Q-bert hadn't played in New York in three years, but his headlining appearance at the Fourth Annual Turntablist's Festival was much more than just the return of a celebrated DJ. The event, held at Manhattan's Symphony Space as a fundraiser for John Carluccio's turntable music documentary Battlesounds, featured brief appearances by more than a dozen scratchers from across the U.S. and Canada.

When he took his place behind the turntables at center stage, Q stood both alone and in the center of a crowd -- in this case, a line of peers, friends and filmmakers armed with video or 16mm movie cameras. Stretching up or around each other to capture the action at the turntables without blocking the view of the audience, these observers formed the rings of a target with Q-bert as the bulls-eye. While more than a dozen other turntablists would follow Q-bert's thirty-minute performance with often thrilling -- yet undeniably familiar -- five-minute sets of their own, it was clear from the start that the greatest sense of anticipation centered around this returning hero.

Looking pleasantly serious in a backward tweed cap and blue sweatshirt,Q-bert licked his fingers and stood almost motionless, before splashing out an initial salvo of scraping, whispering sounds from the record pressed under his precisely splayed fingers. His left hand rattled, possessed, flickering with impossible speed over the fader knobs on the mixer, each finger knocking the volume down one step in blinding succession to produce bursts of sound disappearing into an echoing distance; his right hand pressed with manic precision on the turntable, spinning or shaking or catching the disc to vibrate a pinpoint sound under the needle, reminiscent of the way B.B. King's finger detonates a guitar string.

Q-bert's cuts would often come to a more graceful end than the blunt, sudden stop that concluded every other performer's work for the day, but it was still an informal magic show, with the tricks coming in loose bunches. Over and over, Q smiled and shook his head as he changed the records, silently bidding the roaring crowd not to applaud the performances that had seemingly disappointed him. The M.C. shouted a joyous "Fuck it up, Q!" as the second turntable played a vigorous rhythm track and the humble celebrity wandered out of the spotlight and toward the wings to find a misplaced disc to play next. Whether he loved the spotlight or hated it was unclear; his focus was on the turntable.

The evening opened with a screening of an early edit of the Battlesounds documentary -- a rough, homemade seventy-five-minute video describing a patchy, oddly engrossing history of turntable music through shaky-camera interviews and footage of turntablist competitions. Interviewed extensively in the video, Q-bert demonstrated his techniques and described his early championships, noting that he only seemed to lose when his pumped-up ego convinced him that he would win. Recently Q-bert began emulating Miles Davis' use of silence and spare phrasing and has borrowed the sounds and traditional tools of hip-hop music to find his own voice.

Soon the music was over, the door prizes given away, and a special guest was introduced with an announcement. Grand Mixer DST -- who brought turntable music to the masses on Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" seventeen years before -- took the mike. DST told the tale of his having been "knighted" as the Grand Mixer, and to celebrate Q-bert's skill, he passed along the honor. Yet as DST built up the praise, Q awkwardly gestured "No...", finally, reluctantly, accepting the mike to be honored as Grand Mixer Q-bert. "I don't deserve it," declared the world champion turntablist. "I still need practice...thanks, and I love you guys."

Whatever it was Q-bert displayed, it was more than just a hard-won modesty. Q-bert is a world-class musician in a world overwhelmed with the novelty of celebrity and the distraction of success. No longer a kid, Q-bert the artist seemed only wary of the spotlight -- as if he knew it might somehow take away the one thing he's learned is most important.

MARTIN AZEVEDO
(February 25, 2000)