Big’s Fat Tuesday: An ode to Notorius still falls short

Mark Robinson
Staff Writer

Patrons at The Camel kicked off Mardi Gras with Big’s Fat Tuesday celebration Tuesday night. The event featured DJ Mindset and Elby Brass.

Sponsored by VCU’s Student Hip-Hop Organization (SHHO), the night was meant to commemorate the 14th anniversary of the slaying of hip-hop legend, The Notorious B.I.G. Widely renowned as the greatest rapper of all time, Biggie was the face of East Coast hip-hop through the mid-’90s. His case is still unsolved.

Unfortunately, the night was more like a big fat dud.

There was no sign that a Mardi Gras party was planned; purple, green and gold were noticeably absent from the interior of the Broad Street venue.

Amateur hour on the turntables starred DJ Mindset. His sub-par scratching, which could only be rivaled by Edward Scissorhands, was hard to listen to, to say the least. Transitions evoked head-scratching, not head-nodding, and the mix was decent at best.

All that aside, his musical selection was appropriate for the night. Hip-hop throwback classics like “Juicy,” “Can I Kick it?” and “Ready or Not” cut through the mediocrity and kept the crowd satisfied.

Elby Brass’s impromptu entrance stopped the bleeding momentarily. The 14-piece group stormed from the back room and poured through the crowd, shouting emphatically, “Don’t start no shit, there won’t be no shit.”

Inevitably, the initial energy fluttered, and the remainder of the performance was strikingly pedestrian.

Aside from the intro tune, which was a cover of the Rebirth Brass Band, the music lacked the precision and attitude that the Richmond music scene is predicated on. The performer’s enthusiasm was curbed by the erratic and borderline sloppy nature of their arrangements.

Renditions of the songs “Virginia Creeper” and “Good Weather” provided big sound, albeit too big for the venue. Fourteen musicians crammed onto a stage meant for four is uncomfortable to think about, but Tuesday night proved it’s even worse to listen to.

Elby Brass’s vocals were a mix between screamed rap and call and response chants. “If I Had a Hammer” droned on like a bad 4H tune. “We’re Broke” was distinctively square and reminiscent of a pep band stand jam.

Elby Brass performs in old high school marching band uniforms; they even have a makeshift drum line. A snare and bass drummer fill the void a traditional drummer with a set would fill. Their set up is mobile so they can perform anywhere, anytime.

The concept is novel, but it seems to have resulted in an identity crisis of sorts. Elby Brass is essentially a small marching band, not, as they claim, a funk brass outfit. Calling their music “funk” is like calling Justin Bieber’s music “R&B.”

Although the event was disappointing, those in attendance did come together in honor of one of rap’s finest. The memory of the Notorious B.I.G. will live on through his music, as long as people still come together to listen to it.

2 Comments

  1. I was in The Camel that night, and the Elby Brass Band were jammin. Notorius is also spelt “Notorious”, near college graduate. Looks like the CT chose the guy that listens to Modest Mouse to write this story

  2. I sent this via email, which bounced back from every Commonwealth Times account. I sent it via Facebook, and have seen no response, so now I am posting it here. It was intended as a letter to the editor.

    Don’t Start No Shit, Won’t Be No Shit.

    Obviously, you weren’t listening, Mr. Robinson. Your story reads like the bitter tirade of an underage club goer who, deprived of the standard social lubrication, was unable to convince himself to join in the overriding sense of joy and community that, in fact, characterized our little soiree this Fat Tuesday, 2011.

    Your harsh critique of the DJ doesn’t grant you the gravitas of the consummate music reviewer, but rather underscores your pretension and insensitivity, as it is directly preceded by your correct (!) reporting that he is a member of a student organization, not an advertised professional misrepresenting himself as an adept.

    Your attack on Elby Brass furthers the terrible stench of contrived arrogance that plagues your story like half-digested keg beer drying on the sidewalks of Hell Block on any given Sunday.

    Anyone with even sophomoric powers of observation and a soapbox evangelist’s sense of revelry could see that the evening was cultivated in a spirit of celebratory indulgence. The organization of festivities was not predicated on notions of technical skill, or to showcase talent, but simply to have fun. It was a party, not a show.

    And that’s what you miss, Mr. Robinson. No mention of the 25 pounds of beads worn by the patrons, not a sentence dedicated to the ecstatic undulations of the crowd as Elby Brass bounced along to raucous covers that nobody but you appears to have taken seriously.

    My point isn’t that I disagree with all of your criticisms (even if you neglect to take into account the fact that perhaps the reason Elby Brass doesn’t quite fit RVA’s musical aesthetic is that they are from Fredericksburg), but that you missed the point of the night, which was to have a damn good time. Having been there (and sober) from beginning to end, I can safely say you are in an imperceptibly small minority of people who did not.

    If you want to make a living being an insufferably uninformed empiricist in print, I suggest that you move to someplace where the real arts, music, and journalistic communities don’t look after each other as much as we do in Richmond. We simply can’t afford to hate on each other here.

    Your criticisms are not constructive, they are unqualified attacks on an event you clearly didn’t understand. This aggression will not stand, man.

    Don’t start no shit, there won’t be no shit.

    -S. Preston Duncan,

    The Camel

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