Soapbox: Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 was the basis of my taste in music
It was 2005. iPods were all the rage, YouTube had just been launched, Twitter didn’t exist yet, and the words “podcast” and “social networks” had just been added to the dictionary. In short, it was a great time to be a kid, as well as the connecting point of many of our modern day experiences, like being able to listen to music wherever you are or watch videos of some guy at the zoo whenever you want. Elegant.
It was also the year I played a lot from Tony Hawk’s Underground 2. The game originally came out for the GameCube and Game Boy Advance (and other non-Nintendo platforms) in 2004, but the PSP version, the one my brother had and quickly claimed for my own version, came out following year on Universal Media Disc, a format that turned out not to be so “universal” after all.
Was it a good skate game? I really have no idea. Metacritic says yes, and as of this writing, Nintendo Life readers ranked it 8th on our list of the best Tony Hawk games of all time, but I played that game as a motion sim with a fantastic soundtrack. Sure, I would pull an ollie or a kickflip every now and then, and Really I enjoyed polishing at just about any 90 degree angle available to me, but I was at it for jams, and still am.
To this day, it is difficult to quantify exactly how much influence THUG2 had on my taste in music, but it was a lot. It was the age where it was basically a big ball of putty, ready to be molded; all it took to get me into something was for him to be in front of my face for a few seconds. It was the era of Jackass, Bam Margera, pop punk, and Avril Lavigne, and yes, I was the teenager with spiked bracelets and huge, baggy jeans. We all make mistakes.
Teenage babies don’t usually know much about music beyond what their parents listen to (or didn’t know at the time), who for me were classic bands like The Beatles and Fleetwood Mac for my mom, and dad-rock like Dire Straits . and The Eagles for my dad. Today, I’ll mix in a healthy dose of Mac, Sheryl Crow, Steely Dan, T-Rex, ABBA, and Neil Young along with lots of, much cooler stuff (don’t worry, I still think Steely Dan is cool), but as a teenager, there was nothing more embarrassing than acknowledging the things your parents enjoyed. Teens are horrible. Sorry.
Tony Hawk’s soundtracks were pretty much cheat sheets for kids who didn’t grow up in the ’80s and’ 90s, but needed a crash course on everything they missed.
Instead, it was the insanely cool Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 that trained me. Bands like Faith No More, Jimmy Eat World, and The Distillers became my musical blueprints, and because the worlds of rock and punk are incredibly incestuous, that led me to bands like Queens of the Stone Age, The Strokes, The Offspring and Eagles of Death Metal. Sprinkle a little pop-punk-of-the-day Like Sum 41, All-American Rejects, Avril Lavigne, and Blink-182, and you’ve got pretty complete taste in music, boy.
(Also, shout out to my uncle, who preloaded my first iPod with music from its teens and twenties, introducing me to other bands like Green Day, Weezer, Muse and Rage Against the Machine. Probably inappropriate music for a teenager to listen to, but that’s why he’s a great guy.)
He would later buy Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland soundtrack without even playing the game, which probably Makes me a poser, but listen: Tony Hawk soundtracks, probably unintentionally, were more or less cheat sheets and starter packs for kids who didn’t grow up in the ’80s and’ 90s, but needed a crash course in everything. what they wanted. omitted.
I ended up going to see many of the bands I just listed live, in a sticky-floored venue that had a thick haze of cigarette smoke (this was before the indoor smoking ban). I walked out of every concert with my clothes reeking of tobacco and ash, and my ears buzzing with the warning ring of tinnitus. I used these dubious honors as a badge of coolness, because once again teenagers don’t have fully developed brains and sometimes make poor decisions at the expense of their wiser future.
But God, it was fun. And who could have predicted that a skateboarding PSP game would lead me straight to stumbling across moshpits, being invited to dance on stage at Dropkick Murphys concerts, and forming a lifelong love of Queens of the Stone Age? So thank you Tony Hawk and friends for being my surrogate older brothers. Sorry I never got into skateboarding, but at least we can share the music.
Be sure to check out the other Nintendo Life VGM Fest articles in our season of interviews and music-centric features.
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