Back in California in the early 1980's, DJ Apollo and his high school friends were some of the first people to start experimenting with the turntable as a musical instrument. Together, their efforts would help elevate, scratching, beat juggling, and manipulating sound into an art form that would later develop into a massive worldwide subculture.

The Rock Steady DJs consisted of Apollo, Mix Master Mike, and DJ Q-bert, and they went on to be the first DJ team to ever win the DMC world DJ championships. With astonishing deft flicks of the wrist, bumping turntable gymnastics, and expert timing, their performance raised the bar for turntablism considerably, and won them the highest honors a DJ group can earn.

DJ Apollo went on to be a key member of the DJ group Invisible Skratch Piklz, and he's also gone on to work with numerous seminal artists, including DJ Premier, Souls of Mischief, and jazz trumpeter Russell Gunn. This week, he's come to Shanghai to judge the DMC China finals and play the after party with DJ Shortkut.

SmartShanghai sat down with DJ Apollo to talk about the past, present and future of turntablism, alien abductions, and the DMC.

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Apollo: Great. I love it. It's been a while since I've been in Asia so I'm lovin' it. It's good to be back, as the last time I was in Asia was in 2007 and that was just the Philippines. Oh wait hang on, I was in Singapore last year, but I forget the name of the venue... where was it? Ummm. I'm a real forgetful person. [Laughs.]



Apollo: Yes sir!



Apollo: It's hard to say. I think it has plateau'd somewhat, and from what I've seen there's not as much structure in the routines as there used to be. I think it's become too free-form and I think there needs to be a balance between structure and freestyle as far as the DJ teams are concerned. I feel like there needs to be more in the way of composition and patterns, and routines should have a good mixture of structure and free-styling put together.


Apollo: It's just my opinion -- I mean I'm old-skool so I'm used to a lot of flavor and a lot of funky patterns you know... I do think it's good that it's advanced to get faster with different styles, like drum n bass style. Like, I've seen great DJ's beat juggle drum n bass with time signatures 3/3, 4/3 and I like that, but I think the tricks have plateau'd. We've seen it all already! So now it's just a matter of getting the DJ to really put some composition into it and make it interesting.


Apollo: We used to always say that there are infinite tricks, which there are, but I think we've seen quite a few already. Now it should be about who puts them in the right places because we've seen everything under the sun! [Laughs.]

I've seen some crazy shit man. I mean back in the Q-bert days [DJ Q-bert] when he extended the cartridge and he connected it to a long wire, and he scratched the record sideways instead of the traditional way -- I mean that was off the charts right there! And from then on DJs took that and advanced it more and in a way it became comedy -- after a while and it was just like not even DJing anymore. It got kind of comical and that I wasn't with.

Again I'm from the old-skool. I wanna see like really funky patterns and traditional stuff combined with the futuristic styles together. I think if your just a futuristic DJ doing futuristic tricks then your just that and no more.


Apollo: Most definitely it was the highlight. It was the start of the whole turntable culture. Erm, what can I say about it... it was a great time. I mean we invented it and it was great just to know that that was our stamp and we had a stamp on a part of history in the hip hop world.


Apollo: It started off me and Mike [Mix-Master Mike] in high school. We had a two man routine and we would practice every day either at my house or his house. It basically started out like we would practice in front of each other and it was one of these things where we'd be like, "Your taking up too much time, it's my turn. Okay now it's your turn, now it's my turn." There was only one set of turntables so we were like, "Okay, why don't you take that turntable and I'll take this one. You take that fader and I'll take this one and you do the bass and I'll do the snare." Then it was like bom bom bom bam bam [starts making noises] and we were like, "Oh my god!... Shhhh. It's a secret don't tell no-one." [Laughs.]


Apollo: Yeah. It was like immediately after we did that it was like, "Oh my god, what the fuck did we just do. What the fuck was that dude. Alright let's practice and show everyone tomorrow." You know what I mean, so that's basically how it started and we invented these two-man routines, and we'd do them at high school and garage parties. When Q-bert saw it, it blew his mind and then later on that year Q-bert won DMC by himself. When he came back to Frisco and me and Mike heard about it we were like, "Oh my god, Q-bert won the world competition, wow."

At the same time Q-bert looked up to me and Mike -- we were like the other kids from across town, so we knew about each other. So we were like, "Hey, lets make a group with Q-bert. That would awesome, that would be somethin'". And we did it and the rest is history.


Apollo: As far as composition and music goes there are still things to be done with turntables being used in a team or a band. It's infinite. As a hip hop turntable band you can do rock music, you can do disco, you can do drum n bass, electro... err or you can do something like Baltimore. Baltimore club music I mean, it's really fast.


Apollo: Yeah kind of... I've got to let you hear some it first, but the point is that there are all these new genres that you can do with turntables. So to answer that question I think that there is still a lot to be done with turntable bands. You can make any kind of music and right now there hasn't been a turntable group to really come out for a while.

You can play a dog barking, a car screeching, a crowd yelling, a woman screaming, or something more traditional like a guitar player's riff and manipulate it. The possibilities are endless.


Apollo: Yeah, actually I used to DJ with Branford Marsalis before I worked with Russell Gunn and it was through him that I met Russell. Branford is from a really well known jazz family and it was through my work with him and Buckshot Lefonque that Russell hired me. I was never a huge jazz head but I was discovered by Branford Marsalis and then I started playing with a jazz band. Those were the days in '93 and '94, and we were one of the first bands to have a DJ in it. I really got to elevate the turntable to being used as an instrument then. That was when bands were first starting to incorporate scratching.


Apollo: [Pause] I do... and when we used to practice on acid. Oh man. We used to practice on acid A LOT. I mean this is San Francisco we're talking about, and we grew up fucking around with all that shit, scratching until the morning came up, you know, And making up hella shit, making up a lot of stuff. [Pause... makes a face.] Talking to the aliens! Communicating with the aliens. Yeah, I mean this was one of our funny things we used to always say. If the aliens came down to battle we would battle the aliens, you know what I mean? [Laughs.]

If they came to abduct us I'd be like, "hold up listen to this."


Apollo: It's probably not one that I was performing but one that I witnessed at the Oakland Colosseum. It was during the 80's and it was Run DMC, Beastie Boys, EPMD, and Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. I was just a fan of hip hop then and me and Mike saw Jazzy Jeff doing his performance. He played this one song and he was scratching to it and me and Mike looked at each other and were like, "Oh my god!" Afterward we went straight home and practiced what he was doing -- that's how into it we were. I remember while Jazzy Jeff was doing his routine someone from the crowd threw a big barrel bomb and it blew up on the turntables. We were like, "...why did they do that? What the fuck!" And then him and the Fresh Prince ran off stage. That concert solidified my aspirations of being a DJ. I was like, "I'm gonna do that!"


Apollo: It's like firecrackers but like really powerful, more like fireworks. They are illegal now. Stupid fuckers in the crowd in the Oakland Colosseum. That was normal, I mean it's Oakland and it's pretty thugged out with gangsters in the crowd. They don't want to see Jeff doing that stuff. I mean, they don't know about it yet. It was the 80's, all they want to see is a rapper. That's how I took it anyway.


Apollo: Yeah, that's our group. We took the name Triple Threat from basketball terminology, triple threat players are the ones you have to watch out for. They can shoot outside or they can go inside and they can dunk on you, or they can pass the ball. Like Michael Jordan. We put that theory into DJing. We do a little bit of everything. Beat juggling, scratching, we play at the clubs, all different types of clubs and produce music too. Reggae, soul, funk, rock, hip hop basically all encompassing. Jack of all trades.


Apollo: Can't wait to see the talent tomorrow.

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The DMC world DJ championships China Final is taking place tonight at the Zhijiang Dream Factory. DJ Apollo and Shortkut are playing at the after party at The Shelter.

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