They say nostalgia runs in 20 year cycles, but lately it feels more like 15. So I’m not at all surprised to see so many articles or end up in so many conversations lauding the Tony Hawk: Pro Skater soundtracks. And I’m not here to dispute their greatness. Those soundtracks were great, and I particularly liked how they made an effort to combine various genres of music.
But for my money, the best skateboarding soundtrack came about a year before the first Tony Hawk game on a now relatively obscure Playstation game called Street Sk8er.
I’ll give you a minute to appreciate that pre-Avril, pre-Twitter necessitating the reduction of letter count, title there.
Compared to Tony Hawk, Street Sk8er seems absolutely primitive. The game is extremely linear, as you control a skater following a straight path from the beginning to the end of each course. If you’ve played any of the Cool Boarder games, it’s essentially that, but on asphalt. Dated now, of course, but mindless fun when it came out.
But that soundtrack.
First off, the soundtrack scores a big win by featuring Less Than Jake’s two best songs – “Sugar in Your Gas Tank” and “All My Best Friends Are Metalheads.” There was a little while there when Less Than Jake were minor radio celebs but it was hearing these two songs that truly made me a lifelong fan of the band. Complimenting LTJ’s skapunk was another skapunk band The Pietasters, a band that predates LTJ by only a few years and has one song, “Out All Night,” here. It’s a more laid back tune compared to the rest of the soundtrack – sort of the song you’d put on when you’re just riding along – but you’ll be hard pressed to find a more memorable hornline.
The ska tracks are great but Street Sk8r is a skateboarding game, so of course the bulk of the soundtrack is going to be made up of 90s skatepunk. I Against I hail from the Netherlands, were signed to Epitaph, and despite being named for a Bad Brains album they had more in common with Bad Religion. Honestly, you could say that about half of the 90s’ punk bands, but their two contributions here, particular the fiery “Ordinary Fight,” earned them the affectionate nickname “Suffer, the Band” from me and my friends. H2O, who normally leans a little more to the hardcore spectrum of pop punk, did their own BR channeling here with “Everready” & “Thicker Than Water.” “Everready” in particular is a great jam, with its inspirational “Try but you can’t bring me down” refrain encouraging you to button mash until you’ve uncovered all the game’s moves.
The soundtrack was my introduction to ALL, now one of my favorite bands. Consisting of ¾ of Descendents, “Honey Peeps” from 7th studio album Mass Nerder is featured here, featuring vocals by Chad Price, who would later play in alt/country band Drag the River. ALL never got the same level of respect as Descendents but their pop punk prowess is nearly unmatched, and this song shows why. It’s got this excellent, pulsing rhythm that won’t get out of your head after the first listen.
Probably my fondest memory was discovering Weston in the game’s final level. At their creative height – 1996’s Got Beat Up – the guys were the best pop punk around. By the time they penned “Liz Phair,” an ode to the brash 90s alt rock singer, the band sounded like they’d be more at home touring with Weezer and The Get Up Kids (the synth line is actually almost the same as the one found in TGUK’s “Valentine,” which was released around the same time). Vocalist James Snyder (who now fronts Beach Slang) really sells lyrics like “I sure think we would make a real cool pair, You could sing your songs, I could sit and stare, And fall in love… in love with Liz Phair” with a delicate and earnest vocal delivery that makes it hard not to love.
A sort of strange fact about the Street Sk8ter soundtrack is that it actually played in a regular CD player. No kidding! I remember I had the game in my car a few years after purchasing, bringing it over to a friend’s house and decided to throw it into my car’s stereo on a lark and lo and behold, after a data track that recalls ghosts of AOL’s past, the thing actually plays out like a normal comp.
Okay, so maybe the soundtrack isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but it’s fun, and that’s what mattered to my high school heart when this first came out. If you’re the kind of music fan that has absolutely played out your copies of Physically Fat, Deep Thoughts and Punk-O-Ramas 1-6, this little gem is going to hit that perfect skatepunk sweet spot.
-Emily Matview
Tracklisting:
H2O – “Everready” & “Thicker Than Water”
Less Than Jake – “Sugar in Your Gas Tank” & “All My Best Friends Are Metalheads”
The Pietasters – “Out All Night”
I Against I – “Maybe Tomorrow” & “Ordinary Fight”
Gas Huffer – “Rotten Egg”
Straight Faced – “Against”
All – “Honey Peeps”
Weston – “Liz Phair”
Plastilina Mosh – “Monster Truck” & “Encendedor”
Bow & Arrow – World Is Breaking
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