various artists - Tony Hawk's American Wasteland

It feels weird to realize it's been 20 years since I last bought a Tony Hawk video game. But that fact dawned on me as I started writing up this soundtrack, which is the only thing I remember immediately about playing THAW on my 360. The soundtrack was released by Vagrant Records, and contains fourteen bands you'd associate with that era of mainstream punk rock, playing 14 classic punk and hardcore tracks. It's all very America-focused; the players drawn the the U.S., and the Buzzcocks the only band that didn't originate in the U.S.A.

So, is it any good, twenty years on? Well, there's a bunch of SoCal punk/HC represented: Suicidal Tendencies, Descendents, the Adolescents, Fear, T.S.O.L., and Black Flag all have classic songs from their catalogs appear. And the bands performing those tracks sync up pretty well, with Alkaline Trio playing "Wash Away" and Senses Fail playing "Institutionalized". No surprises here...unless you're surprised that everyone acquits themselves pretty well. I mean, didn't Rise Against perform as Black Flag in a movie around this time?

It's on the less expected cuts that this becomes more than the sort of thing you'd get as a freebie at Warped Tour or a cheap-o sampler at Hot Topic. My Chemical Romance cover the Misfits' "Astro Zombies", which is very on the nose and yet still pretty great. Ditto to Fall Out Boy playing "Start Today" by Gorilla Biscuits, the only post-1986 song on the comp, and very well suited to a group of hardcore lifers who somehow put out #1 records in the aughts. Thrice squeeze two Minor Threat songs into their single track, the Bled (who I barely remember) play a deep cut Bad Trains track from "I Against I", and Thursday contribute the aforementioned Buzzcocks song, a very energetic "Ever Fallen In Love". My favorite remains Hot Snakes' cover of "Time To Escape", a Government Issue track originally released on "Joy Ride". It feels a bit incongruous for Mssrs. Froberg, Reis, Wood, and Rubalcaba to pop up here, just as it's an equally odd contribution catalog-wise, but, for me, it's a highlight. Not to mention it's the last song released by Hot Snakes for nearly 13 years.

To answer my earlier question: yeah, both in the rearview AND today, this is pretty decent. There are a couple of duds here (which I won't call out by name), but swap out the 2005 covers with the originals and it's not too far off from the mixtapes I skated to in 1993. Which seems to be the point of this soundtrack in the first place...to recall those pre-X Games years where you'd tear ass around town to build half pipes and ramps that might only last for a few days before getting torn down, soundtracked by tunes made by kids just like you. 

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various artists - You'll Never Eat Fast Food Again

Regular readers of the blog may be wondering, "Did the big Ape go off the deep end after their birthday?" Naw, although I did give myself a little break to think about what I wanted to write about next. After all, you come here for high-quality insights, honesty, and the reasonably obscure. I don't want to dash missives off just to make a deadline.

So I thought, "What about shitty comps and samplers?"

See, I have always loved a well-curated compilation, as well as an inexpensive sampler. Both have died off a bit, replaced by Bandcamp benefits or limited edition RSD vinyl. CDs weren't perfect, but they were so cheap you could give them away; if you scored a single sale on 100 samplers given away, you paid for your investment. So I have a ton of these damn things in boxes in my apartment, knowing they're the reason I got into Assholeparade or Albert Ayler or Antischism, just to name a few "A" bands.

The flip side are the really cruddy samplers that I held onto because they had one song worth owning. It's why I have a bunch of Victory Records giveaways and Warped Tour double CDs taking up space. That Geffen comp has a bunch of mid-90s garbage on it, but it also has great songs from Nirvana and that dog. on it. I still have CMJ CDs from the late 80s because they had a Sun Ra song on them, or a Fudge Tunnel track that I was really stoked on in 1993.

"You'll Never Eat Fast Food Again" is the perfect illustration of my point. There's a ton of mall punk dross here, from the major-label-masquerading-as-an-indie Drive-Thru Records. Allister, Cousin Oliver, Midtown, Fenix*Tx, RX Bandits: all the (s)hits are here. It's all perfectly inoffensive, unremarkable music that was targeted to kids who'd never held a zine. Cool, cool, cool cool. Cool. But...

I held onto this for the Wrens and New Found Glory tracks. I had no clue who the Wrens were in 1999; only that they sounded like the only adults on this entire record. As the story goes, the Wrens were dropped by Wind-Up, and had a handshake deal to put out their third record with Drive-Thru. However, the only work they released together were the two songs here: an early version of "This Boy Is Exhausted", and "Miss Me", which wouldn't make it onto "The Meadowlands" four years later.

New Found Glory was the only band here I was familiar with before getting a promo of this around its release date. This was Chad from Shai Hulud's pop punk band. Shai Hulud had released a trio of brutal records in the two years before this came out, and Chad had been passing around copies of the NFG EP on Fiddler as Shai Hulud toured behind them. There was no denying that this was some catchy, high-quality pop punk; the songs were tight and super well-written, the recording was raw and honest, and the first full-length on Eulogy flowed perfectly with its added movie samples. No wonder that Drive-Thru paid $5,000 to license that LP and reissue it. Their two songs here, "Hit and Miss" and "3rd and Long", are perfect examples of how good that era of pop punk could be.

The first version of this release, produced before Drive-Thru began distribution through MCA, has a total of 25 songs on it. It also has the NFG songs with samples in them. The version you'll encounter the most in the wild (posted here) drops songs from Mothermania, Face First, and Cousin Oliver. There's a cover variant that's missing the Parental Warning hype. There's also a giveaway that, for some reason, only has 16 songs on it, dropping the last six that are found on the common version. That's a lot of variation for a $2.99 CD.

Discogs

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