By Chris Nixon
UNION-TRIBUNE
August 21, 2008
After six years of touring the states and spreading the gospel of skateboarding to all corners of the country, Tony Hawk's Boom Boom Huckjam continues to showcase the lighthearted side of skating, BMX and FMX (motocross) in a noncompetitive environment.
But what is this Boom Boom Huckjam, and how did it get its unusual name?
Tour namesake Hawk explained while on the road somewhere in the Midwest, his 2-month-old baby girl, Kadence, sitting on his lap as he talked: “We use the term 'hucking' to refer to launching ourselves in the air. And it's a 'jam' as opposed to a competition. And I just threw the 'boom boom' in there for a little Japanese kitsch flavor.”
Basically, the Boom Boom Huckjam is a chance for Hawk to hang out and skate with a bunch of his professional skater friends, spreading the joys of hucking throughout the land. The tour is a culmination of Hawk's 26 years as a pro skater, giving credence to his status as the Tiger Woods of action sports.
Hawk started his journey as a skateboarding icon in the local community of Tierrasanta. His dad, Frank, was in the Navy, and the skinny kid found an outlet for his energy and high level of focus in skateboarding.
“It wasn't cliché California, because it wasn't like we got to go to the beach all the time,” recalled the 40-year-old Hawk. “But the fact that there was support for skateboarding back when it wasn't an acceptable activity for kids was pretty major. There were skate parks and my dad was supportive, if I had lived somewhere else, I wouldn't have that support.”
Since his days learning moves in the few local skate parks in the early '80s, Hawk has transformed himself into the face of action sports (skating, snowboarding, motocross and BMX). He has clothing lines and video games and all the accouterments of top-echelon sports celebrities.
But the accolades mean nothing without the cred, and Hawk has earned his street credibility through gold medals at the X-Games and achieving the previously unachievable in skating.
DETAILS
Tony Hawk's Boom Boom Huckjam
When: Saturday, 5:30 p.m.
Where: AEG Live Concerts on the Green, Qualcomm Stadium, 9449 Friars Road, Mission Valley
Tickets: $24.75-$39
Phone: (619) 641-3100
Online: ticketmaster.com
The legendary Dogtown team sponsored him at age 12. He was pro by age 14. He owned his first house at age 17. During his 17 years as a pro skateboarder, Hawk entered 103 pro contests. He won 73 of them, and placed second in 19. He landed the first 900 (2.5 revolutions) in competition during the 1999 X-Games, and has climbed over every hurdle offered by his sport.
Every athlete has to make decisions in their career about when to hang it up. In the afterglow of the 900 at the X-Games, Hawk decided to step away from competition.
But the drive and focus that propelled the skater to the top of his sport kept his creative juices flowing, and Hawk couldn't stay still for long. Hence, the Boom Boom Huckjam.
“Basically, I stopped competing after '99 and I really enjoyed performing still,” said Hawk. “It felt like the only time I got to perform at big venues was on the coattails of some other big events: a concert tour or a halftime show. It was never focused on what we did. I felt like we had come far enough and had the merit to headline our own tour. I just decided I wanted to make a tour exclusively designed around arenas, hire some of the best talent and make a show out of it as opposed to competing.”
Starting in '02 with a one-off show in Las Vegas, the tour has grown into a 30-date annual tour. This year, the Huckjam features skaters Hawk, Jesse Fritsch, Kevin Staab, Neal Hendrix and Sergie Ventura; BMX-ers John Parker, Dennis McCoy and Kevin Robinson; and FMX-ers Sean Nielsen, Greg Garrison and Drake McElroy. Jason Ellis will be your master of ceremonies. Also featured this year are the scratch skills of Mike Relm.
A self-professed DJ nerd who never really skated growing up, Relm has been impressed with Hawk and his work ethic.
“Skating isn't like the Ice Capades, where everything is razor sharp and if you fall it's a rarity,” said Relm. “People fall. It is what it is. They are constantly pushing themselves. And when you do that, you'll fall because you're trying things you've never done before. And he does that at the show.
“He can say: 'I'm Tony Hawk. I'm going to do a perfect run right now.' Bam-bam-bam, do a perfect run and all the kids love him. But he'll do his run and he'll nail most of the tricks. But every once in a while, he'll try stuff and he doesn't quite make it. But he'll keep doing it. He'll even do it while the credits are rolling, until he lands the trick. It's crazy. I think that's great for the kids to see.”
Tony Hawk's fond memories of Boom Boom
UNION-TRIBUNE
August 21, 2008
Cue the string quartet – Tony Hawk is going down memory lane. Actually, scratch that. Hawk isn't the melodramatic type. But he does have a few choice memories from the past six years of Huckjams.
“The tour keeps evolving, but definitely there are highlights for me,” said Hawk. “One highlight was our very first show, our sort of test show in Vegas in '02. We had Shawn White come out at the last minute as our special guest rookie. And you know how far he's come since then, so that was pretty cool.”
And here's another from the Hawk archive: “One of my favorite memories was from our first tour year in '03, we had Devo play at our San Diego show. Devo is one of my favorite bands of all time, and I'd never seen them live before. And they're playing our tour. It was like Spicoli throwing the birthday party for himself with Van Halen.”
– CHRIS NIXON
Mike Relm: Scratch DJing with eye candy
UNION-TRIBUNE
August 21, 2008
“I never skated,” admitted DJ Mike Relm, the resident audio and video technician for this year's Boom Boom Huckjam tour. “I was a hardcore DJ nerd. Once I got turntables, I've had blinders on since.”
Sporting his trademark horned-rimmed glasses along with the old school skinny tie and Men in Black/Reservoir Dogs black suit, the Bay Area DJ continues to redefine the boundaries of scratch DJing. With a playful party vibe, the mix master takes scratching to the next dimension: video.
Juggling pop culture clips from films like “Pulp Fiction” and “Office Space,” quirky obscurities like “Pee-wee's Playhouse” theme and old Lucha Libre videos, random kitsch from the likes of “Napoleon Dynamite” and forgotten '80s groups like The Outfield, Relm literally scratches video.
Here's how it goes down at a Mike Relm show: While the DJ scratches traditional turntables, DVD and CDs, a large screen shows synced images bouncing to and fro: everything from Bjork hopping about in her video “Human Behavior” and the “Peanuts” characters dancing to the sounds of Vince Guaraldi's classic soundtrack to mash-ups of Led Zeppelin's “Immigrant Song” and Jimi Hendrix's “Fire.”
His original style has led to gigs with Lyrics Born, Money Mark, Gift of Gab, Del tha Funkee Homosapien and most recently the Blue Man Group, and solo shows at high-profile music fests like Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and Bonnaroo.
For Relm, the technique is secondary to keeping the party vibe to his shows: “I did parties for so long that it was always in what I did. But I always scratched. That's for sure what I do. I've seen guys that can scratch better than most of the top-notch DJs. But if you don't have the instinct of playing a party or a show, then it really doesn't sound like much. It comes out sounding technical.
“You have to apply (technique) to entertainment, which is what this is,” continued Relm, speaking from a recent Huckjam tour stop in St. Louis last week. “It's like in skating: You can do all the technical tricks, but if you can't present it as a show, then you're just doing it for yourself.”
Relm adds a live element to the show lacking in year's past, according to tour founder Tony Hawk.
“Once we lost live bands in our show, we basically just had a soundtrack every year,” Hawk said. “That's fine, but I really like the element where he could mix stuff on the fly and change up the show right in the middle of it.
“In the past (when someone took a fall during a run), the music just stopped and we had to wait and figure out what we're going to do next, and now Mike really keeps the flow going.”
Relm is also scheduled for a local solo show Oct. 23 at The Casbah, ($12, casbahmusic.com).
– CHRIS NIXON
