Most people automatically think hip-hop when they hear Mr. Stone’s Throw’s name. Wrong. Yeah, true, he pretty much started when hip-hop reared its head (buying records since age 9!), but Peanut Butter Wolf hasn’t spent the last 30 years with tunnel vision on a particular sound. He’s got “more records than Amoeba.” Not many guys can educate you on a different genre of music each night of the week and keep you bouncing all the way though. He can, and he’s proved it many times. A “DJ’s DJ” was coined for guys like this. He’s this town’s Sound Czar.
What do you like most about what’s happening in LA? That it’s big enough to support so many small subcultures. That’s why I moved here eight years ago and why I spun for a week in a row at my favorite clubs for 777 and 888.

Where did the idea for 777 and 888 come from? A joke. A few years ago I spun at :steveaoiki:’s night on 6-6-06, so I thought it would be fun if I wore a wig and played an all-metal set…since people always associate me with hip-hop. I got a lot of flack for that one from people who thought it was in poor taste. The next year came around (July 7) and I decided to do a “777 spiritual mix.” I even got contacted from a nationally-syndicated Christian radio station and I had to explain to them that the mix had Muslim, Jewish, Catholic, and Rastafarian songs too, so that scared ’em off.

Was prep maddening? Definitely. I usually play a little bit of everything, but for this, I had to stick to themes. I was scrambling each day putting my set together. It was liberating though. When you play a whole night of ’60s soul or ’70s disco or ’80s funk or ’90s hip-hop or whatever, you can go deeper than if you try to play all styles in one night and scratch the surface of each of them.

Did you find that one particular genre went over better than others? I think both times I got the best response at the Rootdown where I did hip-hop and Firecracker where I did disco.

Did you see a lot of the same people each night? I did. There were definitely people who made a game out of going to all the nights and lost out at Funkmosphere because that place was at capacity by about 9 pm.

Anything funny happen? I wore a blue LA hat and white tee all eight nights. Little did I know that Manny Ramirez had just become a Dodger that week. People kept coming up to me and saying “Go Manny” and I had no idea what they were talking about.

Any plans for a 9-9-9 version this year? I don’t really wanna do 999 cuz I can’t think of anything different enough to do. 777 was all vinyl, which was cool, and 888 was all videos, but I have no clever plan for 999. Only thing I really wanna do is a 9-hour show with all my favorite DJs where we each play one hour, but I’m sure a lot of other venues are doing something like that. Or maybe I could organize it with my nine favorite DJs from nine different cities and have them each do nine nights in a row in their city. There’s an idea!