Flight of the Conchords: Caricatures of themselves

By Joe Brown

Friday, May 22, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Dangling precariously from the lowest rung of the music industry ladder, Flight of the Conchords — “New Zealand’s fourth most famous folk parody duo” — can’t draw even 10 people to a free open mike night. But here they are, packing the Joint at the Hard Rock with comedy nerds on Saturday.

1. Ground control to HBO

Touring the U.S. on the strength of the cult comedy “Flight of the Conchords,” which just finished its second season on HBO, “Conchords” mines the comedy of awkwardness pioneered by Larry David, Ricky Gervais and Jack Black, with an antipodean-innocents-abroad spin. Monotoned beyond deadpan, Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement play themselves as they struggle to break into the music biz in Manhattan, bickering and horrifying single women. Each episode is highlighted by one of their lo-fi, intentionally semi-competent videos, which salute and spoof artists and musical genres (David Bowie and Pet Shop Boys and hip-hop have received the Conchords treatment); the videos, dense-packed with pop culture references, are traded online like baseball cards.

2. Prepare for takeoff

The HBO show broke the Conchords worldwide, but McKenzie and Clement have been performing together since the late 1990s, when they dropped out of Victoria University in Wellington to make a go of it on the town’s comedy circuit — which consisted of one bar with a comedy night every Thursday. “We played every week and there were about five people who were crazy about us,” Clement recently told the British magazine The Word. “It was like a miniature version of our show. They were like (obsessed fan-stalker) Mel and they’d scream when we came on. In fact, a lot of the stories in the show stem from then and the five years after that when we were touring.”

3. In-flight entertainment

Before the HBO show, the Conchords’ travails were chronicled in a 2005 mockumentary series on BBC Radio 2, which is available as a U.K. import in a three-CD set. Recorded in London on a minidisc recorder, the mostly improvised series gives a mind’s-eye view of the band’s quietly riotous prehistory, including the archetypal moment when band manager Murray (he’s named Bryan in the radio series) tries to land their original (and unsolicited) song “Frodo (Don’t Wear the Ring)” on the soundtrack of fellow Kiwi Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy:

Murray: “The guys wrote a song for Peter Jackson, and we were all quite excited about it.”

Jemaine: “So we recorded it semiprofessionally, and we sent the Cassingle to the director with a note saying ‘Hello, Peter Jackson, it’s Bret and Jemaine here, from next door. We heard you’re doing a movie about the wizard and the Oompa-Loompas, and here’s a theme song we’ve written for it. Put it in your movie.’ ”

Bret: “Next thing, we go to the premiere ...”

Jemaine: “It wasn’t the premiere, Bret. It was the first half-price Tuesday after the premiere.”

Bret: “... We were waiting for our song, and by the time the credits ran at the very end, we knew that they hadn’t used it.”

Murray: “I got the letter in the mail: ‘Dear Mr. Nesbitt ... Unfortunately we have decided to go with an internationally renowned act from overseas ... For future reference, film soundtracks need to be submitted before the release of the film. Good on ya, mate, Peter Jackson.’ ... That’s quite positive.”

4. The third Conchord

Every comedy nerd has his own favorite Conchord, but for a distinct subset of viewers, it’s all about Murray, the band’s valiantly hapless, doggedly incompetent manager, played by stand-up comic Rhys Darby. Murray moments: boosting New Zealand (“like Scotland, but further”), cold-calling Neil Finn (“New Zealand’s very own Paul McCartney”) for advice on removing an arrow from Bret’s shoulder, booking the pair into yet another hopeless gig, and calling an emergency band meeting (Brett? “Present.” Jemaine? “Present.” Murray? “Present.”) Darby has been part of the act since meeting the duo at the 2003 Edinburgh Fringe Festival: He did their fliers and McKenzie did the lighting for Darby’s show. His live stand-up comedy DVD will be available in the United States this summer.

5. Smooth landing

We’re ahead of England in Conchordance: The U.K. just started airing the hotly anticipated (by comedy nerds) second season. By their own account, the guys barely survived the first one. “When I heard we got the first series I couldn’t sleep for three nights. I thought we couldn’t do it,” Clement told The Word. “Halfway through the first series they asked if we’d do the second one and Bret had heart palpitations.” The duo had to write 20 songs in six months.

Conchords fans will leave the Hard Rock show with something truly priceless: Described on their Sub Pop Web site as “like a gift for your torso,” the Conchords tour T-shirt is sure to be one of the most coveted (by comedy nerds) collectibles of the year.