The Ramrodz Story
...The history of Ramrodz.
Written By Scott Ellyson, Jan. 14th, 2004
IN THE BEGINNING...
About four years ago from this day, a group of middle school kids came together as one when they discovered skateboarding. I believe it was Bobby Jeffries who first actually attempted to skateboard. It was around the time of the first Tony Hawk's Pro Skater video game. I began to play the game, and get into skateboarding. My friend Jeb had a board, so I would go to his house and mess around on it. Soon later, I began skateboarding with Bobby, who had been doing so for about a month. We couldn't do anything. I think Bobby could ollie sometimes, but me, I could just roll around. A few weeks after starting to skateboard, my cousin Brandon came in to visit. Just so happened, he skateboarded too. This was really cool for me because he could ollie over like 3 bricks stacked up. I thought it was the most amazing thing ever. That very day I learned to ollie over a brick. I was so stoked. My cousin could also do f/s 180's. This I tried, but however failed. When he left to go back home, I kept with skateboarding and practiced just about everyday. Mostly with Bobby, who was learning pretty quick as well. Soon did I realize that I was improving quite well. I began ollieing the 2 stair in front of my house. It was at this point that my best friend, Daniel McCoy, joint our crew of learning skateboarders. The three of us skated just about everyday and enjoyed doing so together. Not long after Daniel began, my friend and his brother, Chris & Aaron Queen began. They were both the last people to stick with skateboarding for a good while. The five of us skateboarded for almost a year before we began filming ourselves. For you see, It was then that we began getting tricks down pat. To make a long story short, we skateboarded for about a year and a half, all five of us, before someone began to lose interest. Aaron Queen began playing in a punk band, and decided to devote most of his time to that. So the four of us were left, and here we are today. With the exception of Bobby, who generally skates on and off.
      Skateboarding wasn't just the only thing we started to do. It became aparant that the "jackass" era became quite popular, for Aaron, Daniel, and myself, began doing jackass. We soon made a movie called "Ramrodz: Destroying America Ramrodz Style!" It was a two day process, with nothing planned. It was all completly random. I will admit, it was pretty funny and still is today. Despite the retardedness and over use of fall downs It's still a classic. Now you're probably wondering how the name "RAMRODZ" got started. Well it began with a guy name Kyle Cress. He was a close friend of Daniel's brother, Chad. They called Kyle  "ramrod" because he was known for being a complete idiot. For instance, You know how your suppose to put a quart of oil in your truck once every month, well he got the bright idea that if he added 3 quarts at once, he wouldnt need to change it for 3 months. Instead his freakin truck caught on fire. Kyle passed away a few years ago, and in sort of memory/general use of his nickname, we decided to call ourselves "RAMRODZ" because we did jackass/dumb stuff. The name has carried over to the "skateboarding" aspect of the group.
       From then on, we have been making videos and growing closer as friends. I think up to date, we have about six or seven videos (that's including both skateboarding and ramrodz). You can pretty much get a copy at anytime, except for the original Ramrodz Video. That one is on VHS and would need to be copied. As for the rest... You can ask me for a copy and I'd be glad to burn you one. See we began filming with a massive vhs camcorder back in the day. We collected 10 VHS tapes full of footage. There are some very very memorable times on those. We never got around to making a video composed of the footage from the VHS stuff, but soon later made a video with footage from my digital camera. The digital camera was like a new break for us. It didnt have that much quality, and could fit about 15 seconds worth of footage per floppy disk. But in the end, it was all really cool to make a video of continous clips. Our newest video up to date is "Ramrodz FINAL", final meaning the last video to be made using footage from the digital camera. However, we are currently using a DV camcorder of Daniel's, which has near perfect image quality and sound recording. So now, we are in the process of making a video with footage from that. It should be out sometime in spring. Probably the most anticipated part of it, is the the jackass material. To get a glimpse of the madness, check out Daniel's site. The link is on the main page.
    Well this concludes the History/Story of Ramrodz. I hope you've learned a bit more about us, and I hope you enjoy the rest of my site. Now go check it out! yeahhhh!

                                              -SCOTT ELLYSON (1-14-04)
Back to Main Page
Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

1