Dallas Concert Series Part 1: Girl Talk

I've been to Dallas many times (especially over the weekend) for business travel and it never occurred to me to check out a show. Maybe some subconscious loyalty to the LA scene or plain laziness after a long workweek was keeping me from venturing what Dallas has to offer. It was a comment in passing by co-worker ("You're going to be here this weekend. You should check out who's in town.") that led me to the Dallas concert listings. Lo and behold, everyone's favorite mash-up artist was playing that very night and with tickets available no less. I didn't have no place to go, so I went to the mash-up show.

Opening up was an LA-based guy called Daedalus. Unfortunately, because the line to get in was surprisingly long, I missed most of his set. But it sounded like cool some banging dance/mash-up style music to me. Next up was Busdriver. He tore it up and I shouted a request for one of the few Busdriver songs I know, The First Black Astronaut. Some other dude in the audience, an apparent Busdriver fan acknowledged me and said something to the effect of "Yeah man, he should play more older stuff." I nodded agreeingly and got the hell out of there just in case homeboy might call me out on my lack of Busdriver knowledge. That being said, after watching his set, I'll probably revisit my Busdriver collection in greater detail.

I made my way to the right hand of the stage and figured since it's Friday night, I might as well try to get up front because I've heard that Girl Talk shows get nuts. So, when Greg takes the stage, a whole chunk of the audience follows suit, and I actually end up right up front. I expected a Girl Talk show to consist of Greg and his laptop and that's what I got. Regardless, he does put on a good show by jumping around and dancing with the audience. He doesn't play straight up tracks off his CDs but mixes them up a little bit. For example, instead of using Neutral Milk Hotel as background to some slammin jam, he would mash it up with the Carpenters.

Some noticeable samples last night were: Lil' Mama's Lip Gloss, Smashing Pumpkins' Zero, Toadies' Possum Kingdom, PB&J's Young Folks, Carpenters' Superstar, Sweet Child o' Mine,
and everyone's favorite Since U Been Gone. The highlight of the night was when the stage collapsed due to the amount of people dancing around. Moreover, the actual floorboards were bending and felt like they were going to burst at any moment. All in all, it was an awesome show, but if I catch them in LA, I think I'll hang in the back. My rocking out in the front days are numbered and now I have to do laundry.