DJ Topcat’s brilliant Johnny Cash vs. Eazy-E mashup “Folsom Prison Gangstaz” – released six months ago, but just featured on last week’s Bootie Top 10 – got BoingBoing’ed today, so now it’s making the internet meme rounds in the blogosphere and twitterverse. Just something we like to call the “Bootie Bump.”

We just threw one of our biggest Bootie parties ever — the epic 7-Year Itch Anniversary in San Francisco — and in less than two weeks, we leave for Burning Man to throw Bootie BRC out in the middle of the desert. So we figured if we didn’t hustle and get this month’s Bootie Top 10 done RIGHT NOW, it wouldn’t get posted until sometime in the middle of September. And we know how you guys HATE that.

So here, without further ado, are the summertime mashup jams that have been blowin’ up our iPods (and CD decks) this past month. RIGHT-CLICK TO DOWNLOAD!

Ever since we got back from two months on tour, we’ve had a bit of a rough time getting ourselves back onto a “regular” schedule, as you can probably tell by this, yet another overdue Bootie Top 10 list. In fact, it’s starting to become a “Top 10″ in name only, as we just can’t help including two months’ worth of mashups. Yup, double the mashups, double the fun!

We just did “Lady Gaga vs. Madonna Night” a few weeks ago at Bootie SF, and it was our second biggest Bootie party ever, with nearly 1,500 people. A lot of you have been asking for some of the mashups we played that night, so if you’re a bit Gaga-adverse, you might want to skip around a bit.  However, we also have a healthy dose of other genres such as electro, hip-hop, etc., so there should be something for everyone.

Without further ado … sorted (mostly) alphabetically by bootlegger…

DJ BC – Eyes Without A Bootie (Billy Idol vs. John Blu) – Boston
Bootie Boston’s own DJ BC provides us with a new slow jam to ramp down the night. And yes, we’re suckers for a mashup that name-drops our party’s name!

Faroff - You Ring Me Round (Like A Telephone) (Lady Gaga vs. Beyoncé vs. Dead Or Alive) – Brasília/Los Angeles
The video for this keeps getting pulled down from YouTube, thanks to Lady Gaga’s label (who were all about having Bootie mash her up before her fame, the hypocrites!) But here’s the audio mashup, as Brazil’s Faroff realizes that the classic ’80s hit, “You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)” is one of those perfect pop songs that seems to magically mash up with nearly everything!

CALIFORNIA GURLS DOUBLE SHOT!
DJ Digital Dave - Back To Cali Gurls (Bootie Edit) (Notorious B.I.G. vs. Katy Perry) – Pittsburgh
Mash2Mix – California Tik Tok Gurls (Bootie Edit) (Katy Perry vs. KeSha) – The Netherlands
Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” is definitely this year’s summertime jam, which is why we wish someone would leak a clean acapella track from it. But until then, we’ve got these two mashups that simply HAD to be done: The first makes the inevitable lyrical connection between Biggie and Katy and their enjoyment of all California has to offer, while the second simply proves that this summer’s biggest pop song is basically the same as last winter’s biggest pop song, which is why so many DJs and producers have mashed these two up. (This was the first one out of the gate though, and the best, in our humble opinion– it was a Bootie exclusive to NY Post’s “Pop Wrap” blog last month, read about it here.)

Go Home Productions – How Soon Is Independence? (Destiny’s Child vs. The Smiths) – Watford, UK
Go Home Productions, aka Mark Vidler, is considered by many to be one of the early bootleg scene’s biggest stars. He began mashing up in 2002 and did both the legally-released “Rapture Riders” mashup (Blondie vs. The Doors) as well as the UK-only Mashed CD, a full album of copyright-cleared mashups. Recently, he’s made a much-welcome return to the mashup world, such as this with this track, which uses classic source material such as The Smiths. And he’ll be playing at Bootie’s 7-Year Itch Anniversary in San Francisco on August 14th!

Lazyellow – Blah Blah Blah Chillin Romance (Ke$ha vs. Lady Gaga vs. Wale) – London, UK
Totally infectious club-banger mashup from a newcomer to the mashup scene, Lazyellow from the U.K. We were not big fans of Ke$ha’s “Blah Blah Blah,” but hearing it mashed with thumpy beats and Lady Gaga’s “rah-rah-ah-ah-ah, etc.” as a chorus makes it awesome.

LeeDM101 – (Find Myself) A Heap of Love (Florence & The Machine vs. Depeche Mode vs. Imogen Heap) – South West UK
Simply a stunner of a slow jam, and our favorite Florence & The Machine mashup thus far. Gorgeous and beautiful. Also, it’s nice to see Lee revisiting his Depeche Mode fan roots!

DJ LOBSTERDUST DOUBLE SHOT!
DJ Lobsterdust – Knock Out Eileen (LL Cool J vs. Dexy’s Midnight Runners) – New York City
DJ Lobsterdust – Two Stop (Journey vs. Grizzly Bear) – New York City
Our favorite mashup producer from New York City (and perennial Bootie Top 10 contributor) DJ Lobsterdust returns … and we couldn’t pick just one! The first is a smile-inducing genre-clash of ’80s hits … one that really knocked us out! The second forces indie hipsters to embrace their inner Journey. And come on, who doesn’t secretly love “Don’t Stop Believin’? It’s practically the Bootie theme song!

MadMixMustang – Pac-Man Inferno (Buckner & Garcia vs. The Tramps) – The Netherlands
Speaking of smile-inducing ’80s mashups, this ridiculous combination has us longing for a hot tub time machine so we can take it back with us and blast it on a boombox at the video arcade (while rockin’ our feathered hair and Jordache jeans, of course!) We also love that MadMixMustang uses a lot of source material that other mashup producers overlook … I mean, c’mon, “Pac-Man Fever”? Totally tubular.

MARC JOHNCE IS A “MONSTER” DOUBLE SHOT!
Marc Johnce – Monster Never Can Say Goodbye (Lady Gaga vs. The Communards) – Nuremberg, Germany
Marc Johnce – Monster Will Come Back (Lady Gaga vs. Holy Ghost!) – Nuremberg, Germany
We had plenty of “Just Dance” and “Bad Romance” mashups for “Lady Gaga vs. Madonna Night” at Bootie, but none of “Monster.” Fortunately, Marc Johnce came through at the last minute with not one, but two mashups of what’s rumored to be Gaga’s next single. OMG, and even more ’80s retro goodness with a forgotten gem from The Communards! And then for the more indie fans, we got a very cool version with Brooklyn electro duo Holy Ghost!

Mashup-Germany – Hit And Drop On All The Single Ladies (Beyoncé vs. Rihanna vs. Ray Charles vs. Snoop Dogg) – Cologne, Germany
What’s great about this track is its use of the timeless Ray Charles track, “Hit the Road Jack.” Plus, the Bootie crowd never seems to tire of “Single Ladies.” Here, Mashup-Germany uses his signature multi-song combo style to wonderful effect, even adding in some “Drop It Like It’s Hot” in the mix. Never fails to get everyone’s hands up!

Mighty Mike – Heart-Shaped Desires (Nirvana vs. Muse) – France
Released eight months ago, this one is a bit of a iPod sleeper hit for us, combining two of favorite band’s songs into a dark concoction, full of creepy cool menace.

LADY GAGA vs. MADONNA DOUBLE SHOT!
Mkaio – Alejandro (Mkaio’s Holiday Smash) (Lady Gaga vs. Madonna) – Salt Lake City, Utah BOOTIE EXCLUSIVE
Nathan Scot – Alejandro De La Isla Bonita (Lady Gaga vs. Madonna) – San Francisco
What would “Lady Gaga vs. Madonna Night” be at Bootie without actual Lady Gaga vs. Madonna mashups? The classic “Queen of Pop” dukes it out with the current “Queen of Pop” in a mashup duel using Gaga’s current single, “Alejandro.” The first is a “Bootie Exclusive,” while the second showcases Lady Gaga’s obvious influence for “Alejandro” (I’m talking to you, “La Isla Bonita”) as well as both artists’ mutual love of Latino culture (or at least Latino boys!)

Mochi Beats – Time After Romance (Lady Gaga vs. Cyndi Lauper vs. Three 6 Mafia) – Orange County, California
“Bad Romance” is a such a dance floor stormer, that this darker atmospheric (yet still thumpy) version from mashup scene newcomer Mochi Beats comes off as quite an unexpected surprise!

Stein-Vidar – Like A Virgin At The Y.M.C.A. (Bootie Edit) (Madonna vs. The Village People) – Norway
Another newcomer to the mashup scene, Norway’s Stein-Vidar brings the classic pop cheese with this ridonkulous mashup. The songs work great together, and we added back in some of the original “Y.M.C.A.” (hence the Bootie Edit) just so when you feel the need to do the requisite Y-M-C-A arm gestures!

Thriftshop XL – Abba Alpha Beat Beet Roots Of All Evil (ABBA vs. The Bloody Beetroots vs. Alphabeat) – Scotland
How do you turn classic pop cheese into electro-breakbeat madness? Like this. Wait for it, wait for it … and then there goes ABBA, down the rabbit hole.

Titus Jones – Imma Stop Loving Drugs (Ke$ha vs. Glee Cast vs. La Roux vs. Black Eyed Peas vs. Iglu & Hartly) – Clarksville, Arkansas
One of our favorite mashup producers, known for his multi-song, multi-layered creations, returns with this fantastic pop gem. Titus Jones just graduated from college — someone hire this guy for audio production, he’s awesome! Bonus points for using the Glee Cast version of “Don’t Stop Believin’. Did we mention it’s practically the Bootie theme song?

Bootie LA was recently featured on Los Angeles’s KTTV Fox 11 news, as well as on the morning show “Good Day LA.”

In this week’s cover story of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, entitled “Parties Without Borders,” we are prominently featured in an article about how a few San Francisco promoters are exporting their parties to other cities, with a focus on Bootie, and, more specifically, our recent Europe/Asia/Brazil tour.

Check it out, it’s a really good read! Thanks, Marke B.!

As many of you know, we – A Plus D, aka Adrian & Mysterious D – have been on tour for the better part of two months, doing Bootie parties all over the globe. First, we were in Europe for most of April, then back to San Francisco, then off to Hong Kong and Singapore, then back again to San Francisco, and then off to Brazil. Whew!

Needless to say, due to our intense travel schedule, we’ve been regretfully neglectful of the Bootie Top 10 these past couple months – not to mention posting tour reports! But we figure you’d rather have free mashups first, and tour reports later, so in an effort to make it up to you, we’re not only doubling it up here, but also throwing in a bunch of mashup “double shots,” bringing the total of mashups downloads to 25.

Many of these were discovered along our travels in Europe, while others were our “DJ secret weapons” on tour. Some are older gems that we recently rediscovered. We’ve even got a few “Bootie Exclusives” in the mix – tracks you won’t find anywhere else.

Sorted (mostly) alphabetically by bootlegger … start right-clickin’!

“RUDE BOY” DOUBLE SHOT
A Plus D - Decode Rude Boy (Rihanna vs. Paramore) – San Francisco, USA
DJ Schmolli – Rude Boy Resort (Rihanna vs. Papa Roach) – Vienna, Austria
Seeing as that “Rude Boy” was one of the biggest hits of the spring, of course we couldn’t pick just one! The first is from ourselves, re-imagining Rihanna as if she were an angst-ridden teenage vampire from one of the “Twilight” movies. The second is a total guilty pleasure from one of our favorite bootleggers, DJ Schmolli, who returns to his hard rock roots with this unexpected genre-clash featuring the much-maligned (but admittedly catchy) Papa Roach. So wrong… yet so right! Are we on time for the 2000s retro-revival yet?

THE YOUNG PUNX MASHUP ALBUM DOUBLE SHOT
A Plus D – Final Telephone (Lady Gaga vs. The Young Punx) – San Francisco, USA
DJ BC – Unbelievable Juice and Gin (EMF vs. The Young Punx) – Boston, USA
In April, the music blog AudioPorn Central teamed up with the UK band The Young Punx to produce a mashup album based on the indie-electro group’s second album, “Mashpop & Punkstep.” Simon Iddol assembled a team of bootleggers (including ourselves and Bootie Boston’s DJ BC) to mash up each of the record’s dozen tracks, and it was released on the same day as the album. Here are two tracks from the “Mashed Popped Punk” project – the first makes Lady Gaga sound as if she’s fronting a cool new indie band, and the second gives EMF’s “Unbelievable” a Brit-rap makeover.

“CALIFORNIA LOVE” DOUBLE SHOT
BootOX – California Skank (Tupac vs. Fatboy Slim) – Munich, Germany
Loo & Placido – Californication (Tupac vs. Roger Troutman vs. Plump DJs vs. Zero Cash) – France
As Californians, we felt we were exporting a bit of our own “California love” while on tour. Now the love get returned, quite literally, by both Bootie Munich’s DJ BootOX and France’s Loo & Placido (who just played Bootie in SF and LA). Two different takes, one for the main floor, the other for Electro-Bootie.

Clivester – Heartbreaking Maps (Yeah Yeah Yeahs vs. Metronomy) – Vienna, Austria
We rediscovered this one while compiling and mixing our electro-flavored “Bootie Banger Mix” for the guys over at Dope.sg, who produced the Bootie Singapore party. How did we miss this one back in August? Beautiful and haunting, yet still made with the dance floor in mind. Remind us to play this at Burning Man just before dawn!

Clockwork – Office Musik (Lil Wayne vs. “The Office” Theme Song) – Los Angeles, USA
We love “The Office. Our first night back from our European tour was spent curled up with the Tivo, catching up on a month’s worth of episodes. So this track’s appearance on the Top 10 should come as no surprise. Cheeky, silly, and well-produced … who knew “The Office” theme would work so well with Lil Wayne and a hip-hop beat?

DJS FROM MARS DOUBLE SHOT
DJs From Mars – Enter Telephone (Lady Gaga feat. Beyoncé vs. Metallica) – Torino, Italy
DJs From Mars - Radio Tik Tok (Ke$ha vs. Queen) – Torino, Italy
We have to thank Bootie Berlin’s DJ Morgoth for helping us discover our new favorite DJ/producer team, DJs From Mars, who hail from Italy. Their basic formula is always to start with a basic A+B framework – then they add the “oomph” in the way of thick bass and buzzsaw instrumentation, which takes a basic mashup and turns it into a throbbing electro club-banger.

Dunproofin – Only Mashups Can Break Your Heart (David Bowie vs. St. Etienne vs. U2 vs. Soup Dragons) – Aberdeen, Scotland
We’re big fans of both David Bowie and electro-tinged dance music – so what’s not to like here? Dunproofin gives one of our favorite tracks from “Ziggy Stardust” a dance beat by mixing in a formerly-forgotten ’90s electronica song (remember when they called it “electronica”?) and mashes up something unexpected.

DJ Fox - Come See About Down (Jay Sean vs. The Supremes) – San Francisco, USA BOOTIE EXCLUSIVE!
Fox is one of our favorite local San Francisco bootleggers, and we’re grateful that he slips us a few tracks before anyone else gets to hear them. He sent this over yesterday and while we normally like to “live” with a mashup for a while before we decide to put it in the Top 10, we couldn’t resist jumping the gun a bit with this one. Simply lovely.

Go Home Productions – Virgin O’Riley (Madonna vs. The Who) – Watford, UK
Aaaaaand … he’s back! A much-welcome (and long overdue) return from Mark Vidler, part of the UK’s “first wave” of bootleggers, and one of the early mashup scene’s biggest stars. This turned out to be one of our “secret weapons” on tour, never once failing to get the entire crowd to sing along. An instant classic.

The Kleptones – This Song Smells (Nirvana vs. Blur) – Brighton, UK  BOOTIE EXCLUSIVE!
Take two of the most iconic songs from the ’90s — both of which are rockin’, yet shockingly danceable — and put them together. Two words: Can’t. Fail. The original version of this track is on The Kleptones’ Uptime/Downtime album, but Eric Kleptone was nice enough to give us this unmixed version when he stayed at our SF apartment for a week. This turned out to be another “secret weapon” on tour, and we often closed our sets with this.

Ludachrist – Pon De Foley (Major Lazer vs. Harold Faltermeyer) – Los Angeles, USA
This track was all abuzz on the blogosphere a couple months ago, and had we actually put out a Top 10 in a timely manner, we wouldn’t now be looking like we’re late to the party. Oh well, whatever. This track still lights up a dance floor with its ingenious recreation of the classic ’80s keyboard line from “Axel F” by using the modern blips and bloops of the Major Lazer song, “Pon de Floor.” Clever.

MadMixMustang – Take Me On the Crazy Train (Ozzy Osbourne vs. a-ha) – The Netherlands
Two musical polar opposites from the ’80s — new wave and heavy metal — come together in one brilliant mashup. We love extreme genre-clashes when they just seem to magically work, and this track from the always-dependable MadMixMustang certainly delivers the “wow” factor.

Mashup-Germany - Imagine One Day (So Far Away) (Matisyahu vs. John Lennon vs. Blink 182 vs. Gentleman vs. Bob Marley) – Frankfurt, Germany
We played with Mashup-Germany at both Bootie Berlin and Bootie Hamburg, and while he certainly knows how to tear up a dance floor, we have to admit that his “slow jam” mashups are also something REALLY special. This multi-layered mashterpiece is simply a gorgeous piece of work. By interweaving the vocals of four different artists from four very different genres, it’s revealed that they’re all basically singing about the same universal thing: love.

MIGHTY MIKE DOUBLE SHOT
Mighty Mike – Pressure Time (Queen & David Bowie vs. MGMT) – France
Mighty Mike – Kinda Fair (Lily Allen vs. Robert Palmer) – France
Mighty Mike has turned out to be one of our favorite bootleggers, consistently producing some great mashup work. Both of these tunes have become a bit of “sleeper hits” at Bootie, with “Pressure Time” getting requests, ” and “Kinda Fair” often getting played in the early part of the night, where it’s perfect for getting your drink on.

DJ Morgoth – Sing Hallelujah To The New Divide (Linkin Park vs. Dr. Alban & Yamboo) – Berlin, Germany
Only Bootie Berlin’s DJ Morgoth could take Linkin Park and make them sound so … gay! Sure, he says its “Eurodance,” but we all know what THAT means! While this might alienate Linkin Park fans (what? a mashup without Jay-Z?) — not to mention fans of Eurodance — it puts a big smile on our face every time we hear it!

Obvious Productions – Standing In The Way Of Your Friends (Gossip vs. Justice vs. Simian) – North Wales, UK
Do you know why we love going on tour? Because we can then play American artists like Gossip (who remain a marginalized cult act Stateside) and get a HUGE reaction because “Standing In The Way of Control” was such a big hit everywhere else in the world. Pair that with another artist like France’s Justice, who are also WAY more popular outside the U.S., and it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Years ago, the creator of this track (whose secret identity was revealed to us on tour as Soundhog) anonymously attributed it to “Obvious Productions,” because he thought it was such a simple mashup idea, that he didn’t want to take credit for it. Yet, what he doesn’t realize is that the simplest ideas are often simply the best. A rediscovered gem, and a total “secret weapon.”

DJ Shyboy - Tour De Miami (LMFAO vs. Kraftwerk) – Los Angeles, USA
When LA’s DJ Shyboy played this before our set at Bootie Berlin, we simply HAD to have it! Not sure if this dumbs down the electro krautrock of Kraftwerk, or strangely elevates the joke of LMFAO to something, well … something a little LESS jokey … but either way, it works for us! An oldie, but a goodie.

Sugamotor – Heat My Body (Mariah Carey vs. Massive Attack) – France
Taken from the sex-themed mashup album Sex Mashine, which was compiled by Sugamotor himself, this track is perfect for getting that certain someone “in the mood.” Smooth, sexy, and … kinda dark, in a very cool, moody way. Plus, extra props for using two artists highly under-utilized in the mashup world.

DJ Tripp – Papa Was A Ghost (The Temptations vs. Deadmau5) - Santa Cruz, USA BOOTIE EXCLUSIVE!
While we were away on tour, Tripp was the DJ who held it down in our absence at Bootie SF, and tracks like this showcase why we left him in charge of the decks. How do you take an old-school classic by The Temptations and make it sound weirdly current? Why, by having them sing with Deadmau5, of course!

Victor Menegaux – Nookieflies (Owl City vs. Limp Bizkit) – Seattle, USA
Victor says “I was laughing the entire time I made this.” We are so sick of the earnest saccharine sweetness of that damn, unavoidable “Fireflies” song, that hearing Fred Durst rap something as inane as “Nookie” over the top of it (possibly the worst song from the past 15 years) makes us laugh too!

Just got back home to San Francisco after a whirlwind two months of touring Europe, Asia, and Brazil, with brief pit stops back here in SF to keep the parties running. We were overextended, so needless to say, we are now WAY overdue for a Bootie Top 10 posting!

We promise, we will be rectifying this VERY soon! And we’ll make it up to you guys too, by making it a Top 20 (or maybe a Top 30?) We owe you a couple months’ worth, at least!

One thing we learned in our travels was how to say “sorry” in so many languages:

Entschuldigung, desculpe, désolé, anteeksi, atsiprašau, bocsánat!

Yes, we suck. We know. We’ve been on tour in Europe for over two weeks, and we’ve barely updated this blog – and by “barely,” I mean, “not at all.”

Frankly, we’ve just been too busy doing variations on the above photo (A+D with DJ Schmolli and Simon Iddol in Budapest) to bother updating a blog. (Or do a Bootie Top 10 for April … it’s coming soon, we promise!)

Speaking of promises, we’ll be doing a more detailed tour report soon – and by “soon” I mean “eventually” – but in the meantime, please check out our respective Facebook profiles for all of our tour updates, photos, and more:

Adrian’s Facebook
Mysterious D’s Facebook

There’s a lot more where this came from – like all the places we’ve been so far: Budapest, Frankfurt, Helsinki, London, Cork (Ireland), and Berlin (where we are currently). But until then, we’ll leave you with two more photos of what we’ve been doing while NOT updating a blog (this time with the Bootie Berlin crew and DJ Payroll and Tim Bearcub in London).

A Plus D and Bootie have teamed up with the New York Post to provide exclusive mashups for their popular blog, Pop Wrap!

For our first one, we originally gave them two mashups that were current pop vs. current alt-rock, but what they REALLY wanted was “pop infused with pop layered with pop throwing up pop.”  And who are we to deny them? May we present:

A Plus D – Rude Maneater (Rihanna vs. Hall & Oates)

We’re pressed for time this month, as we’ve got Bootie Berlin’s DJ Morgoth here in California for the week, so we’re just going to cut the blather and do a quick intro instead. Besides, does anyone even bother to even read our blurbs, or do you guys just skip it and get straight to the downloads? (Leave comments below to let us know!)

UPDATE: Okay, so you guys let us know, and it seems that at least a few of you appreciate the blurbs. So we’ve updated this Bootie Top 10 with our comments for each track.

Anyway, we’ve actually got twelve (count ‘em, 12!) tracks for you, due to having two “Double Shots,” the first featuring Kate Bush (including an interesting hybrid mashup/cover from UK artist Dan Black) and the second featuring Chicago’s The Hood Internet (we couldn’t decide between STV SLV and ABX, so we just picked both!) We’ve also got a couple of “Bootie Exclusives” for you — mashups you won’t find anywhere else — as well as a bunch of other gems, including tracks both brand-new and a couple months old (which gives us enough time to determine that they’re fantastic Bootie party tracks!

Enjoy, and start right-clickin’! – A+D

DOUBLE SHOT: Kate Bush
Apollo Zero – I’m Ready & Running Up That Hill (Kate Bush vs. Kano) – New Orleans
Dan Black – Get Into Cloudbusting (Kate Bush vs. Dan Black covering Madonna) – UK
We’re both big fans of Kate Bush, so we when had the opportunity to do a “double shot” of mashups that feature the iconic ’80s British songstress, we couldn’t resist. The first gives her biggest hit, “Running Up That Hill,” a nice disco backbeat, while the second is an inspired mashup/cover hybrid from Dan Black, who sings Madonna’s “Get Into The Groove” over a remixed version of “Cloudbusting.”

Bassnectar – Where Is My Mind? (Bassnectar Remix) (The Pixies vs. Bassnectar) – San Francisco
This starts off innocuously enough, womming and throbbing away before mutating into the most heavy electro breakbeat version of the Pixies you’ve ever heard. Seeing as that Bassnectar is probably the “biggest name DJ” to come out of the Burning Man scene, we can’t help but imagine this blasting out of a ginormous sound system out on the playa at dawn. “Where is my mind?” … indeed!

DJ BC – Could You Be Love Gamed? (Bob Marley vs. Lady Gaga) – Boston BOOTIE EXCLUSIVE!
There haven’t been very many killer mashups of “Love Game,” but here, Bootie Boston’s DJ BC rectifies that situation, making an unlikely lyrical connection between Lady Gaga and Bob Marley. Could this be love?

Copycat – I Was Made For A Heavy Cross (Kiss vs. The Gossip) – Sweden
Kiss is a rock band that dabbled in disco back when it was originally popular in the ’70s. The Gossip are quite a different rock band that — like many of their indie-rock contemporaries — are also currently dabbling in disco. So why NOT put these two together? Apparently, disco is NOT dead!

The Face Melters – Ice Ice Tik Tok (Vanilla Ice vs. Ke$ha) - San Francisco BOOTIE EXCLUSIVE!
The debut track from The Face Melters, a collaboration between frequent Bootie Top 10 contributor DJ Fox and his accomplice Kool Karlo. What can we say that Pop Wrap’s Ryan Brockington at the New York Post hasn’t already said? “The dollar store version of Lady Gaga, both in name spelling and song yelling, has recently been pureed with one of the ’80s most quintessential bleach-tipped rappers … take a moment to accept the fact that Ke$ha may just be the Vanilla Ice of our era. Yikes.”

DOUBLE SHOT: The Hood Internet
ABX of The Hood Internet – Ignition (Keep It Remixing Louder) (R. Kelly vs. Major Lazer) - Chicago
STV SLV of The Hood Internet – I Ain’t That Earthquake (Wallpaper. vs. Little Boots) – Chicago
We couldn’t pick just one! Besides, we didn’t want to play favorites between The Hood Internet’s ABX and STV SLV, so they get one each here … and when both tracks are this good, why not? R. Kelly gets some hipster cred mashed-up with Major Lazer, and speaking of hipster cred, you get a double dose of both with STV SLV’s combo of two very-now “bands of the moment.”

The Kleptones – Welcome Back (Guns N’ Roses vs. Chemical Brothers vs. LFO vs. Basement Jaxx vs. Missy Elliott) - Brighton, UK
The Chemical Brothers always approached dance music with very big, rock ‘n’ roll beats (hence the term “big beat”) so it actually makes kinda perverse sense that The Kleptones would mash them (and several others) up with some classic Guns ‘N Roses. This is a special unmixed, “single” version – the original appears on their new mashup album Upside/Downside.

MadMixMustang – Take Me On The Crazy Train (Ozzy Osbourne vs. a-ha) – The Netherlands
We gotta admit — the first time we played this at Bootie, we weren’t really sure how it was gonna go over. But we shouldn’t have worried — this is the classic sort of A+B mind-fuck mashup that made Bootie’s reputation. In fact, it’s mashups like that originally made us fall in love with the genre to begin with.

DJ Tripp – How Low In The House (Ludacris vs. Steve Aoki) – Santa Cruz, CA
We’re loving the new Ludacris single, and it’s even better coupled with some bangin’ electro dance-floor beats, mashed together courtesy of Bootie regular, DJ Tripp, whose output has been nothing but quality as of late.

The White Panda – Fireflies Goin’ Down (Yung Joc vs. Owl City) – Chicago/Los Angeles
The White Panda mixtape amply proves that you can pretty much plop a rap vocal over just about ANYTHING, which unfortunately makes most hip-hop mashups sound a bit trite and uninspired … and not really all that edgy. This track however, is a notable exception, adding some much-needed dirty street-cred to the overly-precious sicky-sweet sounds of that damn “Fireflies” song. Catchy as all get out. Meet me at Bootie … it’s goin’ down!

 Bootie’s creators and DJs Adrian & Mysterious D got a nice little interview in this week’s SF Weekly “Hey DJ!” column.

As the writer succinctly puts it: “On the eve of their red-themed Valentine’s Day party, A Plus D teach us about making the perfect mashup, crafting a successful club night, and falling in love with classic rock through freshly mashed singles.”

Check it out here!

We skipped the month of January, since we had just put out the Best of Bootie 2009 CD. But damn, there was such an abundance of good material these past two months, that we easily could have put together a Top 20 instead of a Top 10! But we’re just gonna save the rest for March… Right-click to download!

A Plus D – Don’t You Want My Bad Romance (Lady Gaga vs. Human League) – San Francisco
We knew we were taking a gamble when we went ahead and put this on the “Best of Bootie 2009″ CD — barely a week before the end of year! Sure, call us biased … but fortunately, we’ve been getting tons of great feedback and reports of hearing this track in clubs and at parties everywhere! Lady Gaga goes New Wave! And it sounds like both artists need some serious relationship counselling.

DJ Jay-R of C.H.A.O.S. Productions – Ke$ha Just Wants To Have Fun (Ke$ha vs. Cyndi Lauper) – Oakland
Just listen to the lyrics of Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok,” and really, isn’t is basically just a raunchier, more updated version of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” anyway? This track is fun, flirty, and ready to rock the party. A much-welcome comeback for Oakland’s own DJ Jay-R.

Jeff Jones – Party In The Empire State (Jay-Z & Alicia Keys vs. Miley Cyrus) – Boston
For our first Bootie NYC party in three months, we just KNEW we had to drop a mashup of the instantly-iconic “Empire State of Mind.” Only one problem … there weren’t that many out there! But mere minutes before we left for the party, we found this simple-yet-effective A+B. And let’s face it, with Miley name-dropping Jay-Z, coupled with the whole “hands up” vibe of both songs, these two were obviously meant to be together!
NEW YORK CITY BONUS TRACK!
Purple Crush – NYC Bad Girl Lovegame (Purple Crush vs. Lady Gaga) – Los Angeles
We’re feeling the love with New York lately, perhaps due to the fact that we unexpectedly had our biggest Bootie party ever there — over 840 people! It was crazy, so we’re throwing in an NYC-inspired bonus track, created by Purple Crush, a Brooklyn-based electro duo who recently moved to LA. We love it when artists mash up their own tunes!

The Kleptones – Cubikini (Bikini Kill vs. 808 State) – Brighton, UK
From the album Upside/Downtime
This is the soundtrack of our lives back in the early ’90s, where a typical weekend might consist of going to see a Riot Grrrl girl band play at some trashy punk club down the street, before heading out to an all-night rave in a warehouse on the outskirts of town. Did The Kleptones do the same thing? We love hearing surprising and rarely (if ever) used source material in a mashup, such as Bikini Kill’s “Rebel Girl.”

DJ Le Clown - Billie Bootie Lazer (Michael Jackson vs. Major Lazer) - Paris
For the record, Adrian HATES Major Lazer, finding its bloops and bleets incredibly annoying. D, on the other hand, loves the crazy sampling sounds and ridiculous rhythms. But here, we find some middle ground, as MJ gives a jolt of familiar melodicism to the modern, oh-so-hipster, “lazer” sound.

MadMixMustang – Is This Digital Love? (Bob Marley vs. Daft Punk) - The Netherlands
Here’s another mashup that we like, in spite of its source material. Neither one of us are especially big fans of reggae — but Daft Punk sounds so shockingly well-suited paired up with Bob Marley, taking an electronic jam and turning it into anthem of love and unity. It’s the dance floor equivalent of “warm fuzzies.”

Marc Johnce – Mr. Crowley Might Like It Louder (Ozzy Osbourne vs. Dada, Obernik & Harris vs. Amanda Blank vs. Major Lazer) – Germany
We love it when hard rock artists from the ’80s get the electro-dance bootleg treatment, especially when they sound as bangin’ as this. How awesome is Ozzy’s “Mr. Crowley” for a dark Electro-Bootie set? Dude, it rocks.

Mashup-Germany – Sexy Bitch In Memphis (Akon vs. Justin Timberlake vs. Robyn vs. The Eagles vs. Cher vs. David Guetta) – Germany
Can rap lyrics get any more shallow and ridiculous? What’s left to do but take them and mash them up with other artists, both probable (Hi, Justin!) and highly unlikely (OMG, the Eagles!). A nice multi-mash from hot newcomer Mashup-Germany.

DJ Morgoth - Any Way You Want My Woman (Journey vs. Wolfmother vs. MSTRKRFT) – Berlin
Wherein, Bootie Berlin’s own DJ Morgoth discovers the awesomeness of a classic American arena rock band from the ’80s by mashing up a song of theirs that came out before he was even born! See? Journey’s music really is the new Great American Songbook! And it sounds hot mashed-up with the Aussie retro-rock of Wolfmother remixed into a sexy groove by hipster heroes MSTRKRFT. Both these bands love the ladies … it’s oh-so-rock-n-roll!

Winkar Lopez – Shots (Hands Up Bootleg) (LMFAO feat. Lil Jon vs. Winkar Lopez) – Mexico City
As unapologetic and unironic fans of MTV’s “Jersey Shore,” we have a soft spot for LMFAO, who not only did the show’s theme song, but whose commercial for “Shots” practically became the show’s OTHER theme song. Winkar Lopez’s bootleg remix will have you “beating up the beat” and fist-pumping like a true guido! “Shotshotshotsshotshots… EVERYBODY!!!”

AND IN CASE YOU’VE BEEN LIVING UNDER A ROCK:
DJ Earworm – United State of Pop 2009 (Blame It On The Pop) (Mashup of the Top 25 Hit Songs of 2009 According to Billboard Magazine) – San Francisco
What can we say that we haven’t already? Mashup of the year, literally. This should be put in a time capsule for 2009. It’s got over 10 million views on YouTube, it was listed as #1 on the “Must List” in Entertainment Weekly, and Earworm was profiled on CNN.com. It’s an epic tour de force that, with its widespread mainstream attention, doesn’t just elevate the mashup artform — it takes it to a new level of legitimacy. Bravo!

Hopefully by now, you’re already familiar with DJ Earworm’s utterly epic United State of Pop 2009 (Blame It On The Pop), his year-end masterpiece that mashes together the top 25 songs of 2009 (as ranked by Billboard magazine) into one insanely brilliant, 4-1/2-minute pop creation. This is now Earworm’s third year in a row doing this, and it’s by far his best yet.

For one thing, he doesn’t simply mash up unrelated bits and pieces of songs together into a big sonic stew. Instead he has taken individual words and phrases from the lyrics and has intricately crafted entirely new verses and choruses. In effect, he has created a NEW SONG, one that carries a message of hope and perseverance in tough times — “No need to worry, just pick back up when you’re tumbling down, down, down (down, ” It’s uplifting and beautiful, and we’d be lying if we didn’t say that we actually get a little choked up sometimes when we hear it!

Earworm recently posted a color-coded lyric sheet, so you can see just how cut up and manipulated his work really is. It’s seriously Type-A!

The video he posted to YouTube went viral within a few days — which probably explains the extensive FAQ in the “more info” section of the video’s page — and right now it’s fast approaching 10 million views. He’s been written up by major media outlets the world over, and two days ago, CNN.com ran a major interview with him.  

Check out the DJ Earworm interview here — and notice that Adrian from Bootie gets name-dropped in the fourth paragraph, answering the “how did you get started” question! Thanks, Jordan! We vividly remember meeting him for the first time at Bootie, back in April 2004 when we were just a monthly Wednesday at the tiny Cherry Bar in San Francisco. We became fast friends and introduced him to the wider world of mashup culture on the internet … and the rest, as they say, is history!

Needless to say, we are incredibly proud of Earworm, and his newfound wider popularity is much deserved and long overdue! And yes, he’ll be playing feature sets at Bootie SF and Bootie LA very soon!

Bootie just received its first “cease-and-desist” letter, for DJ Lobsterdust’s “NirGaga” (Nirvana vs. Lady Gaga) track on the Best of Bootie 2009 CD:

————————————————————–
To Whom It May Concern:
EMI Entertainment World, Inc. (‘EMI”) is the owner and/or administrator of certain copyrighted content which is currently being reproduced, displayed, transmitted and distributed without authorization on www.bootiemashup.com (the “Site”), including, without limitation, a sample and download of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana (the “Copyrighted Work”). The unauthorized reproduction, display, transmission and distribution via the Internet of the Copyrighted Work without our express permission constitutes copyright infringement in violation of Title 17 U.S. Code, Section 106(a) of the Copyright Act of 1976, and other international copyright laws.
http://www.bootiemashup.com/bestofbootie2009/
This e-mail shall serve as EMI’s good faith notice to you that you are to immediately remove the Copyrighted Work, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana as well as any other unauthorized EMI material. Once the Copyrighted Work, has been removed from the Site, please send us written confirmation of the same.
This notice is written without prejudice to the rights and remedies of EMI and its songwriters at law or at equity, all of which we hereby expressly reserve. Thank you.

Infringement Compliance Unit │ EMI Music Publishing
a: 75 Ninth Avenue │ 4th Floor │ New York, NY 10011
www.emimusicpub.com
————————————————————–

We find it interesting that while “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is probably one of the most mashed-up songs out there, it took someone using Kurt Cobain’s vocals and lyrics rather than the iconic instrumentation to bring about a “Copyright Infringement Notice.”

We have complied with the request and have since replaced the track with one of the bonus tracks, DJ Moule’s “Hey, C La Vie,” which just narrowly missed the original cut of the album.

This now means that the original version of the Best of Bootie 2009 CD is now a collector’s item!

This also allowed us to add DJ Schmolli’s “The Trooper Believer” (Iron Maiden vs. The Monkees) as an additional bonus track.

To read or post comments, click here.

Hathbanger – Party & Bullshit (In The USA) (Notorious B.I.G. vs. Miley Cyrus

So many people get it wrong, that it’s awesome when someone gets it right.

Below is a copy of a blog post from Cyle Gage at FuckAdvocacy.com, wherein he explains eloquently not just why mashups are awesome, but why Hathbanger’s Bootie hit, Party & Bullshit (In The USA) is particularly awesome.

What’s Wrong, And How To Do It Right
by Cyle Cage

Listen to the motherfucking awesome song. Party & Bullshit (In the USA) (Notorious B.I.G. vs Miley Cyrus) For those fools who are unfamiliar, this is from Best of Bootie 2009, an annual album comprised entirely of amazing bootleg mashups. Why is it especially awesome? Because through their music, they transform culture. Really, they take normally earsplitting mainstream shit, smash it together like they do in the goddamn LHC, and transmute it into danceable, art-worthy brilliance.

But I’m singling out “Party & Bullshit (In the USA)” for a reason. The reason is simple and fairly obvious, but I want to explain it for those who don’t pick up on it immediately. This song is taking something that’s doing it wrong and making it right. I like to complain about what’s wrong, but some things deserve a break to be commended. Especially if it’s transformative. So what’s wrong? Miley Fucking Cyrus, that’s what. Honestly, I had never listened (or known that I was listening) to a Miley Cyrus song before this one, mostly because I figured she’d sound just like those other girls. I was wrong. She’s worse.

What I love about this mashup is the contrast, and it’s that satire which makes the music work so well. The song opens with big’s amazingly harsh, thick rap, which I love for its rough honesty. But there’s a nice, light dance beat (like most bootie songs). Talking about smoking blunts at 13 and getting shot at. Then from nowhere, some autotuned 12-year-old’s grating high-pitched voice slices the song up with some bullshit about a Jay-Z song? Putting your hands up? Butterflies? Moving your hips? Aren’t you illegal in most countries, little girl? Party in the USA? This is fucking bullshit, I can’t think of worse lyrics. (And I lived through Staind, Nickleback, and Evanescence.)

And then more of big’s fucking killer lyrics. You read this shit? Compared to modern music, this is Hemingway. NWA might as well be Longfellow, Thoreau, and Emerson. I’m not the biggest fan of rap in the world, but I have a lot of respect for a guy who can stick to a rhyming scheme like it’s nothing. (Yes, biggie rhymes “out” with itself, but Dylan Thomas did that too sometimes.) I have a great deal more respect for motherfuckers like Snoop and Ice-T who rhyme about killing people than anybody who writes a pop love ballad. Poetic conventions in such violent situations? Brilliant. Scare kids into thinking poetry is cool, it works.

The killer, and my favorite part of the song, is big’s swaying jive in the background of Miley’s chorus. Turn it up and listen to it. Party… and bullshit. Party… and bullshit. Fuck Miley Cyrus and her fucking voice. She is what’s wrong. But biggie, even though he’s fucking dead, is making it right.

We’ve gotta admit, we’re starting to feel vindicated!

Seven years ago, everyone thought our little mashup hobby was just a silly underground fad. But in the past week, our little “hobby” has popped up on MTV, Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Huffington Post, CNN, and more.

Is the “Best of Bootie 2009″ CD a harbinger of where music is going in the new decade?

As tireless torch-bearers of the mashup scene, 2009 was certainly an interesting year for us to watch, what with mashups popping up as a major plot point on the television show Glee, becoming every playable track on the DJ Hero videogame, CNN’s Campbell Brown talking about “the mash-up” every night, etc.

Have mashups gone from buzzworthy to simply part of the cultural fabric yet? We’d like to think so. And it will become even moreso as time goes on — the mashup will go from “guilty pleasure” to simply “pleasure”. The “trend” element will be long gone, and hopefully what we’ll be left with is just another style of remix for producers and music listeners to choose from.

As we laze around on the first day of the new decade, nursing our hangovers from our epic Bootie New Years Eve party the night before, we find ourselves getting a little reflective. Looking back on not only the past year, but the past decade, we think about where we’ve been, where we are now, and how we got here. And in regards to Bootie, much of our trajectory can be traced back to one brilliant flashpoint of a mashup.

That mashup is called “A Stroke of Genius,” and it was created in 2001 by a bootlegger who went by the name of Freelance Hellraiser. It was one of the first mashups we ever heard, and its importance was paid homage to last night as Bootie SF house band Smash-Up Derby covered it just before midnight, calling it “the mashup of the decade.”

But we’re not the only ones who have called out this landmark track. Bootie LA’s DJ Paul V. said the same thing in his weekly “Mashup of the Week” blog on PopBytes.

But perhaps, most importantly, the UK’s influential Guardian newspaper called “A Stroke of Genius” “the song that defines the decade.” Although the article’s viewpoint is obviously written from an extremely trendy UK perspective – “A Stroke of Genius” never got the kind of massive attention and radio airplay here in the States that it did in the U.K., and as a consequence, the bootleg scene in that country exploded and burnt itself out rather quickly – hence, the writer’s erroneous comment that “the musical mashup has waned,” which is not only patently not true, but from our experience is quite the opposite! Still, the writer is pretty insightful on many points, which you can read in its entirety here:

Photograph: Marco Dos Santos/Hector Mata/Rex Features/AFP/EPA

When Christina met the Strokes: the song that defines the decade

Looking back at the noughties, Dorian Lynskey examines how a bootleg song, A Stroke of Genius, that never got a legitimate release prefigured all the significant pop trends of the decade

by Dorian Lynskey
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 November 2009 21.45 GMT

When you’re sifting through the ashes of a decade in pop, it’s very tempting to search for the Important Statement, the song that best sums up The Way We Live Now. (Here’s a drinking game for anyone reading end-of-the-00s round-ups: take a shot every time a record is tenuously related to 9/11.) But the most important records are often the ones that don’t know they’re important. They flare like Roman candles and burn out quickly and, in that brief window of incandescence, they vividly illuminate a moment in time. So the song that seems to tell me most about the decade just ending is not something off Kid A or Yankee Hotel Foxtrot but the Freelancer Hellraiser’s A Stroke of Genius.

In the autumn of 2001 (wait, don’t take that shot), a British producer called Roy Kerr, aka the Freelance Hellraiser, spliced together the music from the Strokes’ Hard to Explain with the vocal from Christina Aguilera’s Genie in a Bottle and named it A Stroke of Genius – even the title seemed magically serendipitous. In the 1980s and 90s, art-minded mashups by the likes of John Oswald and the Evolution Control Committee tended to highlight the smash-and-grab nature of combining well-known songs, producing satire and subversion from the mismatch. They brokered shotgun marriages; Kerr, however, was more of a benign matchmaker, showing two disparate artists how much they really had in common.

Fittingly, the record plays out like a seduction. In her original song, Aguilera is coquettish and controlled, keeping her sexuality on a tight leash until the right guy comes along, and the music reinforces her restraint by maintaining a slow simmer. “My body’s saying let’s go,” she breathes. “But my heart is saying no.” In Julian Casablancas’s vocal on Hard to Explain there’s another inner battle (“I say the right thing/ But act the wrong way”) but, stripped of their singer’s hesitancy, the band’s itchy sexual energy becomes a “let’s go” too strong to resist and Aguilera sounds like she’s being swept towards a rendezvous that’s both dangerous and delicious.

It’s as if the Strokes had heard her line about “hormones racing at the speed of light” and written the music around it. Just before the chorus, her “oh-oh-oh”s swoon into the oncoming embrace of the rising guitars, and the pampered pop princess hooks up with the scruffy hipster from the wrong side of the tracks (never mind that Casablancas was definitely born on the right side: this is pop fantasy, not reality). The combination is so perfect that both original songs, excellent in their own right, suddenly sound incomplete, like two works in progress needing someone to complete them: two genies in different bottles waiting to be rubbed the right way. “Come, come, come and let me out.”

As three minutes and 36 seconds of endlessly listenable and danceable pop brilliance, A Stroke of Genius is up there with OutKast’s Hey Ya! in the 00s hall of fame (in fact, the two songs can be mixed together with ease) but it also says a lot about what has happened to pop over the past decade. First, there’s the means of distribution. A few hundred one-sided seven-inches of Stroke of Genius were independently released, which was enough to provoke a cease-and-desist order from RCA, home to both Aguilera and the Strokes, but almost everyone who heard and acquired the song did so online. Ten years earlier, Kerr’s creation would have been a samizdat artefact and you’d probably only have heard it via a tape of a tape of a tape, like copyright-flaunting records by Steinski or the JAMMs, but in 2001 it coincided with an explosion in MP3 blogs and filesharing software. Kerr got a career out of A Stroke of Genius, becoming Paul McCartney’s tour DJ and remixer for, among others, Aguilera, but after that initial vinyl run, it didn’t directly earn him a penny. Its gratis nature was part of its charm. It showed that illegal downloading could be an outlet for creativity and not just a means of taking for free music that already existed.

Mark Vidier, who made some of the very best mashups under the name Go Home Productions, told the New Yorker: “You don’t need a distributor, because your distribution is the internet. You don’t need a record label, because it’s your bedroom, and you don’t need a recording studio, because that’s your computer. You do it all yourself.” During the early 00s mashup boom, fostered by Eddy Temple-Morris’s Xfm show The Remix and blogs such as Boomselection, there were thousands of examples, some so bad they made you doubt the creator’s sense of hearing, others so good they were stepping stones to fruitful legitimate careers.

Danger Mouse made his name with 2004’s Jay-Z/Beatles soundclash The Grey Album before working with Gorillaz, Gnarls Barkley and Beck. Minor Belgian indie band Soulwax earned themselves a second act via the thrilling mashups they played as their alter ego, 2 Many DJs. And there were dozens of wondrous one-offs. All you needed was one good idea, some freely available software and a basic understanding of how music works and 15 minutes of mashup glory could be yours.

A Stroke of Genius also spoke to a new breed of listener: the voracious hyper-consumer, with MP3s of every song ever recorded at his or her fingertips, whose loyalty is not to a particular scene or style but to the endless quest for the next hit of pleasure, from whatever source. Twenty years ago, there was always one friend who, when asked what he was into, said “a little bit of everything”. Now, at least if you’re under 35, that friend is you and everyone you know. If the old model of music consumption was the categorised-by-genre record collection, the new one is the iPod shuffle, where old and new, hip and cheesy, rub along just fine.

A Stroke of Genius came out when many indie fans still believed that manufactured pop stank of evil and death, and the idea of Christina Aguilera and the Strokes in perfect harmony was strange. These days there’s no contradiction between loving Arcade Fire and loving Britney. In fact, mainstream hits like the Sugababes’ About You Now and Kelly Clarkson’s Since U Be Gone, blurred the margins,in the style of A Stroke of Genius, by marrying an R&B-trained vocal to a Strokesian metronomic chug.

While Sean Rowley’s Guilty Pleasures night was busy rescuing Wings and ELO from years of ignominy, a similar process was taking place on a massive scale with new releases. “Do I like this?” superseded “Should I like this?” as the music fan’s automatic response to new music. As Jody Rosen wrote in Slate, “Maybe the real guilty pleasure in [the 00s] is gluttony.” This utopia of open-minded listening comes at a price – the old tribal tug-of-war that once made the top 40 a gripping battleground of rival factions with occasional guerrilla forays from leftfield; the sense that liking a certain kind of music was crucial to your cultural identity – but most of us now inhabit it, for good or ill.

The third crucial thing that A Stroke of Genius and its ilk did was to forge musical alliances so blatantly. Mashup pioneer John Oswald insisted 20 years ago that “the plundering has to be blatant.” His foe was copyright, which he considered a cage around creativity, but the mashup producers applied the same principle to apolitical ends. As pop’s history becomes more overwhelming (and, thanks to the internet and reunion tours, ever-present), originality gets harder with every passing year. So instead of copying old bands and hoping the audience either doesn’t know or doesn’t care who’s being imitated, the mashup producers played games with pop’s back catalogue, often with more wit and ingenuity: you could argue that Richard X’s mashup of Gary Numan and Adina Howard, released legitimately as the Sugababes’ 2002 hit Freak Like Me, made more imaginative use of early 80s synth-pop than anything on La Roux’s album.

The form reached its manic apex, or perhaps reductio ad absurdum, with the work of Pennsylvanian DJ Gregg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, whose albums suggest the view from a bullet-train window as it speeds past countless pop landmarks. Much of the listener’s pleasure derives from recognising the source material and seeing pop as a fluid continuum, teeming with potential connections. Even though the musical mashup has waned, the YouTube equivalent thrives (just ask Oliver Hirschbiegel, the director of Downfall), and recently produced its own answer to Girl Talk with Rev Diva Schematic’s The Golden Age of Video, which cuts up famous movie dialogue to form a rhyming lyric.

But, as with Girl Talk, it’s both a remarkable achievement and a dead end. Both projects rely on a set of shared reference points, largely from an era when certain cultural artefacts were unifyingly successful, and consume them like a reckless oil driller bleeding a well dry. Pop, and pop culture, can only eat itself for so long before all you’re left with is bones.

Little, if any, of this was going through Roy Kerr’s head when he thought it would be a cool idea to match up two songs he liked but, in retrospect, they are all threads waiting to be unpicked. A Stroke of Genius is an accidental prophecy, a signpost pointing in an unforeseen direction. It came out during the first throes of enormous changes in the way music is heard and consumed, not all of them entirely welcome or boding well for the future, which makes it all the sweeter that the song is about velocity, ambivalence and the potential danger of surrendering to pleasure. Looking back, it feels like digital music was the genie in the bottle and, now that it’s been let out, nobody can put it back in.

After seeing the Lady Gaga show in San Francisco last week, we just HAD to do SOMETHING with “Bad Romance.” So here we are, finding common ground between two songs nearly 28 years apart.

Presenting the latest mashup production from A Plus D, where we give early ’80s electro-pop pioneers Human League a hot new singer!

Lady GaGa vs. Human League (AplusD MashupMix)
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It’s been three years since our first Bootie holiday mix CD — that’s how long it takes to compile 15 more quality Christmas (and Hanukkah!) mashups! But we’ve finally released our second holiday mashup compilation! Happy holidays!

Get it here: BootieUSA.com/xmas

There’s even a “family-friendly” version of the album which omits our “Xmas Dick In A Box.” Here’s what’s on it.

1. Go Home Productions – High Tides and Blocked Peace Pipes
2. DJ Schmolli – Pumping Up Christmas
3. Dan Phillips – Jingles Are Jingles
4. King Of Pants – Alala Falala Hasselhoff
5. Smash-Up Derby – Christmas Bop
6. Secret Santa – Santa’s Silent Bum
7. Voicedude – Dreidel All The Way
8. Voicedude – Black Door Or White Santa
9. Jacqui Naylor – Santa Claus Is Coming To Alabama (A+D Remix)
10. A Plus D – Xmas Dick In A Box
11. DJ BC – Sugar Plum Fairy Coda (Recoda)
12. Little Drummer Bonzo – DJ Topcat
13. Mojochronic – Yuletide Zeppelin
14. Alexkid & DJ Seep – Santa Baby (Remix)
15. Voicedude – It’s The Little Things