Behind The Scene: The Party Ben Hit Parade

THIS is where the Party Ben interview began…

Pressure produces diamonds.

I drove Party Ben crazy 547 times during the course of this interview over the course of the past few weeks. He brought up all his ugly self-doubt, I picked some songs I thought deserved pub over some more popular tunes, I yelled at him for making me like Rihanna, he yelled at me for putting my indie cred before all (maybe seriously–it does sound like something I’ve been accused of before) and in the end for a guy worrying that I was giving him back-handed compliments, he ended up giving me the best one I’ve ever gotten in 15 years of journalistic work.

I don’t need to say anything else other than here is Part 2 of the biggest Party Ben interview ever.

(And to the man himself–you’ve been the best. Now how about that We Will Jump You, hmm? )

One thing I’ve noticed about your discography is you take songs that aren’t usually used by the hoi polloi. Even using a Prodigy staple, it’s in league with the Hives. Did the Swedish band’s guitar riff sort of guide you towards using it in “Hate To Smack My Bitch Up” or were you inspired in another way?

Oh man. That mashup is total crap. I made that basically at the request of the Music Director at my radio station, Aaron, he was like “oh stick those two together that’d be awesome.” I did it but they aren’t even in key, now when I listen to it I’m just like “jeez, why did I do this?” But a bunch of people like it, Aaron would play it on his radio and at his club all the time. Goes to show, even if you suck, you might find an audience.

Were you looking for two parallel opposite songs in “Show Me How To Leave”? The Audioslave cut isn’t so clean as it usually is for a rock-cum-R&B mash.

Huh, these are all so old, I don’t even remember making them. I loved “Never Leave,” not so much Audioslave (although I was a big Soundgarden fan). I don’t really know if I had any agenda other than trying something with a big rock hit.

There are certain things that girls love. Diamonds. Conversations. And old school Madonna. I think among my estrogenically-advantaged friends if they were the ones doing a countdown of the favorite PB boots I’ve played for them that “Bizarre Light Triangle” or my personal favorite, “Get The Holiday Party Started” would be the #1 and #2 songs in no particular order. How’d you not take the easy way out with another boot of “Blue Monday”? And how did Madonna and Pink come together?

First, I didn’t make “Get the Holiday Party Started,” that was Ben Liebrand in the Netherlands. It’s a good one though. I did make “Bizarre Light Triangle,” and that, unlike so many of my rote creations, was actually something that hit me in a flash of inspiration, whilst riding the motorcycle, it just kind of came into my head fully formed. That’s awesome when that happens, then the work to put it together is just kind of a frenzied zombie state, because I can hear the whole thing in my head and know exactly where everything needs to go, and my mouse can’t move fast enough. So, I wasn’t weighing any options of other tracks or thinking about who it might please, I was just trying to get it out of my brain and onto the hard drive.

“Independent Room” is one of my favorite early boots in the catalogue. Given the long instrumentals on “Waiting Room” was your thought process “I can put anything in this spot and it should work” or was the Destinys’ Child track Choice #1?

Huh; again, I don’t really remember. I like that one a lot too, the Fugazi seems to bring out this kind of crazed energy in the Destiny’s Child. But you’re right, you can’t really go wrong with “Waiting Room,” for sure, so maybe I could have put anything with it. I didn’t try anything else.

“Boulevard Of Broken Songs”. That was awesome.(/Farley)

Is this still the biggest hit of your career? Having a mash on the conscious level that BOBS is, is it a blessing or a curse? Had you gotten to pick the mash you’ve done to be your biggest hit–would this have been it?

Yeah, “Boulevard.” Jeez. While Snow Police came close this year in terms of sheer #s of e-mails and weird spottings of it from around the world, the “Boulevard” phenomenon was insane, and I say that from the point of view of a bemused observer, not in a sense of pride or anything. I mean, it was a pretty obvious track to make, I just got to it first; although the Aerosmith part at the end was a good idea. From the moment I played it on the air (three years ago this week!) it had a life of its own, and the whole thing was just so nuts, eventually getting contacted from like American Samoa and Fiji and crap, the whole thing just seemed to snowball and didn’t stop until last year, really.

I never expected any of it, I didn’t sent it out or promote it in any way, so it was all just random. And of course I wasn’t really reaping any rewards other than the amusement (often I wouldn’t get any credit even when a station would play it), so it was just funny to me. American frickin’ Samoa, how can that not be funny? So, no, I would never think of it as a “curse,” to have something that funny happen. My sister will still call from her job in Omaha, and will be like “They’re playing your damn song again on the radio.” None of her coworkers believe it, or really understand her when she says I made it. They’re like, “Your brother’s in Green Day?” Speaking of that, it is a little weird to be associated so much with a band I don’t really care for, but I guess I brought that on myself ,didn’t I?

Again, my whole creative life has just been about doing random crap that pops into my head without much though to how it might affect my “career” or people’s perceptions. It would be awesome to have everyone think I was cool, and get good reviews at Pitchfork, and have cool hair, and stuff, but it turns out I’m not really that cool, I guess. I try not to be too sad about it. I mean, some people like what I do, even if it’s kind of crap, so, you know, it’s better than working at a meat packing plant.

While it seems everybody has to earn their stripes at some point with “Another One Bites The Dust” boots, you tweaked the usual theme and avoided both old school rap and rock in using Daft Punk for “Another One Bites Da Funk”. You were Kanye before Kanye was Kanye, man. Were you specifically looking to spice up the “same old boot” by using something more electronic than most of your fellow DJs?

Well, first, don’t take Kanye’s name in vain, I’m loving Graduation so much right now and I really think he’s a genius. Second, again, I think you’re ascribing some sort of knowing commentary on my part where there’s only cluelessness. Since “Da Funk” came out, I’d just always thought it had a weird sonic connection with “Another One Bites the Dust,” so I just forced them together. People have made a big deal about how sped up the Queen vocals are, like it’s a radical move or something, but again, the two songs just went together in my mind so I just had to make it work, as Tim Gunn says. And my philosophy is it’s always better to speed something up than slow the other thing down, something I only violated on “Boulevard.”

“(Triple) Freak Me Out”, during which the Franz Ferdinand first hit is suddenly co-opted with sweet disco rhythm and some Beastie rhymes. Were you looking at it more from the Chic angle or the Franz angle when you put this song together?

Again, no agenda. The story of this one is I put “Take Me Out” with “Triple Trouble” in a Sixx Mixx, then a while later McSleazy did his “Franzie Boys” mashup, which was a coincidence, but I was kicking myself for not fleshing mine out when I did it because his got a lot of attention. One of the many missed opportunities in the life and times of Party Ben. No offense at all to Grant who deserves all the acclaim that could ever go his way, of course, but you know, I was like “dammit, why didn’t I do that.” So Chic Franzie Boys was, in my mind, a cheeky nod to the whole situation. Also it was inspired by reading a couple reviews of the Beastie Boys album that incorrectly said “Triple Trouble” sampled “Good Times,” so I thought, “what if it had.” So it was kind of two different silly things coming together. Wish there had been a Franz acapella though.

“Drop It Like It’s A Whole Lotta Love”–are you surprised considering the success of “Drop” that there aren’t a lot more minimalist rap tracks? From my perspective part of what made it stood out originally was that it was so uncluttered v. most rap tracks and the mashup revival it has to the point where it’s like Starbucks and fits around any instrumental.

I’ve actually written about the “race to the bottom” in hip-hop production. I love it, I think it’s one of the great under-appreciated art phenomena of our time–that every hip-hop song seems to be trying to outdo the last in terms of how little they can actually make a song out of. It’s like the mimialist sculpture movement in the ’60s. “Drop It” is a true masterpiece of production, with its tuned bass drum and left/right channel swapping on the static noise that passes for a high hat; again, it’s almost Japanese in its attention to detail. There’s only four things in that song but they’re perfectly executed. Listen to it in headphones sometime. Lately with Kanye & Common and all, the trend seems to be moving away from the completely stripped-down sound, but who knows.

Anyway, my mashup with Led Zeppelin…I’ve never liked it. One of my top 5 least favorite things I’ve done. It was very cynically made; I felt likea lot of people were making hip-hop vs. classic rock tracks and I hadn’t done one. So I thought I’d put one together and I never found a good beat to lay under the Zeppelin and it just never gelled in my mind, but people like both songs so it…you know…it functions.

In “Never Feel Good”, my favorite part is early when you cut the Cake guitar riff into the bridge of the Gorillaz and suddenly two songs that seemingly should’ve been firing at each other just fit. Were you inspired by other “Feel Good Inc.” boots sufficiently enough to put one of your own out?

This is one of the few mashups in my, er, oeuvre, that was a suggestion from a listener. I honestly get about 10-20 suggestions for mashups every week, seriously, even now that I’m not on the radio; I don’t know if other people get this but it’s one of the banes of my existence. On the one hand I guess I’m glad people get excited and have their own creative ideas, but on the other hand it kind of denigrates the producer, like, I don’t write my favorite author and go “Hey, Raymond Carver, I love your stories, can you write one about a monkey and a cheesecake and have a lot of subjunctive clauses?” Besides, Carver’s dead.

And again, my own acknowledgment of my quite significant shortcomings as an artist do not get in the way of my general conviction of mashuppery as a legitimate, respectable art form; so I don’t mean to say “how dare people write me, the great Party Ben,” but just generally, art doesn’t work that way. I’m not the Raymond Carver of mashups, I’m more like a staff writer at the Weekly World News. So, anyway, I get all these suggestions, just tons of them, all the time, and people will be like “When you make it please give me credit thanks!” Like, they don’t even question that I’ll immediately sit down and get to work on putting, I dunno, Green Day with the theme to Green Acres. And most of the suggestions are like that, just terrible, silly jokes, or stuff that’s like “Can you put Eminem over Michael Jackson?” Yes, well I suppose I could, but I have enough total crap in my arsenal. But of course I feel like I have to be nice to everyone, so I politely tell them the truth: that I have a backlog of so much of my own work, my own ideas, that I don’t have time to get to, that I can’t even think about doing other people’s ideas. But, in this case, somebody got through my defenses; actually I think I might have already been thinking the Cake bassline was similar to Gorillaz, and then they just jogged my memory. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Either way, again, there weren’t a lot of Gorillaz boots at the time… and you seem to be saying “gee you use a lot of cliche songs,” Mr. Rosser, and remember, a) most of this work was specifically being produced for a mainstream alt. radio audience, the point was to use hits and b) I was trying to hit these tracks pretty early, a lot of the time, and the legions of Feel Good Inc mashups hadn’t been done yet. So saying “why did you pick such obvious songs,” seems a bit uncalled for–if I’d been making Animal Collective vs. Peaches mashups they wouldn’t have been on the radio now would they?

With one of my favorite bands being the Clash, you know I’m coming after you re: “Radio Hollaback” and “Somebody Rock Me”. On the Clash tip–what about the band’s versatility lends itself to being used so frequently in the bastard pop community? Was “Radio Hollaback” the easiest boot of your career to make? And finally, would you like to finally expunge or reignite your beef with the Killers in this space? Well, not finally, I suppose–is this more of the Killers fitting in where you wanted to use the Casbah or the other way around?

Gwen Stefani is pretty silly, but actually it was a medium level of difficulty to produce. Ahem. Anyway, I love the Clash, and I think their propensity to get used in mashups and remixes is a sign of what geniuses they were in general, they just made great songs, and also the fact that even though they’re considered part of the “punk/rock” pantheon, their music actually encompasses a wide range of styles that can fit with all sorts of music. So you get the cachet of using a cool punk rock band but really “Guns of Brixton” is just a reggae song. As far as the Killers are concerned, I dunno, honestly in the past year I’ve started hearing some redeeming factors in “When You Were Young,” even though I really disliked it when it came out. So they’re not, you know, pure evil or anything. Personally they were standoffish when I met them (and their arch-nemeses The Bravery were friendly and hilarious) but whatever, I just don’t have time to think about them really, I’m busy listening to Gui Boratto and crap.

Here’s something I’ve always wanted to ask the man behind “Computer Talk”–where are all the Kraftwerk boots?! Where?

Well, Kraftwerk, indeed, are awesome, for sure, but I think partially their sound has been so integrated into musical culture that using one of their tracks in a mashup doesn’t really fulfill the “two distinct sources” tenet. Their music has been used so much in hip-hop and remixes, just as samples, you know? So, I don’t think they’re necessarily underrepresented in general, it’s just that mixing something with Kraftwerk ends up sounding like a remix, I guess.

The first track of yours I ever heard was back when you were doing the Sixx Mixx and they broadcasted it Fridays down here in San Diego. Anyway, I hear the White Stripes delivering my Riff of the Year for ‘05, and all of a sudden there’s the breakbeat for the seven minute best remix ever to “Paid In Full”. And I stop in the middle of downtown and decide, “Wow. This may be the best song I’ve ever heard.” “Pump Up The Doorbell” is probably my #1 Party Ben song (actually made by Party Ben)–what do you remember about the making of that track?

Yeah, that’s one of my faves. I was actually a bit late to “Doorbell,” there had been a couple good boots already that used the 3-chord piano loop with a hip-hop vocal. Team9’s comes to mind. I made a Sixx Mixx and randomly decided to just throw “Paid in Full” in the mix, and realized that it was only about a half-step off from “Doorbell,” key-wise, so I decided to flesh it out. I’m pleased with the results since I think the presence of the Eric B & Rakim drum track really, er, pumps it up.

Can you talk a little bit about “Wipeout Taffy” or are the scars still too fresh?

Har, well, yes, the scars. We–meaning me and A&D–have kind of played up the supposed “disagreement” over “Wipeout Taffy” just for amusement’s sake, so really it’s just funny to all of us. Production wise I do consider it a failure since I wasn’t ever really happy with the drum loop I used to give it some extra oomph, so it wasn’t like I ever thought it was awesome, but the whole “battle” seems to make people happy, since lots of people will make a point of telling me how much they love it. I just did a new Laffy Taffy track over Le Tigre’s “Deceptacon” just as a bit of a piss-take on the whole scenario, since Decepta-Freak-On is one of A&D’s big hits, and we’re all very amused.

(Editorial note — here is PB’s Deceptataffy so you can compare and contrast it to “Wipeout Taffy”…)

At your website, you mention during the writeup of “Hung Up On Soul” that you got distracted by Madonna while you were just trying to make a DCFC remix. Was it due to the ubiquitousness of “Hung Up”? Were you hearing it a lot at clubs or at Bootie or was it just everywhere?

No, it wasn’t really anything against “Hung Up” at all. I wanted to do a “Soul Meets Body” remix since I noticed it was already kind of dance tempo, and since it was in the same key as “Hung Up” I initially just used the instrumental version of that as kind of pre-made beats. But then the Madge vocal just sounded so good with it, it turned back into a mashup.

“Get Laid With Khia” really took it back to the old school with two of the most sampled songs not just in hiphop but in the mashup world as well–”Whitehorse” from Laid Back and “Apache” from the Original Bongo Band. Which of the two did you have first, and what made you decide to use both with “My Neck, My Back” instead of just one or the other?

Okay, well, remember, the first version of that I made was Laid Back vs. Khia vs. !!!, and in fact the first part that came to me was the Laid Back and !!! similarities, so I’d been wanting to do something with those two songs. When I realized the Khia vocal was in the same key, then finally I had a vocal that could tie it all together. But my favorite part of that is still the !!! part. That I made before the Bootie 1-year anniversary, that’s how old that is. Then I was really into Switch’s “Apache” mix, “A Bit Patchy” it was called, since I’m a huge, huge fan of everything Switch does. So I kind of did a new version of the whole thing. The Bootie dance floor never really took to it though, so I rarely play it.

“Don’t Cha Fight The Seether” has more names than Jay-Hova. I really liked the Veruca Salt oringial source material so it’s great to see it used here. Did anything specifically inspire you to make another “throwaway dancefloor sellout mashup”?

Nah, again, this was just another track aimed for Bootie, and I just wanted something with “Seether” in it. I’m always looking for danceable rock tracks to use in mashups for Bootie since my default mode is just to use something electronic from the 80s, and I have about 8 million of those. So any time I get an idea for a rock song that will work on the dance floor I jump on it. I just went through my acapellas until something worked.

You mentioned (possibly mockingly) that you felt a bit of shame over “Hella Dare You To Smoke”. If this is true, how come? Was the Deep Purple riff too obvious or something?

No, entirely the opposite, the Deep Purple riff is the best part of that whole thing! What are you trying to say?! “Hella Good” had been used a quadrillion times and “D.A.R.E.” wasn’t exactly obscure. But I do like the way it turned out.

I’m a big fan of anything Michael did with his first 2 solo albums, so “Promiscuous With You” was right in my wheelhouse. What other songs had you tried to match with Nelly & Timbaland? Were you always going for the retro disco/roller skate rink theme to match it up with?

Oh boy, I tried a bunch of stuff with “Promiscuous,” like “Don’t You Want Me,” jeez I don’t even remember. Everything like half-worked. And I always default to retro roller rink, you should know that by now.

Fergie is the old Rihanna. I can’t stand her singles, and then I look up in my mashup file–LO AND BEHOLD! Shitloads of fucking Fergie singles which apparently some part of me loves, because they’re all over the place. “Genius Of London”, of course, is one of my favorites. Were you surprised at the reaction it got (it seems you were really driven to put it up by fan support) or is it just a testament to how strong “Genius Of Love” is instrumentally?

Yeah that’s really it, I think, although I was heard “Fergalicious” a bunch on the radio on a recent drive to LA and I was thinking it’s a somewhat underappreciated song, at least critically. Both that and “My Humps” make what I think are pretty wry references to early freestyle.

“Walking With A Ghost In Paris” is noteable because not only did it get a reaction from the artist, it got a split reaction from the artist. What was it like watching a mash go out and then seeing the people partially responsible for it react publicly?

The whole Tegan & Sara thing was great. They’re great, they’re hilarious, and were really open and nice with me, and everybody at the radio station the couple times they came in. This is back when LIVE 105 didn’t suck and we were really supporting that song, it’s hard to believe now but even my mix was in rotation. Watching the mix take off was exciting to me since it was so obscure, really; I made it just for us since I didn’t even know if “Walking with a Ghost” was getting airplay anywhere else, and it’s not like Mylo was really known at all in the US at that point. So I just kind of put it together for myself and a couple of our listeners, and then to have it turn into probably one of the top-5 most played/requested/famous/whatever mashups I’ve ever made, it was really kind of inspiring. It’s my only GYBO recommends ever other than Dean Gray (and we all know that was all Team9 anyway), by the way! Anyway, the support from C89.5 in Seattle was really astounding, it was like their #3 song of the whole year, I think. So, the fact that T&S knew about it at all, that they were aware of it and discussed it, and talked to me about it, just that in and of itself was really cool.

Of course I wish they’d agreed on it because even a B-side release would have been cool, and the label was behind it as well, so for once in my life the stars kind of aligned, but of course not quite, that’s the story of my life. After I read that interview where Sarah kind of dissed the mix (or was it Tegan?) they came into the station and I was trying to give them a good natured hard time about it, just because I thought the disagreement between them was amusing, and they took me really seriously and denied ever saying it, and I felt really bad, because I didn’t mean to make them uncomfortable, and understood what she was saying: they have had to fight to get acceptance as a “rock” band, as women, and a “poppy” remix wouldn’t help that agenda.

“Every Car You Chase”, you said earlier, was your biggest hit in a while. And it’s literally gone international. From your buddy at the Toronto Star John Sakamoto, to the notorious Stereogum, then Ireland and Australia and more. Were you looking for a “Every Breath You Take” collabo or was the Snow Patrol song so ubiquitous you decided Something Must Be Done With This?

Yeah, again, no agenda at all, and this time I didn’t have the kind of “holy shit this is already getting people’s attention” kind of experience that seemed to happen with “Boulevard,” the reaction crept up on me. I thought of the combo one day, again, whilst toodling about on the moto, and I didn’t even post it for a few months, I just handed it off to Adrian & D to post at the Bootie site. So, no, I had no agenda or desire to do anything with either of the songs, I just heard it in my head all of a sudden. The response has been hilarious — I can do a really good Irish accent now after all the calls at 3 in the morning from Dublin radio stations. One of them told me to keep a bottle of whiskey by the bed to wake myself up when they called, how awesome is that?

Anyway, while some people want revenge on you for “Wipeout Taffy”, I hate you for entirely different reasons. And not just being way more awesome than I am. You released “Tender Umbrella”. And I hate “Umbrella”. I had a jihad against Rihanna. And then I’m like, “…but I really like ‘Tenderness’” and the next thing I know my girlfriend’s playing it all the time and I’m playing it 5 times a day; it’s going through my head like “If it weren’t for my horse…”. I know YOU like Umbrella, so I will now give you 50 words to turn me around on Rihanna. And whatever more you need to talk about the making of the General Public vs. her mash.

For my 50 words I’ll just repeat the phrase “Pon de Replay” 16 times. And then say “Ella” twice cause I get two more words. As far as making that track, that was an experience similar to “Novocaine Rhapsody” — I was hearing something in my head with “Umbrella,” and I couldn’t place it for like 3 weeks. When I realized it was “Tenderness” I was happy as a little girl because a) I love General Public and b) it’s not an overused mashup song, unlike, as you’ve helpfully pointed out, every single other song I’ve ever used. Anyway, what’s not to like about “Umbrella” in general though? Ella! Ella! Ay! Ay! Ay! Song of the year!

What I find common with you is three things happen in bang-bang-bang order: the point in the mashup where the songs intersect, right click, save as. “Rehab (Can’t Help Myself)”, for a Bootie exclusive, was one of those songs and the first Winehouse boot I kept this summer. What prompted the Temps in lieu of the other 60s soul songs you could’ve picked from?

Honestly, time constraints. Wanted something with Rehab for Bootie, figured classic R&B was the way to go, and in absence of an acapella (at the time) I realized it would have to be just a back-and-forth kind of “medley” more than a true mashup per se, so I just had to find something in the same key and at that tempo and go “dink, donk, dink, donk, done.” Turns out, a whole shitload of those songs are in that key, so i just kind of used the first one.

What prompted you to put up another round of Bootie Traxxx? Your output was already starting to pick up over the past couple of months, and then five more tracks come out just as good as anything else you’ve released this year.

Aw shucks… although is that a backhanded compliment?! Anyway, I really have to force myself to put stuff out, since these days I’m happy just kind of making stuff for the dance floor. But as my career winds down I feel kind of like I should toss some more things out there, plus heading off to Europe I figure I should try and get a couple new things into people’s heads. Plus, hey, GHP put out like 4,000 tracks at once so I can put out five, I suppose, right? Also I just have a little more time since I left the radio station, and a little more desperate need for attention.

What’s been your best moment as a DJ?

That’s tough. I rarely ever sit back and enjoy myself when DJing to be honest — even if people are going nuts and having fun, I’m working to figure out how to keep things up, and I’m in general not the kind of person who’s able to appreciate things in the moment, I’m mostly beating myself up for random mistakes or whatever. But recent sets that felt really good were the first gig at Bootie NY, just because I had no idea what to play and a bunch of my old friends were there and I really wanted it to go well, and I kind of got lucky with no mixing screwups and stuff. The Bootie SF “headline” set back in January was a lot of fun too, although since everything was new it was a bit wonky. Jeez, but in my whole life? Playing a bunch of J Dilla and classic hip-hop in the back room at a night when Mixmaster Mike was hanging around and he was really into what I was playing, that was cool. A couple big LIVE 105 events were crazy. Oh and I just did a crazy private gig where the Sugarhill Gang were the headliners and after their show I DJed for a while, then they came out and started like freestyling over what I was playing, so I basically DJed for them for like 1/2 hour. How hilarious is that for a Nebraska boy who had his mind blown by the very same Sugarhill Gang back in like 1981?

Most importantly–will we ever see Party Ben Kenobi ever again after his vanquishing?

If Party Ben Kenobi is struck down, he will become more powerful than you can ever imagine.

Well, I think we’ve been able to do the definitive Party Ben interview. We now cede the floor to you in Mea Culpa, so anything you want to plug or big up, please do it with all our thanks. And continue to be awesome.

Big ups to A+D and the whole Bootie crew for putting up with me all this time, kooky fans who appear to like what I do despite its flaws, and anyone willing to give me some money. And yourself, Butch, for caring, a little… too much.

(videos brought to you BAH VJ Brewski–who coincidentally is going to be in this chair…)