Just the Ticket

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The Ticketmaster. Happy Birthday to my America, Ticketholders! I guess you'd call me a liberal, or "left-wing," if you had to put me in a binary box, but the one conservative hope I have is that we as a country can get back to a time resembling what we had before this past decade of insanity, hate, and fear, because twelve score and ten years ago, our founding fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. And then women, eventually, once all the witchcraft paranoia got hung out to die and one of them made our flag. It took a lot longer than four score and seven years to even approach that equality, and a mere handful of years, plus at least as many acts of upheaval to affect a frankly superficial level of social change before the next manufactured boogeyman of the month instigated a mass fear response of, by, and for the wrong people to ge...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. DJ TimeDrop Welcome backward, Ticketholders! It's been a decade or more since I last touched a mixing program, but I'm incredibly proud of (most of) the thirty-plus mash-ups and remixes I was able to put together back then, including the beginnings of a Fort Minor & Modest Mouse Mash-Up album and holiday mixes for Christmas and Valentine's Day, the latter of which I'll be sharing with you today because it's the Throwback Thursday before Valentine's Day in the Month Of Love ). I'll be going over the track list, including my inspirations, changes I'd make if I were to modernize things, and anything else that comes to mind as I write. Give it a listen here (apologies for the lack of video on short notice): First of all, I have no technical music skill, so I don't know about tempo or key or anything like that; I just went with whatever I think felt right together in the moment and did my best with what resources I ...

Article by Sean Wilkinson, a.k.a. The TixMaster The day is finally here! And I don't just mean Christmas, either. I've been hearing about The Retaliators  for months now (thanks to Skratch 'n' Sniff's The Retaliators  Halloween Movie Mix ), and not only did I finally get the opportunity to watch it, but I listened to The Retaliators  Soundtrack as well. And guess what? The Retaliators  is a Christmas horror movie! So what better way to celebrate Christmas and cap off my thirteen-day  Countdown to TixMas  special than by reviewing The Retaliators  and its soundtrack!? As I said last time , I struggled with the best way to review these two pieces of media without spoiling one or the other, as many of the songs on the soundtrack are played at key moments in the movie, and snippets of dialogue from the movie are used to introduce some songs on the soundtrack. Thanks to the fortuitous release of Violent Night  this week, I don't have to split them up ...

Holleratchee, and greetings of all kinds, Ticketholders! It's been a long time since I posted anything to the Ticket verse. Between remixes, Heromachine, work, my novel (which I started over roughly five times, after writing over a hundred pages that ultimately went nowhere) I haven't had the time or desire to keep up with all the new movies, books, and music that comes out. Then there was this: Like all great music that draws my attention these days, I heard about Yelawolf's Love Story album on Skratch 'n' Sniff, promoted through the single, "Til It's Gone," which was also featured in an episode of Sons of Anarchy. I immediately started looking through his old material, and discovered that he had worked with big names like Eminem, Travis Barker, Kid Rock, and Ed Sheeran. Although first deemed too obscure for the mainstream, Yela has proven that he can spit rapid-fire rhymes in step with Shady (also the producer on Love Story ), and shatter genre ...

Good evening, Ticketholders and other members of my readership club! I am great! I am fucking awesome! I am the best fucking mashup artist in the history of the universe! Not even close. That was just me being ironically modest to get you ready for the latest offering in my Fort Modest mashup series. Like the first entry, this is a double-feature. Track 4: Bury Me With It the Hard Way * Modest Mouse - Dig Your Grave * Modest Mouse - Bury Me With It * Fort Minor - The Hard Way Track 5: Petrified In the Dance Hall * Modest Mouse - Dance Hall * Fort Minor - Petrified Enjoy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_boMjnJq5A Stay tuned for more mashups and 'machining mayhem as another Elemental Witch comes your way in the next Witches Are Made . Need to be up to catch a bus in two hours so goodnight. Ticketsomniac, Out cold.

Hope you're liking the remixes so far. I've got nothing clever to say right now, so just check this out because it's badass. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh9BPz4Dv90 Ever wonder what Lil Wayne sounds like over "Back In Black?" Didn't know Jonathan Davis from Korn and Jim Root from Slipknot covered "Got Money?" Ever get the idea to blend Rihanna and Jay-Z into "Got Money?" Well, this remix has all that and a bag of bitchin'. So get clickin' y'all. I just finished another Elemental Witch character for my [Fill In the Blank] Are Made  column, so stay tuned for that coming up soon, as well as another Fort Modest Mashup Issue . As always, you can find the Skratch 'n' Sniff radio show on  iHeartRadio  Saturday nights from 11pm-1am. DJ Timedrop, the only nerd that remixes your interwebs, Timedropping out.

DJ Timedrop here again to let you know that I put another Fort Modest mashup on YouTube just now. It's the second Fort Modest "video" I've posted so far, and I like where the album-in-progress is going. Check out "Ocean Breathes Salty Where You Go (feat. Holly Brook & Jonah Matranga)" by clicking the video or the link below. This remix uses the following songs: Fort Minor - "Where'd You Go? (feat. Holly Brook & Jonah Matranga)" Modest Mouse - "Ocean Breathes Salty" http://youtu.be/zsD8tKv5vjs As always, I hope you enjoy my work as much as I enjoy putting it out for you. Stay tuned as my Fort Modest series continues and prepare yourselves for the next Elemental Witch character from my Heromachine side project. I hope to have her ready for you in a few days' time. Until then, Tune in, Turn on, and Timedrop, out.

Cue the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Ticketholders, Soundtrackers, Heromachiners, and Mashuppers! I gladly welcome you to another Mashup Issue , where time gets dropped and the beats don't stop, and all those people that you know are about to "Float On" so they can make it all "Feel Like Home." If you haven't guessed yet, the Ticketmaster, a.k.a. The Blogger Formerly Known As SW@, a.k.a. DJ Timedrop, a.k.a. me, myself, and I, have been working on a whole album of mashups featuring the works of Modest Mouse and Fort Minor (that's Mike Shinoda, Styles of Beyond, John Legend, and a few other dope folks in the music biz). Like I've done for all of my mashups so far, I PhotoShopped together my own cover art for what is to this point a four-part "video" series, starting with this Fort Modest triple feature: 1) "Horn Intro" by The Dirty Dozen Brass Band 2) "The World At Large Feels Like Home" ----"The World At Large"...

Yo, yo, yo. Tickets to Stubs, and I ain't done. I got Mashup  issues, and the mix ain't one. Hit me. If my confusing post title and my pathetic attempt at acting gangsta are any indication, the latest mashup I'm going to share with you features "99 Problems" by Jay-Z. But as I learned during the end credits of Fright Night  (the Colin Farrell remake), Young HOVA isn't the only one with "99 Problems." A band called HUGO did a cover of Jay's hit song, and I liked it so much that I began thinking of ways to combine the two. The HUGO version didn't accommodate Jay's rap very well, so I looked at other "99 Problems" remixes on YouTube, and I got the idea to incorporate Florence + the Machine's "The Dog Days Are Over" as the glue for the track. This is what came out of it: And here's the link for it, too:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thv8tvi_bZ4 Thanks for reading, and watching, and listening. Stay tun...

As promised, I'm following up Mashup Issue #2  with a new Soundtrack . If you've read (and hopefully viewed) Mashup Issue #2 , you'll recall the two rappers up for review today are Riff Raff and Atmosphere . I first heard Riff Raff's single, "Kokayne" (off of his new album, Neon Icon ) where I hear most new music that grabs my attention these days: on Skratch 'n' Sniff . Living in the middle of nowhere (home to two classic rock stations, four country stations—at least—and one teeny-bopper pop station that barely comes in at all), iHeartRadio and Skratch 'n' Sniff have been a blessing to me. Titled "Video Games" for radio play purposes, the white rapper's white powder anthem sports a sped-up baseline that sounds like it came straight out of Fugazi 's "Waiting Room," what might be bagpipes or a squeezebox put to non-annoying use, slightly creative rapid-fire name-dropping ( Chris Rock , Carson Daly , Dolly Parto...

I decided to get back into the review scene, rather than give you another character "right away" (sarcastic quotes because it's been a month since I posted anything here). Welcome to The Mash-Up Issue , Ticketholders! You may have noticed that I started the numbering with two instead of one, and that is because there is already an issue of Bring Back the Soundtrack   with that title . In addition to reviewing movies (which I haven't done in months), books , and music, and designing cool comic book character concepts, and working at Safeway, and writing a book of my own (65 pages and counting), I also find time to create the occasional mashup, along with Photoshopped "album art," under the name DJ Timedrop. In an effort to get as many hits on my work as possible, I will use this title to share my (now small) archive of remixes and mashups with you, starting with this one: It is by no means my first piece, but I consider it my best work so far, and it is...

Here, finally, is the much-anticipated R.E.M. issue, to give you a direct side-by-side comparison of their last two records as a band: Accelerate  and Collapse Into Now . Accelerate   (2008), the band's first album in five years, feels like a futile effort to make people think they're still cool by throwing together a herky-jerky composition of material that jumps from the weirdest, most frantic instrumentation they've ever come up with to slow, indie-folk borefests that demand skipping unless your bedtime playlist is feeling threadbare. Most of Accelerate  lives up to its name with a relatively headbangable tempo, like the Smashing Pumpkins-inspired "Mr. Richards" and the sarcastically cheeky leadoff track, "Living Well Is the Best Revenge," and hits you with surprising lyrics like in the title track, which asks "where is the cartoon escape hatch for me?" and inspires you to "fall a new direction." This record is definitely...

Give a big "Welcome back, Blogger!" to the column formerly known as the SW@ Soundtrack , a column I started back on June 26, 2005 with an issue called The Grading Curve . Therein, I did not review anything, but instead laid down a grading system based on the names of popular record store chains (a sales medium that has come into great jeopardy in recent years). I eventually abandoned said grading curve to experiment with other systems, as any good artist will do when he's new in the game and tired of spitting the SOSO that he brought to movie criticism for one year straight. This issue will be a big one, since I plan to copy-and-paste all back issues of the Soundtrack back-to-back herein. And while it didn't have great longevity at my hand, I still think the curve was a clever device worth giving its due, so what better place to start than June 26, 2005 (SW@ Soundtrack #1: The Grading Curve)? When I have no movies to take apart, I plan to look at the world of mus...