A big concert will be hosted in the high desert featuring a group of hard-hitting punk and thrash bands, a legendary rapper and … a skate ramp?
Yes! After a successful edition last year, Thrasher Death Match is returning to Pappy and Harriet’s on Saturday, Sept. 14. Produced by the iconic skating magazine Thrasher, and sponsored by Converse CONS (shoes designed for skateboarders), Thrasher Death Match will ignite the desert for an evening filled with intense music and top-notch skating on a mini-ramp. The event begins at 5 p.m., and the ramp is open to all skaters until 9:15 p.m.
During a recent phone interview with Jerome Case, the events and marketing director for Thrasher magazine, he discussed how Death Match came together.
“We’ve been doing the event for about 10 years, and we would do it yearly at South by Southwest in Austin, and it was always a three-day event, free to the public,” Case said. “It’s kind of a thing for the local skate community there in Austin, because we have really close ties with the skate shop that’s there called No Comply, and then we started expanding on it. We had interest in doing one in New York, so we did one there for a couple of years, and tried to see how far we could take it. Then, South by Southwest was changing directions, and we saw that there wasn’t a lot of energy around it, so we decided to take a break from it and see what else is available.”
The unconventional nature of Death Match mixed with the unconventional world-class venue in the middle of the desert led to a beautiful collaboration.
“I’d been to Pappy and Harriet’s a couple times for different shows, and it always seemed like a really cool venue and something that would work,” Case said. “I like the outdoor aspect—lots of open space. The desert, I think, adds something really cool to what our event could be. We happen to have a connection over there, so we just started the conversation, and from there, it blossomed into, ‘When can we make this happen?’”
Pappy and Harriet’s attracts crowds from all over, but most of the time, the Pioneertown Palace is filled with desert rats and people from bigger Southern California cities. Case and Thrasher chose Pappy’s to serve the skating community in both of those locations.
“We know that people in San Diego and L.A. will travel. We know they’ll go to see a show, and we know that Pappy and Harriet’s will draw a crowd from everywhere,” Case said. “For us, it was an opportunity to do something, not necessarily in L.A. proper or San Diego proper, but something that had proximity to both that would be really cool, and we could make a difference. That’s what the desert really brought for us in Pappy and Harriet’s—we could curate it differently, make it a one-day event, still get people to drive out, and do everything we want to do. The crew there is just awesome to work with, so they made it easy.”
The music lineup for Death Match features diverse picks like the hardcore punk of Scowl, the shoegaze pop of Hotline TNT, and “Blow the Whistle” hip-hop star Too $hort.
“It goes back to our roots at South by Southwest,” Case said. “If we would do a three-day event, each day would have a different genre of music, so we would do an indie day, and then a hardcore punk day with metal mixed in, and then a rap and hip-hop day. We try to keep that going through all of our events, and keep it all tied in using our magazine connection, so it’s people who we’ve done interviews with in the mag, or friends with people who work with us, and that’s really how we get it going. We always try to bring in a legend act. Last year, we had Suicidal Tendencies; previous legend acts were Roky Erickson and Gorilla Biscuits. For this year, we wanted to highlight the Bay Area, so we reached out to Too $hort and made that happen.”
The genre-encompassing bill will make for an even crazier and unique night.
“It’s wild when you put it all together, and it all makes sense,” Case said. “The people who come out to a Speed show are going to stick around for a Too $hort show, yeah. The opening band we have, Stone Vengeance, is a thrash-metal band from the ’70s from the Bay Area. I think people, when they see them, are going to be hyped.”
As with last year’s Death Match, all of the proceeds from ticket sales will go to the Ben Raemers Foundation, which supports mental-health awareness and suicide prevention in the skateboarding world.
“Ben was a professional skateboarder,” Case said. “He was on the cover of our magazine several times, and he was a sponsored skater for Converse, who’s our presenting sponsor. We don’t use these events as a way to make money; it’s more about the community, so in order to lock in RSVPs, we decided to raise money for the foundation. Last year, we did over $30,000 for them, and we raised ticket prices this year, so we’re looking to do even better.”
Thrasher, a 40-plus-year-old company that has changed the landscape of skating through both journalism and gear, focuses on the community when it comes to throwing events.
“Everything we do is about getting people together,” Case said. “We do a series through the summer called Thrasher Weekends. … When we sell tickets, we contribute it to a local charity. It’s always just trying to build up what the skate community is in those cities.”
Case promised that the ramp action will impress.
“We’ll have an entirely different ramp this year,” he said. “Last year, we had a pretty wild obstacle with a giant rattlesnake painted on it. That was a tribute to our former editor, Jake Phelps, who passed away. He had a snake tattoo on his arm with the skulls on it, so we used that as inspiration for the ramp last year. This year, we’re going scorpion-themed. There’s a lot of inspiration and artistic creativity we can draw from the desert.”
Thrasher Death Match will take place at 5 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 14, at Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, 53688 Pioneertown Road, in Pioneertown. Tickets are $40. For tickets and more information, visit pappyandharriets.com.
