Twice now I've interviewed Gregg Gillis, the DJ and producer better known to the world as Girl Talk. And both times, I’ve come away believing he’s one of the smartest dudes in music.

That tends to happen when you make a living playing chicken with the laws of copyright infringement: You get asked about it a lot, and so you get intimately familiar with terms like transformative nature and fair use doctrine. The fact that you make and play music on a computer just makes you seem like even more of a poindexter.

But the truth is, Gregg Gillis owes his popularity to mastering the art of simplicity: He takes hooks and beats you know by heart, and combines them into a strange but exciting new experience. He’s the Grant Achatz of music. You probably wish you’d thought to do it first. (But then again, that’s what makes geniuses geniuses, right?)

On Wednesday at Jannus Live in St. Petersburg, Girl Talk turned what was essentially a simple DJ set into a hyperactive hybrid of a night at a top-40 club, mixed with a house party scored to an iPod set to shuffle, mixed with a frenzied spin through the FM radio dial.

In other words: It was a mashup. Appropriate, no? ... Read more