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Showing posts with label tony hawk's pro skater. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tony hawk's pro skater. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

There was a SCOOTER version of Tony Hawk's

I thought Aggressive Inline was a stretch, barely clinging on by its fingertips to Tony Hawk's coattails... It seems that the money and trends people in video game HQ thought that skateboarding, snowboarding, BMX and yes, even rollerblading games weren't enough. There was also Razor Freestyle Scooter.

Apparently the storyline was that you are a scooter kid whose friends are kidnapped by an evil robot. Okay, that actually sounds cool. But we have to bend our interpretation of reality and believe that someone who chose freestyle scooter as an extreme sport would have any friends.

Anyway, let's get to the important part: the soundtrack!


I'm not sure where they found these D-list skate punk bands, but it's quite fitting that the songs got the general feeling of skate punk, without the company having to pay for the best of skate punk. Shades of Montgomery Burns looking for a 'non-union, Mexican equivalent'.

Some of the songs sound like they were recorded off the TV onto a handheld tape recorder..

The full album is only 28 minutes long, which is kind of sad. There are definitely some songs that teenage me would have consumed on repeat. In an alternative universe I might have played Razor Freestyle Scooter and listened to Never Too Late and Ex Number Five instead of Bad Religion and Alkaline Trio.

Friday, July 12, 2013

Good Songs to Skateboard to (from Yahoo Answers)


Sumo skaters fall over a lot, I'd imagine.
After being re-immersed in early 00s skate punk nostalgia through Aggressive Inline, I went snooping about on the Google machine to see if I could find some other gems I had overlooked or forgotten. There I found the lolfactory that is Yahoo Answers and a question dedicated to skate songs, posed in 2006.

Some of the answers are standard, some are a little out of left field, some are questionable and some are just plain baffling.


This is the top answer. The answer the questioner was most pleased with. While I would include some SOAD in my desert mp3s, 'Pizza Pie' or Chic 'n' Stu as it's actually named, would not be one of them. Personal preferences aside, who the hell would skate to this schizophrenic clusterfudge??




Then there’s some Placebo, a great band to skate to. If by ‘skate’ you mean ‘drink yourself to sleep in the dark’.


The ‘source’ is also adorable. But let's move on.

Drunken Lullabies is a bit more like it. A steady, upbeat rhythm and a pace that gets the heart pumping and you legs push and kicking! Of course, there is a skateboarder in the video, so it’s not the most imaginative, but it’s on the right track, at least.


I don't listen to classic rock so I don't really know much of Suicidal Tendencies, but I see how the song could work for skating. If course it does have the fucking word 'skate' in the title, so give yourself a round of applause Rachel C, you really excelled yourself with this one! This video is interesting as it shows metal and punk bands exploited impressionable teenagers in the 80s too. UGH DAD I HATE DOING HOMEWORK.

This cautionary tale is the story of a kid 30 year old man who had a future until he got a skateboard, and now he likes to skateboard. So, let that be a lesson to you.



Just when you think Yahoo users have redeemed themselves slightly, *record scratch* Whaaaaat? ‘Lincoln Park’?! And while we're here, I was into Hybrid Theory as much as the next teenager, but I really don’t get how they are a skate band. I mean, I know they were totes angry and anti-conformity, just like skateboarding is (screw you, mom and dad!) but they are terrible skate music. Plus, this is 2006, five years after Hybrid Theory. 

Well for whatever reason, Linkin Park were linked with skateboarding, something that I find baffling, but vital knowledge all the same. 
The 'nothing extreme' footnote kills me.













So unfortunately, I don't think I've found an untapped resource of songs to skate to. If you know any, holla at me!

Thursday, June 27, 2013

There was a rollerblading version of Tony Hawk's called Aggressvie Inline

Ah the early 2000s.. A time when pop punk and rock were kings of the soundtrack, and extreme sports games like Tony Hawk's and SSX were heavy hitters in the gaming world.

So gritty! Mom's not gonna like this one!
It seems that somewhere in a meeting room a gaming company decided to jump on the extreeeeme bandwagonto be down with the kidz. But instead of picking one of the cool X sports, they went with rollerblading, beloved sport of homosexuals, nerds and crazy middle aged women who really should know better.

'Rollerblading man' on google. Says it all, really.
The gameplay actually looks like it was pretty good, despite my misgivings, and word on tha streetz is that Tony Hawk's stole incorporated some better elements in the game. Even better though, the game came with a sweet soundtrack, typical of the time and filled with punk, nu metal and a bit of ska and hip hop.


This video gives a good taster of what the game was about, including all the Tony Hawk's-like elements and the soundtrack, in this case from a band called Student Rick. NOT TAKING BACK SUNDAY as the uploader of the video angrily proclaims. JEEZ U GUYS, KNOW UR MID-TABLE POP PUNK ALREADY. He also left the character dialogue in, which ruins the song, but it does stay 'honest to the Aggressive Inline experience' according to uploader MexiricanBassMonkey. LOL.

To keep true to the punk roots of inline skating, The Vandals were adding to the soundtrack. All aboard for the non stop to Irony Town! As if The Vandals ever cared about punx roots.


There was also some reaaaally dodgy emo and nu metal, but I'll leave that for now.




Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Top 10 Teenage Tunes: Aidan from Murdock

New Feature Time! I was going to call this nostalgiacore but I'm pretty sure that's what Title Fight are doing, hence the awkwardly long, alliteration-heavy name. Anyway, seeing as I know lots of folks who also have opinions on music, I figure once in a while I should ask them about the songs they loved when they were dealing with hormones and whatnot. 


I think I want to be Aidan from Murdock when I grow up. For those of you that don't know, he is singer/guitarist in Irish metal/hardcore punk/noisecore nice guys, Murdock. (We're not big on sticking to one genre in Ireland, thank goth). Not only this, but he also runs his own studio, The Forbidden Zone. And his day job? Oh yes, he only goes and teaches sound recording! - Alanso


Nostalgia you say? Any of my friends will tell you that I am a very nostalgic guy, sometimes too much so! To me, all great memories are safe and cannot be changed, they are good times locked up in the bank of nostalgia, to be called upon whenever needed. They are mine, and YOU can't have them! Why, did you want them?

So I will do this in some what of a chronological order of me getting older. These are not my favourite songs by any means, they are the soundtrack to memories that stick in my head and make me happy.

Stereophonics - Bartender and the Thief



This song was the first I ever heard that made me realise how loud gutiars could be, and Im pretty sure It is the reason I bought my first electric guitar. At the time I was about 12, I was getting lessons on acoustic guitar playing 'she'll be coming round the mountain' and that was boring me. I heard this song I and thought 'THATS WHAT I WANT TO DO'


Nirvana - Mr Moustache



So I started playing electric guitar, and I thought I was so awesome. I had braces, too much gel in my hair, a navy sweatshirt and beige trousers with white runners, I couldn't talk to girls, and my voice was at the squeeky head wrecking 'pre-drop' stage. Did I give a fuck? NO! Cos I had an electric guitar. I first got into Nirvana from the Nevermind album, which I LOVED, and I remember saving up to get some more of their stuff. I got the album bleach and could not get over how much better it sounded, it was darker, dirtier, and much less polished and I loved that. Im still convinced to this day, that the Bleach album is responsible for getting me into darker, weirder, noisier, music and it is the reason that my band Murdock sounds like it does today. We don't sound anything like Nirvana, but it is in there somewhere.

Less Than Jake - Gainsville Rock City



So as far as I knew, the only bands out there were Green Day, Nirvana, Blink 182 and Korn. And that was all I needed, or so I thought.
One day I came home from school, it was just coming into the summer, and my dad had bought Sky Tv for the house, which had Kerrang, Scuzz and P-Rock TV showing music videos around the clock and my mind was blown away. So many new bands, so many cool videos and all summer long to watch them all and learn them all on guitar.
This was the first song I saw on Kerrang TV and it always reminds me of how good that summer felt.

Alien Ant Farm - Movies



Following on into the next Christmas after I got Sky TV, I must be 14 by now? All I wanted was the guitar from this video! I nagged my parents and ended up getting a guitar which I thought was this guitar, but it actually wasn't, BUT it was an awesome guitar which I still have. That Christmas the house was snowed in, so it was me, my guitar and all the songs that I could learn from Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3. A game I still play every Christmas to this day!


Blink 182 - Anthem Part II



So the next summer I got a part time Job. For the first time I had some money to spend. There was a bass in the local music store on special offer and all I could think of, waking up in the morning, going to sleep at night was THAT BASS. I ended up not buying it, but this song reminds me of that summer. I also vividly remember my friends calling over to get me to go to a youth disco to hang with some girls, and I wouldn't because I was too busy learning the new Blink album on guitar. I have no idea how I have a girlfriend today.

Korn - Clown



So around this time, Nu-Metal was everywhere, and I loved it. I still throw some of it on every now and then. My part time job was cleaning cars. They were all older used cars, and they all cassette decks in them. Every morning going to work, I made sure that in my top right pocket of my overall's, I had Korn's first album on tape in there. The album is about 40 minutes long, and I listened to it ALL DAY, EVERY DAY! And I never tired of it

Every Time I Die - Ebolorama



2003 hit and everything changed for me musically. MTV 2 started showing 'headbangers ball'. All of a sudden things got, heavier and faster and louder. Hatebreed, Converge, Every Time I Die, Poison The Well, As I Lay Dying, Killswitch Engage, The Black Dahlia Murder were regularly on. Late one Tuesday night, Ebolarama by Every Time I Die came on and I could not believe what I was hearing. It was rock and roll but it was insane!
One of the coolest moments of my life happened last year, where my band played a few shows with Every Time I Die. They were playing the song, while a couple of them were wearing my band Murdock's tee shirts, and I couldn't help but smile like the biggest weirdo in the venue, thinking back to 2003 and falling in love with this song/band. (That is me being nostalgic about being nostalgic, cos that gig was Oct 2012, That is like inception shit!)

Between the Buried and Me - Mordecai



One night me and all my guys (2 of which would start Murdock with me), were hanging out in the car park in a retail park. Driving around bollards, skateboarding. I don't remeber much of the details but I remember that this song was blaring thought it.
Also one of the guys jumped in though the window of the moving car and landed perfectly on the passenger seat. It was great!

Moden Life Is War - D.E.A.D.R.A.M.O.N.E.S



This song is probably the reason that I play music and drive around in a smelly van, with smelly guys playing smelly venues.
This song is from 2005 and at this stage we were playing music for fun, with out biggest goal being to get a gig at a local venue.
The song made me dream of playing a million miles away from home and being so tired you cant even breathe. If any song resonates inside me, with any sort of a creed or anthem, then this is it

Posion The Well - Ghostchant



The opening guitar riff and snare roll of this song, actually bring me back in time to 2003. No TARDIS or Flux Capacitor needed.
I remember reading a review of this album in Kerrang magazine, before I had ever heard of this band. And from the reviewers words alone, I knew it was going to be the best thing in the world. I still have the magazine in an old drawer somewhere, I dont think I have ever had music make me shiver as much as this song does when the chorus kicks in.