Singing about epileptic dogs with some 10,000+ other people is not something many would get to do on their birthday, but thanks to the shear brilliance that is Flight of the Conchords, I was lucky enough to experience this last Friday at Vector Arena (I also found out I share said birthday with lead singer Bret McKenzie, so yay me!).
The nearly-3 hour show kicked off with some crowd-warming stand-up from Arj Barker, a nice little set with a good range of material and lots of laughs from the audience, most of it I had heard before from TV appearances I had seen, but still very funny and a great lead-in for the headline act.
After a 20 minute interval, the main event arrived with Jemaine and Bret taking to the stage in silver jackets and cardboard 'helmets', diving straight into the high energy and electro sounds of Too Many Dicks (on the Dance Floor), the crowd was into it almost immediately. Despite taking time for a costume change (spinning their helmets around), the boys kept the energy and laughs coming with Robots, a look at the distant future, the year 2000 (they wrote it a while ago...)
The hits kept rolling, but being a comedy show and concert, we were also treated to some excellent between-song banter, including wild tour stories about complimentary muffins and getting stuck in a lift. This stuff was almost as funny as the songs, especially in the hands of such seasoned, and comfortable-with-each-other campaigners. Their delivery of quips, requests for the lighting to be 'more medieval' or 'more depressed', and of course pitch-perfect lyrics remind you just how incredibly clever these guys are.
I first saw FOTC in the early 00's at the Classic, where we were sitting close enough to literally touch them. This time I had to settle for a stadium with 10,000 others, but I can easily saw with no exaggeration whatsoever that this second time round was one of the funniest shows I have seen. A good mix of age-old favourites and new material kept me and the rest of the crowd laughing for 2 hours plus, doubled over a lot of the time.
Do yourself a favour and experience FOTC any way you can, be it a download of their BBC radio show, DVD of their HBO TV show, Grammy-award winning album, or a live performance if you find yourself across the ditch in Australia, where they tour until the 20th of July; looking on their site shows there are selling fast too.
All in all, not bad for two guys from little old Wellington, singing songs about rapping mammals and epileptic dogs.
After a 20 minute interval, the main event arrived with Jemaine and Bret taking to the stage in silver jackets and cardboard 'helmets', diving straight into the high energy and electro sounds of Too Many Dicks (on the Dance Floor), the crowd was into it almost immediately. Despite taking time for a costume change (spinning their helmets around), the boys kept the energy and laughs coming with Robots, a look at the distant future, the year 2000 (they wrote it a while ago...)
The hits kept rolling, but being a comedy show and concert, we were also treated to some excellent between-song banter, including wild tour stories about complimentary muffins and getting stuck in a lift. This stuff was almost as funny as the songs, especially in the hands of such seasoned, and comfortable-with-each-other campaigners. Their delivery of quips, requests for the lighting to be 'more medieval' or 'more depressed', and of course pitch-perfect lyrics remind you just how incredibly clever these guys are.
I first saw FOTC in the early 00's at the Classic, where we were sitting close enough to literally touch them. This time I had to settle for a stadium with 10,000 others, but I can easily saw with no exaggeration whatsoever that this second time round was one of the funniest shows I have seen. A good mix of age-old favourites and new material kept me and the rest of the crowd laughing for 2 hours plus, doubled over a lot of the time.
Do yourself a favour and experience FOTC any way you can, be it a download of their BBC radio show, DVD of their HBO TV show, Grammy-award winning album, or a live performance if you find yourself across the ditch in Australia, where they tour until the 20th of July; looking on their site shows there are selling fast too.
All in all, not bad for two guys from little old Wellington, singing songs about rapping mammals and epileptic dogs.
Full Set List
Too Many Dicks on the Dance Floor
Robots
The Most Beautiful Girl
Fuck on the Ceiling
Albi the Racist Dragon
Jenny
Hurt Feelings
Think About It
The Summer of 1353
Inner City Pressure
Song for Epileptic Dogs
I'm Not Crying
Bus Driver's Song
Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros
Business Time
Bowie
Demon Woman
Encore:
Back On The Road
We're Both in Love With a Sexy Lady
Sugalumps
