Milton Keynes, Saffron Walden, Plan B

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Style Pass

2024-12-02 19:30:03

I’ve been thinking about Nick Drake recently, which isn’t surprising as this week is the 50th anniversary of his death. Drake released three albums of music that never achieved any level of praise or popularity until long after his passing. It’s a shame he would never see that success.

On the flip side it’s fortunate that he created a few small cultural artefacts that would go on to hugely influence other people in positive ways. That includes myself, as I found his music through my dad’s record collection, and it probably had a small part in some of my formative years.

There’s probably a thread that I could draw from here to there, my present situation back to the point I discovered the 12” compilation that featured one of Drake’s songs. But I could probably draw that thread through many things, it’s hard to say which influence is more important than another.

In fact I’ll lay a claim down here, seventeen years later, that it’s the best skateboarding photograph anyone ever took at the Milton Keynes skate plaza. Not just for the reasons that make skateboard photographs good, but all the other reasons like aesthetics, composition, historical context, documentation of a moment. All that stuff.