Hey hey, we're the Flight of the Conchords

I've really been enjoying the HBO summer series Flight of the Conchords, which follows the adventures of New Zealand's "almost award-winning fourth-most-popular comedy-folk duo." The show stars Jeremy Clement and Bret McKenzie of NZ's fourth-most-popular comedy-folk duo Flight of the Conchords, who play themselves. This makes the show confusing, because viewers don't know if they're musicians playing themselves, or just actors who portray musicians in a TV show about themselves.

The show airs at 10:30pm on Sunday nights, and has a TV-MA rating for "adult situations" because many of the episodes have FOTC songs like these that center on relationships between adults.

Business Time
If You're Into It
I Am Not Crying
A Kiss Is Not a Contract
Most Beautiful Girl In The World

Jermaine has a deep soul voice like Barry White or Isaac Hayes that suits him well on songs like "Business Time" and "Most Beautiful Girl In The Word", while Bret's quavering Robin Gibb/David Bowie voice suits songs like "I Am Not Crying" or "Bowie's In Space ".

All in all, they're just trying to be friendly, come and watch them sing and play, but they're in the 25-54 marketing demographic, and they've got something to say. Here's Flight of the Conchords' topical song "The Issues (Think About It)".

The TV show allows Flight of the Conchords to be billed as stars of stage and screen, and now they have a CD out too. Earlier this month, they put out an EP on Sub Pop called The Distant Future, featuring songs from the TV show. Now they're stars of stage, screen, and record. These songs are also available for free on youtube (click the links above) and Sub Pop has an mp3 of "Business Time" available for download from their site. This version changes "netball practice" to "social sports practice", probably to "Americanize" Flight of the Conchords. Why does Sub Pop hate netball? It's just basketball without a backboard!

Anyway, FOTC are the Monkees for the new millennium, so check the show out on HBO if you have cable, or on youtube if you don't. Search for "Flight of the Conchords".

Initially I thought the band was called "The Conchords" and the show was their flight, but they are actually known as "Flight Of The Conchords". I think there should be more bands of the "(article)(plural noun)" form and fewer bands of the "(article)(noun)(preposition)(article)(noun)" form. They should rename themselves "The Conchords", which would be a good name for a comedy folk duo. Flight Of the Conchords isn't as good a name for a comedy-folk duo.