Girl Talk is the stage name of Gregg Gillis. He’s not quite a DJ, but he throws a mean party with the help of his laptop.
Gillis is an expert assembler, taking tiny samples of familiar songs and mashing them together into something unique and danceable. He likes to loop familiar snippets of songs from multiple genres and eras. It’s a music lovers’ trivia game to identify all the samples. Was that Heart? Tone Loc? Led Zeppelin? The Jacksons? All of them. How about Nirvana mixed with Kansas over a dance beat?
It’s not for everyone, but I love this stuff. And as I have been requested to fill in for your February host this week, I offer up a Girl Talk show.
He makes it look easy, but at any point he risks failure to move the crowd. To be able to do keep his party moving for an entire evening requires a rather epic knowledge popular music from the last 50 years, and the skills to put it all together in various combinations.
This video is from 2006 in Chicago.
Some adult language of people partying, so be warned. Not for the little ones. (But who would bring a kid to a New Year’s Party, anyway? Not you…)
GIRL TALK Live, New Year’s Eve, 2006 at the Empty Bottle in Chicago.
PS. If you like this, go get some free downloads and pay-what-you-like albums of his projects at his website. Also, his work is released under a Creative Commons license, so you can remix it and re-use it yourself. Fun world, eh?
