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By Al Shipley
Baltimore City Paper

"If it weren't for that cancer and that divorce, we wouldn't be havin' this conversation," says DJ Equalizer, one of the pioneers of Baltimore club music, about the personal setbacks that kept him out of the scene in recent years. "A rumor went around that I'd died, OK? And all the sudden 50 other people were poppin' up, 'I invented club music, I invented club music.'"

At 40 years old, in better health, and back in Baltimore after a stint on the West Coast in the '90s, Equalizer was more than happy to set the record straight during a lengthy phone interview back in May. "I created the DJ business, literally, in this city," he says. "Totally turned it into a business, y'know. I got started back with Bernie [Rabinowitz] from Music Liberated, this was all the way back in like '85, '86," Equalizer recalls of the influential local record store and its owner, who passed away in 2003. "I left Bernie after a couple years, I moved away from him, and I started a chain of stores you may know as Inner City Records. And I ended up shutting down two of Bernie's stores. And I feel bad about that, because that wasn't the point."

Soon after, DJ Equalizer expanded Inner City Records from a store to a label, issuing his first EP under the group name Sounds of Silence. The A-side, "I Got the Rhythm," is often cited as one of the first Baltimore club records, and just as frequently misattributed to DJ Scottie B. And one of Equalizer's 1989 white-label releases, featuring a club edit of 2 Live Crew's "C'mon Babe," provided the inspiration for one of Baltimore club's first national hits, when radio personality Frank Ski used the break for "Doo Doo Brown" by 2 Hyped Brothers and a Dog in 1991. Other influential releases in DJ Equalizer's catalog include the Beats, Breaks, and Bullshit EP series, which is cited by DJ Technics as providing source material for many of club's most frequently used loops.

DJ Equalizer can even nail down the exact moment that the nascent genre's name was inadvertently coined by an employee of his label's distributor, Liason Records. "Tom from Liason, I'm not sure if he's still there anymore, but he was a part of it, he gave me a call," Equalizer says. "And he's like, 'Bob, look, y'know, I keep getting these calls from overseas, they wanna know they can hear more of that Baltimore club music.' Right there is when it got the name. From that moment on it was called club music, and there was nothing you could do to change it."

Having revived the Inner City label last year, Equalizer released a new Sounds of Silence album, Leaving Las Vegas, and is now building up a roster of artists, including another club legend, DJ Big Red. "The label's back up in full force 100 percent. The web site's kickin' ass. I'm gettin' calls from everywhere, lookin' for the music now that they can go ahead and download it, and there's so much new stuff on the way coming out that it's just, like, sick," Equalizer says, although he's taking his time to make each release special. "Y'know, if it takes six months, I ain't gonna rush it out next week to try to get a dollar."

Still, DJ Equalizer sounds wary of the narrow aesthetic that Baltimore club's evolved into since the days when he helped develop it. "To me, it's just a different form of house," he says. "When I wrote 'I Got the Rhythm' and 'All About Pussy' and 'Much Too Much,' I wasn't thinkin', Hey, I wanna write somethin' Baltimore's gonna like. You can't sit there and say, 'Well I'm gonna make a club record.' When you do, you're trying to sound like somebody else, you're not being original, and people are gonna know that. If you have the ideas, you have the talent, you write from the heart, and that's it."

"Just been diggin through the crates and came across, the first Baltimore Club record ever made. A classic with the essential loops which are still used today. The year was 1989 and the man, the myth, the legend was the B-more Original hit maker BOB THE EQUALIZER one of the coolest dudes on Howard Street, his records are timeless gems that pre date Chemical Brothers and the entire B-more and breakbeat scenes - a truelly original dude who was the spark that ignited the do it yourself B-more way and official Gutter Family from way back in the day... Highlandtown Ish....
ps. I'll be posting some of my fav club records from my collection every once in a while as I got all the hits you never sell the classics...peep the early hand styles of little cool aaron and the bpms.. ha memories, oh and DDB is DOO DOO BROWN..BOB got that vision..."

By Dj Aaron LaCrate
Milkcrate Athletics

In The USA/Baltimore: 410.878.7593 In The UK/London: (02079) 938749

P.O. Box 84350, Baltimore, Maryland 21224 USA

In The USA/Baltimore: 410.878.7593 In The UK/London: (02079) 938749

P.O. Box 25850, Baltimore, Maryland 21224 USA