January 17, 2007
MUSIC
Walk the Talk
 |
Put on your dancin’ shoes—the Night Ripper cometh.
“It’s weird, you know,” Gregg Gillis says when reflecting on the past year, one that saw his second career (more on that in a bit) rocket through the stratosphere. “I’ve been doing the Girl Talk thing for going on seven years now, and up until recently I was just playing at parties and in friends’ basements. Then I’m interviewed on Pitchfork and suddenly I’m considered the DJ for the hipster set. In reality I’m playing more mainstream pop than anything. I just mix it up with a wide array of styles and let it rip.”
Move over, Diplo. Spank Rock, won’t you please have a seat? It’s Girl Talk’s turn at the altar of altered beats. After taking the alternative nation by storm last summer with his party in a plastic case Night Ripper, Gillis—mild-mannered biomedical researcher by day, flailing ball of energy dancing behind a laptop onstage by night—rolls into Johnny Brenda’s this weekend.
If you haven’t heard the buzz yet, you might as well start preparing to lead the backlash, because the cult of Girl Talk is already in full germ-warfare mode, infecting every blog within range with raves, reviews and full-on fatwas.
Effortlessly mixing Biggie with Sir Elton John and the Pharcyde before tossing Missy Elliott in with Hall and Oates, Girl Talk manages to single-handedly throttle the hipster set with a barrage of mainstream pop samples littered with hip-hop snippets. While most discerning people might shun the likes of Jefferson Airplane and Seals and Croft (in public at least), something about those same artists being backed by Pavement, the Boredoms and LCD Soundsystem, well, makes people dance. And then dance some more.
Night Ripper’s infectious 16 tracks are comprised of samples from upward of 164 different artists. Not exactly legal, no, and this fact isn’t entirely lost on Girl Talk’s record label, the aptly named Illegal Art. Their legal eagles have gone out of their way to cover their asses by invoking the fair use copyright clause which stipulates that “artists should be allowed to liberally sample in the creation of new works.” The label maintains—from a legal perspective—the releases contained within Night Ripper are “dramatically different from the originals and therefore would never encroach on the sampled artists’ markets.”
This defense is tough to argue against. You’d be hard pressed, for instance, to contend that Girl Talk’s “Hold Up,” which opens with a snippet of “Your Smiling Face,” could ever be considered a threat to James Taylor’s record sales.
Legalese aside, live performances are where Gillis really shines. Girl Talk embraces the role of party poobah, punctuating mouse clicks with animated dance moves coupled with a gradual stripping process and a tendency to invite everyone and their monkey to jump onstage.
“I think the fact that I’m serving up some of the simplest and most danceable beats makes it easy for everyone to drop their inhibitions and just have fun with the music,” he says. “Most of my audiences of late have been super high-energy, and when I look out, I see almost everybody dancing without reservation.”
“When people come out and see me perform, they should realize it’s my weekend too. When I’m up there on a Friday night, I’ve just come off a week of work like everyone else and want to unwind, let off some steam and have fun.”
A recent New Year’s Eve gig in Chicago featured more people onstage than any documented incarnation of the Wu-Tang Clan in concert. At November’s Be the Riottt Festival in San Francisco, GT’s set had such an overwhelming “onstage presence” that the show’s organizers called an abrupt halt in order to protect the gear of fellow performers.
We’re still locked in January’s bitter deathgrip, so muster up everything it might take to believe this could end up being the best show of the year.
Girl Talk
Fri., Jan. 19, 8pm. Sold out. With Plastic Little + Dan Deacon. Johnny Brenda’s, 1201 N. Frankford Ave. 215.739.9684. www.johnnybrendas.com
No comments:
Post a Comment