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?"

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.

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!)
Read more...
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?
· 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...
By Matt Harper
Hardcore fans of pop culture have been waiting with baited breath for the latest Girl Talk album, Feed The Animals, which is like a musical spot-the-reference game. I am one of those people, so I was over the moon at the opportunity to spend a day hanging out with the man behind Girl Talk, Gregg Gillis, in his hometown of Pittsburgh.
Here's a quick bit of background if you're not familiar with Girl Talk:
· He's not really a DJ — technically speaking, he's a "laptop producer."
· He uses music samples to create something completely new and amazing. Technically his songs are mash-ups, but that's not giving him proper credit: At a rough estimate, there's somewhere around 300 music sources in Feed the Animals, (which drove our James Montgomery crazy on a recent transcontinental flight), maybe more.
· His last album, Night Ripper, was one of the best releases of 2006 (and not just according to me: Pitchfork, Paste, and Rolling Stone all put it on their "Best of the Year" lists).
Anyway, we started the day off at the Coal Hill Steakhouse at the Grandview Saloon, where we had a beer, talked about his start in music, and reminisced about some of his more memorable performance experiences — my favorite being the time he brought $500 worth of Taco Bell to a show to give out to his fans. Read more...
· Hey, let’s have a festival! With music! In the summertime! (And Vampire Weekend, Girl Talk, and The Hold Steady.)
· Even Simon Cowell thinks this year’s “Idol” crop is like a scoop of vanilla in a white styrofoam cone.
· Better than a summer festival? Charts about summer festivals. Justice is in the lead.
· John Mayer…has…a tattoo sleeve. This makes him hardcore while he’s speed-dialing Jessica Simpson as he poses for the Gap.
· Finally, a heavy metal concept double-album about sixteenth-century futurecaster Nostradamus.