You’d be forgiven to think that the once wildly popular “mashup” musical trend is no longer in vogue. Big in the years 2002 to 2004 and personified by such mixes as 2 Many DJs’ Nirvana vs. Destiny’s Child hybrid “Smells Like Booty” and Danger Mouse’s Beatles-meets-Jay Z album-length mastermix The Grey Album, you probably assumed the craze to have passed its peak. Just don’t mention that to the producers behind Bootie NYC—the new mashup monthly at Element.
“Oh sure, mashups are just a fad ... just like hip-hop was a fad in the early ’80s. Remember hip-hop? Oh wait, it’s still around,” says Bootie’s Adrian, as he passionately defends the form. He and co-promoter, and fellow San Francisco DJ/remixer, the Mysterious D, recently brought their long-running all-mashup party to NYC. To this duo, the mashup style (which, if you don’t know, takes two or more existing songs of any genre and blends them into a new composition) is more than just an art. They see it as a culture: a growing, global subculture (“music for the ADD generation,” they've dubbed it) that thrives online where, every weeks, dozens to hundreds of new mashup productions are unveiled.
”One of the reasons mashups get a bad rap is because so many poor ones are posted all over the net,” admits Adrian.
“Like punk rock, just about anyone can do it,” adds Mysterious D. “However, just because anyone can do it doesn’t mean that everyone should.” He figures that out of every 25 new compositions, only one passes the “Bootie” test.
“Our job is to sift through the crap.”
That job, in addition to producing their own mashups (including the popular Le Tigre vs Missy Elliott “Decepta-Freak-On”), involves tirelessly downloading and screening the seemingly never ending flow of new mashup productions from all over the globe at sites such as mashuptown.com and Get Your Bootleg On (gybo.org). In turn, they post the month’s Top Ten Mashups on their site (BootieUSA.com) from where they plan to also begin podcasting.
Adrian and Mysterious D kicked off Bootie SF (so named because they spin ‘bootlegs’ to shake your ‘booty’ to) four years ago and have since taken their popular dance party to Los Angeles, New York and, most recently, to Paris. They consider the launching point for the modern mashup bootleg movement, which was born out of hip-hop’s production style, to be Freelance Hellraiser’s 2002 hybrid of The Strokes vs Christina Aguilera (“A Stroke of Genie-us”) and trace the genre’s roots back to 1993, when Evolution Control Committee mashed up Public Enemy with Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass: “Rebel Without A Pause (Whipped Cream Mix).” But it could be argued that the original mashup dropped a decade earlier in 1983 when Italy’s Clubhouse blended Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” with Steely Dan’s “Do It Again”—reworked that same year into a U.S. club hit by Detroit act, Slingshot.
In addition to Adrian and the Mysterious D, be prepared for a performance by “the world’s only mashup rock band,” Smash-Up Derby, featuring vocalists Adrian and Miss Trixxie Carr.
May 18, Element, 225 E. Houston (at Essex); 9:30, $10.
