Quest presents The Untouchables — The Que Club (11 June 1994)

Catalogue note

Original two-sided Quest promotional paper for The Untouchables at Birmingham's Que Club, Corporation Street, on 11 June 1994, 8pm–8am. Striking navy-and-cream gangster-film typography and Godfather-inspired puppet-hand graphic with pink 18 disc, full hardcore/jungle DJs and five MCs, plus separately billed Speakeasy hard house/trance/garage programme. Grooverider, Carl Cox, Micky Finn, Kenny Ken, Ratty, Randall, DJ Rap, DJ Ron and other period figures feature in cinematic mob nicknames. Reverse preserves £15 tickets plus £1.50 booking, 1am last admission, record-shop and coach-agent networks and event stage marketing. An exact event listing and associated specialist tape indexes offer unusually useful avenues for research; archive authorities Quest and The Q-Club safely reused.

Advertised programme: Main 'Mobsters for the Night': GROOVERIDER ('The Godfather'); CARL 'THE DON' COX; MICKY 'MACHINE GUN' FINN; RATTY ('Scarface'); RAP ('The Babe'; front 'DJ RAP'); PILGRIM ('Wise Guy'); KENNY 'FIVE FINGERS' KEN; NED 'MAD DOG' RYDER; RANDALL ('Hit Man'); NEXUS ('Baby Face'); RON ('Goodfella'; front 'DJ RON'). DONOVAN 'BADBOY' SMITH appears on front only, not in reverse's Mobsters list. MCs ('The Bodyguards'): MC GQ, ROBBIE DEE, RIBBS, SCARLET, BASSMAN. Speakeasy ('Hard House, Trance & Garage'): ERROL RUSSEL; ANDY EVANS; ROBERT CATON; SEAN WISHART; CHOOK O; ADAM TEECEY; JAMES TENNANT; CHRIS DRAPER.

Graphic-design significance: Highly distinctive coherent gangster-film parody: name 'The Untouchables', Godfather-like puppeteer hand controlling type, large elegant cream serif on midnight blue, pink 18 disc, reverse Quest eagle badge logos, identities 'The Godfather', 'The Don', 'Machine Gun', 'Five Fingers', and wordplay 'Bodyguards' MCs, 'Speakeasy', 'Tommy Gun Sound' and 'No Mobsters or Mafia Attitudes'. Neither official cinema age rating nor movie sponsorship is evidenced.

Historical context: The front advertises a follow-on event from the creators of 'Mashed' and 'The Wild Frontier'. Retrospective Quest tape listings independently document Mashed 5 March 1994, The Wild Frontier 30 April 1994 and The Untouchables 11 June 1994. UKacidhouse identifies this flyer, date and venue. MixesDB lists purported dated sets for several billed DJs, but exact tape versions/performance histories remain unauthenticated. The Que Club was situated in the former Methodist Central Hall on Corporation Street, researched and preserved by Birmingham Music Archive.

Production note: Navy and cream printed paper with pink '18' badge and pink, blue and cream panels; precise stock/process unknown.

Condition note: Pronounced transverse/horizontal old crease with short vertical stress marks across both faces, top-left corner bending, light surface abrasion/speckles on dark blue front especially right side and near logo, and rubbing to lower corners and edges with a little visible white edge exposure. Reverse shows related fold/edge wear and stress at upper right. Some speckling may be printed mottling as opposed to damage; cannot distinguish fully from photos. All principal print is retained. Dimensions and paper fragility not measured.

Confidence / uncertainty: DATE physically verified both sides. Front-only DONOVAN 'BADBOY' SMITH intentionally preserved although omitted from reverse mobster lineup. Printed 'RATTY' resolves to existing linked DJ Ratty (not a second 0-linked Ratty); 'NEXUS' to Quest-resident DJ rather than techno act Nexus 21. Existing 'Donovan Bad Boy Smith' used over a 0-linked near-homonym. Unresolved Speakeasy names kept verbatim; no speculative identity link. The printed 18 badge is design, not official classification. Outsourced A4 format not copy-specific measurement.

Through the flyers

Explore the club-culture timeline to follow advertised dates, places and billed performers across the held flyers.

Event details are drawn from the held object and the qualified catalogue research above. A printed bill establishes an advertised booking, not confirmation that a performer appeared.