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Dinner at the Thompsons - Live at Fat Beats
As promised, this past Saturday I made the trek out to the DUMBO section of Brooklyn to visit the Fat Beats Pop-Up Store at their distribution warehouse and see Has-Lo perform. It's quite a hike to get from Jersey to BK, but it was definitely worth it as a whole bunch of people showed up: Zilla Rocca, Has-Lo, My Man Shafe, Chris Brown aka He's Hers, Small Pro, Nasa from Uncommon Records, Edan, Doc Zeus from Passion of the Weiss, and the Brown Bag AllStars among others. I'll go into more detail on the show once I get the footage of Has-Lo up on youtube, but in the meantime I wanted to write about one of the other groups that performed, a neo soul duo called Dinner at the Thompsons.
I'd never heard of them before, but the group's apparently had some bit of success over in Europe. The lead singer is Lucille Tee, out of California, and she's backed by a French producer going by the name Fablive. Now as most of the people in the crowd had no idea who they were, when the Thompsons began setting up on stage there was some question as to whether they were there to perform or just to set up the equipment for the next act. Fablive, a rather large man who appeared to be in his mid 40's, seemed particularly out of place. Shafe even remarked that Fablive was likely Lucille's father, playing the role of her legal guardian while she was out on the road. As he hooked up his MPC and began practicing his routine, however, it became clear that he was going to be a prominent part of the show.
The audience at Fat Beats wasn't too big - about 40 people - but Fablive put as much effort into the performance as if he were in front of a sold out crowd at Summer Jam. It's hard to get the full effect from a few youtube clips, but visually it might best be described as a cross between Chris Farley's Man Down By the River and Arab Muzik. I can't front though, the man stole the show. Not only did he murder his MPC while playing all of the beats live, he did backup vocals the entire time and threw in random shout outs to the crowd. This was made all the more impressive when I attempted to speak to him after the show and discovered that he didn't speak a lick of English.
Most of the videos I recorded during the Thompsons' performance weren't great, but thankfully Tone Riggz got some good footage:
Dinner at the Thompsons - Rise Up (Live at Fat Beats)
And here's one of their official videos, to get a sense of what their actual album (which you can cop here) sounds like:
Dinner at the Thompsons featuring Guilty Simpson - Rice 'n Beans
Finally, I should also mention that the Brown Bag All Stars put on a rather entertaining show as well. I have to admit I'd never really checked for their music prior to seeing them at Fat Beats, but they definitely inspired me to keep an eye out for them in the future. Here's one of the songs from their performance, with video again from Tone Riggz:
The Brown Bag All Stars - Beerz (Live At Fat Beats)
5/23/2011 6:30:00 PM posted by Fresh