The buzz around Flight of the Conchords is huge, but that frenzy doesn’t follow the band when it hits the road for real.
On their HBO series, New Zealanders Jemaine Clement (glasses) and Bret McKenzie (no glasses) play a novelty pop-music team striving to make it big — or medium, or small — on the New York scene, and they muddle through performances at tiny clubs and airport lounges. In real life they are big enough that their shows sell out almost immediately (their Wednesday show at Chicago Theatre sold out in about 15 minutes), yet small enough that they can inspire ritualistic loyalty.
When “Flight of the Conchords” was first shown on HBO last summer, it was a modest hit, infrequently drawing more than 1 million viewers an episode. In a post-“Sopranos,” post-“Sex and the City” era, however, the hip but little-seen show delivered badly needed buzz for the cable channel. “Flight” was renewed for a second season, though no date has been set. Similarly, the band’s new album, also titled “Flight of the Conchords”, sold 52,000 copies in its first week when it was released last month, according to Nielsen SoundScan. But measured by the ever-shrinking yardstick of the music industry, that was enough; “Flight of the Conchords” made its debut at No. 3 on the Billboard chart.
Though most of their music was created for the stage show, the songs come across more vividly on the HBO series, where they provide the soundtracks for videos and fantasy sequences. (It’s hard to hear “The Prince of Parties” without thinking of the “Magical Mystery Tour”-style LSD trip that it accompanied on the TV show.)
Nothing makes Flight of the Conchords more flustered than the opposite sex. When, in songs like “Ladies of the World,” they drool over all manner of women — Caribbean, Namibian, amphibian — the facetiousness is obvious. Their outlook on male-female relations is more accurately reflected in the slow jam “Business Time,” in which sex is merely something to do on a Wednesday, when there’s nothing good on TV.
