Hey, I can sit here and try and write a 'deep and meaningful' on what Morning of the Earth meant, to me, to my generation, to surfing. I could be here a month. It all comes down to one word: AWESOME!
I used to leave my surfboard at this old doctor's house on top of the beach. He and his wife loved me and my brother. Ten years before they had the same love for a couple of other young surfers who left their boards in the doctor's garage. The day they left the doctor's life they gave him a copy of Morning of the Earth — something special from their lives to him as thanks. One night after the doctor and his wife had brought us in from the cold, fed us soup, biscuits and cups of tea, he put on his record. "I've got some surfing music," he told us. "It's very beautiful, i've always loved it. I listen to it quite often." I looked over the cover. I didn't know what it was. I didn't know that was MP in the centrespread doing his favourite cuttle in his famous red shorts. I didn't know nothing. I was just a kid being injected by Morning of the Earth for the first time. And it was beautiful. The music had so much peace and magic. my brother and I talked about it all the way home.
Over the next five years countless evenings were spent at the doctor's listening to his record. It kind of brought us together. Watching the film brings back that same warm glow that wandered through the doctor's house when the record was playing. There's farm life, houses built in the bush near point breaks, single fins, long hair, girlfriends, men building boards and then riding them, bottom turns, dope cock fights, nakednes, Indonesia, music, eyes, bongs, nature, ideas, Nat, truth, incredible surfing, board walking, facial growth wherever it grows, MP shaking like Elkington could only dream of, Sunset, board-shorts, Steve Cooney smiling, energy, adventure, realism, beauty, rock 'n' roll, resin, rovings, fiberglass, sanding, oceans — at every hour of the day, Kirra.
I could write pages and pages of imagery. They all float into my mind at various times of the day or week or whatever. This film isn't my favourite film —it's my favourite all time film. It has changed my life. It's made me stop and think and appreciate everything that goes on around me. The simplest things, like the sun, apples on a tree, and every other thing that brushes by me during the day. What else is there to say? This film is the 70's but it could be the 90's if you want it to be because time really is irrelevant. it's all in your mind.
If you never see this film you'll still be a surfer and a person:
you'll just find yourself a little vacant sometimes.
Words by Andrew Kidman
Morning of the Earth: was at a time when we were all discovering where we stood in the scheme of things. But it was such a new scheme. Surfing as a lifestyle, on the verge of becoming a professional sport and industry, yet, still retaining the essence of escape, of soul. Synergy with music underlined the ground broken by the images. A great soundtrack entwined with personalities exposed as pioneers of individual style.