Retro Review: Girl Talk - Live

Writer's Note: No easy tie-ins today, alas, so I dug around and found an early review I wrote of a local Girl Talk concert. For those who don't know, Girl Talk is the nom-de-DJ of producer/musician Greg Gillis, best-known for his elaborate mash-ups, which can be downloaded for free here. This review was originally published in UAB's Kaleidoscope on October 11th, 2009.

If you were in the mood to hear the likes of Kelly Clarkson’s “Since You Been Gone” sung with complete and utter lack of irony, boy, were you in the right place on Friday night at Club 1120. Packed to the rafters, the show proved an unprecedented draw for the club, as there were so many people crammed into the place that the floor actually bounced along with the people! Mind you, we were on the second floor, but still, I couldn’t help but wonder if we were one hype song away from being on the first!

UAB’s own- or so he said, at least- Shaudi Fly opened the show. He did a quick set that was decent if unspectacular, and if it wasn’t your cup of tea, well, at least he kept the songs reasonably short. Personally, I thought he showed some promise, with a knack for good hooks and fairly slamming beats. Whatever the case, he got the crowd good and hype, which was the best one could hope for under the circumstances, being as how the line to get in was unusually long and it took a good hour to even get inside the club in the first place.

Next up was a short DJ set that was perfectly in keeping with the anything-goes attitude of the main act, Girl Talk. As would prove the case throughout the night, the crowd had no trouble with a set that veered wildly from the likes of Rage Against the Machine (“Killing in the Name of,” aka the “F___ You, I won’t do what you tell me” song) to Bon Jovi (“Living on a Prayer”). They sang along every bit as exuberantly as they would for Girl Talk later.



Clearly, this was a different sort of crowd, to say the least. Growing up, there were pretty clearly defined lines in the sand for different kinds of music. The metal-heads hung with the metal-heads, the rap fans hung with the rap fans, and so on. You could certainly be friends with people who liked different kinds of music, and most everyone liked a little music from other genres, but for the most part, there were indeed cliques revolved around like-minded fans of a particular genre. With the popularity of Girl Talk, clearly there has been a shift in the culture that has made these sorts of boundaries largely non-existent, for the most part.

Which is actually great. The truth is, we all go through phases of liking a certain kind of music, only to switch to others as we get older. What makes Girl Talk, aka DJ Greg Gillis, special is that he recognizes that once we like something, part of us always will, whether we want to admit it or not. So, why not revel in it? 

After a decidedly awkward- and somewhat self-congratulatory- introduction by UAB liaison Andrew Stone (though to be fair, he did have a lot to be proud of, in bringing Girl Talk here in the first place), the show finally started. What made it awkward was that Stone was ostensibly brought out to be the crowd’s hype man (not that it needed one) and to introduce Girl Talk, but what happened was that GT didn’t come out for another few minutes, during which there was complete silence. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a dance club that’s completely silent, but it’s a pretty uncomfortable sound.


Mercifully, the show finally began and Girl Talk wasted no time in getting the crowd much more hype than Stone ever could have hoped to. Girl Talk is infamous for combing disparate elements together into a cohesive whole, and he did not disappoint that night. In addition to nods to his more infamous mash-up combinations- i.e. Metallica’s “One” and Lil Mama’s “Lip Gloss,” Britney and Air’s “Sexy Boy,” etc.- he also debuted plenty of new ones.

Amidst the sea of bodies it was occasionally hard to identify things, but I distinctly remember GS Boyz “Stanky Leg” being combined with GNR’s “Sweet Child of Mine,” a hip hop- beat heavy take on ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky,” and a eyebrow-raising combo of Miley’s “Party in the USA” with what I believe was the Notorious B.I.G.


Though the crowd went nuts for the “Stanky Leg” mash-up, they were a little in the wind when it came to certain others. Like, for instance, a sample of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” may have been duly appreciated by the metal-heads in attendance (myself included), but it was met with indifference or plain old befuddlement by others. My guess is that GT determines what to include in future sets by the reactions of the crowd. If so, poor Ozzy will be getting the boot next time around. 

However, it was certainly not as simple a matter as it being an old song, as one of the crowd’s most enthusiastic sing-a-long moments came during Pilot’s “Magic,” a song older than I am! Perhaps its inclusion on the Lindsay Lohan version of “Herbie” might have something to do with that, but one can’t help but wonder what an older attendee might have thought of people singing along at the top of their lungs to a primo piece of bubblegum pop from the 70s with such gusto and the aforementioned lack of irony.


All in all, a great time was had by all, and thankfully, the floor held or I wouldn’t be reporting on this, obviously. As Gillis put it at one point, “This is the hottest place I’ve ever played in!” Granted, I’m pretty sure he was referring to the humidity, but that night, there was certainly no hotter place to be than Club 1120.