A good crowd had gathered at The Sceptre, with the queue stretching past neighbouring shops. The bar was buzzing with a mixed crowd of mainly homeboy types and dolled up ladies in summery frocks, lamenting the heatwave’s end. Eclipse Touring’s excellent promo work had done the trick. And cheers for bringing yet another big act to Adelaide!

Supporting DJ Craze were The Product playing live, a local trio featuring two DJs and live saxophone. Their set blended slick breaks and beats with ease. All three guys were widely spread out on stage, giving them loads of space to let loose, which was well appreciated by the packed dance floor. When the beat mixer reluctantly announced their final track The Mexican, he said it would include a freestyle competition between the turntable scratch artist to his right and the funky sax player to his left. In three rounds of scratch and sax-off the crowd’s loud cheers voted saxophone the winner. My companion was one cheering for the other side remarking how the turntabalist’s skills were up there with the best, with speed and dexterity not unlike Q-bert or Mix Master Mike. High praise indeed!

The next few minutes saw the floor space disappear as everyone who wasn’t smoking or buying a drink gathered in the main room for the main act to hit the stage. Wearing a bright yellow tee and a cap far too big for his head, DJ Craze appeared with two technicians to set up his decks, Mac and live video stream to a large screen behind the decks. Once up and spinning, he introduced himself as “DJ Craze – three times World DMC champion…” The cap that seemed too big now fits him perfectly! He kick-started his set with a snippet of almost every over-played party tune I’ve heard in the last few years. We got Dee-lite’s Groove Is In The Heart, DJ Shadow’s Organ Donor, Eurhythmics _Sweet Dreams…_and Salt-N-Pepa to the ubiquitous James Brown and dance floor kings of the moment Daft Punk. These tunes certainly grabbed every dancer’s attention and reminded me of his fun set at Parklife 2007.

DJ Craze is known for mashing up everything from Hip hip to house, drum n’ bass to Miami Bass (bass what…?). It seemed the majority of the crowd wanted hip hop to jump along to, but within the first 30 minutes no one could predict which genre he was going to transport us to. Mid-set saw the party tunes get diluted with more eclectic tracks and the odd instrumental tune still in the breaks vibe. A brief display of classic DMC scratch tricks was thrown in with some speedy beat juggling complete with under leg moves and 360 turns, making the live video stream worthwhile at last. This display was a sudden and all too brief showcase of Craze’s skills that has earned him his DJ champ status. The majority of the show saw Craze working away on the laptop with the same records on the decks the whole time.

Some solid hip hop got the crowd chanting and a slow reggae tune got the crowd standing still, but it was the first drum n’ bass track that got the biggest hoots and cheers. Craze noticed this saying “You were all waiting for that shit, weren’t you!” and ceased the genre mixing for a while. While the crowd were gearing up for their first serious dance to the DnB tunes, an unknown MC grabbed the microphone and proceeded to attempt to insert some freestyle rhymes and big-ups for the DJ and the “Adelaide Massive” (???). The sound mix was way off as whenever the MC opened his mouth, the bass dropped big time. Thankfully this lasted less than a track as Craze took note and demanded that the problem be sorted out. The sound problems were quickly fixed, but the MC continued to distract from the strong DnB tunes and mixing. Whilst I’m sure that on any other night this may have been acceptable and possibly even entertaining, everybody was there to see, and listen to, Craze.

After what had been a fun night out, with a great new find in The Product and a well rounded sample of musical genres from Craze, my companion and I left slightly disappointed to wonder who would even contemplate hustling in on a three time World DMC champ?