Nashville Music Blog

Photos by Steve Cross

See the slideshows for more photos: Flight of the Conchords; Kristen Schaal.

Damn The Ryman's confounded early start times. For fear of showing up late, we jogged through the Saturday-evening drizzle down 5th Avenue, scarfing the last bit of our Rodeo Cheeseburger in order to make it in time for Flight of the Conchords. We were, of course, just being paranoid, because we entered the fabled venue with enough spare time to join the snaking beer line before finding our seats. After unintentionally overhearing a painfully intimate story from the girl behind us, we snagged a frosty, 11-dollar 24-ounce and hustled into the auditorium. It was finally business time.

We thought we heard a familiar voice from the lobby, and our suspicions were confirmed when we seated ourselves in the balcony: The opening comic was Kristen Schaal, known better to Flight of the Conchords fans as Mel, the obsessive FOTC groupie from the series. Clearly a tinge more self-aware than her alter ego, Schaal utilized a handful of absurdist playlets and her bizarre (but strangely compelling) persona to elicit a genuinely powerful response.

Clad in robot apparati, the Conchords opened with the instant club classic "Too Many Dicks on the Dance Floor" while bathed in the reflection of the Ryman's disco ball. (Or did they bring their own?) They proceeded to play the bulk of their set on acoustic-electric guitars, and it pretty quickly dawned on us that the vast majority of their material is lascivious pseudo-funk: numbers about layin' a woman down and whatnot sung in a ridiculous but consistently entertaining falsetto.

We'd hoped to hear "Bowie," one of our favorite FOTC jams, and while it was absent from their set, standards like "If That's What You're Into" and "Business Time" made the cut. Bret and Jemaine preemptively apologized to any music critics in the house for their sub-par chops, but they were actually at least passable at a handful of instruments (drums, Omnichord, guitar, keys and glockenspiel), and most mistakes were pretty endearing.

Perhaps the most obnoxious occurrence of the evening was the increasingly unruly crowd, who shouted "Freebird!" about four too many times, went berserk when Bret made mention of East Nashville and constantly hollered lines they recollected from the Flight of the Conchords series. You'd think living amongst the country strain of celebutards would desensitize Nashvillians to becoming severely starstruck, but a lot of folks seemed thrilled simply to be in the presence of people they seen on the tee-vee. Regardless, the Conchords battled back with some pretty hilarious faux Southern accents, and it's nice to see that New Zealand's fourth most popular folk-novelty duo has transcended obscurity far more than they'd ever let on.