Watch this epic 8-minute Marc Johnson mix
Memory Screen remixes 16 years of MJ footage showcasing his magical combination of style and tech.
When I saw Girl’s Yeah Right in 2004 I hadn’t been following skating in a decade so I didn’t know who Marc Johnson was. But I became an instant fan and watched that part over and over again. Everything about it was cool — the effortless flip-in/flip-out tricks, the arms, the weird pushes in that night-time parking lot line, the baggy button-downs, the Joy Division song, fuck, the whole thing was just perfect. Nobody has managed to look as good just pushing on a skateboard while doing absurdly technical shit (and killing handrails) like Marc. By the time Yeah Right dropped he had been filming video parts for a decade and if you go down the YouTube rabbit hole you will not be disappointed.
Memory Screen did just that and pulled together clips from as far back as Maple’s Seven Steps to Perfection (1996) through to 2012’s Pretty Sweet for Girl. The choice of Built To Spill’s “The Plan” is perfect (he skated to it in 2000’s Modus Operandi which is definitely one of his top 5 parts) and though I wanted to mute Ladytron song I get that it captures a certain mid-00’s zeitgeist.
Overall its a great edit and a distillation of shockingly long run of epic skateboarding.
MJ’s unused Pretty Sweet footage made for a pretty good video part on it’s own.