Girl Talk @ Voodoo
Girl Talk shows are always fun. I have seen him three times before he blew up and four or five times since then and they are always epic. I think the early shows after he got big were the best because they were just chaos. Now the Girl Talk team has it down to a science and it’s a little more controlled chaos. It’s still one hell of a party.
A number of the photographers at Voodoo had no idea what was going on when Girl Talk went on. I was sort of explaining to people that when you shoot Girl Talk you aren’t shooting Gregg Gillis behind the computers, you are shooting the whole scene, the crowd and the flying toilet paper. Gregg was wearing a Freddy Kruger mask when he came out and we never really saw him again. Honestly the photos I took of everything kinda sucked but I was having a fucking blast.
I was having so much fun that when I had to leave and get back to the Sailor Jerry Air Stream I decided I wanted to go out with a bang so I climbed up the security barricade and dove into the crowd. People had been crowd surfing but it was a quick up and down, but when they saw I was shooting photos while crowd surfing everyone got really excited and kept me up in the air. Not only was it the longest I have ever crowd surfed, but it was the longest I have ever seen ANYONE crowd surf. I was up in the air for 2 or 3 full minutes and I was more than 50 yards away from the stage when they finally put me down. The shots are pretty awful technically but they are really fun to look at to see the faces of the people in the crowd framed by my legs.
The other thing I should mention Re: Girl Talk is that later that night I hit up Girl Talk’s video art designer Andrew (Bad Brilliance) and I met him and the Girl Talk crew out at a hip hop club on Bourbon Street. After a while we ended up at a steampunk ball that Girl Talk’s booking agent Sam had to convince the manager of the House of Blues that it would be a good idea to let us all in. But we quickly got kicked out when Andrew got on stage and started dancing with steam punk go-go dancers who spanked him until security pulled him off. After that we ended up in the shadiest strip dive bar I have ever seen called Harem. There was a one drink minimum so Gregg bought everyone beers and when he gave them a credit card he had to fill out exhaustive credit card and leave a thumb print for identification. I am not even joking. The one stripper on stage had a dick but she did some amazing tricks for Andrew and Sam’s girlfriend. After her set Andrew got on stage and tried to do his own pole tricks. One of the strippers was yelling at him to get down from there but she was laughing so hard that it was hard to take her seriously. We finally bounced before they kicked us out and Sam’s girlfriend bought us all hot dogs. The end.
Click here to see all the pictures from the actual Girl Talk set at the 2011 Voodoo Music Experience. The pictures of Andrew dancing with steampunk go go dancers we will have to save for my Tumblr…
