Various Artists - Dogtown and Z-Boys

I was born too late to have firsthand memories of the 1970s. If I did, however, I can only hope that my personal experiences of the decade could at least be half as cool as the Dogtown and Z-Boys “O.G. Motion Picture Soundtrack” suggests. The era’s supremely pimped-out custom vans (with dragons painted on the sides! Shit yeah!) alone are enough to make a younger dude jealous, but the heavy-ass, weed smoke guitar riffs that stomp throughout this album only adds insult to injury. “Missed out” is an understatement! The Dogtown soundtrack handpicks the finest moments of pre-punk 1970s rock, straining out all the bloat and leaving nothing but ten tracks of “classic” rock in every sense of the word. The album blazes Jimi Hendrix’s supreme “Ezy Ryder” and the James Gang’s aptly titled “Funk 49,” gets down and dirty from the legendary Iggy and the Stooges, glams up with T Rex and Alice Cooper, and even goes out on a soft note by way of Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May” (which never sounded less corny then it does closing out the disc). Surprisingly concise (10 songs, a miracle these days, proving just because you CAN fill a CD with 70+ minutes of music it doesn’t mean you should). What’s most striking about this wonderful album is how incredibly fresh it sounds. By eschewing hits and big singles for the most part (as well as songs that have been used in car commercial after car commercial), many of the songs sound as new as the day they were recorded. Just as the film aims to rekindle interest in the Dogtown team’s history as skate innovators, this CD will hopefully get a lot of folks to put down whatever flavor-of-the-month rock they’re currently listening to, and get a little more knowledge on the roots. Which - while not as cool as a custom van - is still a very good thing. [www.dogtownzboys.com]