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An Intimate Evening With Girl Talk

Posted 12/5/11 10:26 am EST by in 1, dance, girl-talk, Interview


By Zachary Swickey

NORMAN, OKLA. – I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read that the world’s greatest party-thrower, Girl Talk, was going to be at the Opolis – a tiny venue in the college town of Norman, Oklahoma, that showcases indie acts and local bands with a capacity well below 200. This must be some kind of mistake, I thought, but just the thought of seeing such a huge act in such an intimate setting was awesome.

Turns out, Girl Talk – also known by his common name, Greg Gillis – is in the midst of a guerilla tour of sorts that is hitting up only eight college cities across the states. For the AXE One Night Only Tour 2011, Gillis is going old-school by performing secret shows in low capacity venues, announcing details of the gigs just days before show time via the AXE Facebook page (four more secret stops are scheduled for this Tuesday through Friday, so be on the lookout). Gillis treated me to a quick phone chat before the show and said this tour is a way to give back to the fans and reminisce over his pre-breakout gigs. "Prior to 2006, I would play anyplace, anytime," he told MTV News. "The circumstances did not matter."

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The Bonnaroo 2011 Lineup: Five Acts You Must See

Posted 2/15/11 5:00 pm EST by in Music


With Coachella already set to go and a handful of Lollapalooza acts already leaking out, the summer festival season is already shaping up to be one of the biggest and best of all time. But what of Bonnaroo, the rural Tennessee camping adventure that began as a gathering of jam band obsessives but has evolved into one of the best music events in the world? On Tuesday morning (February 15), the Bonnaroo lineup was unveiled, with Eminem, Lil Wayne and Arcade Fire serving as the big headliners at this year's model (which will run June 9-12 in Manchester, Tennessee). The top line is rounded out by the likes of the Strokes, the Black Keys, My Morning Jacket, Florence and the Machine and a reuniting Buffalo Springfield (making their only festival appearance).

That's an eclectic lineup, for sure (there's more hip-hop on the bill than ever before, especially in the headlining spots), but there's still plenty for the Bonnaroo purists. No matter who you are, you'll be able to find something.

But what if you don't even know what you're looking for? Here are five acts on the Bonnaroo bill who should be circled, highlighted and checked off on your agenda as you make your way into the wilderness.

Lil Wayne
Sure, he's a headliner and a major star, but how often do you get to see him in a festival setting? With a crowd that size and a sound system of that magnitude at his disposal (not to mention an exceptionally mellow crowd), Lil Wayne could turn in one of those transcendent performances you always end up hearing about later. Except this time, you're actually there.

The Sword
For the uninitiated, the Sword play the sort of zonked-out, sludgy, chugging hard rock sometimes referred to as "stoner metal," but they're far more dynamic than that reductive moniker suggests. Their live show is legendarily sharp, and they should provide some much-needed evil amidst all the good vibes in Manchester (because you need balance, you see).

The Black Keys
Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney are secretly one of the best festival bands working, able to stretch their tunes into sweaty, fuzzy orgies of sound that dart, groove and explode. Their set at Lollapalooza 2008 was a revelation, and they've only gotten better since then.

Girl Talk
For a group that consists of little more than a guy and a laptop, Girl Talk is always shockingly dynamic. At festivals, Greg Gillis turns his anything-goes approach into the red, and his set at Bonnaroo is likely to end in mass hysteria and free hugs. So, you know, greatness.

Wiz Khalifa
If nothing else, this show should be an excellent test for one of the most buzz-worthy new MCs on the scene. Can Wiz handle the big crowds? Can his claustrophobic tracks work outdoors? Whether Wiz succeeds or fails (and the former is far more likely), it should be a heck of a party.

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Girl Talk Throw A Party In Dallas

Posted 1/18/11 6:00 pm EST by in Music


By Zachary Swickey

There are only a few absolutes in the music world. Metallica will always be loud, Beoyncé will always be compelling and there ain't no party like a Girl Talk party. I was reminded that yet again over the weekend when I witnessed the great Greg Gillis — the man the music world knows better as Girl Talk — throwing a sicker party than Van Wilder ever could.

Gillis has stepped his performance game up quite a bit since I first saw him many moons ago (which consisted mostly of him hunched over a laptop and drinking). Armed with a giant LED screen, several party henchmen (who shot toilet paper rolls and blasted confetti cannons), 30-odd fans dancing desperately on stage and twice the noise as usual (he now has two laptops), Girl Talk truly brought it. Kicking things off with the first track from his most recent album All Day ("Oh No"), the ruckus was off to a great start. Where else can you get Ludacris spitting over the iconic riff from Black Sabbath's "War Pigs"?

With five albums under his belt, Girl Talk never has a shortage of brilliant musical concoctions. It makes you wonder if Gillis is on to something. The show was completely sold out (about 3,500 people), a feat that some of the artists he glorifies cannot even do. The highest amount of fervor came during "Get It, Get It," which begins with Lady Gaga's already-classic scatting from "Bad Romance." After shaking off a grenade (appropriate considering the amount of fist-pumping I was doing), I fell back into the groove with "Triple Double," which showcases Luda rhyming over Phoenix's "1901" before it digs into digital clips from the Rolling Stones, Lil Wayne, Wiz Khalifa and Public Enemy (to name but a few of the dozens).

By the end of the show, Gillis was shirtless, breathless and sweaty-as-hell, but he had successfully annihilated the crowd as they slowly shuffled out the doors. By the end, the exhausted crowd looked like a marching army of paper maché projects — that's how much confetti was stuck to them. Now that's a party.

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Kanye West, 'Harry Potter' And Pink's Bun In The Oven: This Week's Deep Cuts

Posted 11/19/10 6:15 pm EST by in Deep Cuts


The clock on the wall says it's just about time for us to call it a week here in the MTV Newsroom, but our pre-holiday work is hardly done. Be sure to check back in this space and at MTV News for coverage of the American Music Awards (which features Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Kid Rock, the Black Eyed Peas and the Backstreet Boys, among others) this Sunday, November 21. We'll be live-blogging the red carpet where MTV News' own Tim Kash and James Montgomery will be on hand to chat with the biggest names in music, so don't miss out.

But before you get distracted by the fact that the makeshift football field they have installed at Wrigley Field will only have one working end zone this weekend, check out what you might have missed on the MTV Newsroom Blog.

» Kanye West's new album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy comes out next week, but you can get a jump on all the cultural references before you enjoy it when it drops.

» Jessica Simpson announced that she is engaged to former NFL tight end Eric Johnson, making her the latest pop star to find love in the NFL.

» Girl Talk surprised everyone with a free album called All Day that broke the Internet and reminded us fondly of his golf cart adventure at Lollapalooza.

» A little movie called "Harry Potter" is out this week, and that meant that Emma Watson was everywhere.
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Girl Talk Back With All Day, Hopefully Coming To A Golf Cart Near You

Posted 11/15/10 2:30 pm EST by in Music


Fans of free music, copyright violation, four-on-the-floor dancing and mind-altering chemicals got a treat this morning when Girl Talk's brand new album All Day made its way onto the Internet. For those not in the know, Girl Talk (know to his mother as Gregg Gillis) is a dude from Pittsburgh who has made a career out of being the single greatest sampler in the history of electronic music. Through a handful of albums (most of which have been released himself and for free), Gillis has turned dance music, hip-hop and the mash-up genres on their collective head.

How does he do it? Using only a laptop and his boundless energy, Gillis mashes up artists you wouldn't normally associate with one another (the Notorious B.I.G. next to Journey, Metallica up against Hall & Oates and Method Man). Every song sounds like a hit because they're all nothing but already-familiar hooks. It's a foolproof method.

All Day expands on the promise he created with his 2008 album Feed the Animals, which further streamlined his skills as a producer. All Day still has a ton of huge high-profile samples (look for drop-ins from Black Sabbath, Jay-Z, Eminem, Jane's Addiction, Slick Rick, the Ramones, the Doors and Missy Elliott — and that's just the first track), but it melds much better with Gillis' original backbeats and juxtapositions.

Now that he has a new album, that hopefully means that Gillis will get back on the road. He's an incredibly dynamic live performer, and most of his shows usually end with the crowd on stage with him (they tend to be wet and/or covered in confetti as well). He even lends his energy to just kind of hanging around live music — witness his golf cart ride with MTV News' James Montgomery at Lollapalooza 2008.


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Cobra Starship's Gabe Saporta Tweets About Band's First Private Jet Trip

Posted 10/22/09 10:46 am EST by in Music


We already know that the members of Cobra Starship are down with party buses, but yesterday the group got a bit of a rock and roll upgrade. In order to get to a show at Indiana University, the band took its first ever trip on a private jet. Frontman Gabe Saporta narrated the experience via his Twitter and included a handful of photos from the trip.

"A Cobra first! Private jet motherf---ers!" Saporta tweeted last night. "We're on our way to play a free show w/Girl Talk @ Indiana University." That show, a charity event to benefit a local shelter for battered women and sponsored by Victoria's Secret, goes down tonight on the school's campus. Indiana competed against five other institutions during the summer to win a visit from Cobra Starship and mashup DJ Girl Talk.

In the meantime, Saporta was excited about the jet. He posted a total of three photos of the plane, and he even attached this caption to the photo above: "You know, I'd really love to continue talking about this conversation, but I got a private jet to catch." Friend and occasional multimedia rival Pete Wentz also weighed in on the band's trip. "I can't imagine how awesome you woulda been back in the heyday of rock music selling," the Fall Out Boy bassist wrote on Twitter.

Through it all, Saporta enjoyed the experience and was slightly amazed at the reaction it got from his bandmates and crew members. "I love how every member of Cobra & our crew tweeted about rollin' in a private jet," he wrote. "I guess we're not that jaded, huh fellas?"

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Girl Talk Never Stop The Dancing

Posted 8/24/09 11:33 am EST by in Concerts, Music


By Jett Wells

If you want to know how well a Girl Talk show went, you need only ask when it fell apart. Sunday's (August 23) show peaked early. By the time mash-up phenom Greg Gillis launched into his third song, the crowd had already trampled the barricade and ransacked the stage at the Williamsburg Waterfront.

From every vantage point, there were flailing body parts, sweat-drenched faces and tumbling body surfers. After hours of shoving, pushing, jumping, air-humping and fist-pumping, the crowd screamed and let out a huge breath of air and walked their limp bodies home in the rain.

Even though his live show is little more than a dude from Pittsburgh with a laptop, Gillis' intensity is undeniable. He started the concert dry-headed and wearing a sweatshirt, but by the end of the set he was half-naked and completely soaked in his own sweat. By then, Gillis was just another dude in the crowd, as the audience had long since rushed the stage to join the party next to Gillis. Halfway through the set, the music stopped suddenly because the crowd had pulled out some cords. 10 minutes later, the music stopped again because the stage was falling apart from all the weight of the dancing fans.

"You guys broke the stage!" Gillis yelled.

Perhaps the most overlooked virtue about Girl Talk concerts is that his mash-ups are always different. Most of the samples are the same, but the combination constantly changes and he's always adding new ideas. On Sunday, Gillis dipped into new hits like Drake's "Best I Ever Had" and Lady Gaga's "LoveGame."

Though the show ended with violent dancing and rain, everybody still walked away smiling. Such is Gillis' trick: He plays songs you already know in a no-frills setting, and somehow he remains transcendent.

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MTV News Staff Favorites Of 2008: Sabrina Rojas Weiss' Top 10 Albums That Make Me Happy

Posted 12/24/08 2:01 pm EST by in Bands We Like, Best Of, MTV News Staff Favorites '08


We here at MTV News are a pretty diverse bunch, so the views expressed by some in our more official-type year-end lists (like James Montgomery's Top 25 Albums and Best Songs, and the Mixtape Monday Awards) are not necessarily shared by the rest of the newsroom. So, this week we gave everyone else a chance to chime in with their own lists and explain (or defend) their choices. You'll find all of the staff faves of 2008 here.

By Sabrina Rojas Weiss, Senior Copy Editor

10. The Ting Tings, We Started Nothing: I love singer Katie's shouty power and the way their beat makes me jump around like a little kid. "That's not my name!"

9. Chromeo, Fancy/ Fancier Footwork: With this playing on my headphones, I am instantly in an '80s movie montage. (The original came out last year, but I bought this year's "deluxe" set.)

8. Coldplay, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends: I avoided buying this for months because the hype bored me. But that soaring wall of sound in the title track finally got under my skin.

(What was Sabrina's #1 album from 2008? Find out after the jump!)
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Girl Talk's Lollapalooza Party Patrol

Posted 8/2/08 9:12 pm EST by in Festivals, Lollapalooza


Girl Talk (aka Gregg Gillis), the copyright-busting mastermind behind this year's Feed The Animals album, is a totally sweet dude who loves a good party as much as the next guy. So when we boarded a golf cart with him for a victory lap around the Lolla grounds, he was more than ready to seek out his fellow ragers.

And boy, did he find them. Over the course of one 15-minute trek, he pointed out dudes (allegedly) on a galaxy of mind-altering (not that we'd know). Plus, he got hounded by a lone paparazzo. But he didn’t accomplish his main goal: seeing some boobs and butts.

All hope isn't lost, though. Gillis was more than optimistic that he'd see plenty of both during his Sunday evening set. A man can dream, can't he?


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For The Record: Panic At The Disco, Girl Talk, Dave Matthews Band & More

Posted 7/1/08 11:01 am EST by in For The Record


· After sharing the stage with Snoop Dogg for a run through of "Gin and Juice" at the debut of "FNMTV" three weeks ago, Panic at the Disco are reportedly planning to team up with Snoop again to record a song.

· Gregg Gillis, a.k.a. Girl Talk, is hitting the road in support of his Feed the Animals album. His latest round of U.S. dates kicks off at the Fox Theatre in Boulder, Colorado, on July 11 with opening acts Hearts of Darknesses, Grand Buffet, Cx Kidtronik and the Death Set.

· Dave Matthews Band saxophonist LeRoi Moore is in fair condition after being seriously injured in an ATV accident on his Charlottesville, Virginia, farm.

· First the good news: You will soon hear some new music from Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello. The bad news for hard-core Rage fans? It's not from the band but from Morello's side project, the Nightwatchman. The guitarist is prepping his second solo album, The Fabled City, for a September 30 release.

· In other Rage news, singer Zack de la Rocha is about to break his silence by releasing his first album in eight years under the name One Day as a Lion. The five-song EP with drummer Jon Theodore will be released July 22 and is described as a "sonic reflection of the visceral tension between a picturesque fabricated cultural landscape and the brutal socioeconomic realities it attempts to mask." Exactly. Read More...

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