Maki Somosot | Phoenix Staff

Girl Talk (Gregg Gillis) channels his high school persona.

BY MAIA GERLINGER

In print | Published November 12, 2009

The floor begins to shake. You notice that jumping up and down becomes increasingly difficult as the tiered carpets of LPAC actually bounce upwards against you when you land, probably because “That Guy” over there was screaming and jumping harder than you were.

That guy, of course, was Girl Talk — otherwise known as the mash-up artist Gregg Gillis.

This kind of frenzy had, from the beginning, been Gillis’ aim. Before he even entered onto the stage, a recording of someone saying “Girl Talk” over and over again was played. At first it was low, slow= and incomprehensible, but it became higher and faster with every repetition. When the crowd finally understood the words, there were laughs and cheers. Soon, people were clapping in time and chanting along. Once it reached fever pitch, Gillis sped out and jumped onto a table, as the words “Girl Talk” appeared on the screen behind him.The screen would occasionally flash phrases like “GO NUTS!!!”

Gillis himself was in the center of a throbbing mass of Swarthmore students on stage, but he was the sweatiest and the wildest of them all. Whenever he spoke, his speech was full of expletives — not for shock value, nor even for meaning, but just out of the need to express, with abandon, a sort of ecstasy.

However, the whole crowd wasn’t experiencing a state of frenzy. Away from the front of the audience, one could find quieter pockets where people were still enjoying themselves (or not), without being delirious. In the back, there was a row of people standing up but standing still. But generally, the closer one was to Girl Talk, the crazier it was.

“I was afraid I was going to fall off [the stage],” said Tarini Kumar ’12. “A lot of people looked like they were going to fall off.” The DJ table, pushed and crowded by everyone on stage, was shaking and came close to toppling over more than once. But, according to Kumar, the Party Associates had ensured that it stayed on.

When asked about the on-stage behavior — specifically the fact that, when his set ended, the students on stage rushed forward and grabbed him, Gillis nodded and said, “Yeah. That’s how it’s supposed to be.” He also said that the Swarthmore crowd was “enthusiastic but not asshole-ish,” which, he stressed, was not always the case.

“Sometimes it’s a clusterfuck,” Gillis said. Afterwards he claimed that the show was “smooth.” Xiaoxia Zhuang ’10 described being on stage with Girl Talk as “energy-packed” and “amazing.” “My friends and I loved dancing in the epicenter of the chaos and with Gillis as well,” Zhuang said.

One would do well to note that Girl Talk, contrary to the hype, is not universally loved. Some standing near me found the show fun but a little monotonous: it was just pop hit after hit, with some beats thrown in.

“…It was a decent performance,” Ishan Irani ’11 said. “I’m not sure I would have paid $30,000 of my own money to see him push buttons and shake his head around, but that’s obviously my own opinion.”

There were some masterful moments — in particular, the “Since U Been Gone” mash-up from his latest album “Feed the Animals.” Girl Talk plays the relaxed vocal track from the Kelly Clarkson hit, and then samples Nine Inch Nails’ “Wish” after every Clarkson line to keep the crowd dancing. It is the Clarkson sample which is instantly recognizable. The crowd hangs in wait for Clarkson’s verse to be completed, one agonizing line at a time.

Finally, the refrain — which is in itself one of those melodic climaxes that only bubblegum pop can really do well — bursts forth, along with a driving backing track. T-he combination is, yes, funny. It is also joyous.

The music that Gillis plays may not be his own music. He may indeed be, according to his record label, “one non-stop celebration of pop and excess.” But Girl Talk stands for songs that we all know, the ones that all of us can scream along to, because of our shared consciousness of these melodies and these words. This is our generation. Or, at least, our generation as college students.

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