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Live review: Girl Talk
Ricardo B. Brazziell AMERICAN-STATESMAN
- Photos: Girl Talk at ACL Fest
Predictions were dire or delirious — depending on your point of view — for Girl Talk’s 7 p.m. set. The Xbox 360 stage was, by Sunday night, the muddiest venue at ACL, and Girl Talk, the mash-up project of Pittsburgh’s Gregg Gillis, was likely to be the festival’s biggest dance party. Whatever Dillo Dirt sludge that had managed to stay on the ground was likely to find its way into whatever hair and clothing had managed to stay free of it.
In fact, though, from where I stood (well to the right of the soundboard; getting any closer was pretty much impossible) the overwhelmingly young crowd was on its best behavior, though their parents might not have seen it that way: They pumped their fists, chanted along to the most profane raps, danced in place and smoked a lot of pot. (On the Jumbotron to stage left, Gillis aired footage of marijuana leaves, which was sort of redundant; no one needed any encouragement.) Some mud got kicked up, but it didn’t splash much higher than your knees.
The real insanity was onstage, where Gillis was joined by 100, maybe 200 fans, who danced and screamed while he triggered his storehouse of samples, pulled off his shirt and jumped on the table in front of him to goad the crowd on.
Though, again, the crowd didn’t need much encouragement. The fans screamed along to an impressive array of musical samples. One brief passage near the beginning of the set trotted out Bruce Springsteen (‘Dancing in the Dark’), GS Boyz (‘Stanky Legg’), Red Hot Chili Peppers (‘Under the Bridge’) and Nelly (‘Cut it Out’) in quick succession, and everybody seemed to catch every reference. When the teen-or-twentysomething girls around me sang along with gusto to Pilot’s ‘Magic,’ a bit of fluff from 1975 that I wouldn’t have thought stood the test of time, I asked Lauren Bungo, 22, how she knew the song. It was on a famous soundtrack, she thought. Maybe ‘Shrek’? (Actually, a quick Internet search reveals that it plays a prominent role in Adam Sandler’s ‘Happy Gilmore.’)
‘This is, like, all the music we listened to in junior high school and high school and college,’ Bungo’s friend Alyssa Davis, also 22, explained. ‘It’s our childhood.’
There were too many samples to list in their entirety, though it’s worth noting that Gillis drew on at least two songs associated with Michael Jackson — ‘ABC’ and ‘Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough’ — and flashed the words ‘RIP Michael’ on the Jumbotron.
Though most of the mud stayed more or less where it was, this was still a first rate dance party. Gillis is something of a wizard with his samples, not only making undeniable dance grooves out of unusual material (Cindy Lauper’s ‘Time After Time,’ Elton John’s ‘Tiny Dancer’) but drawing unexpected desires from at least one member of the crowd. Near the end of the night, Gillis started looping the piano intro to Journey’s deathless radio staple ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ and, Lord help me, after a minute or so I was desperate to hear Steve Perry sing.
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Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: ACL 2009: Sunday, ACL Festival 2009
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By Rob
October 5, 2009 12:44 PM | Link to this
After seeing Girl Talk at Emo’s a while back I knew this was a must see at ACL. It is hard to classify as a medium, but whatever you choose to call it, the world is a more enjoyable place because of Mr. Gillis. I like to think of Girl Talk as a nostalgia machine that relentlessly spits out bits and pieces of catchy music regardless of time and musical style. The blend of old and new opens up a whole new demographic of younger fans to groups that their parents listened to on LP. I mean he rocked Electric Light Orchestra for f-sake.