Tripod Articles/Reviews

[pixieDAAS]

Originally Posted by SR

It's not a beard - it's his Wolverine sideburns.

*schning!*

Scod's got them too!!

[SR]

Originally Posted by pixieDAAS

Scod's got them too!!

No, that's just really bad lighting.

[Munchkin]

A funny thing happened on the way into orbit . . .



Can anyone else get the video to work?

[Beckslee]

ARGH! it's the Ann Baron T-shirt.

But very cool. I'll have to watch the video when I get home

I mean we get accolades and lots of chicks but we don't get many awards

*snigger*

[wickedsoulrebel]

Originally Posted by Beckslee

ARGH! it's the Ann Baron T-shirt.

But very cool. I'll have to watch the video when I get home

hey becs... the video has the mrs pinkwhistle t shirt!

[Ginger_bread_gurl]

Although I have heard it many times before, I still enjoy that song.

[Beckslee]

Originally Posted by wickedsoulrebel

hey becs... the video has the mrs pinkwhistle t shirt!

I knew there was something I was supposed to do on the internet

the bastard was wearing my tshirt? scumbag

[Munchkin]

Tripod
Parramatta Riverside Theatre
(The Big Laugh Festival)

This show with no name was put together by the lads from Tripod, up from their home town of Melbourne, as a one off show for the Big Laugh comedy festival at Parramatta.
For the uninitiated, Tripod is three guys having a ton of fun. The group is made up of Scod, on guitar, Yon, a little fella who could easily pass for a character out of ‘Lord of the rings’, and Gatesy, the one with the normal sounding nickname.
This is the third time I’ve seen Tripod perform, and each time, their show has been completely different. Which is a testament to the amount of quality material the boys can churn out. You only need to listen to a selection of songs they’ve cultivated over their time doing the ‘song in an hour’ challenge for the breakfast show on Triple J every week. (One of which, ‘Urine Town’ made a quest appearance) to know that there is no shortage of creativity when it comes to their musical talents. A compilation of their Triple J work alone, has resulted in two CD’s worth of songs.
The joy of watching these guys come from the fact that Tripod is a group that is very much at home with each other. Their humour targets anything that enters their collective radar, including themselves. From simple sounding titles like ‘Crap Karate’ and ‘Old money’ to love songs that include the discovery of a corpse. Their melodies pull you in and their lyrics are seriously funny.
And up on stage they stood for 75 minutes, offering the audience nothing in the way of flashy costumes or technologically dazzling sets, or state of the art lighting. The whole show is just three blokes standing in front of a curtain with a big three legged dog symbol, and singing songs of their own invention.
And between the songs, the interplay between the three is hilarious. But it should be noted that for all their pissing around, they’re actually bloody good singers. By way of an encore, the boys do Radiohead. And truth be told, they do Radiohead just as good as Radiohead, but without all the hassle involved in going to see Radiohead.
And after the show the trio happily met up with their fans in the foyer to sign autographs and pose for pics. I can’t see Radiohead doing that.

GEOFF BARTLETT

[unfrufru]

Putting the pee in play
By Peter Craven
April 06, 2004
THE theatre mob of Melbourne is having difficulty even saying it: Urinetown. That's the name of this crazy comedy sketch of a musical about a world where people not only have to pay to pee but are forced to do so in the public amenities owned by the blackly majestic capitalist, Calder B. Cladwell.

The Melbourne Theatre Company has assembled quite a cast for the Australian premiere. There is Lisa McCune, the Blue Heeler who became one of the nation's biggest musical comedy stars with The Sound of Music and Cabaret; and Rhonda Burchmore, who sings the Broadway tradition like someone who has made it her own.

Shane Bourne, that redoubtable comic actor, is in it too, and the young musical star Kane Alexander, and there's even Gerry Connolly, the man who turns into the Queen before our eyes.

Urinetown was originally a mad idea of Greg Kotis, author of the book and the lyrics. It was dimly suggested by the rigours he faced on a budget in Paris -- with its pay-as-you-go amenities, doing his best to urinate as little as possible.

His musical finally premiered on Broadway in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, having rapidly transferred from off-off-Broadway to off-Broadway, and from there to the Henry Miller Theatre, and to being nominated for 10 Tony Awards.

It's an extraordinary show, full of grit as well as glitter. In one way it's a musical to end all musicals, one full of tunes that are not simply catchy but also seem to evacuate your mind, only to fill it with the glamour and the sparkle and the bygone hopes of all those lost American yesterdays that boomed their way through the past half century with their invitation to pleasure and zest.

Of course Urinetown is also a musical that almost trickles down your leg like an intimate disaster. It's a musical everyone is caught short by because it is, among other things, a black comic critique of a world where everything that can be sold (cable television, mobile phones) is sold at the price the market allows -- even if, only yesterday, these things would have been considered basic amenities, like breathing (or peeing).

A Gotham-like city is under the sway of the darkly masterful Mr Cladwell (Connolly) who dictates that everyone must go to the toilet of Penny Pennywise (Burchmore), with him raking in the profits from the change.

If they refuse or can't afford to, they are carted off to Urinetown, the projected dystopian world of punishment. Though, as the enforcer Officer Locksmith (Bourne) admits early on in a typical Beckettian aside (or a cartoon of one), Urinetown doesn't exist - it's simply another name for death.

As this suggests, the governing style of Urinetown is very much that of Bertolt Brecht-Kurt Weill. It's a deadly, freewheeling snake dance of a musical that is as political as the latest piece of privatisation but that is also, by a principle of parody, resonant with the memory of all the styles, derived from the great musicals, that it mocks and celebrates.

But it's a difficult show to classify, even in terms of what politics might lurk beneath its bold theatrical gestures.

"It cuts it every which way," says Simon Phillips, artistic director of the MTC. "It feels like a green musical, but in the last bit it rips the rug out from under that as well." That's when we discover that Cladwell, for all his greed, has in fact preserved the water supply -- a theme Phillips thinks is relevant to a drought-stricken country.

Talking to Phillips, you get a strong sense of the charm that has enabled this man to keep the MTC together and of his feeling for the kind of work that will mediate between pop and the cutting edge. He says that Urinetown was an unexpected commercial success in New York but that a commercial producer would never risk doing it in Australia.

It has a seriousness "and a size" that suits the MTC's ambitions and resources. Phillips loves the moodiness and trickiness of Urinetown. "Its ability to do a backflip on the audience's expectations, both in terms of its musical send-uppery and in terms of its supposedly serious themes, is unending. For three-quarters of its length it manages to both mock the musical form and to play on the things that people love about the musical," he says.

Urinetown, he says, apes the history of the musical while remaining full of danger and contention, in tune with the Brechtian legacy. "I think its spine is deeply serious," Phillips says. "And the serious part of its spine musically is reflected in the Brecht-Weill style. But its sleeve, if you like, is frivolous - or at least satirical - and there it takes huge liberties with its out and out mockeries of Les [Miserables], of Hello, Dolly, of numbers like Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat [from Guys and Dolls]."

In the crucial role of Cladwell, Phillips has that high mathematician of comedy and caricature, Connolly, "for his anarchy and danger". Says Phillips: "We want Cladwell to glitter, but it's not an easy part. I wanted someone with that sense of charisma."

Urinetown, this savage parody of a musical that wowed them in New York, certainly sounds attractive as Phillips, this snake charmer of an artistic director, gives his sense of it: McCune in rhapsodic love duet taking the mickey out of her Maria Von Trapp manner; McCune with great purity of tone doing a travesty of Joan Baez in the soaring I See a River.

Phillips is thoughtful as he says how much he admires the theatrical masters who can map out a musical that has never been produced before.

Urinetown, if it works, is likely to appeal to theatre buffs as well as the crowds.

Urinetown is at the Playhouse, Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne, April 17 to May 15.

[sooty]

its all gone to piss here in urinetown? its all gone down the drain? hmmm do i smell a lawsuit coming on.....

[Beckslee]

what didn't you know there was an actual musical called Urinetown?

and they wouldn't win because the Tripod song is a sort of parody

[sooty]

ahh after posting i kinda thought twas a stupid post. Nah didnt know bout the real musical i was wondering where the whole theme came from, now i know.

[springyninja]

"Nonsense makes the grade" Michael Gadd

Melbourne musical comedy trio Tripod have cracked the songwriting code. All you have to do is get someone else to give a combination of seemingly nonsensical topics and allow just one hour to complete the song.

Tripod have got plenty of mileage out of this technique brought to the masses on Triple J's breackfast show with Adam Spencer and Wil Anderson. It has spaned two albums, About An Hour of Song-In-An-Hour (2002) and About An Hour of Song-In-An-Hour Again one of which one an ARIA award.

The technique will be brought out again next Thursday, October 28, when the group is a special guest of the third 1233 ABC Newcastle Music Awards. Tripod will perform tracks from its latest album, Middleborough Road, at the Civic Theatre Newcastle and be given a challenge by co-comperes John Paul Young and Garth Russell, inspired by ABC listeners.

"JPY! That's brillant!" Stephen "Gatesy" Gates excitedly interjected. "I used to watch him host Countdown, he's not a hero or anything but he's a real legend."

[LIVE: Song In An Hour?]
"That's awesome, nobody told me about that, we'll have to get someone to video it for us."

Although the three members of Tripod are known for being clever and funny, they have strong musical backgrounds. Simon "Yon" Hall (the little one) was in the National Boys Choir, while Scott "Scod" Edgar (the dorky one with glasses) and Gatesy (the pretty one) have performed in bands their entire adult life.

Gatesy said the Song in An Hour challenge helped the group develop as comical songwriters. "when you've only got an hour you have to be fairly indiscriminate. Basically if it makes us laugh it makes the cut. No rephrasing or anything," he said. "It's when we have more time that the arguments start and the opinions come out."

That's not to say Tripod don't have standards. "We've got standards, it's just that the musical thing comes really easily, so we've had to learn the comedy bits," Gatesy said. "We're still finding out what works and what doesn't. At the beginning of our careers we didn't think too much about subtlety and were just completely bombastic. Now we're older we've found the gentler approach works, and that being loud, obnoxious and bombastic just annoys smart people and distracts them from the funny bits."

Those funny bitcs could be anything from boobs being a time-wasting device, although the internet isn't, on Boobs, or feeling sorry for trees because they get chained to hippies, on Trees.

Self-confessed geeks, Gatesy would have liked to have got an endorsement from X-Box after they wrote Gonna Make You Happy, a song about the possible benefits of gaming stations on a couple's sex life.

But sometimes writing and singing what you know can lead to a flop. "You;re talking about Star Wars aren't you? Adam and Wil must have thought, 'They'll love this'," Gatesy recalled. "we got really exited because we're Star Wars freaks, but when we started to write it we just talking about the biological properties of Hammerheads blood. We ended up with a half-arsed song that wasn't very funny."

But bizarrely, The Controversial Song - which included something "cute with numbers, Don Bradmans's baggy green, the guy that rolled a peanut with his nose as a protest, a Tickle-Me-Elmo Doll, butterflies and the Mark Holden quote, 'Bling, bling, bling, badda bing, badda bang'" - worked.

[raorsri]

Sounds serious


TRIPOD has always maintained it is a band with jokes, not the other way around, so it's not really surprising that Scod, Yon and Gatesy were in town last week, talking up their first fully-realised band album.

Middleborough Rd was born from the songs they sang in the sketch comedy series Skithouse, and the trio beams with pride while talking about it.

“We orchestrated the songs for Skithouse in a very quick way, but it really gave us a taste of what the songs would sound like with a full band," explains Scod.

"We felt like we had all this material that we hadn't quite aired in its full glory, so it became a bit of a thing - once we’ve done Skithouse we're going to really do these songs justice."

Helping them do justice was "an awesome rhythm section" (Gatesy raves about it) and producer Cameron McKenzie.

But don't go accusing them of living out their rock star fantasies - "We are rock stars!" - because this is just the next phase ofthat thing they call Tripod.

"I think people find us a bit hard to pigeonhole, and this album's a real exercise in that," says Scod. "I think a lot of people are finding it hard to get their head around it, and we're the same. We're like, ‘what is this album?’ There's not a short way of describing what it is."

Says Yon: "We try to have a bit of an ethos of taking the music bit of it seriously, and that will reinforce the funny, rather than counteract it. So we really tried to make each song as good as we could musically and didn't really go for musical jokes like funny instruments or anything."

Adds Gatesy: "We actively avoid comedy-sounding songs, and that is the hardest part because sometimes that is the best vehicle for jokes.

"I'm a big fan of Tripod just being its own brand. Whether we do a record with a band or a comedy album or a TV show or a movie - a movie, if there's any producers out there . . ."

Interjects Yon: "Or a comic book.”

Gatesy: "Or a comic book, it's just a Tripod thing."

Middleborough Rd (Liberation) is out now.

Lauren McMenemy

[unfrufru]

Stumbled upon this today doing work. harsh but fair i say

Goldie Lookin' Chain; Tripod
By Bernard Zuel
December 17, 2004



Tripod's Middleborough Rd.




Two wacky groups, two wacky but musically strong albums. reports.



GOLDIE LOOKIN' CHAIN
Greatest Hits (Warner) * * *1/2

TRIPOD
Middleborough Rd (Liberation) * * * 1/2

You won't be playing either of these albums in a year. Chances are you won't even know where they are in six months - "Hmm, last time I remember seeing it was under that bottle of gin we had just finished."

Comedy records are the tropical fruit of the music world: when they're ripe they're a treat, but let them go a little past their time and something rotten is in the state of Denmark.

But in five years, when you flick through your collection out the back of the shed and stumble on one or the other of these albums, you'll stop, smile fondly to yourself, quietly put it on the ancient CD player you still have and laugh yourself silly, remembering the nights you had when everyone was well stonkered and up for a giggle.

There are plenty of laughs here. Tripod's gentle satires poke some tender spots in our comfortable and relaxed country. Geeks, misplaced romance and the sheer splendour of mundanity are celebrated, while the inconsequential and insane are elevated.

Welsh collective Goldie Lookin' Chain are no one-hit wonders in the style of '80s group Morris Minor and the Majors, responsible for the Beastie Boys send-up Stutter Rap. They provide pointed buffoonery by nailing some of the more thick-headed elements of hip-hop and those who just as stupidly attack hip-hop.
What holds both albums apart from the pack is that they're funny - and you won't assume that being funny is a prerequisite if you've seen the junk that gets nominated for ARIA comedy awards - and they also hold together musically. You wouldn't sing along with Goldie Lookin' Chain's Your Mother's Got a Penis or Tripod's Hot Girl in the Comic Shop otherwise.

At least for the next few months, anyway.