DJ BL3ND live at Crocks in Thunder Bay, 3 October 2014

The mask was not his idea. According to accounts of his early videos, DJ BL3ND put it on at his parents’ insistence, a mask that mixed Michael Myers from Halloween with Chucky from Child’s Play and a glam rocker of the 1980s. The two films date from 1978 and 1988 and the mask borrows from both.

By Friday 3 October 2014 it was his trademark, as recognisable as the name, in which the 3 stands in for an E and the whole thing reads as “blend.” The date went up on 23 September, ten days ahead. Only the essentials were given: name, date, room, and no price. The room was Crocks, at 16 Cumberland Street South.

A bedroom, a camera and a very loud mix

His career began online. Videos of him mixing at home started to appear on YouTube around 2009 and 2010 with little response, until the mask went on and the clips began to spread. His live mixes later passed 250 million views.

He jumps, shouts and throws himself around in front of the decks. Steve Aoki is the comparison usually drawn for the stage manner, including the habit of going into the crowd, which has cost him injuries.

That is an unusual route for a DJ. The audience found him before any booker did, and the bookings followed the views, not the other way round.

In 2014 he explained it to the Taipei Times: “I can express myself better with the mask on. Without a mask I’m just a normal person who you wouldn’t expect to be crazy.” His real name has never been made public. The same piece describes him as someone who likes family, dogs and friends, and listens to rock, hip-hop and electronic music.

The year the tour crossed borders

2014 was the first year BL3ND toured outside the United States, and it was the year his standing in the polls rose. He appeared in the DJ Mag Top 100, a poll decided by reader votes, in both 2013 and 2014. He also held the top of Billboard’s Uncharted chart for a record 62 weeks.

His Canadian debut came in June, with shows in Montreal on 13 June and Toronto on 14 June. Asia followed the same year: Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing in May, and Taipei on 1 August, where the ticket was NT$2,000.

By October he had already played Canada. Thunder Bay was a return to the country, not an introduction to it.

During the Asian dates he told a Guangzhou magazine that the mask was not a gimmick: “BL3ND is who he is, not the guy behind the mask.” He said his aim was to deliver fun nights anywhere, with the same energy whatever the style of music. A club on Cumberland Street South was one of the anywheres.

Four days before Amon Amarth

Four days after BL3ND, on Tuesday 7 October, Amon Amarth played the same room. They are a melodic death metal band from Tomelilla in Sweden, and their album Deceiver of the Gods had come out the previous year. The change of crowd between the Friday and the Tuesday can hardly have been bigger.

Four weeks after that, on Tuesday 4 November, came Mobb Deep, announced on the same day as this one. The Queens duo had released The Infamous Mobb Deep in April, a double album that paired new songs with unreleased material from the sessions for their 1995 record. The Friday, with a DJ on the bill, sat alone among them.

Across the eleven priced shows of 2014, admission ran from $5 to $50.

A second visit

A page dated a year later covers BL3ND at Crocks on 9 October 2015. It carries more detail than this one, including doors at 9:30 p.m. and a $20 pre-sale price, so the two nights are best read as separate stops in different years.

The gap between them is a year and six days. Both took place in the Cumberland Street South room, which stayed in use until October 2018.