Within mere moments of going on sale, Girl Talk concert tickets were sold out for last Friday's show at Jake's Nightclub in Bloomington. I stuck reminder post-it notes all over my room months in advance about the date tickets would go on sale, but being the scatterbrained blond that I am, I forgot anyway. Lucky for me, my boyfriend, Joel, likes surprising me, and lucky for me, he didn't mind paying the extra cash for a sold out show. And lucky for me, he didn't mind his momentary deafness after hearing my animal-like shrieking upon being presented with the tickets.
And what a show it was. Little did I know that Girl Talk (real name Gregg Gillis) likes to invite the front row of people at his concerts on stage, so I was ecstatic when Joel and I managed to scramble up on the stage and squash in right behind him. I wasn't sure what a Girl Talk show would be like, since his music is essentially remixes of hundreds of samples of other artists' songs, but Gillis' energy and creativity in his mashups totally shattered any former doubts I had in his performance potential.
But the sweaty, fist pumping, head-banging atmosphere and Girl Talk's life-of-the-party energy weren't even the best parts of the show. We managed to sneak past security after the concert and meet Gillis and were both astonished to find that he was as conversational and personable as a dear friend might be, far from my expectations about how an internationally-known musical sensation might act toward his lowly fans. If the rumors were true, his extreme friendliness might be attributed to a certain man-made substance, but it still made me giddy when he told us we were a good-looking couple. Not that I didn't already know it.All photos: Joel Langebartels
