Girl Talk - Feed the Animals

[Aetos]

[Horse]

That youtube clip has made the rounds. Now there's a true artist. Cutting and pasting glitchy samples and putting whatever on top of it is very difficult and time consuming.

I mean, he could have used any band. But instead he uses *insert whatever other band here.*

What's funny about him is that he started out doing very, very glitchy noise compositions before this. He then realized that breaking out the jock jamz so that douchebags with very limited musical taste could recognize the samples actually sold out college campuses and got him extra beer tickets at the frat party.

The discussions are always fun when they devolve into how he's unique, special and talented. Never mind that he's using Adobe Audition to cut and paste samples and his live show consists of pressing "play."


So the fact that you can dissect the methodology:

"Nirvana - All Apologies
Lil Jon - Real Nigga Roll Call
Flipsyde - Someday
Bun B - Keep it 100
Bun B - If it was up to me
Coldplay - Violet Hill
Mickey Avalon - My Dick (Harold and Kumar 2 soundtrack)
Brother Ali - Uncle Sam Goddamn
Brother Ali - Take Me Home
Flobots - Handlebars
Weezer - Everybody Get Dangerous
Weezer - Greatest Man that Ever Lived
Wiz Khalifa - Say Yeah
Camille Jones vs Fedde le Grand - The Creeps
adam sky vs mark stewart - we are all prostitutes (crookers remix)"

...and just do what he did to make some sort of mixed up nonsense from all of this shit is sorta the reason why the folks who shouldered the crates, and then the serato, don't give much of a shit about him.

All of the songs you've listed (except for crookers, they're fucking great and I'm seeing them tonight in chicago) make no sense together except to surface skimmers. I've hung out with Gregg, we're in the same circle of friends, but you have to realize there's a healthy bit of cynicism from him as well.

He understands the diff between doing something for art and something for commerce. So if anything is amazing about him, it's that willingness to abandon any sort of integrity to "break this cool new idea from 1974 and the invention of sequencers and samplers" to folks who don't know any better.

Pandering to them gets you money on a website



So here's your mega mashup:

Cue guitar from all apologies
Cue some driving beat behind it
glitch loop some vocal sample "awl awl awl awl awl a-a-a-a awl"
blend in an ambient piece from some other track

snore.

[ValkyrieIsAboutToDie]

The guy gets a party fucking rocking. That's all you need to know and that's all that matters.

And you don't have to pay a cent for his album if you don't want to.

Stop pissing and moaning about things that everyone in this thread already knows.

[Aetos]

Not to mention seeing him live is really intense. He encourages people to come onstage, which to me I couldn't believe the venue allowed that. Onstage was downright insane, as well as dangerous. The whole time he performed, his little table was being pushed all over, offstage, and he would have to hold it down. While his music certainly isn't "original", it's original in the fact that if two people were to create mashups using the same songlists, they would have two totally unique new tracks. Thats original enough for me.

grr, stupid flickr wont let me link the photos, but check them out from a show:
girl talk - a set on Flickr

[Lowk]

Originally Posted by Ham n Cheese

Originally I thought Night Ripper was better than this, but this was still a good album. The beginning of this album is just so awesome and it gets stronger and stronger into the later tracks. I think it's probably a better album now, which is saying a lot

I personally subscribe to the perspective of: few albums are good the first time through. The First time you hear the album, you are drawn to a few things of quality and they ensure a second listen. The next thing you know its grown on you like cancer and you get it out of you head until it makes you sick you've heard it so much.

[Zippygoose]

Originally Posted by Horse

I've hung out with Gregg, we're in the same circle of friends, but you have to realize there's a healthy bit of cynicism from him as well.

He understands the diff between doing something for art and something for commerce. So if anything is amazing about him, it's that willingness to abandon any sort of integrity to "break this cool new idea from 1974 and the invention of sequencers and samplers" to folks who don't know any better.

But isn't the fact that you can actually pull that cynicism out of "his music" somewhat telling about the form? Here people are arguing that he isn't a musician but a plagiarist, when at the same time there are clear messages that come through in this album. Feelings, moods, sarcasm et all, which are all created by the combination of others' work. I laughed out loud multiple times through this album because he is putting songs together that are ridiculous. He pokes fun at himself quite a bit. That is what I like about the genre. It isn't pretentious and it almost invalidates itself.

[Intrinsic]

Originally Posted by TOOL

In almost all college courses that assign papers, if you turned in a paper with the same amount of copy-pasta as Girl Talk you would not only receive an F for the paper, you would be dropped from the course. Your professor would give you a stern talking to, and it would be made very clear that they do not tolerate cheaters in their class.

Personally I'd love to see this, but am not quite sure how it would work. Are we talking about a paper that is designed to analyze Russia's socio-economic conditions and how they impacted Chekov's plays? In that case you would be taking from other people's scholarly works and not creating anything new. On the other hand, if you were to take passages from The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Brother's Karamazov, and Ender's Game and create your own unique and coherent plot, the professor would applaud that.

Maybe I'm stretching, and its a topic for another conversation. I certainly think that this, and his other albums, accomplished the latter of the two hypotheticals. Whether it is good or not, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

[brekk]

Originally Posted by Horse

So here's your mega mashup:

Cue guitar from all apologies
Cue some driving beat behind it
glitch loop some vocal sample "awl awl awl awl awl a-a-a-a awl"
blend in an ambient piece from some other track

snore.

nice cop out...


MASHUP OR GTFO

[Thunderbane]

Originally Posted by ValkyrieIsAboutToDie

The guy gets a party fucking rocking. That's all you need to know and that's all that matters.

QFT

DON'T CALL IT A COMEBACK!
*insert rickroll drumroll*
DON'T CALL IT A COMEBACK!

[Fog]

Originally Posted by Intrinsic

On the other hand, if you were to take passages from The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Brother's Karamazov, and Ender's Game and create your own unique and coherent plot, the professor would applaud that.

He would? Dare I ask what school you attend?

[Tingteng]

If loving Girl Talk gets me -1 Internets then so be it.

cue guitar
cue driving beat
cue Phil Collins singing - Can't stop loving you.
cue some other random song


Hopefully it will make some other music snob feel really superior.

[Thunderbane]

Was everybody's Feed The Animals party this weekend pleasureful

[Ronne]

Man, 3:00-4:00 of the first track is just insane. Beats like hell in my car.

[Dom Devore]

When I read this thread I thought the second coming of the mash-up christ had come or something. Now that I'm listening to it I really don't see what all the hype is about. They're good mash-ups... but not that good. Actually, I find quite a few of the tracks very flat and boring.

/me goes to listen to some Sixx Mixx's.

[Horse]

Originally Posted by Zippygoose

But isn't the fact that you can actually pull that cynicism out of "his music" somewhat telling about the form? Here people are arguing that he isn't a musician but a plagiarist, when at the same time there are clear messages that come through in this album. Feelings, moods, sarcasm et all, which are all created by the combination of others' work. I laughed out loud multiple times through this album because he is putting songs together that are ridiculous. He pokes fun at himself quite a bit. That is what I like about the genre. It isn't pretentious and it almost invalidates itself.

I am in full agreement with you here. People ragging on him because of plagiarism are missing the point.

Now ragging on him because he's pandering to people who don't know better may or may not be non-assholish but it is at least more valid.