Howard Theatre "Who's Got Next"

By Von Black

Sunday Sept 9, 2013 - Washington, DC

Since Chuck Brown pioneered what we have come to know as Go-Go music, there has been a pool of bands vying for stage supremacy. Everybody wants to be the band running the band circuit. It has always been Trouble Funk, Rare Essence, and E.U. standing as Go-Go Mountains in the shadows of Chuck Brown and the various bands that have played behind him. Sometimes, even Chuck had been poised to re-emerge from the shadows of another band that was able to shift the plates of the landscape making them larger mountains than he was, much like Wisdom Speeks is doing right now when compared to the likes of Familiar Faces, Da Mixx Band, VYBE and Suttle Thoughts. However, even with Chuck Brown's passing, he is still the mark of excellence when it comes to the Go-Go sound, live performances, and original hits that seemed to have always revived a genre that is synonymous with Washington D.C.

If you say "rap", New York is no longer the first place that comes to mind, but when you say go-go, no matter where you are on the planet, only D.C. comes to mind. With that said, one of the aforementioned bands will have to step their game up to the level of Chuck Brown in order to approach his accomplishments and to fill the global void created with the passing of the great performer.

Several industry insiders are saying, not only will one of these bands eclipse Chuck's accomplishments, but the production behind this band's movement is poised to utterly obliterate his stranglehold grip on the sound he created. No one will dare say who could do such a thing, and we're merely reporting the opinions of others, but if such a notion should manifest itself as a reality, we will be the first to jump out there and put it on the record. More on that later.

For now, let's talk about the bands we haven't mentioned that are striving to be worthy of discussion in such a conversation. Junk Yard and Backyard are in a totally different league. They have never seemed to fit into Chuck Brown's lane, but rather the "Street King's" lane. Neither band will ever go mainstream; not that they are incapable, but their styles won't allow them to. That's like Pastor Troy trying to be like Nelly. Won't happen. On the other hand, there were 10 bands that came together on Sunday night at the Howard Theatre competing for $3,000 and the right to be considered the "Next" band to headline the big stage on the Go-Go scene.

It was a battle of the bands, and the judges were Bugs, Buggy, DJ Big John, Stomp Dog, Slick Daddy Rick, and Rapper Dude. Maximum points were 300, and there were at least five bands that made a really strong case for being the "Next" band on the block to contend with.

Though they didn't win, the Mental Attraction Band (MAB) featuring Big BJ set the bar so high that, according to Nico at GoGoRadio.com, no other band could reach it in terms of putting on a show. "If the judges were judging from a showmanship perspective, MAB would have won hands down," says the go-gologist. The band took the stage, but the lead rapper was nowhere to be found. The other rappers haggled with each other over who would take the lead, when all of the sudden, like a bird, like a plane, it was BJ! in the crowd with a wireless mic. And, he ripped it!!

To say what MAB actually did would be inappropriate at this juncture, so we'll put it like this... They foul, flarn, filth the other bands up with their performance. We believe the only reason they didn't get a 300 score was because BJ marred the whole event by breaking the Howard Theatre's very expensive mic by dropping it to the floor when he finished torching it. That blunder has earned him an honorable mention in the 'Nonsense Segment' on our Facebook page.

ALL4U was another band that put on a show with one of their frontline's men giving the crowd what they wanted. NazzDat from the Club House on Go-GoRadio.com chimed in saying, "Kennan KO really put on a performance." Everybody agrees that he was awesome, while the band put the crank in crank and was a joy to listen to. They weren’t favored to win, but their performance was talked about a great deal in the aftermath. Good job ALL4U.

We caught up with Joc Vaughan of Wisdom Speeks Band & Show and Wisdom Speeks himself and found out from the two strong supporters of the grind circuit which band would be the band to look out for. Wisdom Speeks (Whop) warned, "New Impressions will be the band to watch out for in about a year. Just look at what they did tonight. They made a great impression." Joc echoed that sentiment when he made the analogy, "Boys to Men meets the 'bounce beat." NazzDat added, "They did their thing and made me get the chills." A couple of men repeated that but asked us to keep that off the record. Well, our writer got the chills himself, so let’s put it out there, New Impression's effect doesn't discriminate. Anybody can get it!..The chills that is. And, Clayton Wike of WikeWorld.com said, "This band might be next. They have no egos in the way. And they crank!"

Finally, we are going to turn our attention to the two bands that shared the prize and the crown. Dynasty Band's presentation, the uniforms, the overwhelming number of performers, and the amazing party that they put on had just about everybody in the Howard Theatre dancing. Even the judges were out of their seats partying. Wisdom Speeks applauded them by saying, "I'm proud to see their creativity. I really enjoyed their performance, however I did notice that the band missed a couple of back to back cues, but overall, they were well rehearsed and booty rockin'."

The other band that people are still talking about is PrimeTime. They came out with a 'Big Boy' intro. Their energy was off the Richter, exploding with an original sound that rivals Rare Essence at their best. We couldn't find anyone who could justify why they shouldn't have gotten a perfect score, but the bottomline is they didn't. So, Prime Time and Dynasty Band are it. We'll have to track their movement from here on out. Who knows, we may see one of them on one of our stages soon. Stay tuned.

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