The Texas Governor had begun their set already when I climbed downstairs of the Middle East. Despite the fact that Girl Talk’s headlining there had just been confirmed by the transfer of the show, to my surprise, to the larger of the venue’s two rooms, the current performers had me second-guessing -- posturing on stage to the sound of a generic pop-punk instrumental backing fit more for the divey nearby Abbey Lounge was The Governor’s vocalist, a contrived persona of jittery, disheveled drug-addledness in a gray, unkempt suit with a large rectangular Coca-Cola sticker duct-taped to his jacket sleeve: a ‘cultural commentary’ so heavy-handed it was insulting. He quaked with the manic intensity of an OCD case, meticulously touching his trembling fingers together, rubbing his palm, or tugging on his clothes, an act whose authenticity was never more in question than on the several occasions that he stopped to shamelessly hold up the CD they were trying to sell. It was like satire. The guy on the Korg was pretty good though; I felt bad for them mostly.
The stage was then cleared of everything but a long table, littered with various electronics and decorated with a green skull. A dough-y guy with large orange glasses, thinning hair, a beard, and a yellow t-shirt covered in green, hand-drawn peace signs had some help lowering the table to floor level, and as he positioned himself behind it, it became clear that this was Dan Deacon. I’d never heard of the guy, but the unmitigated enthusiasm of what had to be his 12 biggest fans, tightly packed together in front of an audience approaching half capacity, made me optimistic. After testing the integrity of the squelch and warble machines in front of him, he taped his glasses to his head, reminded us that it was 2007, and asked us to countdown from 20.
We gave it two tries, both ridiculous failures, and then he made with the flipping of the switches and the turning of the knobs. It was a filthy four-on-the-floor electronic eruption, a more danceable Les Georges Leningrad, Dan taking breaks from his flailing and sweating to talk unintelligibly into his vocoder. Each song ended abruptly, cuing some big applause, and between songs he would pant exhausted into the microphone, commissioning new countdowns and assigning tasks: “On 12 you have to look at a stranger,” or “This time you gotta be really excited, like your dog, like, just got hit by a car, but somehow that made him stronger, and you’re like, ‘Awesome.’ ” He also preached that the problems of the world could be solved with more Big Gulps and Playstations. Admittedly this doesn’t translate well to print, but this guy pulled it off, keeping the whole room dancing and raptly entertained.
I had to wonder what Girl Talk would be like in performance in anticipation of his set. I’m pretty sure he has some other material, but like most, I’ve still only heard Night Ripper. He’s not going to use turntables, is he? That would be near-impossible. But he can’t stray too far from Night Ripper -- there would be rioting. What, then?
The question was answered by an almost bare table, back up on the stage, little more than a laptop resting on it. Dressed in a red t-shirt, someone announced, “My name is Gregg, I’m gonna play some music in a little bit.” Gregg Gillis, a.k.a. Girl Talk, disappeared backstage, reemerging minutes later in full alter-ego mode: oversized black sunglasses, hood up on his white sweatshirt, hopping around onstage to the cheers of the crowd like a boxer. As he peered into the glowing screen and clicked a button, those first familiar inhales of that Ciara song came over the speakers. Gregg clapped his hands and jumped back from the table, hopping and shaking his head for a second with an almost exaggerated enthusiasm before reapproaching the laptop, clicking with conviction on what would be the next sample, then leapt back again. And it continued.
As he (and the crowd) danced, his sweatshirt and glasses were flung off, and the set paralleled Night Ripper pretty tightly, straying a bit in chronology and content. About five minutes into it, he pulled a girl up onto the stage; her friend followed behind her, and in under 30 seconds the whole thing was filled shoulder-to-shoulder, ass-to-ass, and Gregg became lost in the swarm, the music being the only remaining sign of his presence.
I found myself watching the crowd in an almost sociological way, as some basked in the attention they found at the front of the stage. It was surreal; until that moment, I had been an ‘audience member,’ and I felt that I continued to be one for a while, until my mind began trying to reconcile that role with what the stage was presenting to me. This was no longer a ‘concert’ at all, but it wasn’t a party, either. In theory, the only difference between the stage and the floor at that point was height. But simply by virtue of there being a stage, we remained the ‘watchers’ of that scene, of whatever occurred on it. Yet those who were on stage weren’t entirely stripped of their role as ‘audience members,’ which they had much more clearly been only minutes prior. Instead, they became removed from themselves, watching us watch them, simultaneously performer and audience. And we, as their proxy, watched them watch us watch them.
Not a dancer myself, I moved to the back of the room, finished my beer at the end of the set, and left. Besides, I have that CD at home. But it looked like they were having a hell of a time.
Photo: scenefeeder