Polish Hill resident Gregg Gillis is a dj, but not the kind that just plays songs.  Instead, he takes recorded fragments of popular songs and recombines them into multi-layered compositions.  This sort of musical sampling and homage is sometimes known as mash-ups, and it’s one of the newest ways in which music is being made.  Performing as Girl Talk, Gregg is known and admired around the world.

Gregg is on tour much of the time, but he’s strongly identified with this neighborhood.  A California writer covering the acts at Coachella, an influential music festival in the desert outside of Los Angeles, writes about Gregg and recalls her own student days in Pittsburgh.  The article is as much an appreciation of Polish Hill as it is of Gregg’s work.