Performance comedy is a strange medium in that it hits a much earlier saturation point than nearly any other performative art. Chances are, when you hear a hilarious joke or see a funny gag, the first time you see it will be the best. If you're lucky, the originality or quality of the humour of the situation will allow for a second, or possibly golden third experience, where you know it's coming so you've got anticipation built up around the punchline payoff.
Take, for example, Robin Williams Live On Broadway. The first time I saw that video, I couldn't breathe because I was laughing so hard. I watched it again last year, some eight years after the first viewing and, while certainly amused, it no longer brought that life-changing, hilarity-affirming, trachea-clogging laughter I remember so fondly. Sure, part of that might be because, at 22 it wasn't anywhere near as shocking to hear Disney's Genie cussing as it was when I was 15 but I have no doubt that, despite my lessened experience, it's still an hilarious example of stand-up comedy. It's really no wonder that the perception of comedians is that of a sad, lonely man, hiding from his own disposability and getting through the day assisted only by a pharmacy's worth of uppers, downers, and everything-in-betweeners. As musicians, it is possible, possibly even expected, that you create music with a legacy. People are always trying to come up with the next OK Computer or the next Rubber Soul. Comedians aren't allowed to have that because any art they create has a best-before date and a maximum dosage.
The only way I can think of to combat this phenomenon is to constantly be pumping out new material. Television does an alright job of combating comedic apathy but in the case of any major television series (that I am aware of), you have a team of writers pooling together every hilarious resource they can collectively think of. Even then, with comedy programs, you'll watch them once, buy the DVDs, and maybe watch the series over the course of a few months every four to ten years once you've had a chance to suppress or chemically destroy the specific memories of what you've seen, allowing that one Friends episode to have a chance at being funny again.
I mention this all because any comedy album has an immediate handicap. If you don't love it the first time, there is an abnormally large chance that you're going to dislike it even more upon listening because the fun sheen of novelty has rubbed off, leaving you to listen to it in a different-from-its-original-intent purpose.
While I did love the piss out of Flight Of The Conchords self-titled 2008 album (more than I ever will again), Folk The World Tour didn't have anywhere near the initial giggly wow factor. The album starts off with "Petrov, Yelyena, and Me," a song about three people who, when stranded, resort to cannibalism. Its style of comedy follows the same brand as The Monty Python sketch about tigers in Africa.
It's supposed to be funny because it's odd that people would behave in such a deadpan way to such extraordinary circumstances. In that respect, yes, FOTC does present it in a suitable way but it's still a fairly dry, although morbid, track.
This kind of writing is fairly typical for the band. You've also got a two-part series of tracks about a Mermaid. The first of which is a bantery kind of thing, while the second is an actual song that ends with a vaudevillian discussion about whether or the Mermaid is more human or fish. In both cases, they are making the phenomenal mundane by bringing it down to the realm of simple understanding.
On the opposite side of the coin is "Bus Driver's Song," which is told from the perspective of a rather adept tour guide bus driver. In this case, as with others, the joke is not inside the song but rather the fact that the song exists. It's not that FOTC really like bus drivers or think that bus drivers deserve to be ridiculed, it's just that it seemed like it would be kind of silly to sing a song about a mundane subject. It's the kind of thing that Adam Sandler did a lot of on What's Your Name?.
But, with all four of these tracks, they just aren't immediately funny. If you go back and think about it, then yes, in premise, they are ridiculous, and therefore kind of funny but the album is scarce in legitimately funny content. In fact, of the 14 songs and banter tracks, only three are immediately laughable.
"Bowie" starts off with a very unrefined, unpolished guitar but eventually turns into whatever the hell "Bowie" is. More than anything, the song demonstrates the band's total commitment to what they are trying to do. Following a series of puns and odd phrases like "nipple antennae," one of the boys starts making a series of laser sounds, without any expectation of laughter or maintenance of personal pride. These moments simply exist because somebody thought they would go with the song.
"Albi" is the kind of thing that would work just as well as an internet cartoon as it does a comedy song. The song tells the brief tale of a racist dragon, an Albanian boy he has badly burned, and some funny turns of phrase.
Lastly, "Frodo (2000 L.O.T.R. Rejected Demo Version)" starts off sounding like "Don't Fear The Reaper," but eventually gets to a point where Jemaine and Bret are squaring off, bouncing Lord Of The Rings quotes off of each other over a euro-dance beat before doing a kind of rap thing (Hip-Hobbit? Mordor, Inc.?) about the films and its fandom.
Choosing to make people laugh as a career is a brave commitment to a brutal, impermanent art. However, even after a few listenings, Folk The World Tour still functions as a notable beginning point of Flight Of The Conchord's recording career, even if it isn't all that funny.
Rating: 3.2 stars
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