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Flight of the Conchords, New Zealand’s self-proclaimed fourth-most-popular-folk-comedy-duo, completely tore up the packed crowd at Massey Hall on Tuesday night. And then they played some songs.

The band, made up of guitarist Jemaine Clement and “other-guitarist” Bret McKenzie, are in town promoting their music, and their HBO television show, aptly called Flight of the Conchords. The band brought along Nigel, purportedly “the only member of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra”, to play additional instruments (ie: cello and bongo drums) on some of their songs, as well as Eugene Mirman, who plays Bret and Jemaine’s landlord on the show.

Mirman, who apparently also does stand-up comedy, was there to warm up the crowd. Turns out he’s actually pretty hilarious in his own right, and before the night was out many audience members were walking away with one of the “I Hate You” postcards he was giving out for them to sign and send to the airline company that lost his luggage.

After a very brief pause, the Conchords took the stage. The crowd burst into wild applause when the lights went up to reveal Bret and Jemaine were wearing silver robot suits and cardboard-box robot heads. But instead of launching into “Robots” instead performed an energetic version of “Too Many Dicks”, which they claimed had its origins in a Vancouver club.

Comedy was also provided by one audience member in particular, who I am dubbing “Toronto-Mel”. For those who don’t know, Mel, played by Kristen Schaal, is the Conchords #1 (and only) fan, and personal stalker. Anyway, Toronto-Mel had secured a seat in the front row, and kept throwing small items onto the stage when the band would play certain songs. Like toothbrushes during “Business Time”, and an eye-patch for Bret to wear when the band launched into “Bowie”. Needless to say, the band was a little put off by her attentions, and would stop playing when she threw something new onto the stage to examine it.

Pseudo-stalkers aside, the Conchords had a little too much fun with their audience… and the audience had too much fun with them. Jemaine responded to post-song heckles with dismissive hand gestures and “Nope. Not worth our time. Come on, try another one.” In retaliation, the band took a jab at the Canadian accent (”You want us to play what? Boo-si-nuss time?”), and when Bret asked the audience to help him sing the chorus for “Carol Brown”, ad-libbed “No wonder this is the country of Celine Dion”.

Otherwise, the band played a 90-minute set with much the same quirky, bumbling charm they project on their show, at times a bit too convincingly. Or maybe they are just really good actors. Largely, they performed new material from the TV show’s second season, but they also brought out a few classic Conchords tunes, like “Jenny” and “Albi” (Toronto-Mel threw jellybeans onstage for that one).

The show’s four-song encore ended with a few more classic Conchords songs, “Foux du Fafa” and “Think about It”, where Bret and Jemaine had a chance to show off their hilarious improvisational skills. Somehow, this led to Jemaine singing “Aids Aids Aids” as the last song drew to a close with the audience almost rolling on the floor from laughing so hard. It was a unusual conclusion to an unusually ridiculous night.

The Conchords will be at Massey Hall again tonight. They then move on to do another 15 shows in the States throughout May, with one more Canadian stop in Vancouver on May 10th at the Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts.

Tags: bret mckenzie, eugene mirman, flight of the conchords, jemaine clement

Posted on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 at 5:41 pm by Jessica M and is filed under Blog, Concerts & Events.

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