Lucy Pearl Concert
The Garage in Dupont Circle

QUICK HITS:

Admission: $20 a ticket
Attitude Scale: 4.0 - A LOT of love in this place, but someone did try to boot my white friend out of V.I.P. - What's THAT all about?
Atmosphere: Smooth -- Put Raphael and Ali together and you don't expect anything else
Dress Code: None for tonight, but everyone was looking nice, especially me :)
Music: R & B --- with instruments!!!
Necessities: Patience, they were like 90 minutes late
Song of the night: Mr. Saadiq's solo rendition of "Anniversary" made all the ladies swoon...
Quintessential moment of the night: Toss up between Ali Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest not having anything to do but play the bongos all night or having a P.Y.T. buy me drinks all night on her 45 year old boyfriend's tab... (I thought he was her father...or AT LEAST her elderly uncle...)

Those in search of a good, mellow time got exactly what they were looking for in the Lucy Pearl Concert at the Garage in Northwest D.C. Held in late-May on a Wednesday night, the new group still managed to fill two shows on the strength of merely one new single.

The new age Rhythm and Blues group consists primarily of three members:
Dawn Robinson, formerly of the diva group En Vogue
Raphael Saadiq, formerly of the R & B group Tony Toni Tone!
Ali Muhammad, formerly of the hip hop group A Tribe Called Quest
At first glance this would just seem to be a collection of failed solo acts, just trying to fleece the remaining cash out of their once prominent but now fledgling careers.... You wouldn't be entirely wrong in thinking this, but you'd be missing the point if you focused solely on it.

These three individuals have actually used their new found musical freedom to form a union that seems determined to bring Rhythm and Blues back to it's soulful origin. Not content with following the pattern of most radio groups, the new material that Lucy Pearl unveiled seemed to concentrate on material a little deeper than their popular single, "Dance Tonight," much to the delight of the mature crowd. However, as to be expected of a new group, the majority of the night was comprised of a medley of "hits" from their former, more established groups, TTT and En Vogue. They even threw in a little of "Award Tour" (which the crowd went crazy for) for the headz there to check out the former Tribe member. And the headz included, Lenny Kravitz (man, he's short), Mike Tyson (man, he's ruff), and the long lost fourth member of Tribe, Jarobi.

All in all, a very cool night -- expect for when Ms. Robinson blew right by me without showing any love...
Me - "Hey Dawn, got anything to say to Paradox from Cyberkrib?"
Dawn - " " Oh, that one hurts...