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- (by Dave Mason)
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Number of Skatetown USA Soundtrack (1979) Reviews: 3
Reviewer: phil, suspicious of fat old pony-tailed rock fans guy September 27, 2004 alright. fact is the john sebastian tune is the only decent thing on the album. it has a funky groove reminscent of NRBQ (who i almost suspect are playing on it), near-ZZ Top-style cool guitar, great harp break, and it is good clean fun as they say. the rest is disco dreck and no matter how much you pathetic old fogies try to ironicly appreciate music you hated the first time around, you're fooling nobody. so lame.
Fantastic...takes you back to the 70's!
Reviewer: Rikki, Music and classic movie lover March 26, 2002 I have this album (yes, the 33 1/3 rpm), no joke.
I saw the movie too and I would love to find it on Video or a re-mastered DVD...but I know it isn't possible to get either of these.
I do have the album to remember this movie by and I would highly recommend it...(if it were still available).
Every song on it is good and there weren't many albums from the time that every song on the vinyl was good.
It seems that this hit was shoved under the rug somewhere in time...I would love to see it revived.
Reviewer: John Fitzgerald, Human resources staff database assistant January 22, 2002 Granted, this album has it's embarrassments such as Hounds pathetic cover of the Rolling
Stones' "Under my thumb" and some forgettable fluff like John Sebastian's "Roller girl"
and Marilyn Mccoo & Billy Davis Jr.'s "Perfect dancer". Nevertheless, this soundtrack is
the best runner up to the "Saturday night fever" soundtrack album for well documenting a
time, an era and a musical genere in a nutshell as it contains some of the most known disco
outcasts not used in the Travolta film such as Earth Wind & Fire's "Boogie wonderland",
The Jacksons' "Shake your body (down to the ground)", Heatwave's "Boogie nights" &
Patrick Hernandez' "Born to be alive". The Dave Mason tracks are a mixed bag but
surprising in that a soundtrack from this period would include recordings from an artist
unavailable elsewhere as that marketing trick had not be fully realized until the plethora of
endless 80's movie soundtracks had surfaced. "Skatetown U.S.A (main theme)" is the
most discoified tune of the three with it's forced lyrics and backing vocals, electric drums
and (supposedly) a brisk string arrangement, I'm sure Dave would rather forget about this
one. However, there is a better than usual version of his classic "Feelin' alright" with
exciting guitar fills more plentiful than on other "live" renditions, this is a definite step
forward. Although "I fell in love" is probably out of place musically on this album, it is
obviously the number in which Mason is allowed to be close to what he wants to do
musically (though the swelling strings do tend to overpower at the end which one can
imagine was an "executive decision" to attempt to "make it fit more" as Dave's ballads
don't usually "climb" that much in that area). Otherwise a pleasing tune that would've
certainly been a highlight of say, "Mariposa de oro" or "Old crest on a new wave" had it
been included on one of those albums instead. Overall, you will get a corny feeling but the
musical choices are surprisingly, unlikely to disappoint.
Information supplied by Steve MacDougall. Album cover kindly provided by John Fitzgerald. Transcribed to HTML by Jeff Kenney and Marty Adelson.
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