The story of Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of a Tony Hawk Pro Skater Cover Band), a group that play songs from Tony Hawk Pro Skater (“Only one through four – no spin-offs”) is inherently Australian.
Born out of piss-taking and reminiscence for a 90’s childhood, the Sydney-based group intended to only perform once for the amusement of themselves and a handful of others. Mainly themselves.
Despite the novelty of the concept, there is an authenticity to Birdman that can only be explained by the 1999 phenomena of Tony Hawk Pro Skater.
However cliched it may be, it still holds true that it was more than a game for a generation. For those unacquainted with the OG of PlayStation games, there are a few important things to know. Whether the language you spoke was kick-flips and 540s or circles and squares, the game brought people together. In the late 90s, it didn’t matter whether you skated or just loved Rage Against The Machine, this was a game for every flavour of kid. Sim’s (bassist) own experience of the video game speaks volumes to its consequence on an entire era of youth.
“The beauty of the game was that, for me, I had a massive injury as a kid. For a long time, I couldn’t walk properly, I couldn’t jump or ride a bike. So the game was a great outlet for me to be able to skate. It was so freeing at the time because I could do all the tricks and fly, I could skate in the most passive way possible but it meant so much”.
Over a decade on and a joke text between devout gamers sparked the happiest of accidents into real life.
“The text I got from Josh [guitarist] wasn’t even the suggestion of the band. It was purely the band name. I wrote back ‘I’m in’” Sim explains. As a veteran of the music scene, he pulled together the rest of the band on the premise of a name “so terrible it’s great”.
“Then we accidentally got our first festival. A friend of mine on social media saw me post about the name of the band and sent me a message asking if we’d like to play Secret Garden Festival.”
And so begin the parallels between Birdman and Australia’s own skating icon, Steven Bradbury. After lucking their way onto a festival line-up, the band garnered the attention of triple j and other outlets leading to a now infamously short performance at Vivid Sydney.
“It was the first night of Vivid and the first show in a series called The Basement Parties. The whole point of them was to re-invigorate the Sydney music scene. It was basically our second show and we knew it was going to go off. Of course, the beautiful twist or irony and fate is we get shut down four songs in by the venue because of noise complaints by residents and neighbours. They were complaining during soundcheck, so that was a red flag” Sim laughs.
Despite their one-night-stand intentions, the internet had other ideas for the now poster boys of Sydney’s lockout laws and now the most niche of cover bands were en-route to San Diego to open for Bad Religion.
“It all started because we’d just tag Tony in every social media post. We just kept at it and at it. He liked a couple of photos and we thought we’d peaked at that point. Then I got up one morning and opened our Twitter and Tony Hawk had followed us. So we screenshot that, posted it on social media and tagged him” Josh and Sim recount over each other.
Then came the message that kickstarted their journey – “What’s your set-list?” After a series of back and forths with Tony and his team, the guys found themselves opening a sold-out show and performing with The Hawk in San Diego.
“The benchmark for the trip was ‘everything is fucking amazing’. But what really blew me away was the genuine sincerity and hospitality. He invited us over to his indoor skatepark and we hung out with him and his crew. We were like “don’t you want to hang out with all the real people?”” Sim says.
If you didn’t know the story behind Birdman and the video game that changed their world, you’d be forgiven for not realising the depth of the band’s values. Granted, humour and self-deprecation sit pretty high on that list but inclusivity beats them out.
“The great thing specifically about the game’s soundtrack is there were a tonne of different genres. It introduced us to music we hadn’t heard before and I think that’s what draws people to our gigs. Yeah there’s a novelty to it but in the end everyone just wants to thrash out to Guerilla Radio” says Josh.
There can be a tendency to saturate childhood memories with more than a hint of rose. To look back on your formative years as being, at the least, better. But when a game brings together thousands of strangers to enjoy themselves during the most divisive time in recent history you have to agree that 1999 really got something right.
“It’s a case of let’s start a circle pit by all means but if someone is down everyone gets around them and picks them the fuck back up because we’re all in this together. It’s just everyone getting to live like they’re 19 again”.
Written by James Mac