CHEEKY RHYMES A CHALLENGE FOR COMIC DUOSimon Sweet...

2006-05-19T14:26:45.090+12:00

CHEEKY RHYMES A CHALLENGE FOR COMIC DUO

Simon Sweetman, Dominion Post, Friday 19 May

Mrs Peacock is a musical/comedy duo comprised of local lads Dave Smith and Jarrod Baker. The duo will probably be forever frustrated at comparisons to Jack Black's musical endeavours with Tenacious D and Flight of the Conchords, the Kiwi duo that are world-famous practically everywhere but at home.

But until Mrs Peacock can develop an act that stands up and away from South Parkand Beavis and Butthead-styled scatological rants, the duo will be plagued by suggestions that they are also-rans in this difficult genre to conquer.

Last year Mrs Peacock was awarded "most offensive gag" at the comedy festival; the duo puff their feathers out proudly, performing this song that won them this form of acclaim. It's not so much offensive as it is silly; a beyond ribald rip-off of ideas better explored decades earlier by Frank Zappa and Denis Leary for starters.

Zappa's abilities were particularly special because his deliberately offensive comedy was shrouded in technically brilliant music; Leary's comedy translated well to music because he wrote simple, catchy tunes and he was doing the anti-PC thing at a time when political correctness had really established itself.

It's too easy to be allegedly shocking, to push things too far these days and when simple gags in student magazines can result in newspaper headlines that seem totally over the top, two guys with a guitar had better be funny as well as attempting to alarm.

The duo is sporadically augmented by a three-piece backing back, introduced as "the Rock-Tron 3000" - this adds musical weight to their ideas, and is a concept the duo would be wise to explore further. Teh band allowed the songwriting duo to aoffer some genre parodies (nu-metal, emo) that were close to spot-on, as well as dishing out musical quotes from Lionel Ritchie's Easy and Andrew Lloyd-Webber's Phantom of the Opera. These riff references deliberately placed out of context were the funniest things Mrs Peacock offered.

The group's nearly po-faced alt-rock re-working of Vanilla Ice's Ice Baby [sic] proved there is some potential for talent to shine; both singers are blessed with decent voices, but as the shock-legend of grimy cinema, John Waters, said in his memoir, "to understand bad taste, one must have very good taste". At this early stage in their comedy career, Mrs Peacock is still tossing out cheeky rhymes written during detention when the teacher wasn't looking.

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CHEEKY RHYMES A CHALLENGE FOR COMIC DUOSimon Sweet...