Unexpectedly three women stormed the stage demanding they could do a better job themselves. Their song about Bowie in Space was heard as an unrecognisable rendition of Bowie’s Space Oddity. Unfortunately the inferior sound system meant the lyrics were incomprehensible and Bret and Jemaine were mistaken for a bad covers band. They performed in the corner of the bar as the cricket club finished their turkey dinner. One such gig was for a Wellington cricket club christmas function. They continued to perform at the Wellington Thursday night comedy club, and also did a small number of corporate functions.
By the time the left they had dozens of fans, and severe chest infections. They performed every night for the month of August and won the Mervyn Stutter Spirit of the Fringe Award. Apparently in the 17th century the room had been used to quarantine plague victims. When it rained, which was most days in Edinburgh, the ceiling dripped onto the audience and a dank slime crept down the stone walls. Their venue was an underground tunnel called The Cave. This time traveling to Scotland to perform in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. In 2002 they decided to again escape the New Zealand winter. It wasn’t until the lights came up at the end of the gig that they realised the woman had snuck out of the room during the performance and they’d been playing to an audience of none.
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She had accidentally passed by the venue on her way home and had agreed to watch the show when Bret and Jemaine offered her a free ticket. Their smallest audience was just one woman. The obscurity of the venue and the general disinterest in musical comedy meant the Conchords had trouble getting an audience and had to cancel many shows.
As they arrived at the venue the only sign that it was a theatre was a guy with a can of red paint writing the words ‘The Cavern’ across the garage door. The theatre was an abandoned basement hidden away on an alley off a back street, off of another back street. The Calgary show was a success, mostly based on the fact that the Friday and Saturday night crowds sold out because the audience thought they were going to a different show. These early songs included Bowie’s in Space, Petrov, Yelyena and Me, Rock Beat, Lullaby, Albi the Racist Dragon, Leggy Blonde, The Washing Song, and Bus Driver.īy 2000 they had written a dozen songs and decided to escape the New Zealand winter and perform at the Canadian Fringe Festival. Propelled on by the success of the gig, and the lack of other work in the city the band continued to perform every second Thursday for the next two years. Despite their performance anxiety the crowd of eleven people enjoyed their gig and were heard clapping and talking amongst themselves. Bret and Jemaine were so nervous they couldn’t speak between songs. That night was their first performance as Flight of the Conchords.
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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”.
The initial list of names included Roxygen Supply, Albatrocity, and Tanfastic. On the afternoon of the gig they realised they needed a band name. After several weeks they knew four chords and Jemaine got them a gig to perform at the Thursday night Comedy Club. 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.Īfter the encouraging feedback the pair continued to write songs in their living room, subjecting their six flatmates to relentless three chord jams. 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.
The first song was Foux Du FaFa, (two chords) and they called themselves Moustache. With a combined knowledge of three chords on the guitar they set about jamming out. In 1998 Bret and Jemaine decided to start a band. Unfortunately the Australians didn’t appreciate the show like they had in New Zealand and the season was cancelled after one week. The group couldn’t believe they were being paid to perform and Bret blew his entire first pay cheque on a pair of leather pants. They flew to Australia for a one month season at a Melbourne’s comedy club called The Last Laugh. They performed to sell out audiences in Wellington and Auckland, and were then invited to perform at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. From that short vignette the group of five developed another pseudo nude show called So, You’re A Man.