Soundtracks: Louie Barletta
Photos by Jeff Davis.
In February, after three years of quietly attempting to buy the brand, Louie Barletta posted on Instagram the words, ‘We got enjoi back.’
After the announcement, I called Louie, intending to talk about the process of buying enjoi back and what was in store for the second coming of the brand that made Pantone 144c famous. However, moments before taking the call, I realised I was wearing a Heavenly T-shirt (the band he skated to in Maple’s 1999 video, Black Cat). As I picked up the call, I pointed out my t-shirt, and serendipitously, a conversation I had always wanted to have with Louie about the music that he’s skated to began.
For those curious about the monumental enjoi buyback, the Slam City Skates blog published an incredible interview with Louie, discussing it all in detail.
I didn’t even realise I was wearing this until just then, but look, I’m wearing a Heavenly shirt. I always thought it was so sick that you skated to their song “Tool” in Black Cat.
Whoa, that is so sick. I love that band. I was really into a lot of the bands on K Records, and I always thought it would be so cool to skate to a Heavenly song. They’re so underrated; people never speak about them enough.
Oh, for sure. They’re so underrated. You, Jerry [Hsu] and Marc [Johnson] were into such good music at that time; Marc skating to Stereolab in his 411 profile, and Jerry wearing My Bloody Valentine shirts. Observing as an outsider, it feels like at that time, not that many people in skateboarding were listening to that stuff.
Totally. Back then, we had a routine where Marc, Chris Avery and I would go skating, then once we were done, we’d go to the record store. I brought The Smiths, Chris brought in My Bloody Valentine, and Marc was really into things like Stereolab. Our crew was this melting pot of rad music.
At that time, it really felt like skate videos had a set formula for what you could do with the music; that, for the most part, was on the tough guy side of things, being either hip hop or something hesh, but you guys were so outside of that.
One of the coolest things about Marc was that he was going big, yet being tech and using Stereolab, which was this soft, cool music. What really co-signed it was Cairo Foster using Modest Mouse in Reel to Real. That made it totally cool to have the juxtaposition of gnarly skating to soft, beautiful music.
It’s funny too because looking at it now, a band like Modest Mouse doesn’t seem outsider by any means, but at the time, it was so far from the music associated with skateboarding.
I trip out on that. When I was young and listening to The Smiths, I would go to early Morrissey shows; there would only be thirty people there, and it would be the same people I saw at the last show. It was such a small group of people who were into that kind of music. I trip out now that it’s so popular
Totally.
I can go back to the exact moment when I realised the specialness of music was gone. Right when iPods came out, I was in this dude’s car; he put his iPod on shuffle, and a song from a live bootleg Joy Division album started playing. I found that record in an Australian record store and paid $150 for it. I freaked out when it started playing and was like, ‘No way you have this album,’ he just went, ‘I don’t even know what this is, I just downloaded a bunch of music off someone else’s iPod.’ It crushed me to be like it took me forever to find that record, I paid a bunch of money for it, then this dude just has it on his iPod and doesn’t even know what it is. That was the moment when I realised music wasn’t as special as it once was.
Damn. It must’ve been so wild seeing that change in music being so inaccessible to extremely accessible.
It was so strange.
Did you choose all your songs other than “Young Turks” by Rod Stewart in Bag of Suck?
Yeah, I definitely didn’t pick the Rod Stewart one [laughs]. I definitely picked “Take On Me” by A-ha for Man Down, but I remember giving them four or so songs to choose from for that part. Jerry picked “Age of Consent” by New Order for our shared part in Subject to Change, but that isn’t off by much. We were both listening to New Order a lot during that time, and when he suggested it, it was very clear that’s what we were going to skate to.
I couldn’t imagine the Subject to Change part to anything else.
I go through these weird phases where, for example, with that song, I loved it so much, then we used it, and then I couldn’t listen to it again. But now, we’ll be driving, that song will come on the radio, I’ll turn it all the way up and be like, ‘This is a really good song, who skated to it?’ Or I’ll be with some young am’s and be like ‘This would be a good song to skate to’ just to fuck with them. For karaoke, my go-to is the A-ha song for sure, I’ll go up there and karaoke the fuck out of that [laughs].
Man, that’s so good. There’s a story I heard where Rick McCrank walked into a bar in Melbourne, they played “Deceptacon” by Le Tigre, and he just walked out.
No way, I’m backing it super hard. I think it’s funny you gotta do it
What is the story with you skating to Rod Stewart?
When we were still filming for Bag of Suck, I had a specific song I wanted to use. I was thinking of the tricks and where they would fit in certain parts of the song. When it was time to submit songs, I sent Matt [Eversole] the two songs I had in mind. He came back with the Rod Stewart song, and I was just like, ‘Dude, no.’ I didn’t know anything about Rod Stewart. I wasn’t a fan. Back then, you have to remember, the songs you picked helped define who you were. I wanted to skate to a song I was into and felt like a representation of me. I told him that, and he just handed me the hard drive and was like go edit your own part. I tried to play the footage to the song I liked, then played the Rod Stewart one, and it was obvious Matt was right.
What song did you want to skate to?
It was a 1960s Motown hit, “Then He Kissed Me” by The Crystals. The other song I was thinking of was “Pop Goes the World” by Men Without Hats.
Knowing “Pop Goes the World”, it would’ve been almost too obvious.
Yeah, for sure. The thing that was more upsetting for me was that “Young Turks” wasn't a song I had even thought of and wasn’t on my radar when I was filming.
Especially when all the other songs you had skated to, you really wanted to use them.
Absolutely, it’s like when we were talking about Heavenly, it’s a band that I knew, a band that I was into. People would come up to me and talk to me about Rod Stewart, and I was like I don’t know anything about this dude. The more I looked into him, I was like, yeah, this dude actually fits; he’s right on par with what I’ve got going on. But at the time, I was like, I have no idea, he’s like a 70s rock dude. I guess it was my own naivety on that one.
It's funny because it became the song associated with your skateboarding.
Totally. It’s like when you have Jerry’s songs that are so heavy, impactful, and so Jerry. Then, with my song, I’m like, I don’t even know why this is my song, but in hindsight, looking back, it totally works. It’s perfect.
One of my friends once said to me, Oververt was my Baker 3; it came out when I was fourteen. It’s the video that I’ve watched the most, and it shaped a lot of my music taste. I know you had a big hand in the editing of that video. How much of an input did you have in the soundtrack?
Wow, that’s so rad. We bought some editing computers, folding chairs, and took everything out of my living room. Then, Roger Bagley and our staff filmer at the time, Matt Mullen, moved into my house for a month, and we edited the video. The soundtrack for that video was already basically the soundtrack of my house.
A fun fact is that we reached out to Blondie first about getting the rights to “Union City Blue” because we were going to use it for Nestor [Judkins]. They were all stoked on skating and came back with a ridiculously low price. After that, we used it as leverage, so when every other band would say how much they wanted, and we’d show them the email of how much Blondie wanted to charge. They’d lower it every time.
Another good story is that for Thaynan’s [Costa] part, we reached out to INXS, and one of the dudes in the band was like ‘No, I don’t want this in a skateboarding video, I don’t give a shit about skateboarding.’ Then we told the other guys in the band, and they were like, ‘We hate that guy, we’re down for it.’ So, they overrode him because at the time, they were arguing and weren’t cool with each other.
“New Sensations” worked so well for his part.
That’s one of those songs where I’ve forever been like that would work so well for a skate video. It’s always just trying to find the right dude for it to work with.
You got all the songs so right for that video.
We really tried to make all the songs fit the personalities of everyone.
I know you originally had Blondie in mind, but “In Dreams” by Roy Orbison worked perfectly for Nestor.
So yeah, we originally wanted “Union City Blue” by Blondie, we edited the whole part to it, and were like, yeah, it’s pretty cool. We tried that Roy Orbison song, just laying it over the same edit, and I remember Roger being like ‘Dude, this is the song.’ Watching the footage to that song, it was like, this is Nestor for sure. I remember telling Nestor that he was going to skate to a Roy Orbison song, and he was so hyped when I told him it was the one from Blue Velvet.
I genuinely think it’s one of the best songs of all time. It works so well with the part, too; there’s a clip of him doing the Daffy down the double kink bank in China that always stands out to me with how well it works with the music.
Yes dude! We spent so long dissecting all that footage to just extract the gold in it. A lot of it was editing based on emotion. It bummed out some of the riders because they wanted some of their gnarlier tricks in it. But I’d be like, it just has this thing, you land, and you’re smiling on the other one you land, and you just look relieved. Roger and Matt are amazing editors; they crushed it. If you want to see a part that I had nothing to do with in that video, it's my part. I was like, I literally was like ‘I can’t watch myself skate, I don’t want to edit myself skate.’ I’m too critical of it, I’m like, ‘I don’t look like Mike Carroll, I look shitty.’ So, the week they were editing my part, I was doing all the titles, because I did them all by hand.
Were you just like here’s the song I want to skate to, do whatever?
Yeah. I wanted to use “Enola Gay” by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark a long time ago, but for whatever reason, it didn’t work. For Oververt, I was like I want to use it super bad and I’m glad it worked.
It felt like the perfect synthpop song to wrap up the other synthpop songs you had skated to in the past.
I mean, like it’s one of the most quintessential ones, it has everything that stood for the eighties.
Yeah, it’s one of OMD’s most powerful songs too.
It sucks you in, which is a big thing for me. We’re working on a Jacuzzi part for someone, and they’re so hellbent on using this artist, they don’t care what song, just that artist, but it’s like you got to find a song that brings up some feeling, some emotion. It’s like what do you want to be? Do you want to be the heavy metal guy, the soft, cruisy guy or what? The music defines all of that, which is what is so hard about navigating this music rights world, because it’s so hard to find that music you can emotionally bond to.
Totally, I think having an emotional aspect is so important. Even with Ben Raemers’ song, it gets pretty heavy and epic. When you guys do the ender together, it really punches you, which is so sick.
For sure. Raemers and Zack [Wallin] were the only ones who brought their own songs to the table.
It’s cool because those songs added something different to the video.
Yeah, we wanted to end something with a big “YEAH! Now we’re ready to go skate!” moment.
For sure.
It takes a lot of effort to really make a video. I get bummed when you watch a video, and it just looks like the timeline, especially when you’re out skating with those dudes all the time, you’re like, he did this trick, then the next weekend we went here, and he did this trick. Then, when it’s like that in the video, it’s like damn you didn’t build it out, you just basically put his life timeline to music.
Tweak the Beef had a super crazy and weird music selection. Where did those come from?
I personally didn’t have anything to do with the editing of Tweak the Beef. The video was going to be hosted by Thrasher, and at the time, they had a library of cleared music that you could use, so it was whatever music was in that folder.
That’s crazy, I’m shocked there was that library, some of those songs feel so rogue to be in a skate video.
Yeah, they were labels that had a deal with Thrasher where you could use any band on their labels.
There was also the Tiltmode video, Bonus Round, that came out around the same time, right?
That was a bit before, and I don’t think I necessarily picked that song [“Pure” by The Lightning Seeds] for my part. But that Cyndi Lauper song that’s in the bonus section, where it’s me with all my roommates, we would play it in my house all the time. It would be like ‘Alright, get out the Bacardi and put on Cyndi Lauper!’ It was the anthem of our house.
It’s so cool how you’ve been able to encapsulate all the eras of your life through these videos.
For me, these videos were all moments of my actual life. So it’s so trippy to talk about them with people who are like, ‘I was fourteen when it came out,’ and I’m like, I was running enjoi and all these things were happening in my personal life. It’s so different from my perspective, but it’s also a rad time stamp on where I was in my life outside of skateboarding.
That's such a nice thing about video parts is that it encapsulates everything of the time.
Totally, and I try to instil that in the younger riders, this part is going to be there forever, own it, try your best with it because once it’s out there, you can't change it, it’s done. Make it what you really want it to be.
How has it been choosing songs for Jacuzzi videos? Do you go into it differently from how you did with enjoi videos?
Early on, we knew there was a possibility to get enjoi back, so with everything Jacuzzi, we tried to make it as far from enjoi vibes as we could. One of the big things for that was the soundtrack. Almost all of that is my business partner, Jeff Davis, who does all the editing. When we met, I didn’t realise that he knew how to edit. I knew he shot good photos, but then all of a sudden, he started editing, and I was like oh hell yeah, you are the editing dude now, you’re killing it. He’s nailed all of it. That’s part of giving these guys ownership in it, that they get to step up, do their thing, and it’s their vibe and their style. I’m really proud of what Jeff’s done with it.
To wrap this up, I wanted to ask, what’s your favourite song you skated to?
In the DVD bonus section of Tiltmode Bonus Round, my roommates and I all skate to “The Goonies 'R' Good Enough” by Cyndi Lauper. It really sums up that era of our lives, just me and my closest buds skating to the song we’d play in our house every night.