Pop Culture: Adam Graham

Girl Talk leads the sweatiest show of the year in Pontiac

The sold-out crowd gathered at Pontiac's Eagle Theatre on Tuesday was so ready to party that the video screens could have played reruns of "Law and Order" and the crowd would have gone nuts.

As it was, their ringleader for the evening was DJ du jour Girl Talk (he signs his checks Gregg Gillis), whose party-hearty mash-ups have everyone jamming to the hip-hop hits of today laid overtop the instrumentals of yesteryear, creating a whole new sound collage using the last 40-odd years of pop music as his template.

Girl Talk didn't need to do much to get the crowd going, but he wasn't done any favors by the Eagle Theatre's muddy sound system, which buried Gillis' technical feat and the triumph of his adventurous samples under layers of low-end thump.

Techno-geek quibbles aside, the show was a massive party, with a herd of sweaty, writhing bodies surrounding Gillis onstage while he hammered through his 70-minute-plus set. There were familiar elements from his "Night Ripper" and "Feed the Animals" albums, but many of the compositions were new, with highlights including a mash-up of M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" with Jay-Z's "Can I Get A..." and a mid-show suite where ODB's "Got Your Money" played over the guitar solo from the Grateful Dead's "Casey Jones."

Non-stop streams of toilet paper shot over the crowd and confetti rained from the sky, so much so that at the end of the night the floor looked like the aftermath of a massive New Year's Eve celebration.

But while New Year's parties are almost always a letdown, this show delivered on its promise. This has been a huge year for Girl Talk -- "Feed the Animals" stands to be showered with year-end praise -- and Tuesday's show was the cherry on top of a triumphant 2008.

OK, I'm no photographer, but I've always wanted to be one. With that disclaimer aside, here are a few photos I shot at Tuesday's show. Professional photos hopefully coming soon.

(Yes, those are Girl Talk's feet.)