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Grand Buffet
Cigarette Beach
Visit their website
brought to you by Egg Boy

So check this out. Egg Boy used to be a music writer for an alterna-mag in Pennsylvania. Every local band with enough cash and (usually no) talent deciding to make a CD sent them to me in hopes of swinging by my massive, writerboy wonder balls and getting some press. Now, 95% of this schwag (as media people call free product) inevitably became coasters at my raging parties, with the occasional jewel case recycled for one of my Public Enemy CD cases that would inevitably get crushed in my red Chevy Baretta after a late night of drinking and Taco Bell drive thru. Yeah I had a portable CD player with a cassette adapter. You wanna make something of it?

But I digress.

One day I walked into the psuedo-hip offices of said newspaper to maybe bitch about some sentence my editor had changed in one of my awesome articles (she loved Matchbox 20: it was a doomed relationship from the start) or whatever, and lo and behold, there on the schwag table sat a bright red CD with the yellow words GRAND BUFFET emblazoned upon it.

It was love at first sight.

Fast-forward six years later. Grand Buffet are exactly where they were when I first met: on the brink of world domination. They have my eternal love for their unique blend of west-coast (PA) hip-hop and Turkish bathhouse-inspired lyrics.

So yeah, I love these guys, and yeah, this review is way biased, but the truth is they can do no wrong, even with this, their forth (I think) release. Nate Kukla, aka Mr Pennsylvania, aka Grape-a-don, aka whatever the hell his name is today, sure does make a strong argument for overhauling the education system in the United States…and using Grand Buffet’s lyrics as the curriculum.

Simple and concise beats underlie Kukla’s mental expounding, adding extra weight to a phrase as banal as ‘Start Macho, stay macho.’ Name-dropping Peter Gabriel (GOOD period PG), Batman, Mike n Ike, Camel Lights…is there any aspect of white trash culture the sponge of Kukla’s brain has not re-appropriated as a smart rhyme? A line like ‘My shirts promote band names, not brand names’ (‘Barbeque Gloves’) shows the underground torch Grand Buffet has carried since their inception, staying on the road and touring non-stop for months on end.

Its $10 and they mail it to ya in like 3 days. You should go to their website and buy one. Now. Don’t be a punk.

Pros: Grand Buffet is the real Slim Shady, and they came first.
Cons: None.
Useful for: Mental enemas, rash relief, muscle soreness.

Metric
Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?
Goldfrapp
Black Cherry
Fleetwood Mac
Say You Will
DJ Dara
Breakbeat Science Exercise 01
The 88
Kind of Light
The Kills
Black Rooster EP
The Libertines
Up the Bracket
Jettatura
Squadra Fantasma
Tone
Ambient Metals
The Streets
Original Pirate Material
Grand Buffet
Cigarette Beach
Roni Size
Touching Down
Rolling Stones
40 Licks
Brendan Benson
Lapalco
Anticon
Music for the
Advancement
of Hip-Hop