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dB Magazine, Event, Review

Tripod

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I hate reviewing comedy shows. How can you tell other people how funny a show was without spoiling it? But what I can say is, I thought Tripod were funny on Skithouse and Triple J, and I can say they’re absolutely fabulously hilarious live.

Beginning with the theme song from Highlander, Princes of the Universe, sung by Queen, the boys started with a full on rock show, with flashing T R I P O D sign rocking out while they posed on stage. They then picked up their acoustic guitars and began to do their own tune. Their song was decidedly less rocky, but quite funny nonetheless. After their first song they started their banter, wondering why we didn’t cheer for the sign, claiming it cost them a lot of money. The sign was the focus of many puns, my favourite being when they were talking about merchandising and selling out to corporations; the ipod part of the tripod sign started flashing.

Another funny but unintentional prop gag came from Gatesy’s guitar string breaking. Whenever a guitar string breaks I always have Jello Biafra saying “Ray’s guitar broke” speech from ‘Night of the Living Rednecks’. Now I’ll have the image of Yon (the little one) picking a fight with Scod (the tall bespectacled one) because they were pretending not to know each other and Scod kept looking at Yon. Ok, so it doesn’t work on paper, you just had to be there…

They did a collection of old and new material, including Lingering Dad, Frustration, Gonna Make You Happy Tonight (my favourite because it’s all about playing video games) and Oil in the Congo. Their “Show Us the Fucking Monkey” was a hilarious stab at Peter Jackson for taking so long to show us the monkey in King Kong, and “the Prison Song,” about a man who is arrested for suicide bombing a bus (think about it) was both political and incredibly funny simultaneously.

Tripod are accomplished musos, playing together really well and using their voices wonderfully. Their in-between song banter was genuinely funny and never seemed forced or rehearsed. Whilst once they may have been a DAAS knock off, they’ve definitely come into their own and now outshine the former comedy trio in both originality and musical style. They could get better haircuts though.

dB Magazine, Interview, Other, Writing

Tripod – “Gatesy”

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Tripod, the trio comprising of Scod, Yon and Gatesy, have been entertaining Australian audiences for over 10 years, and fresh from winning the 2005 ARIA for best Comedy album, Tripod returns to the Adelaide Fringe to make audiences laugh at their silly songs and on stage antics. Speaking to Steven “Gatesy” Gates was pretty much how I imagined him to be – funny, casual, and laid back, buoyed with the ARIA win and the imminent launch of their first DVD.

“Fucking stoked!” Gates exclaims when I ask him about the ARIA win. “We’ve been nominated a few times and the same people always crop up, like Rodney Rude… I think he’s taken one out,” he says going off on a tangent, the first of many in an entertaining fashion, “it’d be an absolute atrocity if he hasn’t taken one out, considering we all shared his tapes in the 80s as little kids… But I think it was our turn,” he cackles. “The Umbilical Brothers had an awesome DVD; I reckon that should have won, but we won instead, which was good. We were really pleased with that record too; it was a departure for us – it was a studio album we did with a band and things, but I’m glad the ARIA people dug it!”

I wondered if they had difficulties doing the studio album, considering they’re known more for their spontaneity and live performances. “With the recorded album, we took the best songs from the three seasons of the Skithouse show”, he says. “When we recorded them originally, I wouldn’t call it ‘shoddily’ but we did it ourselves in our bedroom. We got the best sound we possibly could with what little knowledge we had. It was funny doing a show to broadcast quality and we’d be recording with mattresses along the walls and standing in the toilet hallway,” he chuckles. “But some of the songs we liked and went into the studio with a proper band and producer and we did them properly. Because they were already done and people thought they were good or funny, and we had performed them live, we just thought lets make the music as good as we can.”

At the mention of Skithouse, which while not consistently funny had some fantastic moments, I lamented to Gates about the lack of comedy on free-to-air television. “It comes in waves, doesn’t it?” Gates agrees. “Like everything, lifestyle shows, cooking shows and shit, I think it comes down to network TV really. They just try to follow each other, jump on each other’s successes. Channel 7 has Deal or No Deal so Channel 9 has to do some fucking game thing… And that’s what happened with the sketch show thing – they decided ‘it’s time, we need comedy and we need local content – sketch shows are the answer!’ So everyone did them for a while, and it stopped, but it’ll come back, I think,” he adds, tentatively. “What’s really needed is, apart from Rove Live, there’s no live comedy show – we were brought up on the Big Gig, which was just ace TV, live stuff where it’s not a concern if someone fucks up and things go wrong.” But Gates thinks Network Television is scared of live shows, citing “I think it’s backwards scary fear thinking,” laughingly adding that he’s not even sure that’s a proper expression.

Just in time for the Fringe, Tripod has a DVD ready. “We’re pretty excited because we’ve never done a live DVD before. Every year since getting back from Edinburgh we’ve been doing these things called “Pod August Nights”, a bunch of gigs on Thursdays and Fridays in August. Last year we did it at the Northcote social club (in Melbourne) and we decided to make a DVD of it. We did it on one night, and now we have a record of actually what we do in a live situation… No one really understands (our live performance)– WE don’t really understand – which was really good, trying to work out what we did and what was funny in the editing suite and put in on film.”

As with all DVDs, there are some specials on there, but the most interesting seems to have been dumped due to fear of landing in hot water. “We had a whole bunch of ideas we couldn’t get clearance for – we went to this elaborate effort to do this animation using Lego set to one of our triple J songs, and everyone was freaking out and scared that Lego were going to sue us for using their image as a backdrop for drugs and sex. So we couldn’t use it,” he laments, but he does hints that it may find it’s own way onto the world wide web.

Something that did make it on to the DVD that Gates believes people will enjoy is footage of the lads in Scotland. “One of the biggest things for us,” he says excitedly, “there’s footage of us in Edinburgh in 1998, this was two years after we started, and we went to the Edinburgh for the Fringe because we had enough balls to do it, but we were pretty much under-prepared, certainly by today’s standards anyway. But there’s this amazing footage, shot after shot of three young, geeky guys trying to make their way in the world bouncing around in colourful outfits trying to make an impact on Edinburgh. I think it’s the most embarrassing footage of us ever seen by man!” he laughs.