Girl Talk

I used to drive my roommates crazy with music - I lived with two really good friends of mine, and we all had pretty similar tastes in music, and I'd come home from work and spend two hours on the computer on Allmusic.com and Audiogalaxy, or Kazaa looking up new bands.  I discovered tons of great stuff, and I'd try to get them into the music, but I was always afraid their patience would run out, so I'd just play them the hook, or riff of a song, or the best thirty seconds, or my favorite lyrics, and try to hook them, and get them to listen to the whole song.  This ADHD approach drove them nuts, and they always wanted me to play a whole song, but if it had a slow intro, they were gone.  I was in a bind.

Girl Talk is like that for me.  The mashups are consistently brilliant: "Play Your Part, pt.1" for example, features someone (sorry, I really don't know hip-hop) rapping along to the Spencer Davis Group, and they fit perfectly.  He throws Salt-n-Pepa over Nirvana, and uses the drum beat from "Scentless Apprentice" and the piano to "Tiny Dancer" as the background for Biggie Smalls.

It's frequently great, but it's just as ADHD as I used to be.  Nothing lasts more than a minute or so - if you don't like what's going on, just wait, because the beat, rap, and everything else will change in a minute.  He can't stand to use more than a verse from a song, and so none of the mashups ever sound like a song - there's no sense of returning to a great hook, of building up a theme or melody, of a bridge returning to a chorus - it's like dipping into a club where a DJ is trying to use every record he owns once without having to backtrack.

Contrast Girl Talk to the Grey Album by Danger Mouse.  Simple concept - Jay-Z vs. the Beatles (yes I'm just barely getting into the Grey Album, but that's the thing this blog is all about - how often to you discover a band or a song from three, or five, or fifteen years ago?  It's new to you, even if it's not to everyone else.)  To me, the song that works best is "Change Clothes."  All hip-hop should be over baroque samples.  It's terrific.  And, and this is vital, it builds tension like a real song, until it finally has to break.

I haven't written mashups off - in fact I can't wait to see where things go - but I hope someone builds on Girl Talk soon and and plays me more than just the best parts.