Saturday, February 21, 2026

The Big Push- Ren- and Chinchilla- Great young musicians from the U.K.


The Big Push covering Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus," last summer in Bristol.  This video just dropped last week on YouTube.  The Big Push formed in 2017, in the U.K., and is made up of Ren Gill, Romain Axisa, Gorran Kendall, and Glenn Chambers.  Ren, Romain, and Gorran switch off on lead vocals and backing vocals, depending on the song.  Most of the time, Romain plays lead guitar.  Ren plays lead guitar on occasion, as well as rhythm guitar and bass.  Gorran plays acoustic guitar, rhythm guitar, and bass.  These guys are best known for a whole bunch of great street performing videos playing a really wide variety of cover songs, with many millions of views among them.  Simply put, they rock.  This post will link a few of my favorite videos from The Big Push, as well as some of Ren's solo and duet work, mind blowing videos, and raps, and Chinchilla's work.  If you like any of these, there are many more videos on YouTube, and probably elsewhere, to check these amazing musicians out.  


And to all the salty, crusty, old geezers like me, The Big Push, Ren, and Chinchilla are proof that not all new music sucks.  










Ren

This mind blowing original song and video changed my life.  An old BMX freestyle friend in England, Alex Leech, shared this video on Facebook, shortly after it came out on YouTube.  I think it had less than 3 million views when I first watched it, about three years ago, this video has over 65 million views now.  After watching this video, and several other of Ren's videos that night, I started writing poetry again.  I had only written 3 or 4 poems between 2008 and 2022.  I managed to lose all copies of ten years worth of poetry, 165 of the best poems I've ever written, in 2008, when I got pushed out of California and wound up in living in North Carolina for ten years.  After losing that much work (and all my video master tapes and raw footage), the poetry in me just left.  I had no urge to write poems.  

The utter brilliance of "Hi Ren" motivated me to try and start writing poems again.  I haven't written that many, but most of the new poems I've written since (like this one) have been pretty decent, long epic poems.  I also took a break from the kind of Sharpie drawings I had been doing for years, those based on classic photos of musicians, and I drew a couple of big Sharpie Scribble Style drawings straight out of my head.  I did that just to get out of my personal rut, and challenge myself a bit creatively.  Seriously, this song and video had an incredible creative effect on me.  Thanks Ren.  I still watch this video sometimes to get into a deep, creative vibe.  







Ren X Chinchilla  (Ren duets with Chinchilla- about 2021-22)


Ren X Chinchilla- "How to be me" live  This is a fucking incredible song and performance. 



Chinchilla- 






These five young people from the U.K. are all incredible musicians.  If any of these tracks piqued your interest, dig into their work on YouTube and anywhere else you find music, there's a lot more out there.  


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Friday, February 13, 2026

Keith Treanor podcast on The Union Tapes


Keith Treanor, born and raised in New Jersey, came out to Huntington Beach and rode and rode and rode and wound up riding for S&M Bikes for years.  In this podcast, #43 for The Union Tapes podcast out of the U.K., Keith goes through his life in BMX, from early days on the East Coast, the days coming up as an unknown amateur in the Huntington Beach/Orange County, California scene, and all through his years as a pro riding for S&M Bikes.  

I remember meeting Keith at the Oceanview Jump, a freestyler fly out jump at Oceanview High School in Huntington Beach.  That jump was an amazing set-up, a long, concrete sidewalk runway to a 6 1/2 foot high jump up to flat.  Keith flat out RULED on that jump, no one even came close to getting as high out of the Oceanview Jump as Keith did.  In my 1990 video, The Ultimate Weekend, Oceanview made for a cool jumping segment (for that time) at 23:22* in the video.  In one shot, Keith is a good 10 feet out, in a full tuck, landing to flat.  That was insane for that era, where you could easily snap a frame or forks coming down from that high up.  I've personally seen Keith go a good 1 1/2 to 2 feet higher than that, 12 feet up to flat, but didn't get it on video.  
Keith Treanor with a one handed 360 at the Oceanview fly out jump, which they mention in the interview.  He's about 4 feet up, going from right to left, in this still shot.  

I was already shooting video footage on the weekends, to make my own video, which became The Ultimate Weekend, when I remember meeting Keith and John Povah at Oceanview.  I used to ride there, as well.  When I started making that video, GT rider Jess Dyrenforth was supposed to be the star of the video.  But every time I wanted to go shoot video, Jess was busy.  He was riding for GT Bikes, and was deep into the inline skating world, as well.  After I met Keith and John, I'd call them up, and Keith was always down to ride, and John was too, when not busy with his auto painting job.  Keith was young, hungry, and would just go off anywhere we went, so he ended up being the star of the video.  
Here's another still shot from The Ultimate Weekend, with Keith doing the first 360 over a spine ever to appear in a BMX video.  Gary Laurent did a 360 over the spine a few minutes later.  In 1990, peg grinds, mini-ramps, handrails, and a lot of things were just starting to happen at the time, so every video of that era had lots of "world firsts" or "firsts on video" in it.   

This mini-ramp set up above was amazing for its day, this was the backyard of freestyle skaters Primo and Diane Desiderio, who were working in the City Streets show at Sea World at the time.  Gary Laurent also rode in the show, I believe, and he got the OK to take us to this ramp, even though Primo and Diane weren't home.  Gary had those ramps wired, but he had never tried a 360 over the spine.  Keith, still really new to mini-ramps, because only a couple of them existed then, stepped it up to 3 over the spine.  Then Gary had to do it. Because riding was evolving so fast then, every video that came out in that era had a bunch of world firsts, or firsts on video.  So this was only the second or third mini-ramp ever in a BMX video, and Keith did the first 360 over a spine on video.  These are just a few of my memories of those early days (1990-1994ish) hanging out and riding with Keith and John Povah.  

There's a whole lot more in the podcast above, Keith talks us through his whole BMX career.  If you're a rider from the 1990's era, check it out.  

The Ultimate Weekend- 1990 - Beginning with 7 shots in the intro, Keith Treanor appears throughout the video.  






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* Right before the Oceanview segment, there's a shot of me doing a double peg grind on a little ledge in Huntington Beach in early August of 1990.  That year, 1990, the year I was working on shooting and producing the video, The Ultimate Weekend, was the year that BMX freestylers took double peg grinds, the BMX version of a 50/50 grind on a skateboard, onto the streets.  In this ridiculously self-serving Substack post, I dug into the various people who did the first double peg street grinds on video, and approximately when they did them.  If you are interested in the very beginning of the double peg grinds that led to all of handrail, hubba, and ledge grinds in the last 35 years, check this post out.  







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Tuesday, December 30, 2025

Silver is up 154 % in 2025 and "Asian Guy" is trending on Fin YouTube


This is "Asian Guy." Seriously, that's what he calls himself now.  Who is he really?  How does he know so much about the precious metals and financial markets?  Is that really him, or is it an AI avatar?  Is this a PR campaign from China?  Is it a PR campaign out of London?  Is it a PR campaign out of J.P. Morgan (who now reportedly holds 700 million to 1.1 billion ounces of silver in their vaults)?  Nobody seems to know for sure.  

I stumbled into one of his videos on Christmas Eve, four days ago, and have been hooked since.  He has a real name, he said it in at least one video.  He also said he's been a trader in London for over 20 years.  He has multiple channels, and he talks about more than just silver.  I think the guy we see is an AI created version of him, not actually him.  Obviously all the graphics (which can be really weird and really funny at times) are AI created.  I don't think he's a Chinese PR campaign.  I don't think he's a J.P. Morgan PR campaign either.  Whoever he (or the team) is, he/they are INCREDIBLY knowledgeable about precious metals, commodities trading, economics though history, and Big Picture dynamics in economics, financial markets, and industrial processes and infrastructure.

Pure and simple, he's WAY TOO INFORMATIVE to be a government or bank PR campaign.  His quick Disclaimer says he or his business may hold positions in the markets he talks about.  His insights are fucking mind blowing.  He's way too smart to work for the government, media, or a PR firm.  My best guess, having watched several videos, is that's he a trader who's kind of sick of the BS, and decided to school people on how these markets work.  He's been making videos for at least a month or two before the recent silver market drama exploded.  In any case, he's the new hot trend on Financial You Tube, and conspiracy theories about him are starting to pop up.  

Here's a video from 4 months ago on his Financial Historian channel, and there are only 16,000 views.  This channel is really informative, if you're into economics and history.  If there was a huge PR machine behind this guy, he'd have a lot more views, and the posts would all be super dumbed down, like Fox News.  I actually watched a couple of these videos before the first silver video popped up on my feed.  Whomever he is, whatever the reason he/they is/are making these videos, there's A LOT to be learned from them.  

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Monday, December 1, 2025

Greyson Fletcher's new "Hellion" segment


Just watch this video.  

I remember going to the Action Sports trade shows in San Diego in the mid 1990's and seeing this little kid running around.  "That's Christian Fletcher's son," someone said.  He's a fourth generation member of the Fletcher surfing dynasty, Great Grandpa Fletcher was a surfing and big wave pioneer.  Grandpa Herbie Fletcher is the well known surfer and legendary surf filmmaker Herbie Fletcher.  Grandma is a really good artist.  Dad Christian Fletcher took short board surfing vertical, airing off waves, and ripping in general.  Uncle Nathan Fletcher pushed surfing even further.  

Coming up in that family, we could definitely understand if Greyson found it hard to forge his own path, and make a name for himself.  But he just tore it up in his own way, found his own path, and in his mid-30's now has this absolutely insane new skate segment.  Just watch the video.  

When I was driving a taxi in Huntington Beach in the 2000's, I had Christian Fletcher in my cab twice.  One time he was pretty blitzed, and decided he wanted to autograph the dashboard.  I talked him out of that, since I didn't own the taxi, and had him sign my taxi permit instead.  That autographed permit was in the storage unit that got auctioned off when I wound up moving back East in 2008.  I'm still bummed about that.  
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Monday, November 24, 2025

The Many lives of a Great Song- Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"


The Big Push, from the U.K., covering "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," live on the beach, in the fall of 2025.  This has become my favorite cover of this song, eclipsing the Guns N' Roses version from 1990 on a soundtrack, and 1991 on the Use Your Illusion II album.  

Bob Dylan wrote this song for the soundtrack of the 1973 movie, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.  Dylan even played a role in the movie. The song was released a couple of months later as a single, and became one of several songs Dylan is best known for. "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" has been covered by all kinds of people, in several different styles, ever since.  Here are some of the best versions over the years.  






















I have question marks on a lot of the dates because I'm going by the year it was loaded onto YouTube, and the performances may have been recorded earlier.  


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Wednesday, November 19, 2025

My Funeral Music Playlist (just planning ahead)


OK, there's a story behind this post, I'm not trying to be totally morbid.  I was at McDonald's the other day, talking to a friend, and Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" came on in the background.  I said, "I want this song to play at my funeral."  He replied, "You're crazy."  I agreed, laughed, and said, "Yeah, I want the hearse to be bumpin' this song really loud as they drive to the cemetery.  He just shook his head. 

But I was serious.  OK, I'm homeless (living in a "tiny home community" at the moment) and basically broke.  If I don't get my shit together at some point, there's a pretty good chance I'll just keel over on the sidewalk somewhere, some day, and get cremated or put in a potter's grave, with no funeral service.  But on the chance I get my shit together, and someone actually has a funeral for me, or some kind of memorial service, I want people to remember the times I made them laugh, or the times they laughed with me, or even the times the laughed at me.  I truly do want to put the "FUN" back in funeral on my way out of this life.  

With that in mind, I wrote down two or three songs that I'd want to play at my funeral or memorial service.  I started thinking about those songs this morning, and wound up with a list of 21 songs.  To be clear, I'm in no hurry to kick the bucket, but I figured I might as well go ahead and make a funeral music playlist.  I like to plan ahead.  I just put the whole thing on my YouTube channel: Steve Emig's Funeral Playlist.  So it's there, for anyone who wants to check it out.  

Here are the songs I selected, in order.  I lined them up so that if this music was playing in the background of my memorial service, or the hangout meal afterwards, most people probably wouldn't really catch the theme of the playlist until about halfway through.  Yes, I have a dark, fucked up, sense of humor.  It's served me well many times.  This is another example of that.  






"Fire on High" - ELO (listen to the backward masking in the intro)















"I'm Free" - The Who  (Wishful thinking)

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Saturday, September 27, 2025

AFA Masters flatland- Austin, Texas- 1987


Has anybody done a podcast with Don Hoffman (Pipeline Skatepark/Unreel Productions/Vision)?  Somebody should.  Same with Frank Scura and Bob Morales (who started the AFA).  On camera we have Frank Scura in the intro, and Don Hoffman behind the camera.  Bob Morales put on the contest, and I was a roadie at it, and rode in the comp as well.  This is the third video I produced and directed in 1987.  Nearly an hour of 1980's flatland.  Officially, this video is titled Texas Pro Flatland.  Enjoy.  

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The Big Push- Ren- and Chinchilla- Great young musicians from the U.K.

The Big Push covering Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus," last summer in Bristol.  This video just dropped last week on YouTube. ...