Thursday night, Flight of the Conchords taught a sellout crowd at Cahn Auditorium how to tell it’s business time, where and when to Rhyme-nocerous and how to woo a girl who’s so pretty she could be “a part-time model.”
The New Zealand folk-rock comedy band headlined this year’s A&O Winter Speaker event, their first time preforming at a college. It also included NU sketch comedy group Mee-Ow, and NU alum and Flight of the Conchords star Kristen Schaal, Communication ’00.
Mee-Ow opened the show with a sketch lampooning diversity – and the perils of stereotypes – and three improv games that included “The World’s Worst Facebook Message.”
Schaal, who plays Mel on the Conchords’ HBO show, then took the stage and used her memories of NU to connect with the audience.
“If you go to a school as exceptional as NU, it’s impossible to have a bad day, ” Schaal joked.
If you get run over by a car, “at least you can lay out on this prestigious campus,” she said.
A performer in Mee-Ow and Griffin’s Tale during her time at NU, Schaal described how the only sketch of hers to make it into a Mee-Ow show was “Cartwheels and Somersaults,” while she and Flight of the Conchords duo Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement struggled to cartwheel and somersault across the stage.
She shared two plays she said were shaped by her time as a performance studies major at NU; “Anne Boelyn on Fire,” where she wore a cape and assumed a faux-English accent, and “Lonely Fire,” where she lamented over a lost love.
When the New Zealand folk-rock band then took the stage, MacKenzie and Clement balked at being called a comedy “duo.”
“You have a one-man band – what happened at two?” Clement said. “We’re a band, so I’m just going to introduce you to a band.”
Between their songs, McKenzie and Clement “meandered” and touched upon a variety of obscure subjects, including the benefits of “imagining” children above adopting.
Clement announced that the Conchords were in the process of writing material for the second season of their HBO series and gave a preview of their newest song, “Told You I was Freaky.”
The pair said they were surprised by the number of students waiting in line outside the auditorium.
“It was freezing out there, you guys are crazy,” McKenzie said. “You’re our promptest fans.”
In their song “Cellotape of Love,” the Conchords debated over the strongest adhesive – love – and agreed that “love can be tough but superglue is much tougher.”
After their encore performance of two songs, in which “Emcee J.C.” joined them on stage to help them sing about “angels doin’ it in the clouds,” audience members rushed to the stage to grab the band’s guitar picks, water bottles and set lists.
A&O Chairman and SESP senior Alex White said the group was “ecstatic with how the show went.”
“They played for almost twice as long as we expected and the crowd response was more than we’d ever imagined,” White said. “Kristen’s set also went over extremely well, and Mee-Ow started the whole night off in just the right way.”
“To get them at the start of this whirlwind breakout year that they’ve had is something I’m very proud of,” he added.
Weinberg sophomore Daniel Hegeman said seeing the Conchords in concert made him want to check out episodes of the band’s HBO show.
“It was fun – it was a lot like the YouTube videos only a little more creative,” Hegeman said. “Consistently funny too.”
A&O’s next major event is its annual ball, which White said will feature “an act that is one of the top 10 acts that people at Northwestern list in their Facebook.com profiles.”
The concert will be Thursday, April 10 at the Riviera Theatre, 4647 N. Racine Ave. Tickets will go on sale on April 2, White said.
