I get around

“I Get Around” is a compilation from Ontario’s famous (?) TeeVee Records that might be related to the current operation named TeeVee operating out of Nashville Tennessee. The original TeeVee was pretty much the same as K-Tel records, which is also based in Canada. If you were lucky the record you bought would be a compilations of popular or formerly popular songs. If you were unlucky, it would be a compilation of cover versions of those songs. Sometimes you might find something more interesting, like a moog synthesizer studio band covering tripped out ABBA instrumentals. Today’s TeeVee appears to be focused on country music greatest hits compilations from yesteryear.

Considering the usual quality of these types of compilations, it’s no big surprise that there is only one skateboard song on an album that looks like it going to be all about skateboarding. I thought for sure that I already had “Skateboard Craze” by Willie and the Wheels, but it’s not showing up in my library. A little research on the group turned up this from AllMusic.

Willie & the Wheels was really a mid-’60s studio concoction of writing and production duo P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri. Sloan and Barri released countless tracks of surf and hot rod tunes under different group names (including the Fantastic Baggys and the Rincon Surfside Band) during the genre’s commercial peak between 1963 and 1965. As Willie & the Wheels they officially released a single (“Skateboard Craze” b/w “Do What You Did”) on Dunhill Records in 1965, followed by an album that same year, The Surfing Song Book, on RCA Records.

This record was released in 1978 and the only skateboard song on it was already 13 years old! I don’t have a stylus on my turntable so I can’t even listen to the damn song. The rest of the album contains other songs made famous in the 60’s that must have been cheap to license. To make up for the astonishing lack of skateboard songs, they included one of the always amusing lingo guides. Highlights include:

LIPSLIDE – “…and slide on the apron of the bowl”
CURVE – “riding around the perimeter of a bowl or pool”
NARLY – Who spell checked that, a twelve year old kid?
STOKED – “Being outskated by someone”
TAIL TAG – ?? I think they meant “Tail TAP”.
WOODSLIDE – errr….

That’s “Wee” Willi Winkels jumping that corvette below. This was a very famous photo in 70’s skateboarding. You have to wonder if he or the photographer got paid for this particular usage. One of these days I’ll get the turntable set up and get some MP3’s uploaded.

Here’s a bonus video of a 1978 TV commercial for TeeVee Records.