Gregg Gillis did something that a lot of musicians were thinking about in the current music business climate: in conjunction with his label Illegal Art, he put his latest album under the nom de plume Girl Talk up for bids on the Internet as a pay-what-you-want release.
“It was tough for us — we’re not Radiohead who have a label and a crew,” said Gillis from his home in Pittsburgh, Penn. “For us, it was just a shot in the dark. We had no idea how many we expected to sell vs. download. The only thing I judged it on was the exposure of it, and it was the best any albums I’ve done.”
As Girl Talk, Gillis has become a music-blog darling with his daring mash-ups of everything from Metallica to Notorious B.I.G., with classic rock tracks and ‘60s pop thrown in for good measure. When he released the album “Feed the Animals” earlier this year on his own Web site, it created a stir and earned Girl Talk new followers. He’s performing on Sunday at 210 North.
Gillis has been doing Girl Talk shows as mostly Thursday-Saturday weekend gigs. This has been a byproduct of his previous day job as a biomedical engineer. Although he’s been on some extended tours in his four-album career, Gillis still keeps mostly to this “weekend warrior” schedule even though he’s now a full-time performer.
“When I’ve done a tour, it’s fun, but it’s grueling,” Gillis said. “I like to treat it more like my Friday or Saturday (night out), so that leaves the week to work on new stuff.”
Gillis needs that focused energy for his one-of-a-kind shows. Girl Talk isn’t just a man and his laptop, standing there pushing buttons while you gyrate. Gillis moves around like an exuberant, slightly unhinged frontman, going into the audience and pulling people up on stage to dance — sometimes dozens of people, in fact. Part of this approach points to Girl Talk’s avoidance of the typical DJ/club circuit.
“I’ve always played more or less with live acts,” Gillis said. “Back in the day, they were smaller shows, so I’d make a performance out of it. I’d use the people there to my advantage and get them involved and make the show out of them.”
These wild shows have worked to Girl Talk’s advantage, as much as the blog love he’s received. As Gillis said, “I can’t think of one show (in the past two years) that has not been straight-up insane.
“There is no law or defined etiquette for the show. People have a loose idea of what to do there, and that it’s not like going out to a dance club. It’s like a concert meets a house party. Some in the back just want to dance, and some just watch, and then you have that different group of people on stage. So there are different levels for you to participate.”
Gillis said that he also keeps the live show fresh, often thinking of new bits for every show. He said that should also be the case in Reno. When Gillis creates his hallucinatory associations, it’s trial and error. He’ll hear something in a song and then catalog it in a massive electronic archive.
“I can spend days, or even weeks, cataloging samples and not worry about where I’m going to use them,” Gillis explained. “I’m just preparing tools for building something.”
Gillis said he’ll go through dozens of sample combinations until he finds five or 10 that stick out. He will then mix-and-match on an album or during a show. The result is invigorating where many mash-up artists are not: It’s literally a head-spinning guessing game that has the bonus of being danceable.
But is he really a musician? That’s a debate that critics have used to pick apart or denigrate Girl Talk’s work. It’s not only something Gillis takes in stride: it’s almost a manifesto.
“Some people think it’s the end of all music, and that’s cool with me,” Gillis said. “I’m happy to stir that up. All music is based on influence, regardless of whether it’s Led Zeppelin stealing blues riffs. Music is not original anymore. There are only a certain amount of chords and structures available. So a song could be something that musicians reconfigure and change up and re-present to the public again. That’s what I’m doing.”
Plus, it helps that Gillis is in that generation of musicians under the influence of hip-hop and avant-garde artists who use pre-existing work to make their own.
“I grew up listening to hip -hop and understood that the sampler is an instrument,” he said. “Whether it’s listening to Bell Biv DeVoe or Kriss Kross in third grade, and then my most favorite musicians are Negativland or John Oswald, who are working in the same domain as me.”
Despite that pretentious pedigree, Gillis simply called himself “a person who remixes pop music” — although he also understands that not everyone will appreciate that skill.
“When there’s one guy playing a laptop, obviously it’s easy to critique, but I’ve put myself out there. I understand that some will hate it, but I’d rather be polarizing than slip through the cracks.”
Spot that sample
One of the most fun aspects of Girl Talk is that first listen, when the crazy sample mixing sticks a song in your noggin that makes you smile with its recognition. Among the more than 300 modern hip-hop and soul classics strewn throughout the album, here are the least likely Girl Talk samples on his new album, “Feed The Animals:”
AC/DC – “Thunderstruck”
The Beach Boys – “God Only Knows”
The Cure – “In Between Days”
Ben Folds Five – “Battle of Who Could Care Less”
The Guess Who – “These Eyes”
Looking Glass – “Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl)”
Metallica – “One” (linked with Lil Mama’s “Lip Gloss,” and the best moment on the album)
Temple of the Dog – “Hunger Strike
Pete Townsend – “Let My Love Open the Door”
Edgar Winter Band – “Free Ride”
One of the many Internet sites that try to list every sample is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_the_Animals
