Fun. - "We Are Young"
(Party Ben and MyKill Remix)


DJ Shadow "Scale It Back"
(Party Ben Remix) (2011)


"Every Car You Chase" (2007)
The Police vs. Snow Patrol
Download: 9MB 320kbps mp3

"Galvanize the Empire" (2006)
The Chemical Brothers
vs. John Williams
Download: 5MB 256kbps mp3

"Boulevard of Broken Songs" (2004)
Green Day vs. Oasis vs. Travis vs. Aerosmith
Download: 5MB 256kbps mp3

For more mashups and remixes
go to the Music page here.

For long mixes go to that page here.

If you're having trouble finding something, feel free to e-mail me at partyben@yahoo.com, or have a go through this site's archives which I've sorted by year.

2010-2011 ARCHIVE
2009 ARCHIVE
2008 ARCHIVE
2007 ARCHIVE
2006 ARCHIVE
2005 ARCHIVE
2004 AND PREVIOUS ARCHIVE

AUGUST 3, 2011
GET YOUR LYRICS BORN REMIX RIGHT HERE
Or, over there. Party Ben Information systems may have been on a company-wide massage break (for management) or "Learn to Be a Masseuse" seminar (for staff) this morning when news broke about our Lyrics Born remix, but we put our clothes back on and rushed back to the office to get it posted. To summarize: we've got a longstanding relationship with toweringly great Bay Area artist Lyrics Born; back in 2003 I read a review of his album Later That Day in the Bay Guardian, went and bought it at Aquarius, and brought it back to LIVE 105 (where I proceeded to spend a couple hours editing out all the "shits"). After a few spins on Subsonic and the Sixx Mixx, it got picked up for regular rotation where it went all the way to #1 in 2004, causing some hang-wringing in Bay Area newsweeklies about why it took a rock station to actually support a local rap artist, although they did get the story about how it all came about a bit wrong (apparently they didn't hack my phone). Eventually I got an acapella and started mixing the track with various other songs, and the one that seemed to work the best was U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday." "Callin' On Sunday" went on to be one of my more popular combos, as well. Most amazingly, Lyrics Born and his various labels and stuff have been immensely supportive and appreciative, and especially back in 2003 mashups were a bit scary so it's to their great credit.

Anyhoo, it took a recent video release (a few months after the song actually came out) for me to stumble across Lyrics Born's latest jam, a track with Aussie Sam Sparro called "Coulda Woulda Shoulda." They indulged my request for an acapella, I plugged it into my Remixomizer 3000 and look what came out!

Big big thanks to Justin and everybody at DECON as well as, of course, Mr. Born himself, whose unfailingly positive Twitter feed may be the polar opposite of my all-complaints-all-the-time tweets, but that's why I love him.

Coming soon: a 2011 Summer Remix Fun Pack, plus a gig at Slide tonight, as well as a shindig for Thrillist in LA this Saturday. Follow me on Facebook to keep up with events and whatnot.

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JUNE 9, 2011
PARTY BEN NOW KING OF ALL BBC MEDIA; PLUS, MEGAMIXES
Pretty sure this means you have to call me "Sir" now. To quote similarly comedic icon Austin Powers, Party Ben has been in "BBC heaven" lately, with pretty much blanket coverage from not one but two of their radio "programmes." First up, as he has done in years past, the venerable Chris Moyles of Radio 1's morning show played a couple Party Ben jams during his "soundclash" DJ battle with the legendary Tim Westwood at the station's Big Weekend festival in mid-May. He actually dropped me a line a few weeks beforehand to see if I could make some special new tracks utilizing the artists on the bill; I made a few attempts (including an ill-fated Magnetic Man/Gaga combo) but they were all pretty terrible (Sorry Chris!) and so he ended up just playing some PB oldies during the set. Is there video proof of this occurence, you may ask? Why yes there is:

More recently--well, technically, yesterday--I "graduated" to Radio 2, when their morning show host Chris Evans gave the now 4-year-old "Every Car You Chase" a spin. It apparently got quite a reaction from the Radio 2 listeners, enough so that the show got in touch with me to do a live ("there's no delay, so no swearing please") phone interview this morning. We chatted around 1:00 AM San Francisco time/9:00AM London, and I'd had about 4 vodka tonics at that point having been out and about at the Friendly Fires show & afterparty (which by the way, Friendly Fires, quite good!) so I was even less erudite than I usually am, but Mr. Evans and crew were very complimentary. He asked the question everybody asks--where'd you get the song parts to put this together?--and I tried to explain as best I could that this mashup was made with no acapellas, instrument tracks, special software extraction tricks, or dark magick wyzzardry, but I'm not sure I made myself clear, and it's of course also complicated by the fact that the movie version (see below) was in fact (re-) made using the separate tracks, so I thought it best not to even bring that up. Unfortunately we forgot to mention my web site as well, so now I have a million Brits tweeting at me to ask where on iTunes they can pay money to have the thing. Nowhere, is the answer, until Snow Patrol says it's OK. But of course, you can have the 2007 version for free, right over there in the column at left, see it?

Anyway, listen again to the Chris Evans show over at the BBC web site for the next 6 days or so. My segment is about 2hrs 43min into the program. Sorry, "programme"! "Programme"!

By the way, what is it with me and British morning shows? Is there something about "Every Car You Chase" that just goes well with beans on toast?

In news that's closer to home, there was a whole crapload of Party Ben on local radio last weekend as well, with mixes on both my regular home, 99.7 NOW's House Nation, and my former radio playground, LIVE 105's Subsonic. Both those sets are available on the Mixes page right now. Plus I made a "comeback" appearance at LIVE 105's ginormous BFD festival out at the Shoreline on Sunday, DJing in the Subsonic tent along with Dan B, Miles, KidHack, The Tenderlions, Jeffrey Paradise, St. John,
The Limousines, RAC, Harvard Bass, Blaqk Audio and Wolfgang Gartner. Look, at right, there's a picture of me, sweating profusely through my shirt and onto my CDs, pointing at the audience! The set included another rework of "Boulevard of Broken Songs" (which, by the way, made a commenter on my Facebook page say, "you must love that song so much cause you remix it all the time," and so now I feel like I have to clarify that I make remixes of it as an acknowledgement that it's my biggest "hit" and because perhaps people watching me might want to hear it and be interested or amused by a rework, not because, I, uh, "think I'm super awesome"). Ahem. There's no recording of the live set but I'll be recreating it and posting a link to it soon. Or, soon-ish.

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MARCH 2, 2011
REMIXES AND FUN TIMES
Add a sandwich and you'll have the trifecta. As you can imagine, we at Party Ben Information Systems always strive to keep our image up-to-date, in order to maximize brand identification. With that goal in mind, we continue our attempt to offer "awesome mega electro party remixes of hipster jams" as a balance to our usual "half-assed novelty mashups of crap you've already heard too much." Winning!

Alrighty then. Interested in more Party Ben? Well here's a handy grid for the next couple months.

Saturday March 5 (Sunday morning) 1:00 AM		Party Ben's regular contribution to House Nation on 99.7 NOW
Wednesday March 9 (Thursday morning) Midnight		Guest dubstep mix on Wobble Wednesdays on LIVE 105
Thursday March 17 9:00 PM		Guest DJ set at Popscene with Tenderlions and superstar DJ Omar at Rickshaw Stop
Thursday March 31 6:00 PM		DJ set at California Academy of Sciences NightLife with the delightful DJ MyKill
Friday April 1 10:00 PM		DJ set at Trigger
Saturday April 2 (Sunday morning) 1:00 AM		Party Ben's regular contribution to House Nation on 99.7 NOW
Friday April 15 10:00 PM		DJ Set in Santa Cruz - Details TBD
Saturday April 23 10:00 PM		DJ Set at 21+ along with Menace and Miles at Milk

In other words, lots of high-fiving potential, coming up. Go, brand identity, go.

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FEBRUARY 21, 2011
TWO PARTY BEN MASHUPS FEATURED IN ACTUAL HOLLYWOOD MOVIE YET PARTY BEN REMAINS SURPRISINGLY DOWN-TO-EARTH
I thought I told you not to look me in the eye! Well it's been a little over a week since the release of the Adam Sandler/Jennifer Aniston comedy "Just Go With It," and as moviegoers know by now, not one but two "classic" Party Ben-made combinations of other songs made it into the final print of the film. As mentioned previously, "Tender Umbrella" was featured in many of the TV commercials and trailers, but it's actually the less prominent of my two tracks in the movie itself, accompanying a quick Aniston makeover montage. It's "Every Car You Chase," the erstwhile Irish hit, however, that takes center stage, soundtracking the film's emotional climax in an extended scene that begins poignantly and ends, er, scatalogically. Mirroring my career. You can see a snapshot I took of the credits above right, which shows they even gave me a little contractually-obligated shout-out. Neat! Let's put together a little wrapup of this whole situation now so I can stop talking about it.

MASHUPS IN JUST GO WITH IT: FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Will there be a soundtrack release? No. From what I understand, it was on the table for a while, but it didn't come together. What are those other mashups in the movie? There are three additional musical combos featured: DJ Y Alias JY's plaintive "Can't Stand Beggin'" (The Police vs. Madcon), and DJ Zebra's slinky "This Tainted Love" (Bob Marley vs. Soft Cell) and lively "Roxanne Should Be Dancin'" (The Police vs. Bee Gees). (The latter two were recreated by DJ Lobsterdust for the film and that's why he's credited.) Additional mashups and producers were considered, and new mashups were made specifically for the film, but for a variety of reasons only these five made it through. I actually made a bunch of quick sketches of other Police mashups for them which maybe I'll share someday. Are the versions of the mashups in the movie the same as the mp3s on your website? Actually, no. In the case of the original Snow Patrol/Police mashup, I cobbled that together in 2007 using only the commercially available versions of both songs (which nobody believes, if the three years of e-mails demanding the Snow Patrol acapella are any indication, but I swear it's true). The original Rihanna/General Public mashup is even sloppier, utilizing a software-extracted acapella (since no studio acapella was available) and a poor-quality mp3 of the extended mix of General Public's "Tenderness" (since no instrumental was available). For the film, they of course wanted high quality versions, so I got to have the original tracks from all the songs (except Tenderness which they couldn't get in time so I managed to track it down on a CD in a crazy friend's music library, thanks again Spud) and recreated the mashups from scratch. Which, by the way, was hard. If I didn't reply to your e-mail back in October or November, that was why. But these new versions sound real pretty in the movie! Can you give them to us? Sorry, I really can't. Sure, I flout copyright all the time, but in this instance, the material I used is sort of proprietary, and moreover, Sony Pictures was good enough to reach out to me to be involved with the film, so I suppose I owe them at least that much. But perhaps with enough interest in the movie and the tunes contained therein, all parties concerned can be convinced to release these new versions, sometime in the future. How the heck did this all happen? Well, why not let Adam Sandler explain it himself.
	Adam Sandler on Jimmy Kimmel Live February 9, 2011 As a guest on Kimmel's show on the run-up to the film's release, Sandler describes how he came across mashups in the first place, telling a story I actually heard from the film's music supervisor back when this whole process got started last summer, but I wasn't sure I believed. Apparently, a DJ was playing mashups at a hotel Sandler was staying at in Majorca, and Sandler asked about them. Now, I was told off the record that this DJ actually took credit for the mashups, and it was Sandler's music people in his office back in the US who actually tracked us down. Funny! But even if that's true, Mr. Majorca Hotel DJ, I suppose I still owe you one, whoever you are. By the way, can I be a DJ at a hotel in Majorca? Forever?
	"Every Car You Chase" (2007) The Police vs. Snow Patrol Download: 6MB 192kbps mp3 Here's the original mix of "Every Car You Chase." No acapellas, really. (Video put together by "Most7up")
	"Tender Umbrella" (2007) General Public vs. Rihanna Download: 6MB 192kbps mp3 And here's the original Tender Umbrella, and its video as edited together by VJ Jaren.

Anyhoo, that's that. Many thanks to Mr. Sandler, Mike the music supervisor, and everybody at Sony Pictures. If you want to know even more, there's a big Just Go With It music wrapup over here. Now, where to put my Oscar...

In other news, I buckled down and cleaned up the good old Music/Downloads page, adding some links and fixing some broken ones, as well as adding a few little Easter eggy suprises if you look around. Additionally, the most recent House Nation mixes are posted over at the Long Mixes page. Hopefully coming soon: some hip remixes and stuff.

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JANUARY 29, 2011
NEW ITEMS OF POTENTIAL INTEREST
By reading this sentence, you hereby agree to be interested. While I (and, perhaps, others) had hoped that my ascendance to the heights of Hollywood superstardom would have allowed me to retire to my own private island by now, never to mash or mix again, my management team tells me that our investments in "B. Madoff Industries" aren't doing as well as expected, so I should get back to producing some big moneymaking mashups and remixes. So I did, and thankfully, some people appear to have enjoyed a couple of these recent tracks (which I had already posted via my Twitter, Facebook and Soundcloud internet zones), so I assume the cash will start rolling in any minute.

Also, to continue humblebragging about Hollywood, as I'm sure anyone with a TV has noticed by now, ads for "Just Go With It" are popping up during many situation comedies and sporting event telecasts. I've seen quite a few versions of the ads, and by my count, it seems like about 80% of them feature "Tender Umbrella," although the commercials are short and talky so the Rihanna part is sort of hard to hear (and the popular new Facebook-referencing one does not.) Anyway, yes, the movie is out February 11, and I suppose I can announce that not only is "Tender Umbrella" actually in the film, there is another Party Ben mashup featured even more prominently, over what one might say is the film's denouement. Which track could it be? Galvanize the Empire? "Keep Dean Alive"? Um... Wipeout Taffy? Well you'll just have to shell out your $2.50 and find out.

...Sorry, I'm being told motion picture films are $10. Sakes alive, how times change!

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DECEMBER 24, 2010
HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM PARTY BEN INFORMATION SYSTEMS, MASHUP PROVIDER TO THE STARS!
Have some more champagne! It's hard to believe it was only a year ago that Party Ben Information Systems was forced by the worldwide recession to lay off its entire staff, including Party Ben himself, at what was to be our annual mandatory holiday company get-together. Of course, all of you in the stockroom, factory floor, human resources, and website-updating departments, you are truly missed, whatever your names were. But the good news is that thanks to these cost-cutting measures, the Party Ben brand is stronger than ever, and in fact, we've finally "gone" "Hollywood"!

That's right, Hollywood, as in, showbiz, as in, "everything about it is appealing!" Those of you with keen ears may have noticed a "classic" Party Ben mashup popping up in the trailer for an upcoming film, but then you may have thought, "wait a minute, mashups can't be in movie trailers," and put it out of your mind, and gone to have a snack. But your first impression was correct! My 2007 track "Tender Umbrella," featuring the vocals of Rihanna and the music of General Public, is part of the trailer for the upcoming romantic comedy "Just Go With It," starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston. Let's take a look!

Cool! Now you probably have a variety of questions about this situation, and there are some that can be answered, and some that can't, mostly because all of us here at Party Ben Information Systems are easily distracted and pretty drunk, but also due to the whole "can't talk about it yet" sort of thing that is so common in Hollywood! But here's what can be said.

Yes, Sony Pictures contacted me, and from what I understand it was Mr. Sandler himself who first heard a couple mashups somewhere, and was interested in using some sort of mashuppery in his upcoming movie. Yes, this and perhaps other mashup or mashups by myself and perhaps by others may or may not also be in the actual movie, and/or other accompanying ventures. Yes, in the case of Tender Umbrella, the original artists and labels gave the go-ahead (thanks everybody!) so I was able to get some official stems and redo it in much higher quality, but no, you can't have it. Yet. If ever. Yes, it actually ended up being easier to get my friend Spud's old CD with the extended mix of Tenderness on it than wait for the label to dig the original stems out of their vaults (thanks again Spud). And yes, this means I'm now rich and powerful and beautiful and friends with everybody in Tinseltown!

Oh, you still have more questions? Just a second, we need more champagne. Okay, "Just Go With It" is apparently inspired by a '70s comedy and is all about becoming tangled in your own lies, something I know absolutely nothing about. It not only stars Mr. Sandler and Ms. Aniston but also Nicole Kidman (!) and Dave Matthews (!!) and is pretty funny. You'll be able to see it on February 11. And Party Ben Information Systems promises to sober up and tell you more, if there turns out to be more to tell, as soon as we know that. And if not, well then, this is good enough, and thanks Mr. Sandler and everybody at Sony and the various labels who have been really nice.

In other news, as it is the end of the year, that means it's time for the always-completely-accurate Top 10 (and more) Albums and Singles of 2010, which we post over in this now-a-bit-harder-to-find Best Stuff Zone. Who could be on top this year? Was it Ke$ha as usual? No. But it might be LCD Soundsystem or Kanye! Find out by clicking on one of the words in this sentence!

Also if you're interested in dancing around or guzzling drinks while Party Ben plays pre-recorded music, you have an opportunity to do that at Trigger on New Year's Eve where the awesome and quite good-looking MyKill and myself will be joining forces as the terrifying two headed DJ monster Party Killers. Because, see, our names... yeah. Anyway, it'll be fun!

So, once again, happy holidays to everyone, and BRING ME MORE CHAMPAGNE DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM? YOU'LL NEVER WORK IN THIS TOWN AGAIN! I'LL RUIN YOU!!

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OCTOBER 3, 2010
EVERYTHING SLIGHTLY OLD-ISH IS SLIGHTLY NEW-ISH AGAIN
Except me! We at Party Ben Information Systems pride ourselves on being a dedicated part of America's vibrant Service Economy, successfully accommodating consumers' needs through massive integrated customer preference research data systems, as well as, um, people e-mailing us to tell us what they want. In fact, since we have this whole "self-esteem" problem and generally hate all our own work, we rely on you, the consumer, to determine what, if anything, about us has any worth whatsoever, since it has been scientifically proven that popularity equals quality.

What this means in practical terms is a) if I made a track as part of a long mix or radio show a while back and people keep e-mailing me asking about it, I may eventually release it individually, and b) if something I did a half-ass job on gets played on a major nationwide radio morning show, maybe I'll then consider spiffing it up a bit. With the latter in mind I give you:

Duck Sauce vs. Michael Jackson "Beat Sauce" (NEW VERSION!) Right-click to download: 9MB 320kbps mp3 Click to play: First of all, the actual "original" Duck Sauce track hit the interwebs so I got to use that instead of the Manila Killa edit which I had been using, and secondly, I was able to track down a higher-quality Jacko acapella, making the whole thing much cleaner. Smarter or less ill-advised, not so much. You might also enjoy: Evelyn "Champagne" King vs. Kid Cudi - "Shame (At Nite)" (2008) Also here are a couple random items: Calvin Harris - I'm Not Alone (Party Ben's Alone in Baltimore mix) Right-click to download: 12MB 320kbps mp3 First heard as part of my guest mix for Jules Dance Show back in June of 2009, I actually have received quite a few e-mails about this one, and also kind of like it, actually, myself, but for some reason never got around to posting it individually. It's way too late for most people to probably care but here it is. Cali Swag District - Teach Me How to Dougie (Party Ben's Bmore Remix) Right-click to download: 8MB 320kbps mp3 On further listening I wasn't really that happy with my first rework of "Dougie" which was in the style of Bart B More's MC Flipside remix, so I just decided to do a quick Baltimore-style edit. You heard it on House Nation last night, and here it is. The xx vs. Débruit - "You Got the What" Right-click to download: 15MB 320kbps mp3 Hey here's two things I actually really love, put together for, well, mostly my own amusement. Leave it to a recent DJ set to discover that last year's xx version of Florence + the Machine's "You Got the Love" (itself a cover of the original Source and Candi Staton track from 1986, which I'm old enough to remember, speaking of old) goes great with the neo-Afropop funky beats of French producer Débruit's "Nigeria What," a track that is one of my favorites of the year. It's not much of anything, my little combo, but perhaps someone out there in internet-land will enjoy it.

Thanks for shopping, and for choosing Party Ben Information Systems for your dance party needs.

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SEPTEMBER 8, 2010
REMIX FUN PAK: A PAK OF REMIXES THAT MAY BE FUN
It's everything you didn't really care about individually now collected for your convenience. Seven months after being brought on board at House Nation, St. John's legendary program on Movin' 99.7 FM, I still couldn't be more excited about it. Well, I suppose I could be more excited if I was younger and did crystal meth. But I'm about as excited as I get, at my age. Movin' is a Top 40 station, naturally, so one of my goals over there has been to create mashups and remixes that appeal to their listenership while perhaps pushing the envelope ever-so-slightly, and trainspotters who have been downloading the sets so far may have noticed some unreleased items popping up now and then. Well, now that summer is coming to a close up here in the awesomest hemisphere of all hemispheres, why not collect those tracks and post them up here? No reason why not! So, below you'll find some convenient individual links for seven remixes and mashups from Summer 2010 as well as a combo zip file with all of them, almost like what respected music critics call an "album." But not!

PARTY BEN SUMMER REMIX FUN PAK ALL 7 TRACKS IN A LOVELY ZIP FILE (Mediafire link) Individual links: Cali Swag District - Teach Me How to Dougie (Party Ben's Teach Me How to Be More Like Bart B More Remix) Right-click to download: 12MB 320kbps mp3 I was actually just going to use Bart B More's spectacular mix of MC Flipside's "In the Zone" for a quick little mashup, but that didn't pan out, so I made my own backing track "in" the "style" "of." Felguk vs. Katy Perry - California Clever Right-click to download: 14MB 320kbps mp3 Takes the sunny and inescapable track about "farm fresh fruits" (I think?) to a slightly darker electro place. Madonna - Hung Up (Party Ben's Jacked Up Remix) Right-click to download: 11MB 320kbps mp3 Something I originally made for some Gay Pride DJ gigs I had back in June, and the gays I played it for didn't seem to hate it as much as they did my mashup with "Alejandro" and "Eres Para Mi" so I took that as a victory. Duck Sauce vs. Michael Jackson - Beat Sauce Right-click to download: 10MB 320kbps mp3 It was the awesome Frank Nitty who encouraged me to put this out -- the acapella is DIY and crappy-sounding, and so even though I felt that 90 seconds of the mashup were good enough for House Nation, I didn't feel like it was worthy of an mp3 on a web site. Mr. Nitty both demanded the track for himself and chastised me for being too much of a perfectionist. Steve Angello vs. Pitbull - KNAS / Go Girl Right-click to download: 8MB 320kbps mp3 I do actually really like the funky groove of KNAS, despite my general ambivalence towards the Swedish House Mafia (Congorock's mix of One excepted). This is a pretty dull combo but why not. Far East Movement - Like a G6 (Party Ben's G7 Summit Remix) Right-click to download: 10MB 320kbps mp3 "G6" is dumber than a pile of Republicans, for sure, but sonically one of the more enjoyable 3 minutes you can currently hear on pop radio, and similarly, I thought, to that old Planet Soul track, whose acid squelchy bassline inspired me to make this mix. Mike Posner - Cooler Than Me (Everybody's Cooler than Party Ben Remix) Right-click to download: 12MB 320kbps mp3 Triple-time dubstep! Disco Shawn would be so proud.

There you go. As always, I encourage those of you interested in more timely Party Ben information to go "like" me on my Facebook page or "become devoted to" my Soundcloud spot or "prostrate yourself to" my Twitter system. Where I also make hilarious jokes.

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AUGUST 3, 2010
MORE DOUBLE-TIME NOVELTY MASHUPS WITH FEMALE VOCALS
That and "totally obvious alt-rock ballad combos" are my specialties. So hey, I made a new thing and I figured I'd get it out there before anybody else thought of it:

Nancy Sinatra vs. Janelle Monáe "This Tightrope's Made for Walkin'" Right-click to download: 9NB 320kbps mp3 Click to play: Yeah, okay, I'm using a bit of a karaoke version of Boots which is kind of against a personal mashup rule I have (just cause they're usually pretty terrible) but I've sort of layered the original over it so hopefully you can't really tell. You might also enjoy: Beyonce vs. The Andy Griffith Show - "Single Ladies in Mayberry" (2008)

There you go. Also don't miss my House Nation mix this Saturday night, plus a couple of DJ gigs in the Bay Area this weekend, for more details enjoy my Facebook page.

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MAY 5, 2010
HOUSE NATION CONTINUES, PLUS BONUS TRACK
There's really no way to liven up that headline. Boy, the goofy moniker I railed against for so long has really turned out to be appropriate, but only in a sort of deeply sad and ironic way. Take the word "party," which, in general parlance, usually refers to something that's fun, sure, but only for a limited period of time, and then they turn on the lights, and almost everybody leaves, although a few hardy (or profoundly drunk) individuals stick around, ignoring the fact that the crowd has long since moved on and the floor is looking pretty gross, now that you can see it. Those stragglers are you, dear reader, one of the seven or eight people who still come check out this web site, perhaps even accidentally at this point, but don't get me wrong, Party Ben Information Systems is happy to have you, and appreciates your tenacity.

Not that Party Ben Information Systems has stopped doing stuff. Despite the recent layoffs, we keep putting songs with other songs, and sometimes even play them for paying customers. Moreover, our product is even gracing the Bay Area radio airwaves for the first time in a couple years, which is awesome. Hopefully you've been tuning in to Movin' 99.7 the first Saturday of the month for all the bloopy fun times, but if not, no bother, since you can download the mixes over at the Party Ben Long Mixes Page with only a few days delay, as well as over at the House Nation home page (where the other, far more professional and well-known DJs' mixes are also available, although it does play a commercial every time to log on, which Party Ben Information Systems does not). The May 1 mix has just been posted, and there was also a goofy little track I included in the April mix that some people have been asking about, which I will now give you. The legendary English Beat were performing the same night as the House Nation broadcast here in San Francisco, so I put one of their classic tracks over a bit of a Laidback Luke beat and voila, instant remix. Right-click to download, hobos:

English Beat - Save It For Later (Party Ben vs. Laidback Luke remix)
320kbps mp3

As some of you may remember, Dave Wakeling was a fan of my General Public/Rihanna mashup, although my goofy joking about his quotes in the newspaper (he thought I had an agent!) may have alienated him somewhat, so who knows how he'll feel about this. One can only assume he will not be aware of it.

Anyway, as always, it's probably best to go be our Facebook "fan" or Twitter "slave" so you can keep on top of random tracks I post over there but then am to embarrassed to post to the actual Party Ben Information Systems, because, jeez, you know, this site is so high-quality, I wouldn't want to sully it with anything half-assed. Ahhh ha, ah ha ha, ahhh ha ha ha ha ha.

If you're interested in doing some breakdancing while Party Ben plays songs live and in person, you have a couple opportunities in the next month, including a gig at Trigger in the Castro this Friday, a front-room indie-dance-party set at Temptation at Cat Club May 22, and the now-legendary Nightlife event at the Academy of Sciences on May 27. And then of course the next House Nation broadcast which includes my ridiculous contribution will happen on June 5. Now that's the schedule of a winner.

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MARCH 4, 2010
PARTY BEN JOINS HOUSE NATION
Fierceness quotient nearing dangerous levels. In a turn of events described variously as "inevitable" and "insane," I'll be returning to a regular gig on the Bay Area airwaves starting this Saturday night. And what airwaves they are, as I'm joining the legendary St. John and House Nation on Saturday nights over at Movin' 99.7 FM! They have a rotating posse of resident DJs over there, and so I'll be kicking off the first show of every month. The first mix will air this Saturday night at 1:00 AM, and in honor of my debut I'm doing a special 5-minute mix to start things off that will feature as many house classics as I can squeeze in. Then of course I'll switch over to just playing new tracks I like.

This may date me a little bit (that and the wrinkles), but I seem to remember listening to House Nation back when Wild 94.9 was Wild 107, and it was a shining light in the dark and ugly forest of Bay Area radio. Of course, a few of you may remember me and Disco Shawn giving some good-natured ribbing to St. John's "You're So Fierce" catchphrase on Subsonic years and years ago, but that was mostly about us imagining what sort of catchphrases dorks like us would have (I believe the answers turned out to be "You're So Boss" and "You're So Baddical"). I think some people mistook that as us mocking them, instead of ourselves, but I guess that happens a lot with me. Anyway, like I said, in all honesty St. John is a total hero of mine so I couldn't be more excited to be a part of his show.

For my part, these days I'm sort of getting inspired by Kissy Sell Out, Annie Mac and Annie Nightingale's eclectic programs on Radio 1, and in fact Kissy's show especially is actually kind of a faster-paced version of what I would try and do on Subsonic back before that show got cancelled in '05. Sigh. So it's all kind of full-circle, maybe? Anyway, I'm nowhere near as cool as any of them, and a lot of the tracks I'm playing this week I readily admit to hearing first on Kissy's show, but, you know, I'll do my best, and mad props.

Again, House Nation airs Saturday nights 1AM-3AM on Movin' 99.7 FM in the Bay Area, but you can listen live from anywhere on their web site, and perhaps more conveniently, most of the shows are available to download over at housenation.fm pretty quickly after they air.

Also, it looks like I may be doing some gigs in Mexico soon and possibly returning to Europe later in the spring, stay tuned here or better yet on my Tweetyspaces.

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JANUARY 21, 2010
PARTY BEN RIDES COATTAILS OF UNEXPLAINED 2010 MASHUP RESURGENCE, CELEBRATES WITH BORING ELECTRO MIXES
Just showing William Hung how it's done. Turns out Chron scribe Aidin Vaziri was kicking off a trend, as the 2010 Mashup Fad has trickled all the way down to Party Ben Industries. By "2010 Mashup Fad" I'm talking about, say, the massive response to Earworm's latest "Pop" montage, which doesn't really have anything to do with me but is nice to see, as well as the press attention to Bootie's "Best Mashups" compilation. The latter, in an apparent nod to the Grammy tradition of nominating veteran bands for "Best New Artist," included my 2008 combo "Single Ladies (in Mayberry)", perhaps inspiring a bit of a press re-discovery of the track, which then snowballed, as these things do, since bloggers tend to blog about other blogs. Below is a quick roundup of recent "Single Ladies (in Mayberry)" attention:

	First, there's this hilarious segment on the WGN-TV (Chicago) morning news/chat show, where the hosts' baffled commentary ("who woulda ever thought to put these together!") is, at least, mostly positive.
	Some sort of entertainment news/blog/thing connected somehow with MSN Movies gave it a front page shout-out, although that merely seemed to be pointing to something on Buzzfeed celebrating "10 strange mashups that rock," although their piece included the head-scratching sentence, "most mashups are strange, but these take the cake." Mmmm, cake.
	Prefix Magazine got in on the fun here, calling it "more notable than entertaining," which, again, I'll take as a compliment.
	Then, there was some attention from a few apparently-somewhat-popular blog-type things, including Warming Glow, who called it "pretty decent," and Urlesque, who said it, um, helps us "celebrate the magic of a powerful remix." Huh. They both made some pretty good Photoshop combos of Beyonce and the Andy Griffith Show characters, although they apparently missed the fact that I made an actual cover for the thing myself, and they needn't have bothered.

All pretty silly for a 14-month old, um, baby. The whole thing pushed my sloppy lo-res video on YouTube up about 200K views in just a few days, which, again, aren't Earworm numbers but we do what we can over here.

Other seemingly unconnected Party Ben popularity surges happened over on noted music blog aggregator The Hype Machine, which bafflingly listed my weird Justice/Kanye/Beethoven semi-joke mashup in their Top 10 "most-loved" tracks of the year, coming in at #7, just behind a Fred Falke mix of Little Boots and ahead of a Sigur Ros mashup I've never heard. The next week, my Kid Cudi vs. Evelyn "Champagne" King combo got noticed by DailyBeatz, who called it "way better than any other [remix] you've heard." This popped it up to #3 on the Hype Machine daily "popular" charts for a little while. Sure, we're just talking blog scraps here, but that's actually kind of nice for me, since I'm pegged as a sort of alt-rock dork, wonder why.

So, to continue to combat the notion that all Party Ben does is layer alt-rock ballads over each other, let's post a couple excerpts from the recent Pure FM mix, tracklist and downloads available over on the Long Mixes page.

Green Day vs. Oasis vs. Tonka/Black Noise "Boulevard of Broken Songs (2010 Remix)" Right-click to download: 12MB 320kbps mp3 Click to play: As part of my continued efforts to squeeze the life out of the aforementioned alt-rock ballad combo that made me "famous," here's a dancey version that uses the storming Black Noise remix of Tonka's "Jack Track" as its backing beat. You might also enjoy: Green Day vs. Oasis vs. Travis vs. Aerosmith - Boulevard of Broken Songs (Version 2 Remaster, 2006)

Lady Gaga vs. Laidback Luke/Lee Mortimer/LA Riots "Blau Romance" Right-click to download: 10MB 320kbps mp3 Click to play: Just throwing my hat into the ring on the Bad Romance remix tip (of which there are likely already thousands) except I didn't make the music, it's the Laidback Luke/Lee Mortimer track "Blau" as remixed by LA Riots. You might also enjoy: Lady Gaga vs. Cars - "Poker Face (Just What I Needed)" (2009)

Okay then. I'm sure I don't need to remind you that the best way to keep up with stuff I do, might do, or wish I could do, is to follow me on Twitter and/or be my Facebook fan. It's so much easier to just write 140 characters about something than deal with all this wonky website baloney.

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JANUARY 4, 2010
PARTY BEN NAMED #9 SUPERMODEL OF THE CENTURY BY THE READERS OF US WEEKLY!
Something like that. Just when the Party Ben brand seemed in danger of falling completely off the map, a notation in the local newspaper has, if not revived our brand's viability, at least served as a nostalgia-inducing reminder of a time when it was slightly more prominent. An article by music critic Aidin Vaziri lists ten "high notes" from Bay Area music over the past decade, including some local bands called Greeny Days and the Metallics--never heard of them!--and festivals like Outside Lands, which deserves an award if only for allowing me to be part of a fence-smashing riot just to get to the Beck stage and forcing me to endure sub-zero temperatures, power cuts and acres of swirl-dancing hippies to enjoy a still-transcendent Radiohead set. Ah, fun times. But lo and behold, down at #9 on the list, what's this thing:

9. Party Ben
He didn't start the mashup trend - mixing two or more together to create a Frankenstein-style club hit - but disc jockey Ben Gill, who goes by the name Party Ben, definitely kept it alive thanks to his most clever creations: "Boulevard of Broken Songs" (Green Day versus Oasis), "Somebody Rock Me" (the Killers versus the Clash) and "Rehab (Can't Help Myself)" (Amy Winehouse versus Four Tops).

I always wondered what my last name was! Perhaps the most amusing part of all this was the proximity on the list of Bay Area music sensation William Hung, who followed me at #10. Actually, the American Idol loser/winner's version of "She Bangs" ended up in a couple Sixx Mixxes from what I remember, so there's a certain, uh, symmetry to all this. Anyway, maybe he and I can arrange some sort of combo Oughties flashback tour?

In all seriousness, Mr. Vaziri has always been a vocal supporter of my stuff, and it's all the more heartening because he's an erudite and basically completely accurate reviewer (even his pro-Killers stance is more or less excusable). His take on American Edit was one of the few critical appraisals that seemed to at least capture our intentions, and seeing it written down so clearly meant a lot to both Team9 and myself. While my own goofy work probably doesn't quite justify a #9 slot even on a list qualified by the words "Bay Area" and "highlight" (I might make an argument for hyphy, the heroic efforts of small local venues like Bottom of the Hill and Great American, or even, I dunno, Deerhoof), I'm going to interpret this not as an individual accolade but more as a recognition of the entire Bay Area bootleg scene, from A+D & Bootie to the currently-experience-Susan-Boyle-levels-of-popularity Earworm, and tons of other local DJs and producers too numerous to mention. They all had an undeniable influence on the local music scene over the last 10 years, and also made the Bay Area the bastard pop capital of the U.S. So, huzzah to all of us.

Additional funny thing from the article: commenter "Aquila" criticizes the list and me specifically, saying "as for the dial-twiddler mentioned in #9, I'm sorry -- throwing pieces of copyrighted music by other artists into an electronic sound-blender makes you a creator of background noise, not an artist or even a DJ in any real sense of the terms." You love copyright!

In other news, grab that mix I made for Pure FM's "Pure Trax Reloaded" show over on the Long Mixes page or just click one of the the links below. Merci Vincent! Hope the Belgians enjoyed it. The mix contains mostly new stuff including a Lady Gaga rework, another attempt to pump up the old Boulevard combo, and tracks I made for French-speaking locales this summer including vocals from Katerine, Cali, and Yelle.

DOWNLOAD - PURE FM MIX - 110MB 256kbps mp3 (mediafire)

DOWNLOAD - PURE FM MIX - 110MB 256kbps mp3 (depositfiles)

Enjoy!

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