In Lieu Of "Mashup Monday"...

...I thought I would recommend a short documentary about my favorite mashup artist.

I have posted numerous articles about Gregg Gillis over the last two years.  Gillis, who goes by the moniker Girl Talk, is an icon on the mashup scene.  He gave up a lucrative career in biomedical engineering in 2007 to pursue music full time.  If you take the time to listen to him, you can easily tell that he takes an engineer's approach to his craft.

Gillis plays no instruments.  He's not a DJ.  He doesn't use vinyl or CDs.  His tools are a Saran Wrapped laptop, and the limits of his imagination.

Regardless of your tastes in music, take five minutes of your time to listen to his work, and you'll consider yourself a fan.

Morgan Spurlock, the filmmaker behind 'Super Size Me', has a new weekly program exclusively on Hulu called 'A Day in the Life'.  On the program, he follows someone, generally a different celebrity, for 24 hours, to give you a glimpse into their life.

In one episode this season, a crew followed Girl Talk as he prepared to headline a show at a music festival in Gulf Shores, Alabama.  Here is a short clip.



Unfortunately, you can only view the full program if you have a Hulu Plus subscription.  I watched it on Sunday afternoon, and it was amazing to see how complicated some of his shows became.  He has to prepare as many as 400 samples in advance, and plan exactly where to place each one within a 45 minute performance.  There is a clip of him practicing on his tour bus, and it's simply mind boggling.

You can view the program here online.  I recommend watching it for any fan of music.

You can also download a copy of Girl Talk's latest album, 'All Day', here.

Mash Up Monday - Girl Talk's 'All Day'

With everything going on, I haven't had a chance to listen to a full CD in months.  I finally got smart, and burned a few albums of MP3s onto a disc to take along with us in the car this last week.  One of those albums was Girl Talk's November release, 'All Day'.

For those of you that aren't familiar with Girl Talk, he has become the godfather of mashups.  His first album, 'Secret Diary', came out all the way back in 2002.  It's hard to describe his style.  It's unlike anyone else that I have featured on my blog.  He's like a mashup DJ on meth.  I usually tell people, "If you don't like what you're listening to, wait 20 seconds".  His latest album only has 12 tracks, but has samples from 373 songs.  That is an average of 31 samples per track, or a new sample every 11.42 seconds.

I featured the first track on the album, 'Oh No', back in January.  Now that I've had a chance to listen to the rest of the album, let me play a couple more tracks that I really enjoy.

Track three, entitled 'That's Right', contains at least 15 samples, from what I can count.  It includes everything from Peter Gabriel's 'In Your Eyes', to Nine Inch Nails' 'Closer', to, believe it or not, Miley Cyrus' 'Party in the U.S.A.'.

**It does contain adult language, and is NSFW**


Track four on the album, called 'Jump On Stage', has samples from more than 18 or 19 songs.  On this one, it  carries three main background tracks, Portishead's 'Sour Times', Radiohead's 'Creep', and T'Pau's 'Heart And Soul'.  It flows seamlessly.  It's flawless.

**This contains adult language too, and is NSFW**


The New York Times once called Girl Talk "a lawsuit waiting to happen".  Seeing as he has nearly 400 samples on this album that he has not been granted permission to use, he is not legally allowed to sell this album.  He is, however, allowed to give it away for free under the "fair use" clause of copyright law.

You can go to Girl Talk's website, and download 'All Day', either as a 12 track album, or as one continuous track.  It is easily the most impressive piece of work I have heard in quite a long time.  So impressive, in fact, that on Friday, I listened to it four times in a row.  Back to back.

I haven't done that to ANY CD in probably a decade or more.