Is Girl Talk’s Feed the Animals the album of the year? Hey, it’s the album of every year, with its mash-up of 322 unlicensed samples ranging from the Spencer Davis Group’s “Gimmie Some Lovin’” and Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman,” to recent chart-topping, sample-happy rap hits from T-Pain to Lil Wayne, and  cascade after cascade of snippets spanning the spectacular history of profitable pop.

The 14-track work, created by Gregg Gillis, also incorporates a few seconds from both Metallica’s “One” and Prince’s “Kiss” — songs from two of the most notoriously litigious parties when it comes to cracking down on unauthorized reproductions online — as well as Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, the two acts whose pay-what-you-like download schemes provided the biggest music stories of the past 12 months.

Gillis, a 27-year-old from Pittsburgh, joined the pay-what-you-like fray in June, selling Feed the Animals from a website offering payment options that included “I don’t value music made from sampling.” Press coverage taunted the prospect of a cease-and-desist order even while Girl Talk’s creator pointed out he was unlikely to be the recipient of legal action under the American fair-use doctrine.

The familiarity of the music being craftily sampled makes Feed the Animals an instantly accessible album, even for those who’ve never heard a mash-up before. And Gillis didn’t waste any time in revelling in the prospects for fame — quitting his day job as a biomedical engineer and taking on the look of a wild-eyed, shaggy-haired, would-be spokesman for herbal energy drinks. Gillis’ live act, which resembles a sweaty man fornicating with his laptop, is proving to be the stuff that rock stardom is made of.



Gillis is the public face attached to the once-shadowy underground culture of mash-ups. To those who think culture shouldn’t be subject to any form of corporate control, the mainstream attention granted Gillis apparently vindicates concepts like Creative Commons licences, which encourage artists to unleash their work in order that others can use it as the foundation for something new. (Its co-founder, renowned academic Lawrence Lessig, has just published a book called Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy.) 

Yet, the thinking of these “copyfighters,” as they have been dubbed, also presumes that the long-standing approach to the promotion of would-be hits — where artists, singles and albums are packaged for airplay and other exposure — will somehow remain a fixture of the industry. How could that happen in the face of the copyfighter argument that, at least for the purpose of remixing, all good music just wants to be set free? 

The copyfighters’ rhetoric, no matter how intellectual its origin, has snowballed to a consensus that anyone seeking to sustain a professional recording industry — the one responsible for cultivating nearly every tune you have ever loved and hated — is delusional, misguided, deranged, stupid or too old.

With its release on a physical CD (on a label called Illegal Art, no less) coinciding with Girl Talk’s Nov. 12 Toronto show, every cent spent on Feed the Animals contributes to its inspiration’s demise. The result: there will be no new music popular enough to plunder.


“What this demonstrates is the vulnerability of the recording industry to new technology … all we see is just another example of theft.”

Those words were spoken in the first days of 1990 by Brian Robertson, then president of the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA), regarding Plunderphonics by Toronto artist John Oswald — an audio collage project involving dark deconstructions of the recorded works of Elvis Presley and Dolly Parton.

The disc was pressed for the express purpose of giving it away, but its cover art featuring Michael Jackson revealing female anatomy led to a court order that Oswald’s discs be destroyed.

A year later, a satirical EP called U2 by California-based collective Negativland was withdrawn from sale when the actual U2 caught wind of it, arguing that it could result in confusion for consumers who inadvertently purchased Negativland’s avant-garde audio.

In both cases, media pundits argued that these were fringe avant-garde projects that were absolutely incapable of being mistaken for the genuine article they were mocking.

But, without the legacy of that lawyer-induced attention, it is unlikely Gillis would be citing both as inspiration for the project he started working on a decade later. While DJs and producers in the ’80s and ’90s rummaged through crates of ultra-obscure vinyl relics to crate their collages, Girl Talk was about cutting straight into the jugular vein, creating a collision of classic rock, teenybopper bubblegum and hip-hop that played off the listener’s recognition of at least one original audio source at a time.

The resulting triumph of Feed the Animals is that, rather than tearing apart celebrity-driven culture for the purpose of expressing contempt for the popular, Gillis is using that deconstruction for the purpose of becoming a star himself. Girl Talk might be on the outside looking in, but it’s from the same vantage point as Perez Hilton or The Hills: Live After Show rather than that of his deeply alienated cultural appropriation–practicing forebears.

The technical complications of securing the rights to 322 tracks aside, if Gillis didn’t crave this kind of mass-appeal attention himself, it stands to reason that he should give each of the original artists all the money he makes, no?


A decade of chatter about a workable future model for the recording industry has at least achieved one thing: it became possible for people regardless of their age, background and taste — or no taste at all — to have a say in the debate about the difference between what is art, and what is theft.

When forced to choose between the interests of consumers and blaming the record companies for their profit-driven motives, given that tales of record labels’ corruption are as old as the business itself, it was only natural that the public would side against the labels and their representatives.

 “What I never expected was the personal vilification that came with this job,” says Graham Henderson, president of CRIA for the past four years. “The arguments have been personalized to the point where it then becomes about me.”

Henderson, as the defender of any business model designed to keep record companies alive — which, he is quick to clarify, does not mean forcing people to purchase CDs — stepped into his role right around the time that supporters of Creative Commons, established in 2001, found their voice echoing louder and louder.

With an iPod in every pocket, and high-speed connections commonplace, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) passed in the United States in 1998 — criminalizing the circumvention of management rights attached to software being sold — became the subject of repeated dissent. The most high-profile of the outlets protesting the move, Boing Boing, had its Toronto-born blogger Cory Doctorow pointing to just about every morsel of news about the copyfight.

When then-Parkdale-High Park Liberal MP Sam Bulte was revealed to be hosting a fundraising dinner leading up to the January 2006 federal election, sponsored by lobbyists from the entertainment industry looking to get a bill similar to the DMCA passed in Canada, the inflamed online reaction led by Doctorow was credited with Bulte’s defeat.

Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa and an outspoken critic of the CRIA, has felt empowered enough by these developments to relentlessly chronicle the copyfight on his own website: he spent the summer posting “61 Reforms for [Bill] C-61” in the effort to influence changes to the proposed copyright bill that was killed with the last federal election call. With a new session of parliament (and the same minority Conservative government) picking up where they left off, he’ll now do the same, and Geist is confident that he’ll be able to muster the same level of support.

“I don’t think there will be a backlash,” he says, “but I can foresee the possibility of some people exiting the issue out of frustration or disappointment over the process and the outcome.”
Geist has found that the accessibility of this issue to younger people provided them with a unique entry point to political engagement. “There is a risk,” he adds, “that some may be turned off politics and political participation if they are left with a sense that their voices and concerns don’t count.”

It’s a fair point, but the voices and concerns of those consumers are not the same as the producers, and will likely never be.


The emerging economic meltdown may help steer things back to sanity. No longer will a startup like LaLa.com — whose business model went from CD trading, to online radio, to offering streaming songs for a dime each — be given less-critical coverage than AC/DC for their decision to exclusively market their new disc in the US through Wal-Mart. And coming up with rewarding models might be understood to require as much creative talent as the music itself.

Maybe the pendulum will swing in the other direction, and those artists instituting a firmer pay-what-we-want policy will be lauded for their self-assuredness. Whether it involves a subscription model, or some sort of fan-club membership, the best message to send might be that MP3s may come for free, but the process required to shape them into music worth listening to does not.

Last week, blogger Mike Barthel — a contributor to the blog Idolator — called out one of his counterparts, Scott Thill of Wired magazine’s online Listening Post, for falling prey to “The Boing Boing Effect.” Barthel wondered why an item about EMI’s posted losses of $1.2-billion needed to be accompanied by a snide remark about how hopeless any future prospects for the company were.

“Sure, Girl Talk’s music can be made with nothing but a laptop,” wrote Barthel. “But do we really want all our music to sound like Girl Talk?”

While multinational record companies lose the ability to nurture new talent, consider who is sweeping in to pick up the slack: Gregg Gillis had no problem revelling in a Taco Bell promotion that offered indie acts $500 worth of foodstuffs to hand out to their fans — and the campy coverage was just what the marketing department ordered.

The result is one form of corporate patronage — the record deal — supplanted by a system that is arguably worse. Because when the goal is to get your own voice heard, selling out still beats buying in. No hit song you will ever remember is going to be entered in an MP3-submission indie talent contest sponsored by a cellphone or chocolate-bar company.

But, by perpetuating the image of the maverick who can’t be contained, inspiring knowing smirks with snippets from some long-forgotten guilty pleasure, Girl Talk has done the improbable: created a critically-acclaimed effort that connects with the masses, and is defiantly independent if only because no major corporation is going to touch it.

Oh, and the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial licence on Feed the Amimals prohibits anyone else from pulling a Girl Talk on Gillis — namely, using his derivative work for commercial purposes of their own.

So, the copyfight has finally got the soundtrack album it deserves. It’s got a good beat, and you can rant to it.


GIRL TALK TALK: THE GREG GILLIS MASH-UP INTERVIEW!
Instead of actually talking to Gregg Gillis, which is so 20th century, we remixed a bunch of interviews we found on the internet.

How much do you think Feed the Animals is worth to a consumer?
I don’t know, I guess that depends on what you make. I really enjoy buying albums, and I come from the world where CDs are worth $10 or $15 typically, so that’s what I think it would be worth for a physical product…. But that’s completely different for different people, and I understand that. I think a lot of young kids grow up having no money and are used to having access to the internet and getting music for free. That’s their world, and I don’t really think there’s a problem with that. ¹

Speaking of physical recordings, how does the evolution of the medium affect you directly?
Going to record stores is still very fun for me. I’m really looking forward to seeing any change in the music industry. I mean, I’ll buy CDs until they stop making them, but I’m also very excited about the physical media dying at some point. We’ve reached a whole new creative outlook now — people approach being in bands in a whole different way. But for what it is now, it’s kind of sad to go to a record store that you love and see that times are tough, business has been slowing down and it’s only a matter of time before those stores just start dropping. ²

How do you respond to critics who think you should seek permission and pay artists for the samples you use?
I feel a certain way about the laws, but I don’t necessarily want to wear that on my sleeve. I don’t want to go play a show and then preach to the audience about sampling rights. If my music generates thoughts on those issues, that’s fantastic, but it’s not goal No. 1. ³

If an artist specifically states that the artist never wants his or her music mixed by another, would you respect the wishes of that artist?
I’m not specifically trying to piss people off, so I would be open to requests like that. But if their work happened to fit perfectly into what I was doing, I’d probably still be open to using it if I thought it fell under fair use. It’s a new era of communication between bands/musicians and consumers; I think some people don’t see that yet. Maybe if they saw how their work was used in a particular transformative way, they’d be open to it. Good question! ⁴

So you talk to fans who are into your record, into your show, but they think Rick Springfield is a joke and not worth their time?
Clearly not everyone’s going to be on the same page. I feel like a lot of my personal friends are on a similar wavelength, being ready to be into things. I feel like musicians are almost challenging one another to be into things. But yeah, a lot of kids are at that level, and I’m not saying it’s right or wrong. It’s just a different perspective, and I’m open to it. I meet people who don’t listen to rap music who come out to shows, I meet kids who don’t listen to music from the 1980s, ‘90s, whatever. Clearly, not everyone’s going to be on the same tip as far as referencing 300 songs that I sample. ⁵

SOURCES
(1) Matheson, Whitney. (2008, Sept. 23) “Pop Candy,” USA Today. “Chatting with… Girl Talk, a.k.a. Gregg Gillis.”

(2) Firecloud, Johnny. (2008, Sept. 10) Antiquiet. “Mixin’ It Up With Girl Talk.”

(3) Stephey, M.J. . (2008, Oct. 22) Time. “Q&A: Girl Talk.”

(4) Gillis, Gregg. (2008, July 29) Washington Post. “Girl Talk/Gregg Gillis On New Album, Music Industry.”

(5) Richardson, Mark. (2008, Oct. 6) Pitchfork Media. “Interview: Girl Talk.”