I suppose the new Girl Talk disc could be considered “highly anticipated” since Night Ripper was a hit inside our creepy Internet circles, at least to the extent that Greg Gillis could quit his job to seemingly play the same “not a DJ” set at every festival, parking lot and bar mitzvah over the… More »
At a St. Louis college gig by laptop bootlegger Girl Talk on Friday, an audience member was so moved by the DJ’s wacky blends of classic indie-rocking cheese with today’s chart-topping hip-hop cheese that he proceeded to strip down to his skivvies and start acting like a raging dipshit. At which point he recieved an attitude adjustment from local police, applied directly to the buttocks.
The easy way out of any music review is the relentless slam, the cynical rant against whatever perceived injustice against what is good and just, and the music industry has a unique talent for serving up easy targets. (Courtney Love authorizes a Z-Trip remix of a Nirvana track? Excellent!) The minute I saw the listing for Tempe, Arizona’s Southern Comfort Music Experience mini-festival, it seemed like another softball thrown right down the middle. A lineup selected from the Hype Machine charts? A temporary venue set up in the parking lot of a new mall? Seemingly endless corporate sponsorship? Sounds like a the easiest blog post in the world. The only problem is when the event ends up resembling an actual good idea.
We all love internet memes. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t devote so much of our waking lives to cataloging lolcats or figuring out whether we’re currently saying “wau” or “waht.” But when one-note Web jokes escape from being trapped behind a laptop screen and into the pop cultural bloodstream, I start cringing. Case in point: atrocious crooner Tay Zonday, another sad case of an “Internet celebrity” who’s at best accepted that polite derision from America might be his only chance at stardom. Which was fine when he was being mocked/celebrated by cultural boils like Opie and Anthony and Jimmy Kimmel, far away from anywhere I’d be forced to pay attention. But now he’s decided to start intersecting with my day job, kicking off his music career by perfoming his first show in Minneapolis with internet faves Girl Talk and Dan Deacon:
“Because of a typographical error, a story on the Virgin Festival in the Aug. 6 Style section referred to Girl Talk’s Greg Gillis as a one-trick phony instead of a one-trick pony.” More »
A Girl Talk fan comments on Greg Gillis’ recent stint opening for Widespread Panic, which ended in a heap of vomit and passed-out girls (well, okay, one of each, but still): “Don’t security understand that pissing yourself and barfing all over the place is our way of showing our deepest RESPECT for… More »
Looks like someone doesn’t think imitation is all that sincere a form of flattery:
This might sound odd coming from a guy who’s basically made his career out of jacking bits and pieces of other people’s beats, but lately, Gregg Gillis — a.k.a. Girl Talk — feels like he’s the one who’s getting jacked.
Or, more specifically, his style is, by a host of highfalutin rappers and producers who’ve taken his catch-as-catch-can production ethos (a dab of Neutral Milk Hotel, a touch of Juelz Santana) and made it their own. In fact, there’s one track currently making the rounds — Kanye West’s “Stronger,” which features ‘Ye rapping directly over the beat from Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” — that’s so reminiscent of a Girl Talk song, even Gillis took notice, and he’s a tad bit suspicious of the similarities.
The consensus on Pittsburgh’s Girl Talk (pictured here with the Cowardly Lion) appears to be split into two camps: Either he’s a sublime mash-up artist, or an overrated sample-hack. More »