March 6 - Evanston, IL (Northwestern University, Cahn Auditorium)

Flight of the Conchords to appear in March
Sara Peck

Issue date: 2/19/08

New Zealand comedy duo Flight of the Conchords will land at Northwestern on March 6 to perform their unique brand of folk rock, A&O Productions announced Monday.

"The buzz about 'Flight of the Conchords' is so current,"said Weinberg junior and former Daily staffer Diana Richter. "It's most important that the show does well and is popular."

Flight of the Conchords will perform on March 6 at 8 p.m. in Cahn Auditorium.

Long lines at the Norris University Center Box Office and ticket scalping motivated A&O board members to impose limitations on the number of tickets each student can purchase. Under the new policy, each student can present one WildCARD to buy four tickets instead of the eight tickets allowed in the past.

"After B.J. Novak tickets sold out so quickly, we decided to reexamine our policy,"said SESP senior and A&O Chairman Alex White. "It's never been an issue in the past because people wouldn't buy eight (tickets). We wanted to reduce scalping but at the same time, not make everyone have to wait in line for tickets."

Richter, A&O director of speakers and special events, called the decision to bring Flight of the Conchords a "natural progression,"after their HBO show's recent Emmy win and the band's growing popularity among NU students.

The concert's proximity to Reading Week means Flight of the Conchords will be a welcome break for students, White said.

"It's a night at the end of Winter Quarter, when students might be stressed out," White said.

Richter added that A&O had been in talks with the band since October and that Flight of the Conchords was their first choice on a list of hundreds of possible acts. She said it was "
rare" for top choices to come to campus.

"We lucked out because they originally were going to stay in New Zealand," Richter said.

Northwestern sketch comedy group Mee-Ow will perform prior to the show.

"We thought it would be a nice combination," Richter said. "We wanted to get students involved other than just sitting in the audience."

Weinberg junior Zach Kahn, director of alumni speakers, said A&O also plans to bring an alumni speaker in the spring. They declined to release his or her name. The Spring Ball is also on the calendar for April 10, though the performer's name has not yet been confirmed.

"You'll have to come to find out," Kahn said.

Amily wrote:Students at Northwestern University will be seeing the Conchords perform a sell out gig on March 6. The gig sold out in 45 minutes.

Not to worry though because there is supposedly another one lined up.

[size=133:f1fgmxqg]Flight of the Conchords wowed a packed house at Cahn Auditorium on Thursday night

[size=100:f1fgmxqg]The New Zealand folk/parody duo packed the 1,011-seat auditorium, which took only 45 minutes to sell out. Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement spent the night playing songs from their eponymous HBO show and the Grammy-winning EP The Distant Future, and engaging the crowd with witty banter in the downtime between songs.The night began with improv and sketch comedy group Mee-Ow. Warming up the crowd with a sketch on diversity and games like “World’s Worst”, Mee-Ow provided a hilarious and succinct opener to the show.

Kristen Schaal took the stage next. A Northwestern alumna, Schaal received tremendous applause from the crowd as she walked sheepishly up to the microphone. She spent most of her set lampooning her time at Northwestern;
she told the crowd about being the only sober person during Dillo Day and getting a “D” on a senior performance studies assignment titled “Anne Boleyn on Fire.”

Schaal weaved her stand-up between reenacted sketches and performances from her Northwestern days, often with special guests;
Bret and Jemaine joined in on her sketch “Cartwheels and Somersaults,” and she staged a fake wedding proposal with a Northwestern alum she claimed to have met and fell in love with at the Norris information desk.

While the Conchords hit fan favorites like “Business Time,” “The Most Beautiful Girl In the Room,” and “The Hiphopotamus vs. The Rhymenoceros,” there was an unfortunate flubbed lyric in “Bret, You’ve Got It Going On,” where Jemaine looked to the audience for help.

Their set was a study in informality, with the band adjusting their microphones and monitors, riffing on the audience’s heckling, and yelling to the person manning the lights to request “sad lights” for the more somber songs. They played a few brief excerpts of songs they said were part of their new material, and dropped various hints about their new season of episodes. There was even a tease of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy,” soon played over the Conchords’ “Mutha Uckas.”

To open up their song “Think About It,” a song about musical activism, Jemaine said, “Basically anything that Bono’s into. If Bono’s into it, then we’re right there with him.”

The Conchords were called back for an encore after an hour and twenty minutes on stage. They ended with “Angels,” a song off of their 2002 self-funded Folk The World album that describes the sex lives of angels. They offered the crowd a chance to go to heaven, hell (”Like Tenacious D… Satanic messages!” said Jemaine), or yes, even the bank, as pointed out by a heckler. But judging by the thunderous applause as the house lights went up, the Conchords’ concert seemed more like the former to their audience of avid Northwestern fans.

Their set was a study in informality, with the band adjusting their microphones and monitors, riffing on the audience’s heckling, and yelling to the person manning the lights to request “sad lights” for the more somber songs.