You know that scene in Jesus Christ Superstar where the lepers and and the infirm are pushing towards Jesus and he eventually flips out? That’s kind of it was like being in the audience of Girl Talk’s show on Friday. Hundreds of underage hipsters were surging towards the stage as soon as Girl Talk’s intro came on the speaker, hoping to either jump on stage with Gregg or catch a high-five from him.

But though it might have seemed odd at the time — why push forward for a show that’s got little visuals to offer besides a guy at a laptop? — the crowd’s excitement was due to one impossible-to-overlook fact: Girl Talk is the best there is at what he does. And boy does that “not a DJ” know how to work a crowd…

Girl Talk does a better job of keeping his set fresh than most DJs I know. Sure, he’s drawing from the same ever-expanding pool of samples on his laptop, but some of his samples are brand-new. Of course we got the “Say it Ain’t So”/”A Milli” mashup that he started doing when Da Carter III was fresh; but we also got a bit of new Kanye from the album that isn’t out yet.

And, as he told me in the interview I did with him prior to the show, Gregg is trying to keep his live show fresh. Whereas in the old days he had a few backup dancers doing synchronized moves — something that’s moot today, considering the dance-fest that happens on stage — he had two friends dressed in costumes shooting toilet paper guns and confetti. It was a small gesture among a huge show, but it was still met with cheers.