Interview with QBert
 
  
Dave: My name’s Dave Corey, and welcome to Joe’s Blue Plate Special. This week we’re going to be talking to QBert from the Invisibl Skratch Piklz. To begin with, thanks for coming on the show. Let me just ask you where you’re from and how you kind of got your start?

QBert: San Francisco, California. It’s the whole B Boy scene out there you listen to. Fascinated by the sound of the scratching.

Dave: When was the first time you heard someone scratching?

QBert: ‘83? ‘84? Maybe when that song Rocket came out. ___________ Buffalo Gals ____________, whoa, that’s cool.

Dave: And did you start scratching right away?

QBert: No, no. I didn’t know what it was. I thought it was the needle moving across the record the other direction, whatever, sideways.

Dave: Left and right instead of forward and backward?

QBert: ___________ The first time I _____________ was ‘85 when someone actually showed me how to do it. I went, whoa. Tried it. We were all trying to ___________.

Dave: Wow. So how long have you been doing it then? About 15 years?

QBert: Yeah, 15 years.

Dave: Right on. When did you start actually DJ’ing for parties and things like that?

QBert: Yeah, ‘85. Larry had a _____________ record collection collect everything that I liked and it was pretty much the obscure hip hop stuff. Before I even scratched it a hip party, someone said, who’s got all these records? Why don’t you come and play ‘em at the party? 50 kids there____________ playing the record. And someone goes, hey, check this out. He grabs the record and starts scratching.

Dave: Was the hip hop scene pretty different then?

QBert: As far as the music is concerned, yeah. I guess it was the ___________ era and it was just all like _____________ drum machine and rapping.

Dave: Did you get involved in any of the beat boxing and stuff like that?

QBert: Oh, the actual vocal percussion stuff? Oh, yeah.

Dave: Right on. Where did you get your name from?

QBert: It’s so stupid. My last named started with a Q.

Dave: That’s alright. You coined the term “turntable” is my guess.

QBert: No, no, I didn’t.

Dave: You didn’t? Okay then. My sources deceive me then.

QBert: No. Went from there just got pretty watered down and then someone who just spins records

Dave: Is that what you consider yourself, is a scratch DJ?

QBert: Scratch DJ.

Dave: As far as being a pioneer just in using the turntable as an instrument, who’s kind of influenced you in your pursuit of doing that?

QBert: I’d say so many people. That’s tough to say. One of my first influences probably Mix Master Mike, my partner. He just taught me just to be original. And the way he played it was totally like a musical instrument. That just was like, wow.

Dave: How’d you get involved with Mix Master Mike and start the Invisibl Skratch Piklz?

QBert: I met him at parties. Someone said, hey, come meet my friend the DJ. You know, like, oh, my god, here we go. I wanted to __________ everyone I met, and so I got up there and did my thing, and he just got up there and totally blew everyone away and I was like, oh, what the hell. And then I asked him to teach me some things, and he taught me some things. As far as coming __________, I guess we started hanging out more and in ‘89 ________________ I mean ‘93 or something, disk, and then Yoga Frog came in ‘97 with ________ styles.

Dave: Have you guys mostly picked up people just at parties and things like that, along the way, that have become part of the Invisibl Skratch Piklz crew?

QBert: Actually, one other person I forget is Flair. Him and Shrunkit would come over to my house and buy bootleg __________ tapes from me. I would go to the competitions and dub all the new ___________ and stuff and they would come by and pay for dubbed copies of the ___________, and that’s how I met them. They would show me their stuff. I guess ___________ kept getting better ________ the videos and then Flair, he was just always good and ________, just wanted to show me up ________ new scratch _____________, and then every time I would turn my back, he would do it. And I’d turn around, what was that!! Oh, nothing. He would do some other scratch. I don’t know why I’m going

Dave: No, that’s okay. It’s perfectly fine ramble. I’m just looking for interesting stuff, so whatever you’ve got to say is just fine. As far as the future of turntableism, what do you see there? Do you think that a lot of people are going to make it more of a commercial thing, or do you think that it’s going to stay kind of on the underground? Where do you think it’s going to go?

QBert: I think it’ll go all directions. It’s getting so big. There’s always going to be some people who are gonna try to __________ commercial________, people who of course be artistic with it and do their own thing, and there’s also I guess we’d call it the true school, artists who want to just keep it traditional and evolve it. Kind of like we call it, something like flipping the standard, which is a standard ________, the sound of ah and fresh, and whoever can flip those two sounds the most...I guess those sounds are so basic that you can kind of gauge a person’s skills with the things they can do _________ scratch, kind of like a jazz standard. You know how like all jazz musicians play a certain song, whoever can flip that song the best would be like well respected.

Dave: Yeah. I’ve heard that you compare playing the turntable a lot to the kind of freestyle approach that a lot of jazz musicians have. I guess what would you consider your style of playing to be most similar to?

QBert: Right now it’s really free form kind of like. As far as jazz __________ hip hop _____________ and, I mean, you’ll see that in rock, you’ll see that in every ________ a free form kind of area, even comedians just ________ composition of a comedy, scratching __________ you know what you’re feeling at that moment.

Dave: How do musicians that play other instruments view turntables and just DJ’s in general, scratch DJ’s in particular?

QBert: At first, a musician who knows that a musical instrument is a horn, trumpet or drums or whatever, and they’ll think of turntable like, oh, that’s not a musician. They’re just playing music off turntables. But when they finally see a really good scratch DJ and maybe try it and realize all the infinite sounds you can do with scratching, then they’ll know ___________ instrument.

Dave: And how about audiences? Have you played for a wide variety of audiences, and how has their response been?

QBert: Yeah, all kinds of audiences, people that have never seen it in their whole life, people that don’t like it, people that do like it, like in Japan __________. totally outsells ______________. Everyone pretty much.

Dave: Seems like it won’t be long before that happens here too.

QBert: That’s right.

Dave: Getting really popular. Actually, I’m going to bust out with this question. We’ll see what you have to say about it. Particularly with putting out albums, how do you get around copyright violations?

QBert: As far as like sampling, we try to use things that won’t be recognizable, or if it is, we’ll try to flip it or put it ______________ make it different ____________. so selfish Say you make a collage and stuff you want to cut out this guy’s head or Michael Jackson’s face with an elephant arm on him or something, and then, oh, it’s Michael Jackson’s face, you can’t use it. That’s totally like destroying your free form of art, kind of like sampling is like a collage of sounds. You take one sound. You got like a zillion sounds and like one sound happens to be Hulk Hogan burping or something and he’ll just sue you, so stupid.

Dave: So would you mind if someone borrowed your scratches off of an album?

QBert: No, not at all. Go ahead. I totally am for sample. Go ahead and use them creatively.

Dave: Do you think there’s a point at which it gets kind of overboard, I mean, maybe Puff Daddy comes to mind when he’s...seems like he’s sampling the whole song, just kind of redoing it.

QBert: You know, that’s his art. Whatever he wants to do

Dave: One of the main thrusts of the show is kind of the difference between independent musicians and major label musicians, not so much good versus evil or anything like that, but just stuff that has a lot of corporate backing versus stuff that doesn’t. Where do you stand in an issue like that? Would you want to get on a major label and, I guess get your stuff well-promoted, but at the same time possibly have to compromise some of your creative freedom?

QBert: No, I _____________ any creative freedom

And so being independent ___________ and that’s how we like it. We like to just say whatever we want and have no time limit, no deadlines, as long as it comes out ____________ still enjoy it rather than pop hit some people will like it now and you’ll get paid no one will even care about it. I guess it’s gotta be timeless. Not saying that pop can’t be timeless

I guess the music we do is kind of like an acquired test, kind of like beer, but later, oh, I get it, you know, so, I don’t know

Dave: That’s okay. At the same time, do you sample a lot of stuff that’s like pop hits from the past decades or anything like that? What kind of stuff do you sample?

QBert: I kind of try to stay basic

sound effects

Dave: So you’re not going out there with any Simon and Garfunkel or crazy stuff like that?

QBert: I mean, if I hear some weird little part in there _______ mess with, yeah, I probably would, but as of now, ____________ the whole scratch standard thing, kind of staying very simple and just making use with what I have rather than letting the sounds I guess control you, you control the sounds. Kind of like if you were on a desert island and you had just coconuts, and you were a sculptor, like a statue maker, have to make a statue with just coconuts, and you had no other materials around , so it’s kind of like that’s what

Dave: What do you see the hip hop scene right now? Do you consider yourself to be a part of the hip hop scene, and how do you feel about where the scene’s at at this point in time?

QBert: As far as hip hop, I guess, my roots are in hip hop, ________ I

trying to make like a country kind of song, but it always come back to the

Dave: I understand. Outside of that, just the culture in general around hip hop, whether it’s Puff Daddy down to stuff that you’re doing, down to street level graffiti and stuff like that, how do you think the culture is doing right now? Do you think it’s thriving, think it’s in a good state, bad state, what’s it all about?

QBert: If you’re in the whole true school ________, it’s definitely in a good state, because your whole world revolves around MC’s that are totally ________ do something good, b boys that are just doing the newest moves, graph artists that ______ have the neatest styles, and DJ’s that have the newest cuts and stuff, so if you’re in that world, yeah, it’s totally ____________ as far as the commercial aspect of it or whatever, the other world, I don’t know what you call that...

Dave: Commercial world, I guess.

QBert: ...that’s something different, but it doesn’t matter to me, because I’m

Dave: I understand. As far as advice for independent musicians, independent DJ’s that are coming up that haven’t had the experience that you have, what advice do you have for folks like that?

QBert: Would you repeat that question?

Dave: Yeah, what advice do you have for upcoming bands and artists that are out there trying to make it to the point where you’ve made it?

QBert: I guess just keep on doing it for the love of it rather than the money. I would just come, when you do it for the love of it, you are definitely catering to a wider audience, you may think it’s a small audience, but it’s a very large audience, because this audience will grow up and die and the next audience will grow up and hear your music and die, the next one will grow up and hear your music and die, you know what I mean? So you’re catering to an audience that will hear it for zillions of years rather than something that’s like commercial ____________ people will like right now, which might seem like a big audience now, but as the years ____________

Dave: Understood. Do you want to do a station id? Please!

What’s in the future for DJ QBert?

QBert: Right now we have a convention called Scratch _______ 2000 which comes out in July of 2000. It’s the first scratching convention, kind of like you know how the breakers have the b-boy convention and graph artists have their kind of convention, and the MC’s I guess they have that new music seminar. This is the first time we’re going to have an all scratching kind of conference where people talk about that art and how we break down the music and it makes us all united as one so we can have one language together instead of a DJ that goes, hey, how about that scratch that goes, ..., you know, it’s like, what? And now we can talk, like, okay, well, it’s a chirop combo to the reverse player on __________ whatever, and people, oh, yeah, yeah, I got that.

Dave: So you’re creating a dictionary for the scratch DJ?

QBert: Yeah, totally. We’re going to break everything down as far as basics and stuff. Of course, the more advanced scratches will be harder to do, but at least as a start, we’ll get the basics down.

Dave: Where is the convention going to be?

QBert: It’s going to be in San Francisco July 1st. And we also do a preview of the movie, we’re making a movie, it’s my album, is Wave Twisters, which was a soundtrack to a cartoon movie, and so the cartoon is being built _________ the music right now.

Dave: How long is it?

QBert: It’s about an hour long.

Dave: That’s great.

QBert: _________ clips. We have a video magazine called Turntable TV. _________ has a whole bunch of clips.

Dave: Sounds great. Anything else?

QBert: Also, members of our crew have projects like _________ album right now, and Larry has an album coming out. It’s actually a scratch practice ________ going off

Dave: That’s great. Well, thank you very much for coming on the show. I sure appreciate it. And other than that, I think I’m just going to get you to do an id. Is there anything else you guys wanted to mention?

QBert:

Dave: Is there a message for the kids that you got?

QBert: I guess just practice, practice. We have a website as well. There’s a lot of info on there. skratchpiklz.com. Or you can go to skratch.org, which is easier.