Back in the late 1980s, a fun game among record collectors who were just starting to recognize the collectability of 1980s music was trying to assemble a reasonable facsimile of the lost Valley Girl soundtrack.
The 1983 movie, Valley Girl, featured a plethora of new wave music, the likes of which was being played on California radio stations like KROQ. Due to licensing agreements, a proper soundtrack featuring the music from this movie was never released. All that made it out of the gate was a five song extended play record that was never released commercially. So, it was a fun game, trying to cobble together the sources needed to put together a proper soundtrack for this film.
The problem was finally solved by Rhino Entertainment, who put out a two CD set of most of the music that appeared, or was supposed to appear, on the soundtrack. The good news is that music collectors can still play the game again with another “lost” soundtrack.
The Surf II Soundtrack
Surf II, which was not a sequel and was actually billed as “the end of the trilogy,” was a 1980s comedy exploitation film that tanked at the box office. Its performance as a film was so bad, a promised soundtrack was never released.
True to its title, the soundtrack contains some surf and hotrod tunes. The oldies by the Beach Boys, “I Get Around”, “Surfin’ USA” and “Stoked”, along with “Pipeline” by The Chantays, “Hawaii 5-0" by the Ventures, and “The Wedge” by Dick Dale would be easy enough to obtain on CD or download. The 1980s hot rod tune, “Built For Speed” would be similarly easy to obtain. Also included with these easy to obtain oldies is Johnny Ray’s “Cry.”
There are also a number of new wave oriented hits that would be similarly easy to score. These include Oingo Boingo’s “Only a Lad,” “Mexican Radio,” by Wall of Voodoo, and “Talk Talk” by Talk Talk. Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded Me With Science” and the Split Enz single “Six Months In A Leaky Boat” would also be in this category.
The well-known and easily available “Moral Majority” by the punk band, Circle Jerks is also on the soundtrack.
These are some of the easier tracks to obtain, others would require some hunting.
The Harder to Find Tracks
Some of the harder to locate tracks include the German techno-pop hit by Rheingold, “Fan Fan Fanatic.” There are a few download sites that have the track and a good quality studio recording is available on Youtube. For vinyl fanatics, the song was released in the United States on a four song mini-album.
There are two tracks on the soundtrack by the excellent 1980s surf revival band Jon and The Nightriders. There appear to be some download services that have these tracks that turn up on web searches, otherwise “Surf Jam” does not appear to be on a studio album. “Fuel Injected” appears to only be available on a German import album.
Similarly, the track, “AWOL” by the Canadian punk band, The Deserters, seems to only be available on vinyl on the band’s 1981 album.
The hardest track to locate, however, may be the one that Oingo Boingo did for this movie. The band contributed the song, “Hold Me Back” exclusively for this film. It does not appear to be available in any form except for bootleg copies. There isn’t even a high quality version of the song available on Youtube.
Trying to assemble this soundtrack may be even more of a challenge than putting together a Valley Girl soundtrack. But, for the hard core enthusiast the pursuit may be worth the effort alone.
Jon Pike - Pike is a Ph.D. in communication and writes about activism and popular culture topics for Suite101.
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