Flight of the Conchords Visit NU

This quarter has been a great one for speakers/concerts/comedians brought to Northwestern by student groups. First there was Girl Talk, then BJ Novak from The Office, and last night Flight of the Conchords graced Evanston in a performance that sold out in 45 minutes a few weeks ago.

I got in line for tickets at 8 am, two and a half hours before the box office opened...and I barely got tickets. That is how popular this show was on campus. I had great seats, and the openers were pretty funny.

Mee-Ow was the first opener, an improv/sketch comedy group at NU. They've had some pretty famous alums, like SNL head writer Seth Myers, but they apparently they denied Stephen Colbert a spot in the group when he was a student. Payback is a bitch I guess.



Next was NU alum and "Flight of the Conchords" co-star Kristen Schaal. She had great jokes about her time at Northwestern, but a lot of her jokes using specific people and places can be adjusted to different audiences, like this video of her performing in Edinburgh at the Fringe Festival. Just imagine Evanston and George Washington instead of Edinburgh and Winston Churchill.



After an hour of openers, Bret and Jemaine took the stage to thunderous applause. They broke into a 90 minute set of songs from their show and their EP The Distant Future. Even better than their songs was their banter with each other and the crowd. They really are great comics, and better at improvisation than any group I've ever seen. Here are a couple videos of songs they performed, but there is really no way to describe how entertaining, energetic, and ingenious they are as performers.



This is possibly my favorite moment from the first season:



Hopefully I'll start getting some more stuff up soon. Finals are in a week, and then I have spring break to get back my writing focus heading into spring quarter. Until then posts will be sporadic, but I'll try, there's some good music coming out really soon.


photo credit Jared Miller