It’s no secret at all that I think Tripod are brilliant musicians. The first time you hear their music, you laugh at all the jokes – but the more you listen to them (and laugh with them), the more you become aware of just how impressive Scod, Yon and Gatesy’s musicianship actually is. Their harmonies are impeccable, their music is interesting and the three work together with such finesse. I can’t praise these guys enough. I’ve been a fan of Tripod for about twelve years, first hearing their album ‘About An Hour of Songs In An Hour Again!’ and falling in love with it almost instantly (I actually got one of the copies without the explanations in between songs – in my youth and desperation to own a copy of the CD, I didn’t make any attempt to change my precious copy of the album. I’m now just going to assume it’s a rarity to find now, as the other copies got recalled…)
The first Tripod show I saw live was ‘Lady Robots’, which I insisted my entire family attend. My younger brother spent the second half asleep under the seats (as he spent most evenings out) but I loved every second of it – from the ingenious section when Gatesy went inside the mainframe of the computer and recreated classic video games (the Tetris bit still makes me laugh years later) to the ‘holy-crap-how-do-they-do-that?!?’ moment when Scod and Gatesy played each other’s guitar – first strumming the other’s chords, then creating the chords for the other to strum. Amazing.
Anyway, I got to see Perfect Tripod this week – Tripod teaming up with Eddie Perfect for their almost-completely-acapella show ‘Australian Songs’ – and I haven’t stopped thinking about their performance. The four voices together were absolutely beautiful; it was a masterclass in musicianship and as a musician, I feel I learned a lot.
In honour of their amazingness (I can honour that, right?), I thought I’d put together a list of my favourite Tripod songs and why, just because it’s what I do. I’m a list kind of guy.
First, I want to mention a few covers that they’ve done, which are just awesome.
Ashes to Ashes/Space Oddity
Available as a download from their ‘Live at the Spanish Club’ collection, this was easily the highlight of the few covers that were released. Completely re-imagining ‘Ashes to Ashes’ to make it their own, the three of them completely owned the song, and the crowd went wild when they segued into ‘Space Oddity’. I showed this to my band the other day and we just marvelled at how spot-on every section of the vocals were – there were many sections where (I assume) the band held extended notes while drifting back and forth from the microphone, giving a spacy, Doppler-effect style to the vocals and their tightness and timing just blew us away.
The One
My highlight from the Perfect Tripod album and performance – this cover works in its simplicity: sometimes they just need to tell a story and let the song speak for itself. Eddie Perfect takes the lead for most of this track, but everything really takes off when the four of them bring together some amazing harmonies. Absolutely wonderful.
Sweet Caroline
BUM BUM BUM! They got an entire theater of people to sing along with their completely over-the-top enthusiasm and then capped it off with Scod’s unimpressed contribution to Yon and Gatesy’s madness. So much fun.
Some honourable mentions before we get started on this list proper. These are just songs that get stuck in my head, make me laugh and are just all-round awesome:
Here’s Wally
Kevin Bacon
Get Knotted
The Ballad of Floor-Buffer Smurf
Krap Karate
Ugly Men with Beautiful Women (Purely for the ‘Where babies come from speech’ which I memorised and recited as much as I could)
Gonna Make You Happy Tonight
IKEA (I just love the concept behind this one – and every time I go to IKEA, I wonder about the person who makes those plastic televisions…)
Anyway! Onto the list proper!
10) BAS Time
For my 21st birthday last year, my very good friend (who actually got me into Tripod) surprised me when he bought me the ‘Men of Substance’ album, which I actually didn’t know existed. So, ridiculously great birthday present there. Some awesome tracks on this album – I particularly love the breakdown in ‘Triangle of Happiness’ – but none get me singing or grooving as much as ‘BAS Time’. It’s such a Tripod concept – let’s make a funk song about doing taxes – which only gets better when Scod insists on stopping the song to correct the other’s maths. What absolutely makes this song for me is the smooth, soulful part of the song which praises sweet-point-nine. There’s also the really sexy reciting of the ‘one-recurring’ – I have no idea how they made that sound as good as they did, but it’s just so cool. They end the best song on the album by questioning if it was any good or not. Hilarious.
9) No Oil In The Congo
The Tripod boys sometimes fall into set roles: Yon and Gatesy are silly and just want to have fun, while Scod finds himself as the ‘straight-man’ of the group, the glue that holds the easily distracted minds of the other two together. This dynamic works wonderfully on stage and ‘No Oil in the Congo’ is one of the best examples of this. Putting Scod’s quite serious (and very impressive) song right next to Yon and Gatesy doing the most RIDICULOUS dancing and miming actions makes for some brilliant comedy. I still remember one particularly hilarious bit when they accidentally made someone explode, then had to dig the graves for them and wipe the exploded remains off their chest. The song concludes with Yon and Gatesy winning, completely taking over the song, while Scod just quietly packs up and leaves, glaring at them all the while.
8) King Kong
This song introduced a new expression into the cannon of language: Get to the fucking monkey! The song starts off nicely enough, but by the time the chorus starts off and the audience realises what the song is REALLY about, everyone just loses it. The song’s just so fucking funny. I don’t think I have much else to say but ‘Titanic! Opening credits… ICEBERG SMASH! SINKING! SINKING! DROWN, LEO, DROWN! Roll credits.’
7) Bard
The final song in their amazing musical ‘Tripod versus the Dragon’ (more on that later) is just a tribute to the joys of playing a game with your friends. It’s so earnest and honest and just an utter joy to listen to. In fact, since hearing this song, I knew that if I ever started playing Dungeons and Dragons, I’d have to play a Bard. My favourite character to play is my Eladrin Skald Bard named Seamus. Bards are AWESOME.
6) Second Drawer Down
Everything fits in the second drawer down! ‘Open Slather’ is such a strong album, and the boys as just bursting with energy the entire way through. Sometimes all Tripod need to make a song hilarious is to take a strange and simple concept and take it to the complete extreme. The claims of who or what can fit in the second drawer down get more and more outrageous, until Scod steps in with a conundrum that cannot be solved with the answer ‘second drawer down’, completely shattering Gatesy and Yon’s entire world view. This song is an eight minute epic, the fourth track on the album, and it’s a testament to how strong the ‘Open Slather’ album is that it doesn’t lose energy after this incredible song.
5) I Will Still Play
The penultimate song from the ‘Tripod versus the Dragon’ musical (Still more on that later) is a touching track, sung mainly by Gatesy who has never sounded better than in this track. When writing this musical, the Tripod boys did a great job of writing lyrics which not only applied to Dungeons and Dragons, but could easily be transposed into a less-Dungeons-and-Dragons-esque setting. ‘I Will Still Play’ is about never giving up, even when the odds are against you. It’s inspiring and uplifting with a wonderful trumpet line. What more do you need?
4) Shandy Too Far
I’m actually surprised at how high up this list ‘Shandy Too Far’ is. It’s a subtle song, kind of slips under the radar on ‘Open Slather’ when it’s surrounded by more over-the-top numbers, but whenever I think of a song from it, ‘Shandy Too Far’ is the first one that comes to mind. My friend and I have tried constantly to cover Tripod songs, to mixed degrees of success, but the one that always sounds good (at least to us) is this track. The lyrics are great and tell a funny, yet relate-able story, and I think the subtle-nature of this song is what makes it work. It doesn’t throw punchlines in your face, but it invites you to join the humour over a glass of water (because it promised to stop drinking the night before). I honestly can’t get enough of this song.
3) Ghost Ship
I don’t find anything quite as funny as I find ‘Tripod tell the tale of Tosswinkle the Pirate (Not Very Well)’. It’s absolutely, without a doubt, pure hilarity. The song that tops it all off, the lead single from the soundtrack, ‘Ghost Ship’, a song that obviously caused divides between the group, because they can’t quite agree on what the song’s about. While initially about a spectral galleon of doom, Gatesy tries to appeal to a wider audience and takes advantage of his sex appeal to get more women to buy the album, before Yon decides that it should be a more emotional song, about being a good listener and a thoughtful companion. Scod just wants to sing about banshees. The three play off each other and essentially perform three songs in one, jumping rapidly back and forth. It’s just so fucking funny.
2) On Paper
Okay, here we go. Let’s talk about ‘Tripod versus the Dragon’. Back in 2010, I was invited by my Tripod-loving friend to join him and his sister’s D&D group at the latest Tripod show. I didn’t know much about Dungeons and Dragons then, but I knew I loved Tripod, so I eagerly accepted. We sat in the front few rows, which were fantastic seats, and by the time the acapella overture had ended, I was hooked (DAWN! DAWN OF TIME!). Elana Stone was a wonderful addition to the cast, adding a new dynamic to the group’s sound, and it was hilarious to watch Gatesy’s fighter who really wants to be a bard try to flirt with Stone’s mysterious Something-Something, misinterpreting all her clues and hints (don’t blame him, he rolled bad INT). The characters seemed a lot stronger than their previous musical outings, the entire show was tighter than I’d ever seen them and it was just all-round hilarious. They also used projection ingeniously – either projecting drawings up on the giant sheet which served as a back-drop, or using an overhead projector for shadow puppets. It was such a well staged show and I didn’t think I could be more impressed.
Then Gatesy killed the dragon.
I’ve always had a love for things that mix comedy and drama – things don’t have to be one or the other, just like an actor doesn’t have to be confined to one role, or a singer to one style of music.
I’m not eggagerating when I say this, but the sequence where Gatesy kills the dragon was one of the most powerful things I’ve seen on stage. They used drawings to represent the epic battle, the moment when Gatesy threw the spear and when it pierced the dragon’s scales, then they dropped the sheet to reveal a distraught Gatesy cradling Something-Something, who’d been the dragon all along. There was just something about the combination of lighting, music and just shock at the mood-whiplash the scene provided that made that moment stick with me since. I was literally blown away. The rest of the production didn’t let me down and by the end of it, I just wanted to watch it again and again. That original production of ‘Tripod versus the Dragon’ was nothing short of brilliance. Tripod boys, if you’re somehow reading this, it was genius. Pure genius.
Anyway, if Gatesy killing the dragon was the scene that always stuck with me, ‘On Paper’ was the song that I desperately wanted to sing. Elana Stone sung the hell out of this song, with such passion and emotion, and it’s everything a good musical ballad should be – powerful, with fantastic crescendo, sung by a brilliant singer and contains the line ‘Killing him should make me glad, his songs are really bad on paper, but I can’t get them out of my head.’ Oh god… It just started playing in my head, and it’s brilliant.
I don’t think I can praise ‘Tripod versus the Dragon’ enough and it’s more than enough proof of what incredible musicians Tripod really are.
1) The Hot Dog Man
When it comes down to it, my favourite Tripod song will always be the one that makes me laugh the most, and no song makes me laugh like ‘The Hot Dog Man’. This time, Gatesy plays the straight man, really innocently singing about the friendly neighbourhood hot dog man, while Scod and Yon start to pervert the song around him, turning the Hot Dog Man into one of Hannibal Lecter’s patients. The song is wickedly funny and just builds the tension of how terrible this man could be, capping it off with this fantastic exchange:
YON: Don’t we all have a hot dog man, deep down inside?
GATESY: I’ve never had a hot dog man inside of me! …. He was a pastry chef….. He needed me.
I’ve seen them perform this song a few times, but the best version ended with Gatesy angrily leaping off the stage landing and collapsing into a conveniently empty seat off to the side, pissing himself with laughter. He’d twisted his ankle and couldn’t stop laughing, making the entire song funnier for all. That performance was a wonderful example of ‘the show must go on’ as this song was quite early in the set. In obvious pain, he climbed back onto the stage and gave a wonderful performance, before limping off at the end.
I know that I’m not alone in my love for this song – during their ‘Self Saucing’ tour, after playing ‘No Oil in the Congo’, they came back on stage and asked if we wanted one more. Everyone demanded ‘The Hot Dog Man’ (except for one lovely man, who called for ‘The Ballad of Floor Buffer Smurf’, but wasn’t disappointed when the boys started playing).
I am definitely interested in trying to find out what they think their best songs are – which are their favourite to play and which were their favourite to write? So, Tripod, if you’re reading this, please let me know! I’d love to find out. As a musician, I think it’s important to set yourself goals to achieve, no matter how out of reach they might seem. Without a doubt, I’d love to be the fourth voice in a quartet with Scott Edgar, Simon Hall and Steven Gates.
Tripod have always been a huge influence on me as an artist, both comedic-ally and musically. I’ve always been impressed with their musicianship and enchanted by their voices. I literally cannot praise them enough. Their latest tour has them singing some of the greatest Australian songs, written by the greatest Australian artists, and they definitely deserve to be mentioned among them.
Crazy is Perfect 