Mysto and Pizzi live at Crocks in Thunder Bay, 27 September 2013

Ten dollars was the whole price, and on the day the night was announced even that could not yet be paid online. The post went up on 31 July 2013, nearly two months before the Friday in question, with a promise that tickets would be on the promoter’s website soon. The date was 27 September, and the address was Crocks, 16 Cumberland Street South.

Loffredo & Associates presented it together with H.I.T Management. The headline read “live from New York City,” which for a Thunder Bay dance night in the autumn of 2013 was a reasonable thing to print in bold. Music ran until 3 a.m. for anyone holding a valid wristband, and the night was 19+.

Two producers from Queens

Mysto & Pizzi are Yaroslav Vynnytsky and Marc Joseph, who began working together in 2006. Their early credits were on the R&B side. They produced “Get Dirty,” featuring Chamillionaire, for R. Kelly’s 2007 album Double Up, which reached number one, and worked on Kelly Rowland’s Ms. Kelly the same year. The announcement says both records went platinum.

The name that reached most listeners came later. In 2009 the pair remade “Somebody’s Watching Me,” the 1984 Rockwell single, a number two hit in the United States with Michael Jackson singing the chorus, for GEICO’s Kash advertising campaign. A remake behind a national commercial reaches more listeners than most club records ever will. That is the reference point for everything else on the bill.

What the poster claimed

The announcement leaned on remix credits. It named Justin Timberlake, Tiësto, Avicii, Steve Aoki, Kid Cudi and Ciara among the acts they had remixed. It also put their work on EDX’s “Give It Up for Love” at number two on the Beatport top 100 and number one on the site’s House chart.

Two of their own singles followed: “Where Is Love,” with Jonny Rose, and “Hymn,” which had turned up on episode 250 of Tiësto’s Club Life podcast.

That is the profile of a production team more than a touring act, and the billing reads that way. It called them “up and coming” and “quickly establishing a name” in pop, R&B and electro-dance, a modest phrase set beside a credit list that long, and a fair one.

Their label was Ultra Records, part of Sony Music, and the releases from that deal ran into the middle of the decade, among them “Galax” and “Flight to Paris.”

Avicii’s “Wake Me Up” had come out that summer, and mainstream dance was moving fast enough that a pair with pop and R&B roots fitted the moment.

It is fair to guess that many people who paid ten dollars knew the tune first and the pair second.

The room that month

Crocks did not run on dance nights alone. On 13 September, Sick Individuals played a frosh weekend bash. The next night Elliott Brood, the Toronto alt-country trio, played a special early show. From a student-week dance floor to a stomping three-piece with a banjo in two nights is a wide swing for one venue.

Across the nine priced shows the record holds for 2013, admission ran from $10 to $40. Mysto and Pizzi sat at the bottom of that range. For a guest billed straight from New York, the price was closer to a club cover than a concert ticket, and the local slot went to DJ Anthony.

The 19+ line was the rule of a bar-format room. Nineteen is the legal drinking age in Ontario, so anyone younger stayed outside, however many friends were in the queue.

Crocks kept the Cumberland Street South address until October 2018, when it moved to the downtown north core. This night belongs to the older building.

A Friday in late September, a few weeks into the university term, was a sensible place to try a night like this. That is a reading of the calendar, not a stated reason. Three weeks on, MAKJ took over the same room at the same price.