powerful for the time that’s passed. It left its mark on Denny Aaberg, and it will almost certainly leave a mark on anyone who watches it. It was a time, Denny Aaberg says, “Anything was possible.”

Epilogue

The Innermost Limits of Pure Fun proved an enormous hit on the surfmovie circuit but also made an impact outside surfing circles, where it was included in teh spring exhibition of Sydney's Yellow House Artists in September 1971. There it was seen as a work of art by many visitors to the exhibition, including the the psychedelic rock group Pink Floyd, and was recognized for it's innovatory fimmaking that transcended the the surfmovie genre : source Surfmovies by Albe Thoms