DJ Qbert live at Crocks in Thunder Bay, 15 May 2015

The billing for 15 May 2015 used a phrase Crocks rarely printed: early event. The turntablist DJ Qbert headlined, with doors at 8 p.m., and an after party was billed separately at $5 with Rogue. The room could hold a listening crowd first and a dance crowd later, with the price of each on its own line.

Loffredo & Associates presented the show with H.I.T Management. Advance tickets were $20, sold at Rainbow on Bay, Joya Espresso, Waking Giant Coffee Co., Extreme Pita and Crocks, or online through the promoter’s store with a service fee. It was a 19+ show, photo ID required. SNS were named as special guests.

The name on the flyer

Qbert is Richard Quitevis, born in 1969 in San Francisco to parents from the Philippines. He was a founding member of the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, the San Francisco crew that began in 1989 with Mix Master Mike and DJ Apollo and treated the turntable as a lead instrument. The group played its last show in 2000, and its members then went their own ways.

Between 1995 and 2000 it put out the Shiggar Fraggar Show tapes and records, along with Vs. Da Klams Uv Deth in 1997. They are the records a scratch-listening audience knew the crew by.

The DMC is the Disco Mix Club, a British DJ organisation whose championships were for years the main proving ground for turntablists. His record there is why the billing opened with the word champion.

He won the DMC USA solo title in 1991. In 1992 he took the DMC world title as one of the Rock Steady DJs with Mix Master Mike and Apollo, and in 1993 and 1994 he and Mike won it again as the Dreamteam. That is three world titles in three consecutive years, all won with the same partner.

The billing also listed him as a DMC judge in 2012 and a member of the DMC DJ Hall of Fame, an honour he shares with Mike. Mike went on to tour and record with the Beastie Boys from 1998.

Records, film and gear

Wave Twisters, his 1998 album, was built mostly from samplers and beat machines, not turntables. It became an animated film in 2001, with the animators drawing to music that already existed. The film premiered at Sundance and won an award at South by Southwest. It is his best-known solo work.

He also ran a company, Thud Rumble, founded in 1996 with fellow Piklz member Yogafrog. It handled his releases, films and events. He co-designed mixers and the PDX-2000 turntable with Vestax, a slipmat line called Butter Rugs launched in 2001, and a stylus with Ortofon.

In 2009 he launched Qbert Skratch University, a school for scratching. By 2015 he was a performer, a teacher and a product designer at once, and the billing for this show listed only the competitions.

A different kind of Friday

A scratch performance is not a resident-DJ Friday. People come to watch hands work, and the earlier doors suit that. The later after party then gave the floor back to a dance crowd. The pairing of two kinds of night under one ticket day is a reading of the two prices, not something the promoter spelled out.

At $20 it cost more than the $15 charged for Joel Fletcher four weeks earlier. It cost less than the $35 asked for Machine Gun Kelly the previous December. The $5 after party matched the door price of the Canada Day night six weeks later, which shows how cheaply the room sold its late hours.

Eight days later

On Saturday 23 May the room changed direction entirely. Great Lake Swimmers, a Canadian folk band, played the same stage. A room that could book a scratch DJ on a Friday and a folk act the next Saturday had no single house sound.

More of the year’s DJ and club nights are on the shows page. Rogue, named for the after party, stays a name and nothing more.