Pure serendipity brought Grand Buffet to play Cecilie's Coffee House this past Saturday; hitching a ride with fellow Pittsburgh acts the Modey Lemon and Hovland, Grand Buffet opened up S.C.O.P.E.'s "Pittsburgh Attacks" concert by surprise with a wry parody of stand-up humor, setting the stage for an evening of amazing music and melodrama.
The band's tagteam of Lord Grunge and Grape-A-Don then settled into a demonstration of amazing showmanship, mixing raw insult humor with angry, often improvised, alternative hip-hop. Songs such as "1000 Percent"
and "Candy Bars" startled the gathered crowd with their sparse electronic backing, curse-heavy lyrics, and Lord Grunge's repeated lunging and threats to kick one audience member's derri¸re. Following this, Lord Grunge performed microphone fellatio in one audience member's lap while Grape-A-Don became increasingly animated as the concert built to "You're on Fire" and "Double Crazy", leaping around Cecilie's, posing and singing for a camera, running in and out of the room, and serenading the white-hot bulb of a lamp. And just when events could not get more raunchy or bizarre, Grand Buffet did an impromptu
request for a song about fornicating with corpses. With an old 80s toy guitar/beatmaker and plenty of wit, the band closed their show with the improvised "Corpsef*cker", riling the crowd up and concluding with Lord Grunge smashing a beer bottle over his head. By far the most energizing, innovative, and creative band to play Colgate in a long time, Grand Buffet left the audience wondering what they had just experienced while praising whatever force sent Lord Grunge and Grape-A-Don to Hamilton. Hopefully S.C.O.P.E. will bring this peculiar and original band our way again soon.