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San Francisco artists, Jondi and Spesh were interviewed in the basement of their weekly event, Qool, at 111 Minna Street Art Gallery. Their distinctive perspective on progressive house has influenced everyone from superstar DJs to bedroom dancers, worldwide. Yet one would never know it by their personable, down to earth character. Jondi and Spesh bring, without restriction, underground creativity and flavor to their music and events. Their weekly event, Qool, is a techno progressive house, trance happy-hour that's best described by Stacy, a long time patron: "It's half seven in the evening outside, you get in, the beats boom, and it's hard not to think it's 3 in the morning!"
 But it's not only the events or the music that have your soul rested and feet tired. Their philosophy of connectedness, of the group gestalt, permeates the South-of-Market air. The following interview includes general insights on who Jondi and Spesh are, their inspirations, weekly events, the Looq record label, and future plans. Unfortunately Lasse Looq, co-founder of Looq records, was unable to attend this interview, due to prior "fund raising commitments with the Foam-and-Computer-Chip Art Legal Defense Network."
Ms.E: My first question is, has anyone won the London contest on your site? Has anyone found the blue fluffy ball?
Jondi: No.
Spesh: No, nobody has won the London contest yet.
J: Has anyone even inquired about the London contest yet?
S: Nobody has even inquired about the London contest.
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"Nobody plays here because of what we pay them, or because of any other reason than they want to play here. I think that is part of the core of the party."
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E: How did you guys set that up?
S: Well the first step was actually going to London and then the second step was...an impulse to put one of those things in the elevator--on the way up, without being caught--and the contest was an afterthought.
J: No, the contest was really because we kept getting these emails from people, "send us your records overnight mail 'cause I'm a bedroom DJ." So we didn't want to say, "no." We wanted to say, "sure, find the fuzzy ball, send it to us, and we'll do that."
E: So by now I imagine that some janitor has picked it up, right?
J: No, no, we had someone check on it.
E: Was it still there?
S: It's still there.
J: The staff at that hotel is a bit lax.
E: That's pretty cool.
J: Totally.
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"Whereas we used to make a statement on a dance floor to one another, we were all sort of participating in something that was not an external statement of anything. It was more an internal connection with the people around you, and then you reach a state, whatever that state is."
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S: Especially the a.v. staff, because we asked for a turntable to be sent up to our room, and they couldn't produce one so.
E: So Spesh, is that short for, "Special K"?
S: Right, my given name is Steven Key, and so I started to DJ under the name Special K, and then it got shortened to Spesh, by some friends of mine, and then it stuck that way.
E: How did you guys meet?
J: We met at a party.
S: Whose party was that?
J: Nova Bass's house
S: Nova Bass--we meet at a party over at Nova Bass's house--a.k.a. Sam Urton.
J: That was in '93--Nova Bass was a part of Trip-n-Spin, our original label.
E: And you guys pretty much just started right away, started to make music together?
 S: Yes, absolutely, sort of out of necessity for me, 'cause, the Trip-n-Spin label started and going and getting attention, but we didn't know where the house thing was going. And then my partner in the label, who was almost the entire engine for the label and the one who was making the music, decided to go to Japan, because he is a very whimsical person.
J: Why did he go to Japan?
S: Because it was the new thing.
J: Right.
S: And so he is only able to pay attention for something for 6 months at a time I guess.
So house music was 6 months, and then Japan was like the next 6 months.
J: We got stuck in house music for 10 years.
S: Yea, we got stuck--no. So he left, there was no Trip-n-Spin. He said take Trip-n-Spin and do with it what you will and I said, "Great." So the next week I went to a party and I met J.D., and J.D. said, "I've got a studio, I'm making records." And I said, "Great, I need you, lets be friends," so very lucky for me.
E: So you were part of Trip-n-Spin?
J: I actually had to submit a demo tape.
E: You did?
J: I did, they liked it, they accepted me, and they said, "Now you can pay for your own record and put it out."
E: Right?
J: It was a collective. We were actually Trip-n-Spin.
S: For 4 years, or something.
J: Yea 4 or 5.
S: And then we said, "What are we doing?" 'Cause the people who had actually left us alone to deal with Trip-n-Spin, and actually never did anything and never put any music out, said to us, "You need to include us in the decisions your making." We thought, "O.K. fine, we will, and begrudgingly, secretly we'll start our own label."
J: It was kind of a dysfunctional collective towards the end.
S: It was fun. [Hands Jondi the mic.] Do you want to hold the rabbit for a while?
J: Yea, sure, I'll hold the rabbit.
E: O.K., previous to that, before you guys met, what were you listening to? Like a decade before, in the '80s?
J: I had a radio station on KDVS in Davis. I started off playing hip-hop and house music and got into old Belgian techno, Lords of Acid, sent out their first record, even industrial stuff and then I started writing to labels, domestic labels and they would send me stuff. So that's how I got into it.
S: I'm going to try and make this short: When I was 11, I would sit on my roof with some tin foil attached to an aerial, on top of a boom box, so I could get Jello Biafra's show, "Maximum Rock and Roll." And I'd listen to punk rock--that was the best music in the world. Then I got into high school and I heard the other best music in the world, things like Simple Minds, and Haircut 100, The Specials, the Cure and stuff like that--that was the best music in the world. As a matter of fact I made a theory that there was no more world after the next 2 years, that maybe the world would come to an end, 'cause music had gone as far as it would ever go. And then some years passed, those were blurry, and then I heard Doc Martin play house music at Townsend in San Francisco, and I had another time jump, but this time it was on the dance floor. And it was like nothing I had ever heard before, so I was very relieved that the world was not going to end.
J: I had a big moment like that in France.
E: I can relate to that; those times where you just bounce forward and you get "Whoa, O.K., that's the future."
S: But, it was a dance floor time warp.
J: Yup.
S: Whereas we used to make a statement on a dance floor to one another, we were all sort of participating in something that was not an external statement of anything. It was more an internal connection with the people around you, and then you reach a state, whatever that state is.
E: So you had experienced a time jump?
J: Yea. I had a similar moment in France, where I basically heard house music for the first time, I said, "Oh, yea. I've been dabbling with some keyboards, but that's what I want to do!" I didn't really know it at the time.
E: You did DJ on the radio, but you don't DJ anymore?
J: Yea, I do, once every few months, here. I DJ, I really enjoy it, but it's not a career aspiration.
S: Those sets are always special because you know, it's kind of like me being a studio engineer, and those moments are also so special! It rocks, 'cause I love to see where Jondi is musically, it's a part of our communication too, a checkpoint to see his state of music, because he'll go throw, and it's great to see what he picks.
J: 'Cause I pick out of his records--they're all at my house!
S: There is a record store at our studio with 5 thousand records, and he'll go and shop there, and come out with a record bag full of stuff.
J: That you bought, and never listened too!
S: That I bought and never listened too, and then it will totally surprise me, and also it always keeps us in touch, definitely, what are you listening too, what do you like?
E: Who is Lasse Looq? [Pronounces it Lassie]
J: Lasse Looq.
E: As in the Scottish "lass"?
S&J: Finnish.
J: He's a virtual person,
E: O.K., and how did this manifestation, or creation of that change your path?
 J: He's the founder of Looq Records; he basically inspired us to start Looq Records.
J: He's kind of a semi-real, semi-mythical character, he's written music, released music. "Amphiobiosis" is his latest track, on Dorigen, U.K.--great hit--it made Pete Tong's buzz chart; not very prolific, gets distracted, and has other careers, but a key figure for us.
S: Pete Tong loved it.
J: We're working on getting a picture of him.
S: And likewise, Lasse is working on getting another record out, so it's just an issue of focusing his attention.
E: People might hear some word about him, but never see him?
J: He's somewhat elusive.
J: He's been spotted here and there.
S: He's been spotted, but definitely the best way of getting a hold of him is through e-mail.
E: The label came before the club, right?
S: Yes
J: Yes? Yes.
S: Well actually.
J: No. It depends on when you think the club started, because the club started with a different name. It was E-KA, or first it was E-Cool.
S: It was Electronicool, then it was E-Cool, then it was E-KA: "E," "K," "A."
J: But then we had to change it cause Eiming got freaked out because of the "E."
E: The "E"?
S: There's like, "E" and "K" in there, and it was like, "what else is in there?"
E: "A" for acid of course!
S: Like of course, right!
S: So not wanting to have anything to do with drugs, we changed it to "Qool."
J: Yes, so we started Qool, about the same time as Looq.
E: Right, but you guys have been throwing parties, as a core of the label, and it was all intertwined.
J: Yes, back in the Trip-n-Spin days, back in the Trip-n-Spin loft parties.
S: Yes, Trip-n-Spin actually started as a party, back in "9-0", '90, so it was the first incarnation of Trip-n-Spin--it was a rent party.
E: We all know it!
J: A rent party?
S: Yea, we would make rent by charging at the door. Alisandro, who is now a lawyer, was our door guy. It was great.
J: He's better suited as a doorman than a lawyer.
E: I also heard that when you guys created the "Qool Card," the place basically blew-up.
J: We created the Qool Cards cause we wanted to give our regulars a special place, so if this party was free, we really couldn't do that.
J: So we decided we would charge a token 3 dollars, and then have a Qool Card to get in free.
S: So the first couple of weeks, we gave everyone Qool Cards who were inside, so we thought that no way we would have any money at the door. And we hired a doorman, and we would pay him--we were expecting that say 60 dollars would come in, then we would pay him 60 bucks. And then we would be good to go. Somehow that evolved into much more then 60 dollars.
J: And we really didn't want the party to be a big money maker 'cause we weren't paying our DJs and we really didn't want to get into that. So we needed a charity at that point, so we chose the SETI institute, which is one of the groups searching for extraterrestrial intelligence. And we started off giving them 15 dollars a month.
S: Yup.
J: And now we're giving them $800 a month.
S: I think an important distinction too, about the party, is that we started because I wanted to play someplace on a weekly basis, and it was really about me wanting to play there and other people wanting to play there also, because they wanted to play there.
And everyone plays here because they want to play here. Nobody plays here because of what we pay them, or because of any other reason than they want to play here. I think that is part of the core of the party--everyone is here because they want to be here too, and the people that get Qool Cards are people that...
J: Well, basically anyone who asks for one.
S: Yea anybody that asks for one, which is by definition someone who wants to be here. But sometimes people ask for the wrong reason, like, "I want a Qool Card 'cause I hear it's the place to be." And then of course we deny them in a very nice way and say, "You know what? There are other places to be too, so you don't need to be here." We just want people who are blind to the whole "place to be" thing.
J: Basically, the criterion is you just need to know the name of the party, and you would think that would be easy, but…
S: Nope it's not. It's going nuts upstairs.
E: Is it true that "Qooligans" are mere guinea pigs for experimentation?
S: I would say that's half true.
J: It's a great opportunity to have a crowd on a regular basis where you can test your new music. What is unclear in the studio becomes instantly clear on the dance floor--oh, O.K., we need 8 more bars there, that break down is too short, too long, whatever.
S: It's great. So our studio nights are always on Thursdays, and our Qool, always on Wednesdays, so we take the track, play it at Qool on Wednesdays, make a mental note, go to the studio on Thursday, make changes, and we ship it to England on Friday. It's like, "Shabam!" It's a great system.
E: So are you guys spinning dub plates, or CDs?
S&J: CD-Rs.
J: We have a CD player that has pitch adjustment, and dub plates are kind of on they're way out because there so expensive, they degrade really, really quickly, and CDs, as long as they have pitch control, they're just fine.
S: Some DJs are holding on to the dub plates and well, it's good to do both.
E: It is really expensive to do dub plates.
S: You got to do the CD-R. It's like a home record-cutting system.
J: Most DJs that chart acetates are playing CDs.
E: Right.
J: And they say "acetate," but in fact...
S: "Acetate" is a much sexier of a name.
J: Right, and when we found that out, we said, "Oh you mean, he just played it from a CD?"
E: Who are some of the main characters, DJs, in your family, crew, collective?
J: We have our residents, Gil, and Hyper-D, and they've been with us since day one, playing basically every week. And we have a lot of guests we book every 3 months, or so.
S: We create four schedules throughout the year and that encompasses three months, and so there is a list of 80. DJs that we pull from--there are about 20 DJs that are fairly consistent that play here, but it’s a balancing act between booking... for every superstar DJ we book, we book some guy who has never played in public in his life, and then what we do is take those as the outside, and then fill in to the middle.
J: Yes.
S: That's the deal.
J: Just to name a few names: Jim Cyr who throws the Sweet! parties, definitely has helped us out and supported us from day one. So we always book him. DRC who's playing now, Jim Hopkins, Jerry Bonham.
E: DRC was the first DJ lady I ever saw.
J: Oh yea? Right on.
S: I remember when she first worked for BPM Records when they were on Polk street.
J: We're working in the studio right now with her.
E: That's really cool, what about your production crew, people that are working on your web site?
J: Darren Kani is our website guy, totally fantastic, brilliant, we have a lot of people who help out with the labor.
S: Andrei Fon, Minister of the Vibe, will get a place in our new website too. And when we were experiencing a lot of growth, here with qool, one of the problems was making sure people who were tourists here knew what this was all about. So Andrei pretty much took it into his own hands to make sure they knew what it was about. And he would always approach these people in an unexpected way, and give them like, a glow-in-the-dark rubber snake, for instance, it would always catch them off guard, enough to.
J: Either make them run away, or enjoy it more!
S: They're either going to fall in line, or get out.
J: Christian Matthews does our visuals, he does all our overheads, and all our fliers, from day one, super talented guy; we have a lot of photographers who do album art, and take pictures.
S: Omar, Scott Carrelli, Trevor Crowley.
J: Kelly O'Connel
S: There are a lot of people who submit pictures to us. We're inundated with art, and we love it. It feels good; there is a responsibility too.
E: How about the label? Who helps you run it?
S&J: Our intern runs it!
E: You have an intern?
J: And she actually runs the label.
S: She's super talented, super detail-oriented and she can make the most difficult things really, really easy, and she gets them done in ten minutes.
J: It would take us hours!
S: We struggle to give her stuff to do, 'cause she's always done. J.D. will call me from the studio and say, "Jackie is done with everything, can you please think of something for her to do?" We've been able to share our music with more people because of her. One thing we're totally bad at is making packages to put in the mail, and that's so important.
E: It's a big job.
S: To share our music with people, that's what we do.
J: And now we're sending out too many packages.
S: 'Cause when we started Looq, our strategy is that we'd share our music with the best DJs in the world, and if they started playing it, then the music would be sucked out of record stores and we wouldn't be stuck with a big back catalog in a closet. So that's the strategy.
E: When was your first hit? Was "We Are Connected" your first hit?
J: Yea, I guess that would be our first hit.
S: On a global scale, but everything else...
J: Our first record did pretty well.
S: Everything else that got attention though, we all always thought it was a hit because it's always a hit for you…
J: If anyone plays it!
S: If anyone plays it, or you see it on someone's chart, or whatever. The idea of a hit for us has grown and grown and grown, I'm sure maybe.
J: Were still underground!
S: The real hit I guess, is something that's in the top forty, but I think we have a hit on every single one of our records, by definition.
J: We've been the "next big thing" for the last nine years now!
S: Yes, we've been the next big thing for nine years! Stop the interview--that's it!
E: That's all I need to know!
E: "We Are Connected" was made a few years ago?
S&J: In '97
 E: And it's been recently remixed?
J: Remixed, and re-released, on Dorigen--circulation remixed.
E: Made more fresh; people are hyped on that now?
S: Everyone knows our name now in Europe.
J: It's regenerating us in Colorado.
S: And Jerry Bonham says, "Hey, they are really, really 'We Are Connected' nuts in Colorado."
J: In Boulder.
J: We get these random pieces of feedback.
S: I don't know what speed these tracks move across the land, but they get there, eventually, and I'm sure there as fresh to new people as they are, fresh to us.
E: That ["We Are Connected"] has a classic vibe to it, even having been made a few years ago.
J: Well, when we released it, people tended to hate it, and then it matures and then they love it.
S: Actually, "We Are Connected" was panned by Mixmag, and DJ magazine, actually aggressively panned in DJ magazine. So we throw up our hands, and said, "O.K., well, maybe we wrote this track, and…"
J: No we wrote a scathing letter to the editor.
S: But nevertheless, we always did that; we have an adversarial relationship with anybody who has ever reviewed one of our records. So we wrote a scathing letter to everybody--it's what we do--and we wrote a scathing letter with a funny picture of the guy who reviewed it, who was a Scottish DJ named Huggy Burgerqueen.
E: Huggy Burgerqueen?
S: Huggy Burgerqueen. So we sent a letter to him, and they actually published the letter minus the unflattering stick figure drawing that we did, which was awesome. And then we didn't hear anything from the track until somebody was telling us that John Digweed was desperately trying to get a hold of us, because the label that we released "We Are Connected" on, Trip-n-Spin, had ceased to exist, 'cause we let it go dormant. And the company that under-wrote the pressing of it had also gone dormant. So actually john Digweed was searching for us desperately.
E: So John found you?
S: Because John Digweed decided he wanted to do a more deeper, more dirty house sound, and it was a pretty aggressive agenda I think on his part, and he went and did this thing, the Bedrock CD; our track was on it. He and Sasha have been pushing the sound now for about a year, and it's pretty much catching on massively, others are starting up to produce this kind of sound; we found ourselves in the middle of it and as a result, we've been doing more remixes, but since our sound has evolved a little bit from '97...
J: We're finding the English "sheep mentality." The "house music headmaster," as Spesh puts it.
S: That's right the "great house music headmaster" is dictating that cuts.… Someone behind the camera has just pointed out an analogy I once made when I went to Oxford; somebody told me that the white socks I was wearing wasn't the thing to do. It was a "plebian" thing to do. I needed to have socks that weren't white. So what I say now is the tracks that we send to England now have white socks on them...rebellious white socks.
J: Actually most people like it; we got one nasty e-mail this morning.
S: We did a remix last week that was rejected by the label because we're kind of forwarding our agenda, and I think their wanting us of a few years ago. So they think it's absolute "shite." We couldn't resist but to point out to them that when "We Are Connected" came out, the English thought it was absolute "shite." And it wasn't until 2 years later, when John Digweed played it, that it became the bee's knees.
E: Why has it ["We Are Connected"] taken off overseas in Europe?
J: It's because of the DJs--actually we're getting really good feedback, and I think our new album will do really good over here.
S: It's the DJs in Europe that have supported us, and that's because we're giving the music straight to them, and for some reason, we're all on the same wave length, so that's happening right now and we're happy about that.
J: There aren't as many DJs in the progressive house world that can make a record like some of the European superstars can, and also, Americans basically like music with vocals in it. And that really hasn't changed yet.
E: It's true! What's next for the label?
J: New album is out: We Are Connected; we're going to be still doing remixes, we're going to start a U.K. division of Looq Records. And we already have some releases for that. That's the current agenda, plus some side projects too.
S: He has lots of side production-projects too.
J: He's got a job, and I don't!
S: Not only Jondi and Spesh, but it's going to be Jondi, and who know else in the future!
J: Mark Musselman, "Moyer and Musselman," a breakbeat project.
S: And anyone who works with Jondi, is blessed to work with him.
E: I know how important that is.
J: I'm not an engineer. Just 'cause I can't let go of the mouse, doesn't make me an engineer!
S: And also I want to do a mixed CD. He's the best non-engineer I've ever met!
J: Witness his shirt, remember this name [printed on Spesh's shirt: "Setflow"]. This will be Spesh's mixed CD!
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Watch a video interview recorded at 111 Minna, San Francisco