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Because I Can Skate, Therefore, I Must Skate!

Good Ol' Skate Music

The second time I went skating with Shannon was at Incrediroll. It's a former Wisconsin Skate University location on Hwy. 100 and Oklahoma Avenue in West Allis, WI. Shannon preferred two things there over our previous skate at Rollaero;

she could rent the Skate-Mate trainer there
she preferred the epoxied concrete floor to wood floor

We weren't there long before she exclaimed, "K-mart, this music sucks!". I'll spare you the story of how I became known as "K-mart"... But suffice it to say this turned into an ongoing discussion between us over just about every skate session we attended together from then on. Usually, the talk about the music was after we left and returned to my apartment and cranked up whatever tunes I had in my collection of mp3 files or alternatively, what I didn't have but was playable on YouTube.

Over the last four-plus years, I've come to appreciate that skate music means different things to different people, especially those much older than me and those much younger. For this page on this website, I've put alot of thought into this topic. What I've decided to do is to divide my music section up into four different parts which I'll write about over time. This is the first part and it's the kind of music I prefer. To Shannon and I, this is what we consider skate music. With younger people who did not live through the 1980s, it's been a challenge to get them to understand that the music played at skating sessions wasn't necessarily top-40 music. Sure, there was plenty of Michael Jackson and Madonna played too, but when one went to skating, there was alot of music that didn't get airtime on the radio and one only heard at skating.

The list I am compiling here will never be totally finished. The songs are a combination of what Shannon and I remembered, followed by what we found we liked in related YouTube videos. Some we would remember hearing after we found it again, others were songs that were after our time but we liked anyways and could hear that they'd be considered skate music. Finally, thanks to the rink DJs who once in a while turn me onto something old that I never heard before. Thanks to the people who are still making 80s skate-jam type music even in the 2000s!

I'm not ranking the songs here but adding to the list alphabetically by artist. Some are slow jams, some are quite fast tempo. Some are rap tunes which sample from other songs. Some people have a problem with that, but I don't.

A-Town Players