Pittsburgh DJ Gregg Gillis AKA Girl Talk reclaimed public relevance earlier this year with the release of All Day. Sure, Gillis had been releasing EPs since 2002, but when servers crashed under the weight of people trying to stream the 12-track LP, people really started to take notice.
It's easy to have a love/hate relationship with the idea of Girl Talk. While there's the allure of a musician being able to digitally mash up the best of hip-hop, rock and R&B at the club, can a glorified DJ really handle a venue like the Fillmore Miami Beach?
Whether we think so or not, Girl Talk is coming to South Florida on May 19. We've come up with five reasons why we think it will (or maybe won't) work after the jump.
He can seamlessly mix the Beatles, General Public, Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, and Beck into one song.
We'll say this for Gillis: He makes people want to dance. But will the Fillmore Miami Beach transform into one big dance party? Or will a few people just stand around, killing the whole Girl Talk vibe?
He has no original music.
Unlike a lot of bands who sample music and mix it with original tuneage, none of Girl Talk's music is his own. Everything is digitally sampled and mashed up. He basically uses other people's hits and turns them into his own. But will that be enough for the mastered sound and lighting the Fillmore has to offer? Will the crowd get bored hearing the best of the 80's, 90's and today for a few hours straight?
Hearing a Girl Talk album feels like a real insight into how Gregg Gillis thinks.
Okay, that might sound a bit far fetched. But we totally believe it. Don't you think he's trying to tell us something when he mixes Ol' Dirty Bastard's lyrics "Oh baby I like it raw" lyrics with Radiohead's "I'm a freak/ I'm a weirdo/ I don't belong here" from "Creep"? We sure think so.
Listening to Girl Talk feels like a "Can You Name that Song?" challenge -- and we like that.
Rick Ross, Lady Gaga, the Jackson 5, Lil' Kim, Rihanna, the Toadies and Ozzy Osbourne are all musical acts we never thought we'd say in the same sentence. We like hearing his albums over and over again just to test our musical knowledge. Yeah, we're nerdy like that.
We don't know what to expect.
He definitely has an ear for mixing. But does he have the star power to wow us? Will he just play his album for us in order? Will he be able to put all 373 tracks together in 71 minutes live? Or will it be an entirely new experience all together? That alone seems worth the ticket price to us.
Girl Talk, May 19. At the Fillmore Miami Beach, 1700 Washington Ave., Miami Beach. Ticket are $31. Tickets go on sale March 4. For more information, visit livenation.com.
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