Music influences our lives. No one can deny the connection between the lifestyles we lead, the styles we cultivate and the music we listen to. Historically, action sports and music have gone hand in hand and in many cases this connection has changed the musical landscape. The sports themselves have influenced trends in music and have helped give birth to new breeds of style.

Back in the 50's, Dick Dale started it all and is the widely acknowledged "father of surf music". His combination of style and equipment created the first distinctive sound of surf music. Jan and Dean, popularized its sounds worldwide. The Beach Boys personified the surf culture's image and lifestyle with their rich harmonic vocals. The Beach Boys, Dick Dale and Jan and Dean all came from the beach communities of southern California. They lived in a unique surf culture found nowhere else in the world. Although, it is debated whether are not any of The Beach Boys actually surfed, the profound effect their music had on the popularity and culture of surfing cannot be denied.

The earliest skateboarding music was the pop of the late 50's. It was later replaced with the surfer tunes of the 60's. C.R. Stecyk III, acclaimed artist and director of countless skateboarding films, stated that "skate music started being different from surf music when Jan and Dean, using a reel to reel in their driveway, recorded the first sounds of skateboarding for a sample in their song "Sidewalk Surfing". But it really wasn't until the late 70's that skater's musical tastes took a turn for the hard core. Then everything changed. The emergence of punk rock and its association with skateboarding had a huge hand in changing the face of rock and roll music. Skateboarding changed from "sidewalk surfing" into its own sport with its own style.

Street skaters transformed suburban landscapes into thrill rides, snuck into backyard pools and formed their own bands and their own style of music in Skate Rock. Bands like the Surf Punks, the Circle Jerks, Beastie Boys, Black Flag and Agent Orange played a type of anti-establishment music, with edgy lyrics and devil-may-care attitude. Many of these bands came into being as a result of a group of skaters needing a new outlet for their tremendous creative energies. Or in other cases, at least one member of the band was a hardcore skater who understood the lifestyle and wanted to produce music that reflected it. According to Morizen Foche, legendary skate photographer and musician, "Skate Rock wasn't and isn't a particular sound or a specific beat, volume or scale. It's Skate Rock because the musicians came together solely because their common background was skateboarding." It was the influence of these skaters that inspired bands to push the musical envelope to newer levels of rawness.

In 2000, Seattle's Experience Music Project (EMP) immortalized this period with their exhibit titled Hey Punk. They brought together skate punk bands, pro skaters, photographers and writers to kick off their permanent exhibit on this influential period. According to Jim Fricke, the museums senior curator, "Back then, it was really the hard-core punk - fast, loud, thrashy music that worked really well with the aggressive attitude of the skaters. In the late 80's, the subculture of skate punk influenced bands like Pearl Jam and Nirvana and became a blueprint for alternative rock, Fricke noted.

Another event worth mentioning in this respect is Fridge Magazine's Brooklyn Vermont Snowboarding / Urban Style Festival - A blend of the most down home hip-hop music and style with the likes of professional snowboarders in an all-star pro pipe jam. It is a huge celebration of hip-hop music and its connection with snowboarding. Its freestyle, free-form and ever changing style can be compared to the freestyling MC or a DJ's ability to use the best of the old to make the most righteous new sounds and create a new style. BKVT provides a legitimate forum in which two closely linked communities/cultures are united, without having to sacrifice integrity.

Of course, it is difficult to pin any one type of music to any sport. The subjective tastes of each individual athlete can hit every part of the musical spectrum. BMX is the perfect example of a melting pot of musical tastes. It encompasses very different disciplines: dirt jumping or trail riding, street, vert, flatland, racing and downhill racing. One could say that the rhythm and style of flatland matches the drum and beat of hip-hop, while street and vert riding requires more velocity, a different pace that would match an upbeat music closer to alternative rock. Dirt jumping combines a bit of both, requiring finesse and rhythm, adrenaline and speed. Racing is an all out full-force effort to reach the finish line and heavy metal would be the key to push a rider to go full speed. However, it all depends on how the rider is feeling - the way an athlete rides and what they listen to can define their style.

The connection between sports and music continues. For films and videos, the musical element can make or break the entertainment value of the film. According to Dave Seoane, former pro snowboarder and supreme ruler of Cinemaseoane, "You can sometimes get away with less than great footage if the music is good. It is still entertaining to watch if the music fits the footage." Seoane, the mastermind behind such films as Roadkill, 8 Tracks, Subjekt Haakonsen and countless others, has normally scored his films with the hard core, skate punk music he grew up listening to. As of late, he has tried to mix it up a bit by using a single musical artist to score his films, like the Haakkon Faktor with a soundtrack by DJ Greyboy. Similar to skateboarding filmmakers, most snowboarding filmmakers grew up listening to the skate punk music of Black Flag, Youth Brigade and TSOL. As of late, hip-hop and snowboarding have made a connection and it is becoming more evident in films that have a greater variety of musical tastes represented. Check out Mack Dawg's The Resistance and Whitey's The Revival to see the influence at work. Ultimately, for the filmmakers, it is the music they are listening to and filmmaking gives them an artistic outlet to use it in.

The distinctive flavor of Fleshwound Films' Crusty Demons of Dirt series catapulted Freestyle Moto X and the freeride movement into the spotlight, expanding the boundaries of the motocross world. Starting out producing a series of snowboard films, the Fleshwound team utilized snowboarding style and cutting edge cinematography to act as a catalyst for freestyle. Musically, the soundtracks reflect a similar taste to that of the skateboard and snowboard films - with tastes remaining consistent with the style of the sport - rough, raw, fast and alternative. Utilizing the new style punk rock of The Offspring to old school hard core of the Adolescents and Agent Orange, the punk-rock and hip-hop sounds of the Bloodhound Gang to the doomy goth-metal of Moonspell, Crusty helped to create a style and sound that set freestyle apart.

For skiing, that same holds true. With the birth of extreme skiing or freeskiing, young skiers like Glen Plake and Scot Schmidt stepped out of the box, into Squaw Valley's Pallisades and changed the face of skiing. Filmed and documented by legendary filmmaker Greg Stump and later, by Steve Winter, the young skiers push the limits of skiing and ultimately transformed the look, feel and sound of skiing films. The soundtracks of films like Steve Winter's Ski Movie and Teton Gravity Research's Further are reflective of the style and attitude that started with Plake, and is continued by the likes of Tanner Hall, Candide Thovex and Skogen Sprang.

Last year, ESPN united athletes that embody the lifestyle and culture of action sports with the bands that have been with them along the way at the inaugural ESPN Action Sports & Music Awards. More than 6,000 attendees gathered at the Universal Amphitheatre in LA as LL Cool J, Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and Chris Klein hosted the first ever event, which included performances from Black Sabbath, Ben Harper & the Innocent Criminals, Crazy Town, De La Soul featuring Busta Rhymes and Incubus.

Year two of the Action Sports & Music Awards kicks in on April 13, 2002 - once again at the Universal Amphitheatre. See it for yourself in person by buying a ticket on ticketmaster.com. Or tune into ESPN on April 16 (9 pm EST, 6 pm PST). Either way, you'll experience the most explosive night in the history of action sports.

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