Recently we discovered an HBO series at our local indie video store: Flight of the Conchords, a series born of the comedy-music duo of the same name. (They bill themselves as “Formerly New Zealand’s fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo”.)
The show builds on their great stage act by using their satirical songs (mostly) in musical fantasies which occur as part of their every-day life. Such as when Jemaine falls asleep at the laundromat and sings It’s Business Time.
Some other favourites:
- Inner City Pressure – Pet Shop Boys style
- “The Humans are Dead” wherein they take on robotic personas from the distant future (earlier live performance or a different version from the show) includes such gems as a binary solo and the chorus “We used poisonous gasses, and poisoned their asses”.
- Foux Da Fa Fa – a ’60′s French fantasy inspired by the girl at the pâtisserie.
I was pretty well hooked from the first episode where Jemaine and Brett sing a song of the broken-hearted, protesting “I’m not cryin’” (they’d been cutting onions making lasagna for one). The best bit from that song was this:
I’m sittin’ at this table called love
Starin’ down at the irony of life.
How come we’ve reached this fork in the road
yet it cuts like a knife?
Ah, sweet ironic cutlery.