Mash Bros. mix hits

On Oct. 3, the Super Mash Bros. rocked the college community in the Intramural Gym. With over 700 tickets sold and 500 people in the gym at one time, the explosive mash-ups from Nick Fenmore and Dick Fink blew the minds of those lucky few able to gain admittance. Their mixes ranged from Imogen Heap over Chingy, to Kanye over Coldplay.

At the start of their set, they suffered some technical problems due to certain malfunctioning pieces of sound equipment. However, after a bit of tweaking, they got everything back online. They turned the volume right up to 11 and played a two-hour set.

By all accounts, the concert was a success. The crowd was loud and responsive, knowing most of the lyrics to the mashed-up melodies and enjoying the showmanship of the college-aged Super Mash Bros.

The hype for the concert wildly underestimated the popularity of the event. "We honestly had no idea it would produce this much excitement around campus," said SEC President Pat Glennon. "We were originally going to have them in Falstaff's, but some folks involved decided that the small gym would be more accommodating. They couldn't have been more correct."

While conditions may have been hot and sweaty inside the concert, the two DJs said they could not have enjoyed themselves more, even with the cross-country journey necessary to get to Saratoga Springs.

"The hardest thing about being on the road is just the sheer amount of traveling," Fink said. He goes to school in Portland, Oregon, so he flies across the country on the weekend to play shows before coming back on Sundays to prepare for classes.

The 19- and 20- year-old duo go to school during the week, fly out on the weekend, blow some other school away and still have to be home to make sure they get their homework done. Fink and Fenmore have been mashing together for almost two years since they started this project, but they still fondly recall the band's creation.

"At the time, we were both DJing separately with other people, but we were always big fans of each other." Fink said. "We actually decided to start mashing as a dare from a friend of ours."

The work of established mash-up artists inspired the friend's dare. "We were driving around listening to Girl Talk, or maybe it was e-603, and he bet us that we couldn't compete. After that, we started making the beginnings of our first album," Fink said.

They quickly became known in a popular new genre. By layering songs on top of each other, DJs form a compiled "mash." For instance, they play the base track to "Shake That" while overlaying the high dulcet tones of Lil' Wayne. It sounds simple, but Fink and Fenmore spend hours on the couch trying to match up songs with similar rhythms to achieve the best flow in a mash. Once they find two relatively close songs they will then try and add finishing touches to the mash. This can come in the form of other sound clips dubbed in at certain points, or just by slowing down certain parts of one track to achieve a better rhythm. Once everything is all put together the song is ready to be compressed and ready to play.

The result won over students, who sang along to the mashes that Fink and Fenmore blasted.

"Even if you guys didn't know all the mashes, you still loved Aerosmith, so that's all that really matters," Fink said. "We had a great time."