- I had no preconceptions about the Scratch Perverts but I had been told – ordered – simply to use whatever means necessary to get to 33&1/3 for their set.
And so I waded through a sweaty, sardine-packed upstairs room at QBH just before 3am. The heat was ridiculously oppressive but I was about to find out if it would be worth it. I was lucky enough to get dragged to a fairly good vantage point – this was a set that had to be seen, not just heard.
And then, there they were. I immediately smiled at the sight of the three Perverts, a motley crew of English caricatures not seen since The Fast Show. Tony Vegas, long locks of hair and a small fishing hat – the 70s dag. Prime Cuts, thick metal necklace and piercing eyes – representing the West Bromley Rocksteady Crew. Plus One, cap deftly tipped to one side, the clean cut cute b-boy.
But that was about as far as comedy went. The trio immediately got down to the very serious business of completely destroying the sweltering room. Using four decks and two mixers, the three rotated every few minutes, so that Plus One started, Vegas came in to battle with him, then Prime Cuts replaced Plus One, and so on.
Krafty Kuts had finished with a downtempo vocal classic but the applause hadn’t even died down before some energetic hip hop snapped the dancefloor to attention. And then the scratching started. Oh, sweet mother of god, that scratching. Two hands on the record going every which way, or one finger vibrating the record ever so slightly, it was flawless. Cutting the vinyl to shreds, hands and faders a blur, or precisely picking up the needle and dropping it back in, tapping the record, performing as I’ve never seen it done before, this was the work of true masters.
Individually, they were each brilliant, but as a team, they were indomitable. Not only did they compliment each other, harmonising their scratching like sections of an orchestra complimenting each other, but there was more. Every so often, as one Pervert was scratching up a storm, another would mimic what he was doing, so that you wouldn’t notice where one stopped, took his record off, and the other began his stint. Seamless.
I finally worked out why they are called the Scratch Perverts: because the way they manipulate the records is perverted. They do stuff to vinyl which is so naughty it should be outlawed. Goddamn.
I was having difficulty keeping my jaw off the ground, but that was without the tracks that were being dropped. From funky older hip hop to some cheeky newer material, the selection was impeccable. Mary J Blige’s ‘Family Affair’ felt right at home alsongside some Snoop Dogg, as did, of all things, P Diddy’s ‘Bad Boy For Life’.
After forty minutes of ecstatic screaming of lyrics and general approval, the Perverts decided it was time to end the block party. A familiar guitar twang shrieked out over the speakers, recalling a distant, yet unforgettable memory. As the tune built, more people realised what was going on. The thumping bassline kicked in, the crowd went into an even higher state of frenzy. And then the lyrics. I yelled them out for all I was worth:
Change my pitch up, smack my bitch up.
Holy fucking shit, are these guys hot or what? Wiping the tears and sweat from my eyes to witness the Prodigy being scratched to bits, I thought that it wasn’t going to get any better.
I was wrong.
The very next tune was even more of a surprise that the rnb or the Prodge.
With the lights out, it's less dangerous
Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us
No hyperbole nor expletives can describe the feeling of headbanging to Nirvana in the middle of a 33&1/3 NYE party. Unbelievable. Sublime. Brilliant. The Perverts let ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ play out, part of the crowd indeed moshing, the rest simply blown away.
But there was still over an hour of perversion still to come. What were they going to do now? The answer drew raucous screams from the crowd, not least this reporter: drumnbass.
Playing just about every hard-edged dnb hit of recent times (and some older ones, too!), the Perverts floored me again and again. It didn’t matter that they were playing slightly familiar tunes, these were the weapons of mass destruction the dancefloor willingly surrendered to. As Sean Penn says in The Game, “They fuck you and they fuck you and they fuck you. And then, just when you think it’s over, that’s when the real fucking begins!”
Unfortunately, it was here that the sound started to fall away a little. I had been comfortable - with my earplugs in – but now the sound started to drop out, then come back heavily distorted. I’m reliably informed that it was a combination of the Perverts overtaxing their relay back to the main mixer and the enthusiastic masses surrounding the equipment bumping the cables.
The bass was heavy from the outset, but now it started to get painful, and I had to block my ears. I would eventually retreat to the back of the room, but not before witnessing yet more mastery.
Consider, if you will, the moment Prime Cuts took one of the cables out of the mixer, licked his finger, and started grounding the lead. Flicking the plug with his finger, he created a rhythm with the low, rumbling noise, complimenting Plus One’s fury on the other decks.
If you thought that was it, well then you obviously hadn’t being paying attention to the rest of the set. These boys don’t do things by halves. Prime Cuts took over from Plus One, banging out a tune of sorts. He started flicking a switch on the mixer, something like the one that changes the channel from Phono to Line-In. This changed the grounding rumble to a higher-pitched tone, much like he was ‘scratching’ it. Flick, flick, flick – Prime Cuts took the simple, initial beat he was tapping out and turned it into a freestyle all-in brawl. His right hand grasped the lead, his finger moving slowly, fast, and blurred. His left would move from flicking that switch to the volume fader. These hands were truly quicker than the eye.
The icing on the cake was Tony Vegas getting on the other two decks and proceeding to compliment Prime Cuts’ ‘tune’ with some disgustingly good scratching tricks.
Truly, I have never seen anything to compare with this brilliance. Sure, there’s Dexter and the Avalanches, but this was different, in that it was a furious peaktime set that you could actually dance to (if you managed to scrape that pesky jaw off the floor). This set didn’t just have skills and tunes, it had flow and was definitely geared towards a dancefloor ready to go buckwild.
Krafty Kuts stuck around, Bukem and Conrad were transfixed (they’d never heard of the Perverts but now want them to do some scratching on future albums!), and Freq Nasty came to pay his respects.
The latter was playing to a packed main room as I left, but where was the energy, the fury of the Perverts? Surely these guys deserve a main room appearance next time. Ya heard?
Walking into QBH without the faintest idea of what was in store, I was competely and utterly floored. Having since read reviews of their February 2002 trip downunder (sans Plus One), it’s interesting to note that they performed the same tricks (the cable grounding), the same tracks (‘Family Affair’, ‘Bad Boy For Life’), and the same predominance of drumnbass. In Sydney, for example, the Perverts received a mediocre response because their track selection was regarded as overly commercial, and without enough hip-hop.
This time around the set had more of a structure (hip-hop to novelty bridge to dnb), and the tunes, no matter how cheesy, combined with dem skillz, made this the most amazing performance I have ever witnessed.
And apparently Agent Mad booked them for Easter as soon as they walked off stage. You heard it here first – make sure you don’t miss them next time!