Party Ben

Party Ben
Birth name Ben Gill
Also known as Dean Gray
Origin Gothenburg, Nebraska
Genres mashup
Occupation(s) DJ
Associated acts Team9
Website Party Ben
Information Systems

Party Ben is a DJ in San Francisco who spent many years working at local radio station Live 105 and is one of the more notable figures in the mashup scene.

Mashups

From June 2003 to December 30, 2005, Party Ben hosted the "Sixx Mixx" on Live 105, a weekly program of mashups. After the "Sixx Mixx" ended, he began airing mixes on KJEE-FM in Santa Barbara and 91X in San Diego. Party Ben was also a member of the "Untitled Friday Night Show" along with Madden and Miles the Intern on Live 105. In 2008 Party Ben started collaborating with Slacker Radio, an internet radio service, to mix and DJ their "New Sounds" station.

In late 2004, Party Ben created the "Boulevard of Broken Songs" mashup, featuring elements of Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", Oasis' "Wonderwall", Travis' "Writing to Reach You", and Eminem's "Sing for the Moment", which itself sampled Aerosmith's "Dream On". A later version replaced the Eminem sample with the Aerosmith sample. The track became his most widely-spread work and received worldwide attention, including that of Billie Joe Armstrong, who mentioned in an interview that he thought it was "cool."[1]

"Boulevard of Broken Songs" was the impetus for Party Ben to work with Team9 on the American Edit album under the alias AJ Music, where the two mashed up the songs from Green Day's American Idiot album. Recently he mashed "Every Breath You Take" by the Police and "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol to create "Every Car You Chase". The mash-up got the attention of Snow Patrol, and it appeared on 2011 romantic comedy Just Go with It.

Party Ben was one of the resident DJs at Bootie. One of his earliest works include a mashup of "Ohh La La" by the Wise Guys and "Summer Nights" from Grease.

Other work

Party Ben is a contributing writer for Mother Jones.[2]

References and notes

  1. ↑ Vaziri, Aidin (2005-05-03). "A DJ's 'mash-up' of sound-alike tunes by the likes of Green Day is getting mad airplay -- and no one's sued yet". Hearst Newspapers. Retrieved 2008-08-19.
  2. ↑ "Party Ben". Mother Jones.

External links