About the Flight of the Conchords
World famous in New Zealand are Jemaine Clement & Bret McKenzie, better known to the planet as the 'Flight of the Conchords'.
They first met in Wellington as university students and felt that they'd like to learn to play guitar. Initially they tried playing other peoples songs, but finding that was too hard decided to write their own.
Their first major international success came at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where they received rave reviews and built up a solid fan base (most of which, it seems, now run fan sites for them).
In due course, they made a series of adverts for Phones4U in the UK, a radio series for the BBC and, now, a self-titled TV series commissioned by HBO.
Having developed a small but dedicated cult following at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2003 (post Robotic invasion), the Conchords have gone from success to success. An initial BBC radio series in 2004 was followed by rising internet fame, which led to HBO picking them to up produce the self-titled sitcom. Along the way they've picked up a Grammy for Best Comedy Album, been nominated for Emmy's and picked up a host of NZ awards.
An old ticket from from one of the first times I saw the Conchords at the Edinburgh Festival, this one from their 2003 'High on Folk' show. Those caves they played in (actually Medieval vaults that are cold & wet and form heaps of condensation, which has a bad habit of dripping on you) are absolutely adjacent to where the great Edinburgh fire was that destroyed major sections of the historic Cowgate in 2002 (a World Heritage site) & where the 'Gilded Balloon' main venue area was...
