FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS - CLICK FOR ANSWERS!

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 at our shindig??

Q: Who the hell is Party Ben?

Well, here's a brief bio!

Party Ben is a remixer, producer and DJ, best known for his mashups, most notably the Green Day/Oasis combo "Boulevard of Broken Songs" (2004) which received airplay on hundreds of radio stations worldwide and later appeared on the notorious Dean Gray - American Edit, produced with Australian Team9. Party Ben is also known for his Sixx Mixx radio program, which aired on LIVE 105 / San Francisco from 2003-2005, where he worked in various capacities from 1994 through 2007. He's been a DJ for like 20 years and was the original resident DJ at Club Bootie in San Francisco. He is currently a resident DJ on the legendary House Nation program on Movin' 99.7 in San Francisco. He's also currently the program director for Slacker.com's electronic channels.


And here's a slightly longer bio!

Originally from a small town in Nebraska, Party Ben began DJing in his early teens when he played new wave hits for his sister's birthday party in the garage. But even at this young age, he was already a "bedroom producer," creating tape-edit remixes by switching around the inputs on his Sears stereo system.

Eventually he escaped Nebraska and attended Carleton College in Minnesota, where he became a fixture on the campus radio station, KRLX-FM, soon becoming the station program director. After moving to San Francisco in the early '90s, he began a long career at Bay Area alternative stalwart LIVE 105 as a producer, on-air personality and program host, eventually ascending to the esteemed position of Creative Director, in charge of the "audio personality" of the station. One day in the late '90s, he realized that the audio editing software he used to make station IDs could also be used to mess around with the music as well. And so he did.

Whatever you call them, his blends, bootlegs, remixes and mashups soon gained radio and nightclub attention, even before the word "mash-up" was invented. In 1999, Party Ben reworked Fatboy Slim's own Rolling Stones-sampling "Satisfaction Skank" into a radio and club hit, and his 2002 remix of Eminem's "Without Me" was sort of a Bay Area phenomenon.

After co-hosting the long-running electronic music program Subsonic for years, Party Ben started his own show to feature his own and others' mashups, remixes and whatever else seemed interesting. This half-hour show, airing Fridays at 6pm, was first called The Six Mix but eventually gained two more X's to become The Sixx Mixx. It was a prime-time genre-smashing sampler of craziness, inspired primarily by Belgian duo 2manydjs and their "Radio Soulwax" compilations, but aimed at a more mainstream, alt-radio audience. The high-profile show was immediately controversial, venturing beyond the LIVE 105 playlist to air sometimes polarizing mashups. Mp3s of the show were in high demand. The Sixx Mixx also helped to jump-start the Bay Area bastard pop scene, providing local producers like Earworm and international stars like Go Home Productions and Adam Freeland a prime-time audience of hundreds of thousands.

Of course, the Sixx Mixx was also a launching pad for Party Ben's own creations, and it's these musical combos for which he has become most well known. His biggest hit came in October, 2004, when the Green Day/Oasis/Travis/Eminem (and/or Aerosmith) hybrid “Boulevard of Broken Songs" became an unexpected worldwide phenomenon after its debut on the Sixx Mixx. The mash-up eventually received airplay on hundreds of radio stations around the world, from Tokyo to Cape Town, and the press started to pay attention. Green Day's own Billie Joe Armstrong called the mash-up "cool" on MTV News, Rick Dees invited Party Ben on The Weekly Top 40, and the San Francisco Chronicle made Party Ben front page news. In fact, the mashup was such a crazy phenomenon that a record label executive credited Party Ben's version with helping extend Green Day's run on the top of US rock airplay charts.

Party Ben later joined forces with Australia’s Team9 to produce the mash-up album American Edit under the pseudonym "Dean Gray" (a phonetic spoonerism of "Green Day"), combining the acclaimed Bay Area punk band's album with everything from Johnny Cash to Queen. The album became an illicit internet sensation, received five stars from the San Francisco Chronicle and some other critical praise, as well as a "cease and desist" order from Warner Brothers Records within 10 days of its free internet release.

More recently, Party Ben's combination of Snow Patrol and The Police called “Every Car You Chase” was a smash in Ireland, with 2fm calling it “probably the biggest hit in the country” in April of 2007. Another blend of General Public and Rihanna called "Tender Umbrella" got props from Dave Wakeling himself, and a cheeky mix of Beyonce's "Single Ladies" over the theme from the Andy Griffith Show recently grabbed media attention.

Despite never having made an official release, Party Ben has a weirdly pervasive level of pseudo-fame. His mashups have received airplay on countless radio stations, from major networks like BBC Radio 1 and Australia's Triple-J to stations in American Samoa and even Party Ben's home state of Nebraska. Officially, he has done official guest DJ mixes for a long list radio stations including Radio Bis Warsaw, XFM London, Fritz 102.6 Berlin, Pure FM Belgium, Oui FM Paris, Indie 103.1 Los Angeles, 91X/San Diego, and Sirius Sattelite Radio.

Starting in 2010, he was brought on board as a resident DJ on St. John's legendary San Francisco radio show, House Nation, airing Saturday nights on Movin' 99.7.

As a live DJ, Party Ben tries to put some extra effort into the experience, since DJs are mostly kind of stupid. So he creates exclusive mixes just for his DJ sets, new versions of classic mashups, and mixes it all up with new tunes, combining them into a fast-paced party experience. He's performed in cities around the world, including two European tours and jaunts to Canada and Mexico. A partial list of Party Ben's recent DJ gigs includes:

- VOLT Festival, Sopron, Hungary (2009)
- Festival Francofolies, La Rochelle, France (2009)
- Festbaloche, Olargues, France (2009)
- U5 Club and Silver Wings club, Berlin, Germany (2009)
- Zold Pardon, Budapest, Hungary (2009)
- Oberanger Theater, Munich, Germany (2009)
- Munich Gay Pride festival (2009)
- Farao Discoteca, Portugal (2009)
- La Lucha Libre, Paris, France (2009)
- California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, CA (2009)
- Good Life and Machine, Boston, MA (2009)
- Lotus, Dallas, Texas (2008)
- Bambou and Venue, Houston, Texas (2008)
- Cheval and 510 King Street, Toronto, Canada (2008)
- Blue Dog, Montreal, Canada (2008)
- Air Conditioned Lounge, San Diego, CA (2008)
- Water Taxi Beach, Long Island City, NY (2008, 2009)
- The Vault and Element, New York City (2007, 2008)
- Hyde and Maro, Toronto, Canada (2008)
- MX Beat Soundfest Events, Puebla and Monterrey, Mexico (2008)
- Custom Hotel, Echo, Echoplex, Los Angeles (2006-2008)
- Prozak, Krakow, Poland (2007)
- Balsam, Warsaw, Poland (2007)
- Soundstation, Liege, Belgium (2007)
- 4 Sans, Bordeaux, France (2007)
- Le Kleo, Toulouse, France (2007)
- Elysee Montmartre, France, (2007)
- Grand Mix, Tourcoing, France (2007)
- In the Bay Area: DNA Lounge, 111 Minna, Ruby Skye, 1015 Folsom, Pink, 330 Ritch, The Stud, Rickshaw Stop, The Fillmore, Great American Music Hall, Shoreline Amphitheatre, Paradise Lounge, Trigger, and countless more venues

Back home in San Francisco, he was the resident DJ at Club Bootie, America's first all-mash-up nightclub, from its founding in 2003 until 2009. The club was voted “San Francisco’s Best Club” in the San Francisco Weekly and San Francisco Bay Guardian in 2007 and 2008.

Party Ben brings his radio experience and encyclopedic knowledge of electronic music to Slacker Radio, the premier online streaming radio service, where he programs five of their electronic stations. He has also added "writer" to his resume, acting as a music and culture contributor for the pionneering Mother Jones magazine.

Some notable press on Party Ben includes a feature as Spin.com’s “Artist of the Day,” a profile on MTV News, a profile in LA's City Beat and inclusion in countless articles from the LA Times to the Washington Post.

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

A: Yeah, 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 over the course of the show, 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, along with Disco Shawn, I'm saddled with the dumbest name in showbiz (TM), and people just think I do a lot of drugs ("Do you party?!?!") or act as a sponsored-alcohol-consumption-encourager like Duffman. 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 artistic prison, within which I must do the best I can.

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