PARODY, POWERPOINT AND ANARCHIC CHARM |
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) MRS PEACOCK: Nature’s Beast at Comedy Underground, 305 Queen St, Auckland From 5 May 2010 to 8 May 2010 Reviewed by Nik Smythe, 6 May 2010 |
Jarrod Baker and Dave Smith, aka Mrs. Peacock, those irascible musos who brought us Rock 101 three of years ago, bring their – and our own – heritage into sharp focus with their new multimedia lecture, Nature’s Beast – NZ Music 101. Notably, it’s New Zealand Music month this month, though I can’t recall them even mentioning that.
After delusionally thanking the viewers at home and us, the studio audience, the lads kick off with a quickfire history lesson beginning with 1959’s Blue smoke, swiftly reducing each decade from then to the 21st century to crass generalisations.
Then the main ‘tiki tour’ commences. The audacious deadbeats bring us on a regional journey around all the main centres, again distilling the essence of each area’s musical culture to a basic stereotypical formula, which they then demonstrate with their own example. The boys’ skill in parodying musical genres is excellent and the increasingly popular PowerPoint presentation that accompanies the dissertation provides more than a few chuckles.
There are a few entertaining added features: behind the scenes footage of their music video shoot (not for their band, for the Phoenix Foundation), and a curious wee contest called ‘Never Mind the Peacocks’ where the audience guesses the classic Kiwi single as they do vocal renditions of their intros, in the hope of winning a CD of questionable but definitely Kiwi music.
The eight-strong audience was kept consistently giggling through the hour. In spite of their brazen awkward lameness there’s an unexplainable charisma about these chaps. It’s kind of hard to tell where the intentional lameness ends and the genuine shabbiness round the edges begins. I’d say there’s definitely room to slick the show up a fair bit without losing too much of the anarchic charm.
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Helen Sims