[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JBAxkZun3s[/youtube] Tonight, Girl Talk – Pittsburgh’s Gregg Gillis – starts a two-night stand at the House of Blues. This video, “Play Your Part (Pt. 1),” demonstrates the Girl Talk thing well: Take classic rock, pop and soul hits and give them arena-sized beats and hip-hop vocalists. Each album contains hundreds of samples, all used without permission. To avoid the charge that he’s profiting from other people’s work, he gives his music away. When his recent All Day was made available, the online demand was so intense that it jammed up the Illegal-art.net website.

Here are excerpts from a 2008 interview OffBeat conducted with Gregg Gillis.