What's Good? Brendan Boeck x Fox 'Expendable 2'
Welcome to round 17 of the latest LUXBMX journal segment, 'What's Good?'. To reiterate, we reach out to one of the homies and get a hot tip on the latest biking madness. It's called 'What's Good?' and for this instalment, we lean on Canberra based biker, filmer/video maker and validated BMX lifer, Brendan Boeck (i.e. B-Dog).
B-Dog in the streets of Canberra showing off his custom paint job (by his wife). Photo by Bike Perv
Running into B-Dog is something you'll learn to relish, the dude is always dripping with optimism and fanatical energy, a refreshingly genuine fella with a friendly aura. You would also be hard pressed to catch him without a DSLR or video camera in hand, something which he has championed for over a decade now.
You young bucks out there might not know but B-Dog has a long and fabled history with Backbone BMX, having worked there, been one of the key crew behind their mission to grow and develop BMX in the capital, as well as having filmed/edited both 'The Backbone Video' from 2015 as well as 2022s 'Ranch Hand' video - featuring the entire Backbone team.
The essence of Brendan Boeck, Backbone's previous shop in the background. Selfy
The dude is then well positioned to describe an influential BMX video and with a couple years under his belt, one that might not be easily apparent. As you'll read, this is essentially how this episode went down.
Look at that thing! Unfortunately the character of a photo from above is that you don't get a sense for the thickness of a VHS tape, it's chunky and beautiful. Doyle on the cover with a one handed no-foot can. Photo from BMX Museum
"Expendable 2 was a film made by Matt Story in 1999, and right out of the gate Megadeth's 'Holy Wars' riff blesses the ears.
This film documents some of the best riders of the times, like Dave Mirra and Ryan Nyquist doing what they do best on the largest stages and competitive platforms of the late 90s, down to the homies in the woods hitting sets of trails and rails in their local towns. All backed by a diverse soundtrack from metals own Megadeth and Snapcase, hip hop icons NAS and Busta Rhymes and even punk royalty by none other than Bad Religion and Cro Mags.
Expendable 2 was the first BMX film I bought on VHS and it helped cement the love I have for our culture of freestyle BMX to this day. This film helped sew a seed in me about documenting our sport and its culture and how backed with an epic soundtrack, can instil ever lasting memories. So much so that I pay homage to Expendable 2 in my last full length BMX film 'Ranch Hand', I ended up using a mash up version of 'Holy Wars', including 'Creeping Death' by Metallica, 'Eminence Front' by The Who and even a NAS track. Not to mention hip hop tracks to trail sections.
This screenshot from the intro might give you a sense of the picture quality, which is poorer than it would appear on the original. Nonetheless, the colours go hand in hand with my memory of the video, makes me feel sentimental
Matt Story seemed to cover it all in the film and pieced it all together well. Mixed sections of riders blended with the diverse soundtrack kept you on your toes all the way to the credits section where the homies are chilling on the deck and mucking around, having a laugh. From the big screens of top tier competition, race tracks, trails and rails, it was all documented.
I feel that this film was the bridge from 'old school' to 'mid school' BMX. From big brand sponsored riders running 4 pegs, 2 brakes and doing all the big crowd pleasing tricks on ramps, to the birth of new independent rider owned companies like Terrible One with Joe Rich, Ruben Alcantara and Taj Mihelich paving the way and reinventing style and tricks which to this day, are still revered. I mean, have you seen the last clip? Taj with that one handed (down) whip over that huge box. Who could forget?
Dozens of riders, music, spots and camera angles I'd never seen before and nicely edited onto a spool of tape I could put in my VHS tape player whenever I needed to get stoked, that's the power of a BMX video.
Watch it if you haven't seen it, and watch it again for nostalgia and stoke."
Brendan - 2014 selfy. Photo by Brendan, obviously
The full video is able to be viewed online here, however for the purposes of this episode, I've embedded the abovementioned section from Taj Mihelich as well as the intro so you can feel the feels of that Megadeth riff.
Horns up.
