Flight of the Conchords

Meandering. Unrehearsed. These are the words that Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie used themselves to describe their show at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center on Monday April the 6th. They may have been these things, but they make meandering very very funny.

This was the first stop on their tour, so they may very well have been a little unrehearsed. Florida because of it's dangling penile geography often is either the first or last stop in a band's tour, or not at all.

Unfortunately, we switched from HBO to Showtime last year (Dexter was the deciding factor), so many of the songs that they played were lost on us, although no less funny. Highlights included "Business Time" and "Robots". One kid two rows down from us even dressed as a Robot, with the crowd around him unsuccessfully trying to get the Conchords' attention.

Kristen Shaal (who plays Mel on the show) opened up the evening with a comedic act that will forever make me look at kitchenware in a new light. She is only performing with the Conchords for part of the tour, so I considered it a treat that we got to see her act.

Sure enough, videos from the evening were posted on youtube mere hours later. The "unique" experience that a few thousand persons share can now me shared by geeks all over the world.

What ultimately marred the show was not their meandering performance, but the performance of the audience. It began between lulls in the songs as people in the crowd started yelling out song requests or other pithy statements ("I love Australia!"). The Conchords handled this well at first, but as the night wore on and the alcohol fueled crowd gained confidence, the Conchords had a harder time shutting the obnoxiousness down and seemed annoyed. Mob mentality is a funny thing...I even found myself wanting to scream out "Not as Good!", a reference to the fact that Jemaine had a brief stint on a series of Outback Steakhouse commercials. I held my tongue. It was the Performing Arts Center, after all. Would you shout "burn the witch" during a performance of Wicked?

I felt weird going there dressed in jeans.