The Mash-Up

Admission of guilt: once upon a time I downloaded music. Shut up. You did too. We all did. Most still do. And by doing so, by downloading individual tracks, by consciously selecting the songs we wanted to hear and placing them in an order we saw fit, by stealing the power of track selection and order from bands and record labels, we changed how we hear music.

And I'm damn glad we did.

Now, sometimes giving an album your undivided attention is a rewarding and worthwhile experience and nothing can replace it. And sometimes you want a little Ludacris after your Decemberists and maybe after that a little Dean Martin topped with a dash of Mindless Self Indulgence. Sometimes on a long drive I'll throw my entire iPod on shuffle and force myself to listen to whatever it throws at me (a tortuous and thrilling exercise). Banging on my steering wheel, blasting my air trombone, gulping and singing with tears on my face and shredding on my air lightning wolf tooth guitar (it's imaginary, why wouldn't it be made of lightning and wolf teeth?) all within 20 minutes of driving down the interstate. It's the only way to drive, friends. Missouri State Highway Patrol dare not stop the raucous concert in my twin cab. They daren't.

Q:Why do I obsess over mash-up wonder duo Super Mash Bros?
A. I'm a Nintendo fan boy who clings to any pun-related cross media version of Nintendo franchises.
B. I'm a dancer.
C. They embody everything I've come to love about music in the past decade.
D. I don't. I just wanted to type "mash-up wonder duo"

A: C (will also accept B).

You see, Super Mash Bros condense half an hour of my iPod interstate shuffling into a two and a half minute orgasm of Top 40 beats and riffs that will turn your ass into a beat shaking frenzy. An entire day of listening to the radio by the pool is turned into a 3 minute dare, a song a that dares you to not love it. And you will.

Guaranteed.

DJs across the country are capitalizing on a trend that Run DMC and Aerosmith helped popularize 25 years ago but no one has tapped into the zeitgeist like Super Mash Bros. Girl Talk is close but he is more interested in controlling the throngs of writhing bodies around him with more "danceable" approaches. Listening to Super Mash Bros mash ups for the first time is as an event. You smile as you think "Wow, that's Modest Mouse and Bubba Sparxxx and that's the Caridigans! Holy shit! What!?! Is that Britney? I can't believe they pulled this off? And that's Kelis and...." Rinse. Repeat. You don't have time to tire of a song, you barely have time to process what's happening to your body. Instead you're left smiling like a dolt, sweating and jumping on the dance floor or in my case, banging on every surface in my truck as trees and fields zip by.

Don't believe me?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ix6b0WrAkc