PARTY BEN:
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Q: Who the hell is Party Ben?
Q: What kind of a stupid DJ name is that?
Q: Aren't you breaking the law?
Q: Can you please send me CDs of all your mixes and shows and everything? I'll pay you!
Q: I'm new to downloading songs, how do I get them on my computer?
Q: How do you get the vocals out of songs?
Q: What software do you use to make these dumb things?
Q: Hey, can you make this mashup, of ___ vs. ___ (two songs that both have a similar word in the title)? It'd be great!
Q: Can you DJ my wedding/birthday party/bris?




Q: Who the hell is Party Ben?

Well, here's a brief bio!

Party Ben is a remixer, producer and DJ, known for his semi-popular mashups, most notably the Green Day/Oasis combo "Boulevard of Broken Songs" (2004), which eventually received airplay on hundreds of radio stations worldwide. The mashup later appeared on the notorious American Edit, produced with Australian Team9. Party Ben was also known for his Sixx Mixx radio program, airing on LIVE 105 / San Francisco from 2003-2005. He has also recorded guest DJ mixes for XFM London, Oui FM Paris, Indie 103.1 Los Angeles, and Sirius Sattelite Radio. He was featured as Spin.com’s “Artist of the Day,” and has been featured in Esquire, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, as well as on KTVU Fox 2 / San Francisco and MTV News. 

Party Ben was an employee of LIVE 105 (KITS-FM, San Francisco) from 1994-2007, occupying the position of Creative Director since 2002. He hosted and produced multiple specialty shows on LIVE 105, including the electronic music show Subsonic, the Friday Night Game Show, and the Untitled Show. His claim to fame was the Sixx Mixx, a 30-minute mix show featuring mashups, remixes and amusing covers, which aired at 6pm Fridays from June, 2003 through December 2005. The show was also picked up and aired by 91X (XTRA-FM, San Diego) and KJEE-FM (Santa Barbara).

In 2005, Party Ben and Australian Team9 produced the mashup album American Edit under the pseudonym Dean Gray. The album's website was issued a cease-and-desist order by Warner Brothers Records ten days after its debut, but received significant critical attention, including a five-star review from Aidin Vaziri at the San Francisco Chronicle. The album was subsequently the subject of a coordinated effort at mass disobedience of the cease-and-desist, modeled after the "Grey Tuesday" event held for Danger Mouse's Grey Album.

His most recent claim to fame is the Snow Patrol / Police combo "Every Car You Chase," which received significant airplay and press in Ireland as well as other places, but mostly Ireland.

Party Ben also DJs live, producing full-fledged shows featuring his mashup productions and other stuff. He has DJed in Plock, Warsaw, and Krakow, Poland; Liege, Belgium; Munich, Germany; Bordeaux, Toulouse, Tourcoing and Paris, France; Montego Bay, Jamaica; Toronto, Canada; Puebla and Monterrey, Mexico; Las Vegas, Seattle, New York City, Los Angeles, Indio, and all over the Bay Area.

He has been a resident DJ at Club Bootie, America's First All-Mashup Nightclub (TM), since its debut at Cherry Bar (now Annie's) in August, 2003. The club moved to the DNA Lounge in March, 2006, where it remains, now on 2nd and 4th Saturdays of every month. Bootie has won "Best Club" from the readers of the San Francisco Bay Guardian two years running, and from the readers of the San Francisco Weekly. The club now has "satellites" in Los Angeles, New York City, Paris and Munich.

He is also a resident DJ at Call In Sick, a new monthly electro-focused night on third Thursdays of the month at Beauty Bar.

Party Ben also writes about stuff, and has been a guest music critic for the Mother Jones magazine "Riff" arts and culture blog since February, 2007.

Q: What kind of a stupid DJ name is that?

A: Yesh, I know. Ask Aaron Axelsen, LIVE 105 Music Director and host of Subsonic, our weekly electronic music program. Many years ago when I used to cohost the show with him, we would give each other silly nicknames at various times, for the amusement of ourselves and potentially our listeners. For instance, if he was intent on completing a break in record time, I would call him "Action Aaron," and if I had attempted a joke, he would call me "Silly Ben." Fun! I would do the "party reports" on upcoming raves and whatnot, and thus, I was called "Party Ben" in a kind of ironic sense, because I rarely seemed to make it out to most of the glowstick-filled freakshows I was talking about. Like, "hey did you make it to that rave, Ben?" "Nah I fell asleep in front of the TV." "Wow, you're really Parrrrty Ben." Chuckles. Now, I'm saddled with the dumbest name in showbiz (TM), and people just think I do a lot of drugs ("Do you party?!?!") or stand around like Duffman encouraging everybody to "party hardy." Unfortunately neither of these are true, and I continue to be pretty boring. I can only imagine what it must be like to have a cool DJ name, with like a letter "X" or a "Z" or a number in it, a name that everybody takes seriously, but I suppose that like the White Stripes' rejection of all non-red, black and white colors, it's often creatively productive to work within a set of restrictions, and having a DJ name I feel embarassed to tell people is my ball and chain, I suppose.

Q: Aren't you breaking the law?

A: Well, that depends. If you're talking about my radio show, or playing mashups on the radio, then absolutely not. Think about it: songs are altered all the time for airplay: shortened, edited, talked over, mixed live, stuck in commercials. If there was a law against "playing altered versions of songs" on the radio, I'd like to see it get enforced. "You can talk over the intro to Fugazi, but you can't play Beyonce vocals over the middle part"?

Now, putting the question of legality aside, as a radio station, LIVE 105 desires good relations with record labels, who want us to play the original versions of songs, understandably. That has been an issue, especially when we've played a mashup or bootleg a bunch of times. Thankfully, and interestingly, most label personnel we deal with have realized the attention their artists get when we put a mashup in rotation is worth the posslble loss of some spins on the original mix, and don't give us a hard time.

If you're talking about "putting mp3s containing elements of copyrighted song material on your website for anyone to download," then, yes, I suppose I am breaking the law, although I don't think it's so cut and dry. For instance, a DJ's promotional mixes can be given away to provide a sample of his or her abilities, and those contain copyrighted material. Moreover, since many of my bootlegs are done with an attempt at comedy in mind, they could fall under the label of "parody," which is protected speech.

Unfortunately, the continuing downturn in profits has record companies flipping the hell out, even though there is no evidence that file-sharing networks or mp3 blogs are the culprit or have any negative effect on record sales, and in fact many beiieve the case to be quite the opposite. There's no way a sales downturn could be due to record company consolidation, the difficulty of finding purchasable copies of songs you like, the increase in the price of CDs that have one good song and 10 pieces of filler, or Ashlee Simpson, now, could it.

Q: Can you please send me CDs of all your mixes and shows and everything? I'll pay you!

A: Er. sorry. While I do believe in the legitimacy of mashups/bootlegs and long mixes as original art forms, I also feel strongly that if I'm using other people's songs to make new songs, the least I can do is not charge anybody for mp3s. Also, what with work and DJing, and, you know, trying to go to the gym once a month or so, I just don't have time to fulfill everyone's requests. It's a lot of work to keep this site (barely) functional, and that's kind of the limit of my abilities. Please don't be mad.

Q: I'm new to downloading songs, how do I get them on my computer?

A: On a Mac, do that click-and-hold-for-a-brief-tantalizing-moment thing, on the provided link, until the little menu pops up. Select "Download to Disk." Choose a location for your mashup item. Click "Save." Then you can do with it what you will. With OSX I guess you hold Control and click the link, then select "save to desktop."

On a PC, right-click and select the slightly-less-intuitive "Save Target As..." ("Target"?!) and pick a location. Then you can put it in your iTunes or open it and change it around and post it on your own website and say you made it. Good job!

Q: How do you get the vocals out of songs? Can I have the vocal for "Boulevard?" Please send it to me now!

A: Hold your horses! If I've used an a capella (a vocal-only track), then I've either gotten it from a 12" single or CD, a friend with a connection, or the artists themselves. In mashups like "Boulevard of Broken Songs," there are no a capellas at all -- just the original versions. That track sounds like I have a capellas because 1) I'm using the intro to the Oasis track which is just Liam with an acoustic guitar, and 2) I've turned down the bass a little bit so it's not too muddy when the two songs are combined. There's no a capellas in "Every Car You Chase" either. I'll take your demands for the a capellas as compliments on my production skills...?

Q: What software do you use to make these dumb things?

A: I use a simple but effective workhorse program called Adobe Audition. If you want to make mashups, you need two things: an ability to alter music files (pitch-shift, time-stretch, or add echo and effects), and an ability to layer them in a multi-track program of some sort. There are lots of other programs out there that can do this, look around and you might be able to grab something for free. Acid Pro is supposed to be good and I just got it but I haven't used it yet.

Q: Hey, can you make this mashup, of ___ vs. ___ (two songs that both have a similar word in the title or are me and my girlfriend's favorite songs)? It'd be great!

A: Probably not. I appreciate the suggestions, but even if you think two songs sound a lot alike, that doesn't mean they can just be combined like magic. Plus I have a backlog of about 1000 random ideas that I haven't had time to get to myself so it's kind of impossible for me to be everybody else's producer for hire. Besides, why not download some of that software I was just talking about and try it yourself? You're probably better at it than me anyway.

Q: Can you DJ at our club? Can you DJ our private party?

A: Sure, probably! I'm always interested in gigs. Drop a line to partyben@yahoo.com and see if I'm around.

I've done a lot of gigs for very different clubs -- some rock events, some electro parties, gay clubs, mainstream VIP dress-up type venues, underground hipster haircut dens, mega-raves, whatever: I aim to please. Also I do a lot of corporate and private events, so if your company's having a party and you want some tunes, get in touch.