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Hmm.. F o the C tablecloths and lampshades? I see a home decor opportunity here.

‘Flight’ of fancy

Spontaneously bursting into song never sounded so funny
by amber ray / metro new york
JUL 24, 2007

FEATURE. The self-proclaimed “fourth most popular folk parody band in New Zealand,” Flight of the Conchords have become accustomed to playing venues filled with adoring fans
donning homemade T-shirts with their logo on them. Stalkers? Hardly, the music-comedy duo has gotten a TV series

because of their devoted following.

The Conchords, Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie, celebrated

their inaugural television season at an HBO party for TV critics last week in Los Angeles. Though they’ve spent the last year and a half in nonstop cult hero mode touring the globe, filming their eponymous series and recording an album for Sub Pop, the pair stood in awe viewing their logo on linens that decorated the tables throughout the party venue.

“This is a bit unusual for us,” Clement says of the recognition.

“I made a few of those tablecloths at home myself,” McKenzie jokes. “And lampshades.”

That he would actually find time for arts and crafts is a mystery. Since the Conchords won Best Alternative Comedy Act at the 2005 U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, the stateside buzz surrounding the duo has kept them from their homeland for all but two weeks. And they were barely able to take those 14 days off. On their way to the airport to catch a flight home last year, HBO suggested they turn the “Flight of the Conchords” pilot into a series — right away.

“We popped into the HBO office on the way to the airport — Jemaine and I had our suitcases with us,” McKenzie says. “We sat down and they said, ‘Look, we really want to do this.’ We were, like, ‘Well, we’ve got a plane to catch, so we don’t have time.’ They were like, ‘We think you guys should stay right now,’ and they tried to convince us not to go to the airport.”
Clement and McKenzie did take their holiday, but afterwards flew to New York for four months of filming their unabashedly silly sitcom/music video hybrid of a series. Playing a pair of New Zealand musicians trolling Manhattan’s Lower East Side for gigs and girls, the show isn’t too much of a stretch from real life.
“I think a lot of great comedy characters do have an element of a real person in them,” McKenzie says, citing the creations of “The Office” mastermind Ricky Gervais. “There’s a bit of them there, and there’s a bit of someone else. We’ve had so many conversations when we’re writing the show about things like, ‘For the TV Bret, is this too stupid?’
But I think we’re definitely more similar to our characters than we might like to admit.”
Not quite — TV Bret and TV Jemaine have yet to play any proper gigs … or get their name on tablecloths.

From: New York Metro