Serious fun with Grand Buffet

Dennis the Menace’s terrorist tendencies and the perils of the HPV vaccine aren’t exactly typical banter for a live show. But that was the subject matter Grand Buffet chose to discuss in between songs during last Thursday's show at the Statehouse, 321 E. Wylie St.

The rap duo might come off as goofballs at first, but there’s something behind their brand of hip-hop that a basement-show crowd, or any casual listener, would not expect.

Much has changed since Grand Buffet first started making music in 1996. They have produced a loyal cult following and influence in the underground hip-hop scene, but the members have remained mere observers of the commercial music industry. And as its albums have progressed throughout the years, the quintessence of the band remains the same: While they often rap about serious things, they do so in a satirical way, never taking themselves too seriously.

“Satire is the humor of the intellectual. But at the same time, we’re still doing a bunch of crazy shit,” member Jackson O’Connell-Barlow said.

While in high school together, the duo started Grand Buffet through a common interest in hip-hop. Jarrod Weeks, the group’s other member, said he became interested in rap at an early age. But he fell out of favor with it during his teenage years, as he started getting self-conscious about liking hip-hop.

“Puberty makes you do a lot of weird stuff, and it made me diss hip-hop.”

It wasn’t until he paired up with O’Connell-Barlow that Weeks regained his outward love for the genre. For O’Connell-Barlow, hearing Public Enemy changed his life. He said at that moment, the group was the most exciting music he had encountered.

“It’s comparable to the way punk was in the generation before us, ” he said.

He added that nowadays, he still seeks out the same energy and excitement in new music. Although he seems less than impressed with a lot of current music, he and Weeks both keep up with pop music.

While the band is quite aware of the sound and infrastructure of the mainstream music industry, both members expressed that they are very much not a part of it.

“We don’t have a pot in which to piss,” Weeks said.

They have full creativity in their music because a label doesn’t bind them. On the downside, they aren’t reaching an audience beyond their own loyal fan base.

Although Weeks and O’Connell-Barlow both said they would sign with a major label, they also expressed their reluctances toward the commerce of music.

O’Connell-Barlow cited Prince as an artist who suffered the repercussions of his label.
“He had carte blanche for a while after Purple Rain, and when things started trumping, he built up a new contract. Unhappy contractually, he wanted to leave, but he couldn’t,” he said.

He added that the same thing happened with other giants like George Michael and Joe Strummer.

Instead of being alienated by record labels, when O’Connell-Barlow and Weeks started Grand Buffet, their hometown’s music scene embraced them.

“Pittsburgh hadn’t been touched by the pretentious progressive music scene then,” O’Connell-Barlow said. “People were initially taken back by two dudes who showed up with a stereo.”

He said that those who looked into Grand Buffet’s music would find “a band that’s unique in their personality.”

Weeks said that to this day, Pittsburgh doesn’t have a cohesive scene.

Although the two played in Pittsburgh since 1996, they didn’t start touring until 2001. This was after the group released what Weeks calls its first official album, Sparkle Classic.

Whether or not Grand Buffet remains an under-the-radar band or the next big thing, the two Pittsburgh MCs will continue to make music. As O’Connell-Barlow said, it’s about making albums with as much energy and quality as Public Enemy once possessed. While the 30-year-old still feels like he just graduated high school, he also believes he possesses a maturity because he’s doing what he wants to do.

“If people give the time to just relax and think about what they want to do with their own lives, it could revolutionize the world.”