Gregg Gillis‚ aka Girl Talk ‚ is the hottest artist that doesn't actually sing.
This mash-up master is rolling into town tomorrow, and he took some time to chat with Music Editor Avery Spofford before the big show at Cannery Ballroom. He told us about everything from how Girl Talk got its start to how his music has changed to what makes one of his live shows feel like a "house party."
VERSUS: Let's start at the beginning. How did Girl Talk get underway?
GREG GILLIS: I was in a band in high school with a bunch of my friends, and we were called "The Joysticks Battle the Scan Feed Relay to Your Skull," and we were really just into smashing things and playing weird electronic music. At that point I was diving into the underground of experimental electronic stuff, so when I got into artists like John Osgold, Negative LAN and Kid 606 we started to incorporate sampling into what we were doing, using a lot of skipping CDs and tape collage.
When that band ended, I was really into people in the underground who were doing remixes of pop music, and I wanted to start a project that was entirely dedicated to that. Simultaneously, I got my first laptop, for college, so I started the project with that computer.
VM: How did you come up with the name Girl Talk?
GG: I felt that the underground electronic music scene I was associated with when I started was a bit overly serious, a bit stoic. I was playing with of other musicians who would play behind electronics or computers and sit there looking at the computer like they were checking their e-mail. And they would have absurd band names like "XR2;4,." It just seemed very ridiculous and removed from what I wanted to do. There's a populist idea behind sampling pop music, and I wanted to take it over the top, so I picked the most flamboyant name possible. I wanted to pick a name that other artists would be embarrassed to share a bill with - the absolute sore thumb on the fliers.
VM: Who do you cite as your musical influences?
GG: I'm really down with everyone I sample, and they obviously go on to influence what I do. When I started getting into music I was really down with Public Enemy, NWA, De La Sol, Beastie Boys, a lot of that earlier rap stuff. And then I got into Nirvana, and that blew my mind. I got into Nirvana and Sonic Youth, and that kind of led me into a more experimental world, and that's when I started diving into John Osgold and Kid 606. All of that went on to directly influence the Girl Talk project.
VM: How long does it take you to put together, say, a three minute-30 second song like "Bounce That"? Could you describe the process a little bit as to how you go about putting something like that together?
GG: For the last two albums, I put them together as basically 40- or 50-minute pieces of music. In my mind there are certain division points, but there are no real beginnings or endings to any of those songs, so the track separation and the naming of those songs is just kind of the last thing I do, as an afterthought. I worked on "Night Ripper" and "Feed the Animals" for about two years each, and then dividing up the songs took about two hours. As far as putting the album together in general, it's a big trial and error process. For instance, in "Bounce That" there's a Steve Winwood sample. So I sit down with the song, "Valerie," and take my favorite parts from it. I take that music and then I catalog it. Then, when I'm sitting down to prepare a live show, I'll decide that I want to introduce something uplifting from the '80s, and I'll go through my bank of samples and go to that Steve Winwood sample. Once it exists in the live show, it's constantly changing. Every show I change a small little bit, and it slowly starts to evolve. So then, when I sit down to do an album, I have two years of live shows to pull from, and I can think about what works the best or what I liked the most and edit it down and highlight those pieces.
VM: Your sound has changed pretty drastically since your early releases. How would you characterize that change, and what do you think the reason was for it?
GG: I think I've gotten better with the tools, so I'm now capable of making many different styles of music out of samples, whereas in the early days I was more or less still figuring things out. I think the biggest change has been the intention behind the project. When I started I was really interested in the juxtaposition of noise and pop, and I really wanted to make avant-garde music out of top 40.
I always wanted to push the fun nature of the shows, but I wasn't necessarily making music you could dance to. Then I started to fade into more accessible terrain, working with beats and dropping samples that people could actually recognize. I started playing more house parties, and that was kind of when I saw the light. It was like, "This could be really interesting and crazy, and I think I could make some progressive music that people could also get down and dance to." So I think that whole experience went on to form where the music eventually would go. "Unstoppable" was the first album where I actually started playing around with beats, structures and not completely un-listenable music, and then from there it's faded over the years into more accessible terrain. I just have wanted to make the music more listenable.
VM: I understand that you have yet to run into legal trouble, although your music is composed entirely of samples of other artists' work. How have you escaped being sued or issued a cease and desist when it seems like every artist today is scrambling against music's new modes of distribution?
GG: There is a doctrine in United States copyright law called fair use, and it allows you to sample pre-existing works without asking for permission if your new work falls under a certain criteria. It looks at how transformative your work is, whether it creates competition for the source material's sales, how it impacts the source material and the overall nature of your work - kind of a subjective look at what you're doing. And my label and I both feel that the stuff I'm doing should be able to be released, because we feel that it is transformative. It's making something new out of older music, and it's not in any way negatively impacting the potential sales of the original artist. If anything, it's probably turning people on to their music. So, we stand by that. But, it is a grey area, so we just put the music out with hopes that there won't be an issue. I think it's a sign of the times that we haven't had any problems so far.
VM: Have you heard feedback from any artists regarding your use of their music, complimentary or otherwise?
GG: One of the ladies from Yo Majesty just hit me up on MySpace a couple weeks ago to say that she liked the way I worked with her voice on Feed The Animals. I've had Big Boi from Outkast come out to shows; Sophie B. Hawkins' manager e-mailed me. There have been a handful of random people contacting me to say what's up and that they enjoy the work.
VM: As far as your own sampling goes, do you have a favorite song that you've created or a favorite moment of a song?
GG: On "Night Ripper," one of the last decisions was whether to include the bit with Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" and The Notorious B.I.G.'s "Juicy." I like all of the music to sound good, but I like it when you can tell it's a manipulated sample. I like it to have some level of dissonance, to sound like a collage. The "Juicy" B.I.G. thing sounded so natural to me that I thought maybe people would misinterpret it; I thought it was almost over the top. And I love both of those songs, so I didn't want it to come across the wrong way - I thought people might think of it in terms of irony, just because it fit so beautifully. But I ended up putting it on there, and people really took to it.
There's no real single on the album, but that moment kind of evolved into that. That was what people were always requesting and posting on blogs, and to this day I still try to jam that little bit at every show, and people get really fired up. It's almost like it's become my signature mash-up, which is cool, because I like the way it sounds, and I didn't think that people were going to get down with it the way that they did. I'm psyched that people saw it on the same terms that I saw it.
VM: Let's talk about your live shows, because I know our readers are really excited to see you perform at the Cannery in November. For those readers who have never been to a Girl Talk show, what can they expect?
GG: This tour has been pretty ridiculous so far. Every night has been insane. My shows are presented as a live concert in that there is always a distinct beginning and end and I like to put on a performance. I really just try to break down barriers. I know it's a large room, but I want everyone to forget about the fact that they're in a venue and I want it to feel like a house party. I try to get in the crowd as much as possible, and I try to get people on stage, and I just want to break it down to the point where people lose their minds and forget about where they're at.
VM: Do you have particularities as far as venues you like to perform at? As in, do you prefer an enclosed, traditional venue like the Cannery Ballroom over a festival setting or vice versa? Would you ever play an arena show?
GG: I'm cool with either one. To me they're just kind of different worlds. I used to always want to play the smallest, most intimate venues possible, because it's kind of where I came from. I love the basement show with just 50 people crammed in a small space with all the lights out. I think that can be a wonderful experience, but as I've played more and more shows and festivals I think that I've seen the value of playing the bigger shows. Because occasionally, with a bigger room, the energy can just collectively be through the roof. I think that I just approach different venues a little differently, performance-wise. A lot of the shows on this tour are just insane for me as far as the venue size - in Chicago we're playing to 4,500 people, and the show's sold out, and that is just huge. I love it, and I want it to keep going, and I'm really excited about the potential that one human being playing a computer and doing live remixes of pop music is something that could sell that large of shows. So open up the arena - I'm ready.
VM: Where do you see Girl Talk going from here? Are you working on another album similar to "Night Ripper" or "Feed the Animals," or do you think you'll be trying something new for a while?
GG: When I finished "Night Ripper," I couldn't imagine making another album in that style. I thought it was very exhaustive. But then I slowly started to make more and more music, and two years went by, and I took a step back and I was like, "Whoa, I have enough material for another album in that style. Let's go for it." So with every step of this project I never really look to the future much. I just kind of take it day by day, and I work on the small little pieces of music every day that go on to influence something in a bigger picture.
Right now I feel like I can't imagine making another piece of music like "Night Ripper" or "Feed The Animals," but I think it could go down. I am kind of interested in going back to the style of some of my earlier work, basing things around actual song structure. I'm interested in using samples to make individual songs that have repeating parts, choruses, verses and things like that. That's something I've been fooling around with, but at this point I really can't say where it might go.
VM: The ultimate question for the ultimate sampler - who is your favorite artist of all time, and what is your favorite song of all time?
GG: Oh, of all time? I'm going to have to go with the most influential band in my life and that would be Nirvana.
