Loud Farm
San Francisco
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Girl Talk - Interview
Girl Talk, aka Pittsburgh's Gregg Gillis, is no stranger to a life on the road. In fact, these days it's pretty much all he does, which would make sense, since over the past two years, he's built up a reputation as the ultimate dance party MC, a guy who will create the best and most schizophrenic mix-tape you've ever heard live in front of you, one that's pulled from the collective musical memories of everyone who has ever listened to pop music in the last 50 years. His process is notorious: he takes samples from hip hop, indie rock, and top-40 hits and splices and dices them until the individual parts of each song are combined into a Frankenstein-monster mosaic that's entirely his own -- and danceable as sin, despite many of the samples' cheesy origins. The man rocks out to your parent's music, and he isn't ashamed of it, because why should he be? Loudfarm speaks with him about the pleasures and perils of nonstop touring, his writing process, quitting his day job, and the future.
Loud Farm:You're traveling and touring pretty much nonstop. How's that going for you?
Greg Gillis Yeah, we're in the middle of a miniature 9 shows over 11 days Northwest tour. I'm kind of on the road a lot. I don't really stop playing shows.
LF:How has touring changed since you started?
GG: Everything is bigger. I'm trying to expand the posse a little bit.
LF: Does that mean a full band, or is it more for the visuals?
GG:I have two people who are often on stage doing physical props for the entire show. They build a lot of different contraptions like confetti and balloons. We give 'em a loose budget and we come up with basic ideas, but usually they don't even tell me what's going on. Sometimes it's a giant floating whale and sometimes it's a big tube shooting confetti through a crowd -- things like that. They've been my good friends for a long time, but they just started touring with me last fall.
LF:They don't tell you what they're going to do? Have they ever totally caught you off guard?
GG:The first time they really busted it out, they used these big air pillows. They didn't tell me they had one that had a giant print of Bart Simpson on it. So the show started and I saw a big Bart floating through the crowd. It's the little things. Every night is a small adventure as far as what they're going to do or how it's going to go down.
LF:I remember seeing you in 2007 -- you had to stop because you nearly got pushed off stage. What are some of the crazier moments you've experienced at a show?
GG:I've seen it all go down on stage. I've seen a lot of people crowd surfing on stage. I've seen people jump from the audience into a crowd-surf on stage. I've seen every level of nudity on stage. A couple shows reached a point where I saw people have sex on stage. It wasn't like they were showing off -- they were just lost in the moment, lost in a big crowd, feeling secluded enough to just go for it. So yeah... I've seen people have sex on stages.
LF:Bringing a laptop to a dance party is a dangerous affair -- how many have died during your shows? GG:I always cover my computers in Saran Wrap. It's kind of like a computer condom: people can sweat all over it, pour beer on it, and it's fine. Back in the day, I didn't really do that and a lot of times the table would get knocked over and computers would smash. In 2007, I probably broke 3 computers. LF:Between writing on the road and being holed up in your studio or bedroom, which do you prefer, and why? GG:Man, I'm definitely more functional at home. The days get sucked up so quickly on the road. You drive to the venue and that might take a couple of hours and then you might have a couple of interviews and you might have a friend in that city and then it's time to go eat and before you know it, it's 3 hours till the show and you don't feel like working, and after the show you feel like a beer. I'm always fooling around with stuff, but I never get much done. LF:Do your ideas for songs come from prior knowledge of music, or do you listen to the radio and try to find the sounds of now? GG:A lot of it's listening to the radio now. I grew up listening to music, but I wasn't necessarily into classic pop music as much as current pop and hip-hop. Even when i was in middle school and high school and I was diving into the more underground music scenes, I wasn't into the classics. I think that everyone's surrounded by that music, so whether you like it or not, you remember the songs. So a lot of the ideas come from hearing those songs now. The past 5 years i've been really into listening to the radio and checking out those pop classics, and basically listening to whatever my parents are jamming. LF: Not a lot of your audience would likely say that about their parent's music... GG: Yeah, it's a funny divide, because ultimately I don't want to play songs, i want to make something new out of them. I'm a big fan of all the older pop, but for a lot of younger audience members coming to the shows, they might not necessarily see eye-to-eye with me on that. They might not be into any of that stuff, but ultimately that doesn't take away the show.
LF:As far as the artists themselves are concerned, have any given you any love or was anyone really into something that you mixed? GG: The coolest one to me was about a year and a half ago. My buddy came up to me during the show and told me that Big Boi from Outkast was there. That was really wild to me. I started doing as many Outkast remixes as possible and after the show i got to meet him. He said he'd seen me live, but I wasn't sure if he knew I'd used his vocals on a record, so I told him about it and he was totally cool with that.
LF:A lot of your bios mention your background in the 9-to-5 world. What was it like when you finally got to cash in the day job? GG:People didn't know that I did Girl Talk, so when I quit, I didn't want to tell them, since i planned on doing engineering at some point again and I didn't want to weird them out by holding this crazy thing from them. In a way it was weird and kind of awkward. So I told them I was quitting to travel the world and take advantage of my youth. Immediately after that, I went to play the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona. That was the moment I realized it. I wasn't in the office anymore, I was chilling on the beach. LF: Have they approached you since then, saying 'Oh, by the way...." GG:Yeah, one of the guys I know there pretty well hit me up on Facebook. I use my real name there, but 95% of my friends just know me from Girl Talk. All of the pictures on there are from shows... so he didn't even really have to say anything. LF:What's coming up for Girl Talk? GG:Working on stuff for the live show, which is always a process. Sitting down to make an album is stressful because it becomes more intense and meticulous than normal work. When I come up for ideas for shows, it's very loose. When it doesn't work out, who cares? I don't ever have to play it again. When you sit down to make an album, you think, "This is a piece of work that people are going to judge". Making an album is something that I'll get to when I'm 100% positive that I have enough new material in front of me to make sure the album will be better than the last album. I'm not there yet, but I'm psyched because the shows these days are mostly new stuff.
Interview by Charlie Rohrer
