One of the least pleasant parts of writing new editions of Mass Communication: Living in a Media World is making the decision of what material to cut in order to make room for important new material. Some of the cuts aren’t that bad – the material is dated and really doesn’t belong in the book anymore. But sometimes I have to cut materials that I really like and is still relevant. But textbooks can only be so long… so the example has to be cut.
For me, one of the most painful cuts for the seventh edition was taking out the material on mash-up artist Gregg Gillis, better known as Girl Talk. For me, his masterpiece was a 71-minute long mash up called All Day that featured more than 400 separate samples. The following post brings together and updates several posts I’ve written on the topic over the years.
Please note that most of the links here to video or audio content will contain offensive and/or NSFW language.
Trying to explain what Gregg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, does to someone who grew up in the days of the Doors or the Ramones can be a bit challenging. He’s a DJ who plays clips from multiple songs at the same time. Put more elegantly, Gillis is a mash-up artist—someone who combines two or more pieces of music to create something new.
As an example, one of the most famous mash-ups is Danger Mouse’s “The Grey Album” that combines the a cappella vocals from rapper Jay-Z’s “The Black Album” with samples from the Beatles’ so-called White Album. While Jay-Z had created the a cappella version of his album specifically for mash-up use, the Beatles publisher EMI was not amused and attempted to get The Grey Album suppressed. Despite EMI’s efforts, The Grey Album remains available and is considered an artistic success.
As great as the work by people like Danger Mouse may be, nothing really compares to the level of mash-up done by Pittsburgh’s 29-year-old Gillis. Gillis has a degree in biomedical engineering, but several years ago he quit his day job to create the incredible mixes that go into his five albums. His most recent album, All Day, reportedly contains 400 different samples — typically some kind of rap combined with some sample of pop, rock or soul music from the last 40 or 50 years.
All of Gillis’ music is given away online, and none of the samples he’s used have been authorized or paid for. Were he to attempt to license the music, Gillis estimates that it would cost several million dollars, and that many of the songs wouldn’t be available at any price. And yet, so far no label has sued Gillis for his sampling. According to Duke law professor James Boyle, speaking on NPR’s One The Media, says there may be a range of reasons no one has gone after Gillis:
There is the story that the labels learned from DJ Danger Mouse and don’t want to risk creating the Che Guevara of the digital sampling age, the lost hero to which all of us will offer reverence and thus make him even more popular.
Another story is, they’re going, hmm, this is really interesting. Let’s let him run a bit, and when we finally see how things are playing out then we’ll figure out a way of getting a revenue stream out of this. A third story is they realize it’s actually fair use and they don’t want a bad precedent brought against them. And then a fourth one is that they are gibbering in terror and are so scared by this new phenomena, they’re incapable of rational action of any kind and so are caught in a kind of fugue state, as the digital music scene develops.
BTW, if you really want to get the full flavor of the OTM program on mash-ups and sampling, you really need to listen to it rather than read it.
Without further ado, here are a number of fascinating videos and links dealing with Girl Talk and mash-ups.
Girl Talk – Bounce That animated video
Note: You need to go to YouTube to view this video.
This video was created by Professor Matthew Soar and his students at Concordia University in Montreal using rotoscoped video. (BTW, to the best of my knowledge this video does not contain offensive language)
Visual Breakdown of Girl Talk’s All Day
Here’s a great visualization of All Day that displays what samples make up each track as they play. It was put together by @adereth.
Download Girl Talk’s All Day at Gillis’ lable Illegal Art.
For those of you who are fans of mashup artist Girl Talk, there is a now a fascinating dance film out that is essentially a 71-minute long video for Girl Talk’s latest album All Day.
There’s a preview below, but here’s a link to the entire film.
The film was funded through Kickstarter, the long-tail funding website, with director Jacob Krupnick raising almost $25,000 from 577 backers who committed amounts ranging rom $5 to $500 or more. (Most of the backers were under $100.)
This is Chapter 3 – It Goes Like This
- NY Times story on the project from 3/11
- NY Times: Conversation with Girl Walk’s director
- Lead dancer Anne Marsen’s Web site
- Jacob Krupnick’s Portfolio
And finally:
An extended lecture on Mash-ups, Borrowing and the Law
from Professor James Boyle