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Posted on Wed, Oct. 05, 2005 Mix and mash-up WHEN MADONNA MEETS SEX PISTOLS: UNLIKELY MIXES ARE BIG IN CLUBS, ONLINE By Nerissa Pacio Mercury News At the Santa Cruz Blue Lagoon, DJ Yuma Tripp works the Friday night party crowd with dance-happy creations that he's spent hours, days and sometimes even weeks crafting to clever perfection. He chuckles when he names his own top three favorites that have brought him Internet renown among his fellow digital crate-diggers: Nine Inch Nails' ``Closer'' vs. Ace of Bass' ``All that She Wants''; 50 Cent's ``Disco Inferno'' vs. the Ramones ``I Want to Be Sedated/Blitzkrieg Bop''; and Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg's ``Next Episode'' vs. the Champs' ``Tequila.'' Tripp is among the legions of bedroom remixers who've blown up the Bay Area's red-hot mash-ups scene. While most of the DJs surface anonymously on the international community's online hub, www.getyourbootlegon.com, Tripp and others have started mash-up club parties from Santa Cruz to San Francisco; DJ Party Ben hosts the ``Sixx Mixx,'' a weekly mash-ups radio show on Bay Area station Live 105; and on Saturday, mash-up DJs Adrian and the Mysterious D will be spinning sets at the Download Festival at the Shoreline Amphitheatre. Most mash-up artists agree that the amusement is in the do-it-yourself challenge: splicing the most unlikely of lyrical or musical pairings to make them somehow mesh. The results are new genre-blending, often tongue-in-cheek MP3 tracks that are slapped onto the Web to be downloaded for free. But even after sprouting from the blogging underground to dance-club hit lists and finally to mainstream airwaves, some Bay Area DJs are finding fresh ways to stir up the bootleg scene. On a creative quest to elevate the art, also called bastard pop, Tripp produced his first mash-up music video of the Nine Inch Nails-Ace of Bass hybrid ``She Wants Animals'' and played it in September at the Blue Lagoon. Clubbers were blown away. And now, taking the mash-up to the next level, he's busy buying DVDs and using a software program (``Vegas'' by Sony) to fuse the pirated videos on his home computer. By November, Tripp says he'll have cut up enough videos to play a standing 30-minute set at his gigs to visually rock his audio. Eventually, he plans to collaborate with other Bay Area DJs for a video mash-ups tour. ``The novelty has worn off,'' says Tripp, 30, who has been a DJ for 15 years and has seen the recent mash-ups craze evolve from a trend into a full-fledged genre. ``It started off as an anti-pop music statement, where people were tired of hearing Britney Spears, so they said let's stick Britney over the White Stripes, or Madonna with the Sex Pistols. It's opened up the way people think about music -- no one listens to one type of music anymore.'' Videos, Tripp says, were the natural next step in the mash-up evolution. And while he isn't the very first person to do it, it's still a relatively new invention. ``They really let you see what musicians are being mashed,'' he says. ``So far, I've gotten a great response.'' DJ John (Liechty) of Campbell quickly earned a reputation for his rare and complex multi-song mash-ups posted on www.getyourbootlegon.com. After less than a year on the scene, he was getting e-mails from club DJs asking to use his tracks from Tennessee to Brazil. DJ and club promoters Adrian and the Mysterious D (a.k.a. Adrian and Deirdre Roberts) soon asked him to spin as a guest DJ at their monthly parties in San Francisco, and his tracks were released on an indie compilation ``The Best Mashups in the World Ever are from San Francisco,'' which received rave reviews in Remix magazine. ``I haven't made it quite yet,'' says Liechty, 35. ``The pinnacle of a mash-up DJs career is when you start getting cease-and-desist requests from the law firms representing the artists.'' Mash-ups have been around for years, but this style of smashing together music got worldwide attention -- and caused controversy -- in 2004 when DJ Danger Mouse, aka Brian Burton, combined Jay-Z's ``Black Album'' with the Beatles' so-called ``White Album'' to create the ``Grey Album.'' Major label record companies and copyright supporters fought against the online release, which generated a million downloads on the first day. The most famous label-approved mash-up album was ``Collision Course'' by Linkin Park and Jay-Z, which landed in the Billboard Top 10. DJ Adrian is shaking up the local mash-ups scene by performing mash-ups live on stage. Two years ago, Adrian and his wife DJ Mysterious D founded Bootie, the popular monthly mash-ups party at San Francisco's Cherry Bar and Lounge, where they spin as the resident DJs alongside Live 105's Party Ben (Gill). Bootie is arguably the center of the local mash-ups community, where on the second Saturday of the month, an alternative crowd of club-crawlers from throughout the Bay Area clamors to get in and score one of the precious burned bootleg CD giveaways. Promoters say it's for fun -- not to turn a profit. Their recent two-year anniversary bash at the San Francisco Rickshaw Stop attracted hundreds of clubbers lined up around the block, from Goths and punks, to rockers and preppies, earning them the reputation of a fan base as mashed up as the music. The club's overwhelming success and an experimental gig with friends at Slim's nightclub eventually lead to the formation of a six-piece live mash-ups cover band called Smash-Up Derby. ``We thought: `Wouldn't it be fun to do live versions of what we were spinning?' '' says Adrian Roberts, who recently performed the popular mash-up of Michael Jackson's ``Billy Jean'' vs. Nirvana's ``Smells Like Teen Spirit'' at the Bootie anniversary party alongside topless go-go dancers. ``This was just too good to do only once. . . . It's artistic re-appropriation. It's poking at pop culture but at the same time reveling in it.'' Where to go to hear mash-ups Saturday, Adrian and the Mysterious D spin all mash-up sets at the Download Festival, 5:30-7 p.m., 7:40-8 p.m., Shoreline Amphitheatre, 1 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, www.downloadfestival.com. 9 p.m.-2 a.m. Saturday, Club Bootie, Cherry Bar and Lounge, 917 Folsom St., San Francisco, $5. (415) 974-1585. Guest DJ King of Pants of Seattle. Resident DJs Adrian, the Mysterious D and Party Ben of Live 105 host the parties every second Saturday of the month. Oct. 28, Mini Bootie party, upstairs at DNA Lounge, 375 11th St., San Francisco, (415) 626-1409, DJs Adrian, the Mysterious D and Party Ben spinning all night. Third Fridays starting in Nov., 11 p.m. to 1:30 a.m., Filthy at the Blue Lagoon with resident DJ Tripp, 923 Pacific Avenue, Santa Cruz, (831) 423-7117, www.thebluelagoon.com. 10 p.m.-2 a.m. Saturdays, DJ Mei Lwun at Mr. Smith's, 34 Seventh St., San Francisco, (415) 355-9991. Mash-ups Web sites www.getyourbootlegon.com The mother of all mash-ups Web sites where the international mash-up community distributes, chats and meets www.culturedeluxe.com For bootleg charts based on Web site visitor votes www.mashupradio.com For mash-up podcasts and popular downloads www.gohomeproductions.co.uk Based in the United Kingdom, motherland of the mash-up, these DJs created the now famous ``Ray of Gob'' Sex Pistols vs. Madonna mash-up. -- Compiled by Nerissa Pacio What is a mash-up? Definition: Mash-ups are hybrid songs created with audio editing software in which the vocal track of one song is melded with the instrumental or rhythmic track of another. More complex mash-ups use multiple songs. Also known as ``bootlegs'' or ``bastard pop.'' The good: Generally, the more unlikely the artist pairing or the more disparate the genres, the better the mash-up. The bad: The samples used are usually unlicensed and are often anonymously posted on the Internet as downloadable, free MP3s. Some people argue this is illegal. Bootleggers use fictional monikers to protect their identities. At the club: DJs usually play pre-recorded mash-ups. The next level seems to be mash-up videos in sync with the music. A mash-up example: Gwen Stefani featuring Eve (``Rich Girl'') vs. Snoop Dogg featuring Pharrell Williams (``Drop it like it's Hot'') vs. ZZ Top (``La Grange'') = ``Hot Rich Girls Dropped In A Grange'' by TBP. Bay Area mash-up DJs DJ John Liechty of Campbell. Spins at Bootie SF mash-up parties. Signature style: complex party mixes blending multiple parts. www.djjohn.net. DJs Adrian and the Mysterious D (a.k.a. Adrian and Deirdre Roberts, at www.rebeldjs.com). Founders of San Francisco's Bootie monthly mash-up dance club parties: www.bootiesf.com. Adrian's live mash-ups band performs at Bootie and around the Bay Area: www.smashupderby.com. DJ Party Ben (a.k.a. Ben Gill) of Live 105's (KITS-FM 105.3) Sixx Mixx, 6-6:30 p.m. Fridays. http://partyben.com. DJ Yuma Tripp of Santa Cruz. Resident DJ of monthly mash-up parties at Blue Lagoon. www.bass211.com. DJ Matt Hite of San Francisco. Writes a comprehensive insider blog on mash-up DJ news, production and culture. www.beatmixed.com. DJ Earworm of San Francisco. Recently deejayed parties at the MTV Video Music Awards in Miami. His tracks appear on popular bootleg compilation ``The Best Mash-ups in the World ever are from San Francisco.'' www.djearworm.com. DJ Mei Lwun of San Francisco. Spins at Frisson, 244 Jackson St., San Francisco, (415) 956-3004; and Club Glo, 396 S. First St., San Jose, (408) 995-6414. www.mei-lwun.com. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ TELECOM-CITIES Current searchable archives (Feb. 1, 2006 to present) at http://www.mail-archive.com/telecom-cities@forums.nyu.edu/ Old searchble archives at http://www.mail-archive.com/telecom-cities@googlegroups.com/ -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
