When Central New York rock fans talk about their favorite memories of K-Rockathon, they inevitably talk about the music, the friends, the mud — or The Jump.
In 2001, Boy Hits Car singer CRegg Rondell climbed a stage lighting tower and jumped into a crowd of more than 25,000 fans at K-Rockathon 6 at Vernon Downs. In 2005, he did it again when he leaped off a column of speakers as thousands chanted “Jump!” during K-Rockathon 10 at Weedsport Speedway.
It’s unclear exactly how high up he was — 68 feet, according to a famous YouTube video of the 2005 jump, though some claim it was even higher. He could’ve died or been seriously injured, or he could’ve hurt the fans he landed on.
Instead, he became immortal.
“That video, that jump video, it certainly follows me,” Rondell told syracuse.com | The Post-Standard in a new interview before Boy Hits Car performed at the K-Rockathon Reboot on Saturday.
Half a million people have watched “the greatest stage dive ever” and other copies of the video online. That’s more than attended all of the K-Rockathon concerts combined since the music festival began in 1996. Random people will still come up to Rondell and ask him about it, years later.
Rebecca Clark, who’s attended multiple K-Rockathons since she was a teenager, said that the 2005 jump is still one of her strongest memories.
“That’s definitely one of the ones that stood out to me,” Clark told syracuse.com. “I’ve seen a lot of things at K-Rockathon, but that was definitely (one of the craziest).”
WATCH:
CRegg, whose real name is Craig Rondell, said he started climbing scaffolding at festivals around 2001 and doing jumps “if people looked into it.” He’s not the first person to ever launch into a crowd-surf from a great height, and K-Rockathon wasn’t the first place where he did it, but “it just became more of a thing here.”
Rondell came of age in the thrash scene, so circle pits and stage dives always felt natural to him. But he also grew up “in the stunt world,” with family members who worked on film sets and other performance spaces. Rondell frequently jumped in a foam pit, or fall pad, in his cousins’ backyard during breaks when he worked on a live “Batman and Robin” stunt show at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, California.
Rondell also worked in Hollywood over the years, with stunt credits in movies like “Iron Man,” “Gone in 60 Seconds,” “The Patriot,” “Lords of Dogtown” and “The Rundown.” So he knows a thing or two about safely taking risks to entertain an audience.
But any good stunt performer knows you can still get hurt. It happened to Rondell when he did a “header” at K-Rockathon in 2001.
“When I did that jump at Vernon Downs I got one of the craziest charley horses in my thigh and I was like, ‘Ohh there’s way too much exposed going off chest first,’” he recalled. “So I’m like, ‘I should just do a header,’ like an old school stunt header, where you mark where you’re going to land and you go off head first. ... At the last moment, you kind of roll over, so you’re exposing less of yourself and it’s your back mainly.”
Louie Santangelo, who was at the 2001 concert, said one of his friends caught Rondell.
“I moved out of the way,” Santangelo told syracuse.com. “I was only 13, so he would have no doubt squished me.”
When Boy Hits Car returned to K-Rockathon in 2005, Rondell climbed up high again during the band’s song “Benkei.” The fans started urging him to jump, but he didn’t plan to do it.
“That was kind of an accident,” Rondell admitted. “I got stuck up there is what happened. ... I just wanted to get a view and have a moment up there and then I got stuck on that speaker (tower).”
Rondell could hear people chanting “Jump!” but he didn’t feel safe. There were 4-foot-high dividers between the audience and the stage, so he would have to leap far out to get over the security pit and land in the crowd. There was also a metal barrier on top of the speakers that he worried would catch his foot, potentially throwing off his angle.
“I was like ‘What the F ... what, no this is bad, this is bad,’” Rondell said while re-watching the video of the moment before the jump. “That’s where I’m looking down, trying to take everything in -- ohh yeah, this is wild. Ohh, jeez, that’s way too high.”
He thought the Weedsport Fire Department might have to bring a ladder and rescue him. Then it got scarier.
“I kind of started getting vertigo or something. I don’t know what it was but ... it felt like the speaker was shifting and listing a little, like slowly moving,” Rondell said. “It’s a very bizarre feeling.”
He decided he would have to take the leap. Rondell urged the crowd to pack closer together, becoming like a “shock absorber” for his impending fall. He tried coaching them to avoid making their arms stiff, to avoid causing broken wrists or other injuries. He eventually tumbled forward, falling on his back and into the arms of the crowd.
They caught him. The crowd went nuts.
And it was all captured on video, eventually becoming known as The Jump.
“I know people say, ‘Ohh that was 60 or (more feet)’” Rondell said. “I don’t know if it was that high but I can tell you that I had enough time to think as I was falling. I had enough time as I was falling to be like, ‘I haven’t hit yet.’ That thought, ‘Oh, my gosh I’m still falling.’ And when I hit it, I went down but I never even hit the ground.”
Fans triumphantly lifted him back up in the air. The band played on, and Rondell became a K-Rockathon legend.
But it could’ve had a very different ending.
“It’s so fortunate and lucky that nothing really bad happened and no one got seriously injured,” said Rondell, stunned while re-watching his younger self.
Clark, who also attended Saturday’s K-Rockathon Reboot, said she’s still surprised it happened. She saw him climbing the speaker tower in 2005 and made a beeline toward the stage to take photos.
“I couldn’t believe he was doing it,” she recalled. “I didn’t think he was actually going to jump.”
Rondell said the height was never the scariest part. It was always the worry that someone could get hurt, including himself.
“I looked over to the right of me and there’s a dude in a wheelchair, crowd surfing,” Rondell remembered. “It was surreal. ... I was like, ‘OK, that could have been me’ if they didn’t catch me or if I hit that lip on the speaker.”
Rondell said he’s not aware of any serious injuries that occurred when he jumped at K-Rockathon and never faced much criticism over safety concerns. He did once get kicked out of a festival in Arizona for similar actions and remembers a Boston show where “they weren’t too thrilled.”
“It’s rock ‘n’ roll and it’s unpredictable,” Rondell said. “The fanbase in Syracuse and Central New York, it’s a very different breed. Because I’m pretty sure I would have received lawsuits if I would have done that jump in a lot of other places, but in Syracuse it was like ... ‘rock on,’ you know?”
He might not have faced any legal repercussions from his K-Rockathon jump, but another musician was famously sued for falling on a fan at the New York State Fair. A Liverpool woman claimed “Jessie’s Girl” singer Rick Springfield injured her with his butt when he lost his balance on the top of a metal bench during a 2004 concert at Chevy Court. A jury ruled in Springfield’s favor in 2015.
Rondell is the frontman and sole remaining original member of Boy Hits Car (sometimes spelled Boyhitscar). The Los Angeles-based band gained a following in the ‘90s and early 2000s with its mix of alternative rock, thrash, and nu metal but never became quite as well-known as other K-Rockathon performers like Limp Bizkit, 3 Doors Down, Papa Roach, Evanescence, Breaking Benjamin, Lit, Wheatus, Puddle of Mudd, Eve 6 and Cake.
Rondell repeatedly endeared himself to CNY fans at K-Rock concerts, including at Dysfunctional Family BBQ and the Free For All, over the past two decades. Anyone who saw Boy Hits Car perform responded by gladly opening their arms to Rondell.
“It was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. ... The fact that they caught me, and risked their life and limb, I mean, I’m just like bowing down to the Central New York rock crowd,” Rondell said. “I couldn’t have more respect because I could’ve died or been very badly hurt.”
Rondell, now 53 years old, crowd-surfed a little on Saturday but didn’t make any crazy jumps. He didn’t have to.
He further showed his appreciation with a second Syracuse performance Sunday night at The Jugg on Teall. Rondell hinted it might be one of his last times performing with Boy Hits Car but remained appreciative of what he called his “home away from home” on Instagram.
“What else can I say about the Syracuse fans? Nothing but love and respect.”
K-Rockathon Reboot: The fans
