Once upon a time a couple of skateboarders from Venezuela decided to start a band and make music for skateboarding videos. As plans go, it wasn’t a bad one; any number of cool bands got their start on extreme sports videos — skateboarding videos being the original purveyor of thrashing fun.
So it was in 2010 that Samantha Ambrosio and Miguel Fraino left Venezuela for Mexico City and put their plan into action. And what was this skate punk duo with stoner, psychedelic and dub influences going to call themselves? Well why not invoke the influential skateboarder John Cardiel? You could hardly pick a more inspirational figure, to judge by this profile of Cardiel for Transworld Skateboarding in 1993, which said:
“The mark John is making in the skate scene is like a terminal illness. He can never be cured, and he just won’t go away. John is just 100 percent balls out all the time, and he is destined to win and become a legend in his own time. If cojones were measured by the size of eggs, John Cardiel’s would be those of an ostrich.”
The plan worked: Cardiel the band merged a fast, aggressive sound with psychedelic dub and has become a force within skate sub-culture worldwide. They became icons in their adopted Mexico, playing events for Vans and Thrasher before making their way to SXSW in Austin, Texas, in 2015 and 2017.
Ambrosio and and Fraino have toured with Pennywise, Radio Moscow, Teenage Bottlerocket, Torche, American Sharks, H2O, Green Jelly and AJ Dávila, among many others. Their exploits have taken them across the Americas and to Europe. More recently they toured the U.S. West Coast with Ladrones — fellow polycultural punks, themselves hailing from Atlanta, Georgia by way of San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Cardiel’s all-out commitment to what they do embodies skate culture at its best. Ambrosio and Fraino are pursuing their vision with an intensity and dedication that would make their namesake proud. Skate or die, as the saying goes.
Cardiel, with Goat Rope, Rude Television and Headfoam, play 9pm Saturday, August 26 at Propaganda in Lake Worth. cardieltheband.com ~ Tim Moffatt
