If you didn’t happen to be one of the 3,008 Girl Talk ticketholders in the Hump Thursday night, you missed an experience unknown to Mississippi State University up to now. While the school has seen its fair share of national and international performers such as Three 6 Mafia, Widespread Panic and the Allman Brothers Band over the years, there has never been a beloved performer such as Gregg Gillis, aka Girl Talk.
In previous weeks, the biggest question surrounding this concert was whether or not there would be a dance floor at the show. This was so important because some shows are better when people have room to move – Girl Talk shows are one of those. Luckily, Music Maker Productions announced there would be a dance floor at the show for an allotted number of people who came early enough to get wristbands. I’ve been to my fair share of concerts and that, my friends, was not a dance floor. But the silver lining is show-goers had a great time regardless of where they were in the coliseum.
The music-hungry crowd fulfilled the statement, “it’s about quality, not quantity,” with their gung-ho attitude and outfits. Kids not even old enough to remember the ’80s DayGlo movement were wearing so much bright orange, yellow and pink, I thought I was going to see a “Frankie Says Relax” T-shirt before the night was over.
At 7 p.m., an hour before the opening band Junk Culture was set to begin, I weaved through the steadily growing crowds of glow stick-drenched students and knew the show was going to be intense. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of MSU students I could see from where I was standing on the side stage.
As it is with almost any live production, there was a delay in the show’s beginning, but only about 20 minutes. My guess is the show was set on hipster time – not late, just too cool to be on time.
Junk Culture, which is made up of electronic artist Deepak Mantena and his younger brother Nitin Mantena on drums, got in position on stage and music immediately started flowing from the speakers. Everyone started dancing as if they were commanded to do so. They opened with a song which doesn’t require any real dancing effort because your body starts swaying and your head starts bopping involuntarily with the beat. While they played, random videos like crashing ocean waves and a kid slalom skateboarding flashed on a large screen behind them. The random videos continued through the show with no pattern or theme, and later Deepak told me the videos were just ’50s and ’60s propaganda he chopped and assembled in the same fashion as he does music.
The last few weeks marked Junk Culture and Girl Talk performing on the same bill in northwestern cities like Seattle. While I wasn’t able to attend those shows, I can say this performance reassured me the Oxford-based artist deserves to be on Illegal Art, the same label which signed Girl Talk.
After a short break allowing people to collect themselves and get drinks, it was 9:30 and Gillis was ready to take the stage as Girl Talk.
He ran on stage sweatshirt-clad and immediately started clicking out samples on his cellophane-covered laptop. While watching him begin to perform, I got distracted by a huge stack of toilet paper rolls resting under a table on stage and I smiled because the next thing I saw was a leaf blower sitting beside them. Before I knew it, toilet paper was soaring through the crowd and a couple of dozen people were on stage with Girl Talk. His digital-age version of a setlist, made of samples, loops and a combination of those, was heavy with songs from his album Feed the Animals but also included songs from prior albums and some newly-created mashups. Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child of Mine” followed by swift beats from Eminem, Shawna’s “Gettin’ Some” laid with Jay-Z’s “Big Pimpin'” and the unlikely pairing of M.I.A’s “Boyz” with the Cranberries’ “Dreams” are a few of the mashups heard throughout the night. As the crowd continued partying and Gillis’s clothes continued dwindling, I deemed the night successful.
Gillis took it up a few notches when he announced explicitly he did not care about anyone’s classes Friday morning, he just wanted to make sure everyone had a good time and his words were a verbal dose of heroin to students. Thanks to Gillis and the crowd, the show ended on a note just as high, if not higher, than the one on which it started with the Temptations’ “Shout” and a giant inflated pillow rolling through the crowd.
When the neon lights cut off and the house lights came on, every forehead in the place was beaded with sweat and eyes everywhere were blinking while their owners were trying to take in what just happened around them for the last two hours.
Sure the dance floor wasn’t the size it should have been and there was some underhanded wristband distribution, but all in all, I think MSU should view the concert as a positive thing and forget the petty things which can happen at any show.
I want to say thank you to the students who purchased tickets in order to help get a bigger dance floor and even those who bought them the day of the show because it’s a sold-out show like Girl Talk which starts an abundance of bigger, more appreciated acts coming to campus.