Annie's Song.

John Denver was one of my favourite musicians. He wrote a lot of great songs and seemed to be able to capture the simple joys in life so eloquently and so beautifully.

We have a few things in common. Unfortunately, one of them is that he died on my 21st birthday.
I remember it vividly, having had a very good and extremely drunken night at my joint birthday/grandparents anniversary party (their wedding anniversary is the same day as my birthday) in Aberdeen, somebody told me that John Denver had died in a plane crash.

The effect this event had on me was profound. I couldn't say that I was a huge fan at the time, but I remember this great sense of loss. This was the first person that I cared about that had died.

Perhaps it was the John Denver and the Muppets Christmas Album that my mum had, how it was always there throughout my childhood and now, in a sense it was gone. I don't know, but something was different...

The John Denver and the muppets Christmas album.

A few years later I purchased an acoustic guitar, I've always been more of an electric guitar guy, but I gave it a shot and while learning a few songs on it I decided to buy a John Denver  songbook and some of his albums.

Annie's Song was a beautiful song and quickly became one of my favourites to play, the chord progression was challenging and it sounded great. The depth of emotion in the lyrics really struck a chord with me.

Here's what I found on the internet about the song:

"Denver wrote this for his then-wife Ann Martell after their first separation and near break up of their marriage in 1974. He said that it was one of the fastest songs he ever wrote, composing it in about 10 minutes while he was riding on a ski lift in Aspen, Colorado. Denver was reflecting on all the joy he found in his marriage and his relief that they were back together. Wrote Denver: "Suddenly, I'm hypersensitive to how beautiful everything is. All of these things filled up my senses, and when I said this to myself unbidden images came one after the other. All of the pictures merged and I was left with Annie. That song was the embodiment of the love I felt at that time.""

That's all very well, but what does this have to do with skateboarding? I hear you ask...

Well, there's been an "Annie" in my life for quite some time too. Old Skool Annie.
In 2005 when I still had the shop, we decided to celebrate the second anniversary of Black Mark Skateboards by hosting an "Old Skool Jam" at Dunfermline skatepark.

It was "International Go Skateboarding Day" and we decided to do something a bit different.
We had genuine relics of skateboarding's past as prizes on the day and we hosted such events as the high jump (highest "hippy jump" over a bar) and, among other things; highest air. Using this ramp as the basis.

Unfortunately, due to the sheer size and the steep transition, very few people actually managed to even get over the ramp on the day.  I recently rediscovered this ramp at the back of my shed and I thought it was about time that she was cut down to size so that she could be used by the next generation.

Kyle's skating is really coming on and I remember how great it was the first time that I managed over a launch ramp, so I decided to give "Annie" a new lease of life and turn her into something we could both use to further our skating in the future.

Although we didn't actually film any skating on the ramp, this video is my version of a tribute to John Denver, I hope you like it...