Best Sections of All-Time: September Sessions finale

Ah retrospect. That dirty trick. As I watch this section and think of where everyone featured in it went, I get happy/sad — you know, like when you cry at a wedding and think of all the ones you let get away before tearing into too many rum and Cokes and embarrassing yourself on the dance floor? That little moment , sitting alone watching your friend get hitched to the girl of his dreams and just before you start scanning the room for the love of our life. That sentiment.

September Sessions is post-Momentum Gen but pre-crumbling of Momentum Gen, it’s sorta right in there. It is by and large a classic — and showcases “the boys” getting slightly irie about life and surfing which is — again in retrospect — actually a pretty poetic and prescient moment. Little did I know at the time that they were so perfectly articulating what would be so poorly interpreted for the following two decades

As I write to you from a place with more wave pools and dead surf brands, mags, movies than exciting new ones, a place with negativity all over the “core” industry — a place with zero sex appeal, zero punk appeal and zero social credit, I think of this part in September Sessions. This is sexy, punk and full of credibility all at once now that I see it again and it isn’t even really trying to be any of those things.

Let’s forget that Jack Johnson went on to make more banana pancakes than any other surfer/musician of all-time and he’s still counting cash from sharing his pancakes with Curious George — for this moment, for this 3-minute section, set to Jack’s song “F-Stop Blues (I think) that you could only bootleg at the time, Kelly and crew sound like unironic philosophers and Jack Johnson sounds like the right kind of “surf music.”—Travis Ferré