Girl Talk at the Black Cat

Girl Talk w/Dan Deacon
Black Cat
Washington, D.C.

This was right up there with Arcade Fire as one of the greatest shows of the year, if not my entire life. I’ve got paragraphs of praise in my journal just dying to get out into public view, but I’m afraid if I let most people read those thought, they might become completely convinced that I’m a trip-head of colossal proportions.

You’d have to be completely unemotional not to buy the stuff Greg Gillis (Girl Talk) and Dan Deacon were selling that sultry night at the Black Cat, and I’m anything but that. I’d ingested a foot long Subway and a Vitamin Water mixed with red bull and I would need every possible legal substance to hang with the dance crazy trip loving marathon. It started with the slow trance of White Williams, and by the time Dan Deacon had set up his green glow skull on the floor, the crowd was suffocating every free bit of space around the geek star. Deacon drops this insane blend of thumping beats which reach down inside of you and seem to pull something entirely new out of your body and soul, but then he mixes that intoxication with these carefree melodies on top that never let the mood get too serious. The sweat was pouring throughout his hour long set, and the crowd seemed to fuse closer together with each pulsating bass line. He’d take those lines, start them slow, and build them faster, faster, and higher, yellow lights flash until finally exploding with a thunderous explosion that would see everything go dark except for this green skeleton that was at the center of the mass of humanity.

And then it stopped.

We breathed deep. Tried to slow our hearts, dry our faces, and find our clothes. You put your face up, because up was the only way you could get any type of air unspoiled by 200 people breathing it before you. And then the lights went dark again.

The screen started to blink. (girl talk repeat/cascade) and then this little voice over the speakers started the mantra: “girl talK/ girl taLK/ girl tALK/ girl TALK/girL TALK/ giRL TALK/ gIRL TALK/GIRL TALK.” A sunglassed, dark-haired hoodie kid came out, threw a plastic guitar into the audience, and asked D.C if, “y’all are ready to party.” Flipped open a laptop, clicked a few buttons, a bass line started to pulse. “Hold up, hold up, wait a minute, wait a minute.”

Then the lights and stage exploded.

I ripped my knee open trying to climb up on the stage. We fought past the two security guards, surrounded the already sweating gillis. And the insanity began. He sat there. Pushing buttons, checking levels, feeling every note before it emerged—our job was to feel it once it came out of the speakers. There was a glow in the dark 10 foot tall spider with shades in the corner, and every inch of the stage was pulsating with a mass of flailing body arms and lips.

No one can be cool at a Girl Talk show, too much sweat and too little space, but every single person can pretend that they’re in a room of their very best friends, most of them trashed, dancing to a scrapbook of their favorite songs. Grace was lusting over Greg, begging me to take a picture of her touching his hand, Kimbell disappeared off the stage and onto the gyrating floor, I just tried to stay standing up.

I wanted to capture every single moment of the night, but Girl Talk isn’t meant to be captured, it’s meant to be lived. You’re not going to understand it from Youtube clips, album cuts, or even from sitting at the bar. You’ve got to be on the floor with Gillis, lustfully calling for each and every song to take you to a place that you’ve never been, and for the people around you to take you there with them.

You don’t know who you’re dancing with, you don’t know who’s behind you, you don’t know why you just took off your shirt and tied it around your head like a bandana—you just know that the music told you to move, and you’ve got to move.

Even when the music stopped talking, when the power got unplugged from the thundering movement, when the P.A. lit up to ask if you knew _____ because both of them had fallen and were with an ambulance outside, even then people kept moving, kept chanting—they didn’t control their bodies anymore, Gillis did, and he hadn’t said to stop.

He was the voice of our fragmented insanity, telling us to forget all dreams of rational existence—we gladly followed. Girl Talk was about letting go of all pretension and plugging into a completely equal existence as a worshiper of the muse of rhythm. When he finally closed with a screaming cover of “Scentless Apprentice,” catapulting into the crowd, it was our cue to be released.

Standing in the cold black air outside, I felt like every adrenaline gland in my body had been emptied, my body kept trembling, my hair was wet, and somehow, I’d never think of a concert the same way again. Maybe that’s because Girl Talk isn’t a concert, it’s a mass experience with Gillis as the conductor. I don’t know if I could handle riding with Gillis everyday, probably wouldn’t be healthy, but dear bacchus, hold on tight, because when I go again, it’s going to be crazy.