Grand Buffet serves up a diverse audio plate

The Punk Rock and Roll show also featured Disasterpeace and D.C.-area band The?Drugstore Cowboys.

By: Dan Foreman

Posted: 9/25/07

Rappers Jarrod Weeks (a.k.a. Lord Grunge) and Jackson O'Connell-Barlow (a.k.a. Grape-A-Don) of Grand Buffet can certainly spit out an impressive swarm of rhyming vocabulary over some solid reggae/funk electric beats. But that didn't seem to be the focal point of their performance at Chomondeley's Saturday, part of a tour promoting their new album, The Haunted Fucking Gazebo.

It was difficult not to be more preoccupied with Grape-A-Don's between-song anecdotes, which were devoid of any semblance of logic. The majority of his banter was a stream of conscious blather in which he talked about an encounter with butter bear testicles, and then commented on the temperature in Chum's that night, saying; "It's hotter than Garfield's speakeasy in here!" His partner in crime, the portly Jarrod Weeks, like an embarrassed parent, juxtaposed his friend's hyperactivity by remaining silent, paying no mind to Jackson's nonsense.

The duo's jilted mannerisms changed sharply once they launched into their tunes. They were in perfect sync with one another as Jackson dished out his complex verbiage with no hesitation. Some of the songs incorporated melodic vocal choruses, which offered a reprieve from the pummeling rap style. Though most of the lyrics don't make sense to this writer, they sound impressive when laid down to a beat. One memorable lyric reads, "I was a little worse for wear when I ingested a Mongolian worm in Red Square."

In the middle of the show Jackson freestyled about Spiderman, Batman, the Vatican, Mathew Perry and ice cream. Unfortunately, as a whole, it wasn't all that clever. He ended with, "That's a freestyle from a me, me, me style to show your parents when you get your report card." Not much about this dude makes sense.

On the whole, the band was an effective crowd mover. Grand Buffet is surprisingly diverse for their genre, incorporating droning, robotic vocals that were reminiscent of Les Claypool, shouting, empowering rapping with laid back reggae chanting.

The Drugstore Cowboys, a hardcore/progressive rock band, opened the stage and proceeded to run amok around the stage and café. Their sound, which at times felt reminiscent of Rage Against The Machine, was too loose and chaotic. The drum beat was rarely entirely in sync with the screaming vocals and guitar, and the songs came off as an awkward fusion of clashing styles of rock. Sometimes songs veered to techno with their synthesized sounds, at which point the Cowboys ran wildly around and made inappropriate gestures at the audience.

Berklee student Rich Vreeland, the first to take the stage that night, played 45 minutes of electronica under the moniker Disasterpeace. He played a heavy, effects-laden electric guitar accompanied by other electric sounds courtesy of his Macbook. His ability to keep time and never lose track of the bizarre time signature of his songs was impressive, especially since it was his debut performance. The crowd seemed duly impressed with his guitar-playing skills,but the effects-drenched pieces made it unclear what and how much he was actually playing.