That’s So Software
“Software, computers is the most punk rock thing ever.” -Girl Talk
I don’t know much about Girl Talk except that his remix of “Wamp Wamp” by The Clipse a couple of years back was maja. Now I see the footage of him with his fans in the new “I’m A PC” advertisement and am suddenly confronted with the rapidly changing identity of the DJ, from party maker to party facilitator, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.
On one hand it’s a great Generation O statement about talent and equality in which we all get to play with the tools in the shed first come first served. On the other hand isn’t this guy just dancing around with his laptop on stage? I can do that at home with iTunes Genius but it doesn’t make me a rock star. Why are these kids so into it? Or are they? Maybe they’re all having “fake fun” as my Grandpa called it whenever he took me to 4-H fair work retreats at the tractor factory where he worked (not made up). Call me crazy but the Girl Talk fans have a substantially less kinetic vibe than, say, the people who went to see Ice Cube live with Redman at the DC Armory in 1993.
Fun fact: At that show there was an unbilled new artist who performed that night, a year before his first solo album dropped. His name was Biggie Smalls.
