Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Flight of the Conchords
Taken straight from their official website. These dudes are totally awesome. We don't have the airing in SA & me; well through my most trusted source of vision; I was hooked up & got hooked...Tit bit facts about the most dumbest- most briliant duo:
• Bret and Jemaine first met in 1996 at Victoria University Wellington.
• They were both acting in a University Drama Club production called Body Play. Bret and Jemaine were put in a group of five men to create a short theatrical piece about male body issues.
• Melbourne International Comedy Festival
• Unfortunately the Australians didn’t appreciate the show like they had in New Zealand and the season was cancelled after one week.
• In 1998 Bret and Jemaine decided to start a band. With a combined knowledge of three chords on the guitar they set about jamming out. The first song was Foux Du FaFa, (two chords) and they called themselves Moustache. The four piece band had Bret on casio-tone, Jemaine on guitar, and their friends Toby Laing and Tim Jaray on trumpet and double bass. They performed their one song at the Wellington Fringe Festival late night club and members of the audience were said to have been “mildly impressed” by the act.
After the encouraging feedback the pair continued to write songs in their living room, subjecting their six flatmates to relentless three chord jams. After several weeks they knew four chords and Jemaine got them a gig to perform at the Thursday night Comedy Club. On the afternoon of the gig they realised they needed a band name. The initial list of names included Roxygen Supply, Albatrocity, and Tanfastic. But the final name was chanced upon in a series of events that went something like this: Jemaine went to the bathroom and noticed the flat toilet was called the Concorde, he returned from the bathroom to suggest the name Conchord, and Bret said “What about Flight of the Conchords”, and Jemaine said “okay”, and Bret said “okay “, and Jemaine said “okay then” and Bret said “We should go to the gig, we’re late
• By 2000 they had written a dozen songs and decided to escape the New Zealand winter and perform at the Canadian Fringe Festival
• In 2002 they decided to again escape the New Zealand winter. This time travelling to Scotland to perform in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Their venue was an underground tunnel called The Cave. When it rained, which was most days in Edinburgh, the ceiling dripped onto the audience and a dank slime crept down the stone walls. Apparently in the 17th century the room had been used to quarantine plague victims. They performed every night for the month of August and won the Mervyn Stutter Spirit of the Fringe Award. By the time the left they had dozens of fans, and severe chest infections.
• They returned to Edinburgh in 2003 and again performed in the same subterranean grotto. The show had developed to include a xylophone and a dancing toy flower. Their new songs included If You’re Into it, Bret You’ve Got It Goin’ On, Sexy Flower, and Hiphopopotamus vs. The Rhymenocerous.
• In 2004 they returned to Edinburgh this time performing above ground. The sell out show included the songs Jenny, Business Time, Stana and an unfinished love song called The Scientist and the French Teacher.
• From their success in Edinburgh the BBC Light Entertainment Department commissioned the band to make a six part radio series. Bret and Jemaine moved to London in 2005 and spent five months writing and recording a mockumentary about the lives of a fictional version of themselves. The show was the first time they collaborated with NZ comedian Rhys Darby who played the character Brian Nesbitt, the fictional band’s manager.
• Later that year Bret and Jemaine received an invitation to perform at the Aspen Comedy Festival, in Colorado, USA. Against tradition they left New Zealand’s summer to go to the northern hemisphere’s winter and were shocked by the snow when they stepped off the plane in t shirts and jandles. The HBO executives liked their act and asked them to film a half hour performance for a stand-up comedy show called One Night Stand.
• Over the next four years they made a TV pilot, a sitcom, released an EP and a full length album, toured North America, made a sandwich, filmed a second season of the sitcom, toured North America again, released a second album, and went back to New Zealand.
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