I was heading down to Melbourne for Lano & Woodley’s last ever performance ever, and took the opportunity to organise a couple of interviews to make it more of a ‘business’ trip rather than just an indulgent weekend away. I was grateful to catch up with Yon, from Tripod, as there was much to discuss seeing as Tripod were about to release a live mini-album before going on tour. Or so I thought. It turns out there was about to be a live album, a studio mini-album and then a brief Christmas tour. Yon met me in a cool café after a Tripod ‘rehearsal’ (more of a barbecue, according to Yon) where we spent a good couple of hours yacking, some of it, recorded for posterity. It was a good, fun chat.
Somewhere along the way, my old podcast Radio Ha Ha came to an end. What a great way to baptise a new podcast series! And the beauty is, had this interview been included in Radio Ha Ha it would have been cut to at least half its size – I get to be as self-indulgent as I like, making for a great opportunity to chat in-depth about where Tripod is at right now, and illustrate it with lots of bits of songs.
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Announcer: And now for something somewhat derivative. [1]
Soundbite: The ‘Theme to Radio Ha Ha’ [2] plays ever-so-briefly before the stylus of the record is brought across the vinyl, bringing it to an abrupt end in time for:
Announcer: Stand and deliver! [3]
Song: ‘Theme to No Wucken Forries’ (edited version) [4]
Dom: Hello and welcome to a new comedy podcast called Stand & Deliver! I’m Dom Romeo: a kind of comedy nerd. But that’s all right.
To kick off this first episode, I’m handing it over almost entirely to Tripod. But first, here’s a word from our sponsors.
Advertisement: silence
Dom: Well, of course, there are no sponsors yet. But that empy air could have been an advertisement for your product; your show; your gig; your CD; your book; your service. If you want to advertise on the fastest growing comedy podcast – true for at least this first episode [5] – get in touch. Here's the e-mail address: [email protected].
Interlude: ‘From Beginning to End’ by Psychedelic Spew. [6]
Dom: Anyone who’s been paying attention to comedy lately has to be aware that there’s been a bit of a rise in musical comedy and cabaret over the last few years – all of which appears almost irrelevant to a band like Tripod, who have been doing great musical comedy just about forever now. Their show this year, Tripod Are Self-Saucing, was easily their best yet.
I caught up with Tripod vocalist Yon at a cafe in Balaclava, Melbourne (I need to tell you this so that you can tolerate the sound of traffic in the background, throughout); we didcussed Tripod’s new CDs - the live album Songs From Self-Saucing plus a new studio mini-album – all on the eve of their Christmas tour, Hey, We Don't Make The Yules!
But before the interview, here’s a bit of a live rendition of Gonna Make You Happy Tonight one of the Songs From Self-Saucing.
Soundbite: ‘Gonna Make You Happy Tonight’ (excerpt) from the Tripod album Songs From Self-Saucing
Dom: Yon, Tripod’s about to embark on their Christmas tour, entitled ‘Hey, We Don't Make The Yules!’ Tell me, what goes on? How do you go about planning a Christmas tour?
Yon: Well, we usually just start by deciding to do one at all. We usually just do one in Melbourne, actually. A few years ago we did a bit of a regional one, which was okay, but this is the first time I think we’ve done... I mean, it’s Melbourne, Sydney and Perth, so it’s a ‘tour’. You can call it a ‘tour’. And we’re calling it a ‘tour’. But it’s only just a tour. What defines ‘tour’? I’m not sure. How many gigs? How many places? I don’t know.
Dom: Well, you’re going to the trouble of travelling interstate; I think it’s a tour. My question to you though is, is the reason why it’s worth taking a Christmas show beyond just Melbourne because this has been a great year for you? I mean, Tripod Are Self-Saucing, this year’s show, was pretty phenomenal.
Yon: Oh, thanks! I reckon it’s ‘cause we’ve built up a Christmas repertoire over the years. We’ve done Christmas shows for probably ten years now, and we write a few Christmas songs a year and then we usually end up with one good one at the end of each year; maybe sometimes a couple. So we’ve got about ten Christmas songs now so it will be fully Christmas content. There’ll be a few other songs – we'll put in a couple of oddities and a couple of other ones we’ve been doing around the place this year as well.
Soundbite: ‘Fabian’ (excerpt) from the Tripod album Fegh Maha
Yon: It’s how we approach most of shows, actually; we don’t really sit down with a grand plan, or anything. We just sort of end up clumping a bunch of songs together in the way that a band would. Unless we were doing Lady Robots or something like that, and then we actually have come up with a concept. And a story. And it all has to fit together and shit.
Dom: If there are ten Christmas songs, why isn’t there a Tripod Christmas album?
Yon: Well, it’s something I think about every year... ’cause I’m the one who always thinks about merchandise, for some reason. I reckon we’re not far off one. I actually want to do a TV special. We were talking about it. We did say at some point if our TV show doesn’t get up this year, let’s do a Christmas special because I’m sure that would be easier to pitch than some bloody thing with a narrative to networks. But it hasn’t happened. [7]
I don’t know; I’m happy to just keep writing new ones and we'll boil it down to something really good eventually, when we do something.
Dom: I’m just thinking about the poor fans who, so far, can have ‘I Hate Your Family’ I think it’s called from the Open Slather album, and... what’s the other Christmas album that’s been released? There isn’t one! [8]
Yon: And that wasn’t even a proper Christmas album. That was a bloody... that was rubbish! We basically had a live album that had all non-Christmas songs on it, and then we called it ‘The Christmas Edition’ and we put a studio version of one of the Christmas songs on it. We shouldn't count that. That was shameless - and shamefull - marketing.
Dom: And I can only blame you, now, because you just admitted that you’re in charge of ‘merchandise’ thoughts. So you must have been the one that went, ‘let’s get this album, put a different cover on it, add a new song to it, and re-issue it’.
Yon: I can’t say for sure that it was me, but I would be money that it was me who suggested it. I’m the cynical merchandising arm of Tripod, that’s for sure!
Soundbite: ‘I Hate Your Family (Studio Version)’ (excerpt) from the Tripod album Open Slather - Special Christmas Edition
Dom: Now, speaking of merchandise and CDs, I was under the impression that you had a mini-album coming out of live stuff from Tripod Are Self-Saucing; I now find out that you do have a mini-album coming out, as well as the live album of Tripod Are Self-Saucing. I think that’s exciting. I think Tripod Are Self-Saucing was an awesome show. I love the sound of the band now that there are two guitars, which means that Scod can actually concentrate on playing intricate melodies while Gatesy strums a bit more.
Yon: Well, I feature more heavily as the ‘lead singer’, I think it’s fair to say, because the other two play guitar. It’s good that they’re not here because they would shout me down as I said that, but it’s nice to be able to say it and tell people the truth!
Soundbite: ‘Autistic’ (excerpt) from the Tripod album Songs From Self-Saucing
Yon: We should have introduced the other guitar ages ago. I mean, Gatesy’s always been good at it. It actually pretty much happened that we only had one guitar for so many years because there was a guy who was in Tripod before Gatesy and he didn’t play the guitar, and we were just sort of stuck in this ‘Scod plays the guitar’ thing, and I think we also thought that comedically and performance-wise, it worked better for Gatesy to have his hands free. But he actually moves around a lot with the guitar anyway so I think it’s a forward step.
Soundbite: ‘Autistic’ (two guitar instrumental excerpt) from the Tripod album Songs From Self-Saucing
Yon: The songs are more re-playable for us, too. I just stand there and enjoy listening to the two guitars some of time, you know.
Dom: So do I. Which is why – I mean, for comic effect it has to happen, but – I always bemoan the fact that during the song ‘Too Many Remotes’, we never get to hear the end of Scod’s fantastic guitar solo because you’re busy doing a sort of ‘mouth fiddle’ solo with the ‘remotes’.
Yon: No, I interrupt his solo. That’s what happens in that bit. Sometimes anything can happen in our gigs, but I don't actually do the ‘mouth solo’ at that point. I do it earlier. [9]
Soundbite: ‘Too Many Remotes’ (excerpt from Scod’s guitar solo, interrupted by Yon and Gatesy’s discussion about remotes) from the Tripod album Songs From Self-Saucing
Dom: I think it’s significant because I remember it, because it’s a great ‘mouth solo’. We hear all of it, in that case, which is even worse that we don’t get to hear Scod's solo.
Yon: Well, it’s a shame that you value his guitar solo over my ‘mouth solo’. I guess people don’t value ‘mouth solos’ in general, do they.
Soundbite: ‘Too Many Remotes’ (excerpt from Yon’s ‘mouth solo’, interrupted by Yon and Gatesy’s discussion about remotes) from the Tripod album Songs From Self-Saucing
Dom: Tell me what the mini-album’s about, if it’s not the live stuff from Tripod Are Self-Saucing.
Well, the mini-album, which is the one that we’re more excited about, is basically seven songs that never went that well at gigs. But we like them. So it’s sort of like this catharctic ‘get it out of your system’ exercise, really. And for anyone who's interested in finding out what those songs would be like, they’re the people who are going to buy it. So we'll probably just sell it at gigs and release it later on for distribution.
It’s sort of ‘us’, but a bit more esoteric. And it was actually really fun to do. We didn’t do the band thing like we did with Middleborough Road; we stripped it all the way back again. It’s just us singing them in a room live. There’s a few little moments of putting extra tracks on, but it’s pretty much just us, singing it live at my parents’ holiday house, with microphones, sitting around us. It’s very informal.
Dom: Does it have a title yet, Yonnie?
Yon: It’s called Perfectly Good Songs.
Dom: Okay. I think it should be called Tripod’s Odds & Sods.
Yon: Oh, sorry about that. Sorry that it’s already gone to print and we can’t change it.
Dom: Of course, come Christmas: new cover, one extra song – new album!
Yon: Yeah, I know! I... I can’t do that again, can I?
Soundbite: ‘Ain’t No Oil In The Congo’ (excerpt from the passionate opening) from Tripod's contribution to the 2006 Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala from the limited edition DVD Boxed Set Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala Collection
Dom: Now Yonny, I know I'm not the Lone Ranger on this one: I honestly think that Tripod Are Self-Saucing was probably one of the best shows you've done. The music was more spectacular because of the new arrangements, given the two guitars. I think the level of satire in the music was also really good. For example, if I may: ‘Ain’t No Oil In The Congo’, which begins as a passionate political piece that you and Gatesy just throw and turn it into cheap and nasty razzmatazz. It's like, why ruin such an impassioned political stance for the razzmatazz, until you realise hey, that is the political statement, that impassioned politics is being ignored for the sake of commercial razzmatazz.
Yon: I didn’t realise! I never realised we were making that statement. I just thought that we were making the statement and then making it more entertaining to make the statement. That’s much cleverer! From now on, I’m gonna sell it on that level, because I think that’s really cool. That's a good idea. We should have thought of that.
Soundbite: ‘Ain’t No Oil In The Congo’ (excerpt from the cheap and nasty razzmatazz ending) from Tripod’s contribution to the 2006 Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala from the limited edition DVD Boxed Set Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala Collection
Dom: And of course, that song about King Kong – I don’t know what it’s proper title is; I’m tempted to quote the chorus but I’m going to have to bleep it when I do because it’s called ‘Get to the bleeped Monkey’.
Yon: I think we call it ‘King Kong’. When we right the set list out, we usually put the shortest version, so I think we just put ‘Monkey’ or ‘King Kong’. Although there are a few other ‘monkey’ things that we do so if we right ‘Monkey’ it might confuse us about what song’s coming up. But on the album I think it’s called ‘King Kong’.
Soundbite: ‘King Kong’ (excerpt) from the Tripod album Songs From Self-Saucing.
Dom: I think, again, it’s a fantastic song; it catches peoples’ thoughts and beliefs so well. As a song, it’s got a bit of everything in it. It’s still got the vintage Tripod nerdery of the whole Star Wars thing happening. What are your thoughts on it? Tell me about the song?
Yon: Well it was my wife’s idea, for a start. She goes, as she often does, “Why don’t you write a song where this happens?” Usually I ignore her, but I put it to the other guys. I think I told them – because they’ve heard all her other ideas, I didn’t say whose idea it was; I just told them the idea and they liked it, and then I told them that it was her idea. ’cause that was the only way to sell it to them. ’Cause if they’d known it was hers, they wouldn’t have touched it.
Dom: Do you get to sleep on the sofa if your wife hears this interview?
Yon: Aah, she knows what they all think of her!
Dom: Do you get to sleep on the sofa if she hears that bit of this interview?
Yon: I sleep on the sofa anyway. We’ve got children; we sleep at opposite ends of the house. Preserving sleep is the order of the day at the moment.
Soundbite: ‘Tall Man’ (excerpt) from the Tripod album Songs From Self-Saucing
Dom: Now look, ‘Tall Guy’ [10] is something we’ve featured on the show because it was inspired by Tom Gleeson, who a lot of people know. Do you have anything to add on that? I mean, it’s a beautiful… you make ‘country and western’ sound so beautiful to an audience that probably wouldn’t necessarily go into that sort of thing.
Yon: I think with ‘country and western’ I’m a bit of a late convert. Scod sort of pushes that all the time. He really likes it, although he listens to a lot of different things. For some reason that’s sort of his ‘default’ position when we start writing a song.
Soundbite: ‘Tall Man’ (excerpt from instrumental break) from the Tripod album Songs From Self-Saucing
Yon: I’ve been listening to that Bob Dylan radio show that he does. Have you heard about that? [11]
Dom: Yeah, yeah.
Yon: So many of the songs that he plays are ‘country and western’ and you just realise that it’s a really good starting place for just the form of song writing. I don’t know what it is. Because everything’s stripped back to their most basic – the ideas, the emotions and the tune. And the way you play it. There are no ‘smart arse’ chords. It’s really honest; you can’t hide behind flashiness. I think that’s what’s good about it.
Dom: You say there are no ‘smart arse’ chords, but in ‘Too Many Remotes’ there are some nice little chord movements…
Yon: Oh, but that’s… I would call that ‘country jazz’ or maybe ‘ragtime’ or something. I don’t know if that’s country, that one.
Dom: But your mouth solo sounds to me like it should be a fiddle solo…
Yon: Yeah, but again, it’s definitely ‘jazz-tinged country’. I wouldn’t call it a ‘country’ song. ‘Tall Man’ is very, very country, though. It’s like four chords or something.
Dom: While we’re on ‘Too Many Remotes’, just for a moment, indulge me. That guitar solo with moves into jazz chords… reminds me of a story that I think Scod once told me – I think it was Scod – that he got thrown out of a band for suggesting ‘Dream A Little Dream Of Me’, which has those sorts of chord moves in it! [12]
Yon: Yeah, he’s… we’re a bit… I don’t know, ‘gay’ is almost the description for some of those… some of that… [13]
Dom: ‘Sophisticated’ would have sufficed!
Yon: Well, you know, another one we do is ‘Let’s Take A Walk’, which is in that – I don’t know – ‘jaunty’ jazz/country sort of style. I think it’s also conducive to comedy; I don’t know why. Or maybe just the kind that we do.
Soundbite: ‘Let’s Take A Walk’ (excerpt) from the Tripod album Fegh Maha
Yon: I think the thing we all come together on is those Queen songs from A Night At The Opera. I think there’s a couple that are just fantastic. One is ‘Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon’ and the other is ‘Sea Side Rendezvous’.
Soundbite: ‘Sea Side Rendezvous’ (excerpt) from the ‘Sounds’ section of Tripod’s website [14]
Yon: They’re that sort of 1920s (song, from) before jazz got too wanky. We just love that stuff.
Dom: It’s funny that you should bring that up. You’ve been covering that stuff in shows recently, and for a while there were downloads available of some of those songs. Also, I know – from my earliest ever interview with one of you – that you began busking elaborate Queen songs before Tripod was well known as Tripod. [15]
Yon: We used to like getting really complicated songs like ‘Flash’ – you know that Flash Gordon song? [16] In some ways it’s really simple, but in other ways, no two bits are the same. And I’m a big fan, in an arrangement, of no two bits being the same. You can play the same section – you know, when you get to the chorus the second time – you can play it the same way and it can work – but I guess I do come from the school of thought that you’ve already heard that, so let’s hear something different each time you hear that same tune. I like that sort of ‘fiddly’ stuff. But again, the ‘country’ stuff – I like the really simple thing and I like when no two bits are the same.
Soundbite: ‘Forgive Me Father’ (excerpt) from the Tripod album Songs From Self-Saucing
Yon: I think you get into formulas and you get into grooves with different songs. Particularly because we did that ‘song in an hour’ thing, it’s really hard not to not have formulas – arrangement formulas – like ‘second verse, aaahs will come in’. You know, shit like that. So it’s good to recognise the different philosophies and try them out rather than have this set method. I’m sure people who know our things well will hear patterns in the way we arrange stuff. You know, you try and do things differently but I think there are things that you don’t even notice, that you just take for granted that you do the same every time.
Dom: Given all of that, I think the last question should be as much of a doozy as I can bring to you on short notice. What’s the one song that should have been a ‘dog’ that should have been taken out the back and shot, but you nursed it back to health and now it’s winning dog shows as a song.
Yon: Ooh, on that goes well that we hated at the start?
Dom: Yeah.
Yon: Um… I think I really hated the idea of ‘Congo’ at the start because comedically, we have about three formulas that we do. One of them is that one of us starts a serious song, the other two f*** it up. Or maybe two of them start a serious song, the other two f*** it up. With ‘Cong’ I thought, ‘it’s just another one of them’. But you know, it’s the way you do it. There are only a few jokes in the world and as long as you do them a different way each time, it’ll feel fresh. But that was one that I didn’t really like at the start. Didn’t really like it musically, didn’t really like it comedically. But I think as a whole piece, it’s a good journey.
Dom: I’ve already told you why that song is just awesome, so…
Yon: Yep, and now I know. Now I know the truth about what the idea behind that song is!
SONG
Soundbite: ‘Suicide Bomber’ from the Tripod album Songs From Self-SaucingDom: We finished there with ‘Suicide Bomber’, from the newly released album, Songs From Self-Saucing, which you can buy via Tripod’s website: www.3pod.com.au, or at music stores, or, along with the new mini-album, Perfectly Good Songs, at gigs. Which gigs would they be? Why, the live gigs, on the ‘Hey, We Don’t Make The Yules!’ tour.
On Saturday December 2nd, they’re at the Metro, in Sydney, New South Wales.
On Friday 8th and Saturday 9th December, they’re at Fly By Night in Fremantle, Western Australia.
On Thursday 14th they’re at The Corner, on Friday 15th, at the East Brunswick Club, both in Melbourne, Victoria.
And I guess I should point out that all the music you heard during the interview with Yonnie came from the CDs Songs From Self-Saucing, Fegh Maha and Open Slather – Special Christmas Edition, plus there’s one song from their website and one from the 2006 Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala as filmed by GNW Productions, shown on Channel 10 and released on DVD by ACMEC, in the Best of the Gala Collection limited edition boxed set. All of which could make great Christmas presents for someone.
Dom: Well, that’s all we have time for in this first edition of Stand & Deliver! Get in contact. Or don’t. But keep listening. Because over the next few weeks we’re going to feature interviews with the likes of Kitty Flanagan, Michael Palin, Chris Franklin – lots of people whose surnames consist of two syllables, the second of which ends in ‘n’. But keep listening. Especially if you like Tripod. Oooh, mysterious. Or even if you don’t. Bye now!
Soundbite: ‘Theme to No Wucken Forries’
- A reference to the introduction to episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus spoken mostly by John Cleese, but sometimes by Eric Idle: “And now for something completely different…” Hence it also being the title of the first Python film – which consisted of sketches from the first two seasons, filmed for the big screen.
- That is to say, the wow and flutter of bad radio reception is followed by the static and noise of a radio tuner being spun through various stations – sampled from ‘Reception’, from the Paul McCartney & Wings album Back to the Egg – before giving way to ‘Holiday for Strings’ by Spike Jones and his City Slickers, but only for the briefest of moments.
- Spoken by John Cleese as the highwayman Dennis Moore from the sketch of the same name, a send-up of Robin Hood, that appears on the newly remastered and re-released CD Monty Python’s Previous Record.
- By Psychedelic Spew, and originally written and recorded as the theme for a sketch comedy show called No Wucken Forries. The first episode contained a recurring sketch that tried to come to grips with the correct spelling and pronunciation of the word ‘forries’.
- Not true in any way, shape or form. WTF was I thinking?!
- In fact, the very opening and very closing seconds of ‘Twist & Shout’ by the Beatles; let’s see how long that stays before I’m served with a ‘cease and desist’ notice!
- Hang on, did he say ‘Tripod television show’? Jesus H.M.A.S. Christ, Dom, talk about your ‘missed opportunity’! There was your next question right there… fool!
- What I meant to say was, “apart from ‘I Hate Your Family’, what other Christmas song has been released?” And the answer is, ‘Fabian’, on Fegh Maha, as I discovered when I was looking for music to mix into the interview. Still, this bit worked. As to the ‘Christmas album’ Open Slather – Special Christmas Edition, I got to interview Yon about that all those years ago. See for yourself. (OMG – not quite a decade ago now!)
- Of course it’s just as Yon says; despite having seen the show three times – well, okay twice, and the songs from it performed as a set at the Comedy Store – I could never quite remember the technical construction of ‘Too Many Remotes’ – or ‘Tall Man’, for that matter. But now I’ve got the CD Songs From Self-Saucing to set me straight. And I played the relevant bits in the interview to illustrate Yon’s points!
- I meant ‘Tall Man’, of course, and ‘the show’ refers to Radio Ha Ha, for which this interview was orginally recorded. Tripod and Tom Gleeson appear in Episode 31 of Radio Ha Ha, with an exclusive preliminary mix of a live version of ‘Tall Man’?
- Theme Time Radio Hour with Your Host Bob Dylan is the name of the show.
- It was indeed Scod who shared this anecdote and it was during this interview featuring Yon, Scod and Gatesy, conducted for ABCNewsRadio a couple of years ago now. In many ways, this Yon interview is that one’s companion piece, since we get to go a little in-depth and use a lot of music to illustrate points.
- “Not that there’s anything wrong with that…”
- Here you go.
- As Scod explains in the second interview in this here blog entry.
- Title track from (and theme to) Queen’s soundtrack of the film Flash Gordon.
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