back	March 15, 2010 RSS

Revolution in the music business: Girl Talk’s career is based on stolen hits

Gregg Gillis, better known as DJ Girl Talk, uses up to 150 samples to create his tracks. He shamelessly snaffles sounds from world-famous bands as diverse as Abba and ZZ Top. Gillis celebrates the fragments he uses: "If I sample Nirvana's ‘Lithium', it's off the cassette I was obsessed with growing up, the one that changed my entire life." Girl Talk is the grandmaster of the mega mashup, the king of sampling. He DJs at parties thrown by Paris Hilton and thrills the crowds with his sweat-inducing live gigs and CDs such as Feed the Animals. But he is also right on the front line of a new intellectual property war: a conflict in which millions of dollars and the boundaries of artistic freedom are at issue. Is he entitled to use those samples without paying? Are his tracks to be seen as his own independent creations? So far nobody has sued Gregg Gillis; indeed, he has attended US Congressional hearings as an expert on such matters of copyright law, which are assuming increasing significance in the digital world. As for his fans, they're not bothered by such things: they just love his music. Read the full story by Rupert Bottenberg on Girl Talk and his "musical larceny" in THE MINI INTERNATIONAL