BY MAIA GERLINGER

In print | Published November 5, 2009

Self-described as “a man playing a laptop,” Girl Talk, also known as Greg Gillis, is capable of drawing a crowd equal to that of a live band. He will be performing live on campus, on Saturday at 8:00 p.m, for this semester’s Large Scale Event, or LSE.

Girl Talk shows have reputations for being, essentially, massive and crazy dance parties. Gillis is known for inviting audience members to come up onto the stage and dance with him. Concertgoers tend to leave drenched in sweat. Many would be hard-pressed to think of any other DJs quite as name-recognizable — that is, if one is of the opinion that Girl Talk is a DJ.

“Mash-ups,” also known as “bootlegs,” “blends,” “bastard pop” and by a wealth of other names, are pieces of music created by overlaying tracks (e.g. vocal tracks, beats, etc.) from songs over tracks from other songs. Perhaps due to his popularity, Girl Talk has become somewhat of a poster child for appropriation-based contemporary arts. He was featured in the documentary “RiP! A Remix Manifesto,” which suggests that copyright laws stifle creativity. Some claim that, even despite the gray areas of legality in which he works, Girl Talk’s main crime is that of unoriginality; after all, he doesn’t write any of his own music.

Popular opinion, especially among college kids, seems to be of the former. “The biggest reason for getting Girl Talk is that so many people on campus want to see him,” Sarah Kroll ’11, head of the LSE committee, said.

LSE selections, according to Kroll, were made based on a survey that the committee sent out after Worthstock asking students who they would most like to have perform on campus. “[We] all have different tastes, but … we want to try to appeal to as much of the student population as possible,” Ivana Ng ’12, member of the LSE committee, said.

Negative reactions have ranged few and far between. Mostly, there are just those who know him and those who don’t.
“[Girl Talk] will be a great time, so I’m really excited,” Linnet Davis-Stermitz ’12 said. “[The concert] will be very participatory.”

Questions and debate over Girl Talk’s talent and legitimacy, voiced all over campus when “Feed the Animals” was released seem to have died away in anticipation of the live performance.

Girl Talk’s most recent album, “Feed the Animals,” was composed of over three hundred samples from artists both popular and obscure. However these samples are unauthorized; The New York Times Magazine has referred to Gillis’ work as “a lawsuit waiting to happen.”

Gillis, in response to the criticism, cites fair use in “Feed the Animals.” He states that the album was originally created as a single, long piece of music — weaving in and out of genres, styles, and artists to create one seamless mash-up. In fact, interestingly enough, when “Feed the Animals” was released, Girl Talk’s record label, Illegal Art, made the album available for download online and gave the buyer the option of paying exactly as much as he or she would like, including paying nothing. Those who did choose to give nothing were asked why; some of the answers from which they could choose included “I don’t believe in paying for music” and “I don’t value music made from sampling.”

The opener for Girl Talk has yet to be announced, but will be, according to Kroll, a stand-up comedian. “The decision was a combination of having tech constraints and wanting to appeal to a bigger crowd. It’s kind of unconventional, but it should be fun.”

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