Video: Talkin' with Girl Talk Part 1

Recently I spoke with Gregg Gillis, better known as Girl Talk for SPIN Earth before his show at Paradiso. We spoke about everything from how he samples music legally to onstage near vomiting, playing live and bio-medicine's role in Hollywood. This is part 1, stay tuned tomorrow for part 2.
SPIN earth Amsterdam
Gregg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, holds firm to the grounds of fair use copyright law when legitimizing his brand of music—a sound once considered "illegal" by traditional copyright standards. His reconfigured party jams where Kelly Clarkson vocals go over AC/DC riffs, Weezer under Lil Wayne, Biggie and Elton together at last are more than just mash-ups. Surprisingly the record companies haven't tried to tackle Gillis's "mix 'em and cook 'em in a pot like gumbo" approach. As he explains, it wouldn't be a good publicity move for a major label to go after him. After all, it certainly doesn't take anything away from the original work. It's more a form of flattery.

But Gillis didn't get into the business to push legal boundaries. In the current climate where direct piracy is of far greater concern, what's the point? Girltalk is just here to rock the party.

Girl Talk's myspace

Video: Yeezy's Steez on AI

I don't like to hate on Yeezy. I like Yeezy. But Yeezy can't sing, and that is fo sho. However auto-tune grants Yeezy the luxury of song. It's granted T-Pain straight up luxury - where would he be without it. But for Yeezy, it means Yeezy can sing. Is it fair for him to be held up as a role model on American Idol where the kids are doing it for reals, doing it tough, if he can't sing without the Auto-tune. Yes. You know why. Cos he rocks the Canadian tuxedo like nobody's biz. That may even be chambre underneath which makes it a triple-double-denim-layer-cake-bonanza-The-Boss-ain't-got-nothing-on-Yeezy's-steez night at American Idol. Who got booted? Who cares.

Video: Eagles of Death Metal rock Amsterdam

I filmed the Eagles of Death Metal show at Paradiso for SPINearth.tv last week. It was a great show but little did I know that I had friends at the gig... turns out they got backstage and partied with Joey 'Sexy Mexy' Costello and Big Hands O'Connor... and drank their rider. Ho-hum, here's my report.
Click here for video
The Eagles of Death Metal are fucking rad: sweaty-sexy-truck-stop-rock-n-roll-fucking-rad. Tongue firmly in cheek while still paying respect to the Rolling Stones, ZZ Top, Lynard Skynard, Foghat and all the great swampy southern skids that ever pickled their livers in sour mash, a EoDM is the best dang knees-up since the Devil went down to Georgia.
And so Jesse 'the Devil' Hughes, Darlin' Dave, Big Hands O'Connor and Joey Castillo the Sexy Mexy took the stage – albeit ironically to "Straight Outta Compton" – and it wasn't long before they let us know what they came to do – Bang. Other standouts throughout the set included "Cherry Cola", "I Want You So Hard" and "High Voltage".
But that wasn't enough. All three levels of the sold out Paradiso crowd were spilling over each other cheering and near done blew the roof off the old church as the Devil took the stage for the encore. He was visibly taken back, pacing the stage, soaking it up and that only made the cheer louder. So he mellowed them down with an old country ballad before covering The Ramones' "Beat on The Brat" and the Stones' "Brown Sugar" to which the rest of the band joined him before closing with "Wannabe in LA".
The Devil's revival rolled into Amsterdam that night and possessed the normally placid Dutch crowd, leaving them baptised in beer and rock n roll and exorcised of all the boring and straight in their life… at least until the next day.

Eagles of Death Metal website
Eagles of Death metal mySpace