And what an Experience.
An atmosphere of an old reel to reel playing crickets chirruping and soft distant howling wolves was set up from the beginning to get us in the mood. These sorts of sounds were used along with the music throughout.
It was also exciting to look at all the instruments and ‘things’ on the stage and wonder how they were going to be used. The most curious was the large pack of Special K breakfast cereal. Other mysterious objects included: an alarm clock, pack of cards, a book, a tin that once held Italian pimentos nailed to some dowel with a string to make it look a bit like a one-stringed instrument, a teapot, tin opener and various hardware such as a ratchet, chains, locks, bolts, door hinges etc. Some perfectly innocent looking beer bottles turned out to be instruments, played like a huge set of pan pipes that took 3 people to play.
The band consisted of 5 blokes in brown suits who played multiple instruments and sang gorgeous harmony recreating the music of Ennio Morricone who composed epic spaghetti western film scores. The main instruments played were piano, trumpet, double bass, synthesiser, glockenspiel and tympani (kettle drums). Other instruments included, snare drums, ukulele, flute, whistles, bells, vibraphone, jews harp, saw, maraccas, castanets, pan flute, and just about every other instrument found in a primary school music class. I recognised only one of the players – Boris Conley who was the resident ‘funnyman’ pianist on ‘Frontline’
Their renditions of Ennio Morricone’s music was beautiful, haunting, surprising, exciting and ultimately hilarious. My friend and I found ourselves in fits of giggles. The performers worked their guts out (not unlike the hard men of the West) to recreate Morricone’s compositions with everything on stage being brought into use in very creative ways and even dialogue from the films was added. As well as the famous big themes and songs they also performed minor incidental music, for example they do a gunfighting scene and include the sound effects of bullets and the body hitting the ground. This is where the box of Special K was used, the microphone was plunged into it to create the sound of boots crunching over gravel.
The lyrics to the serious songs about the relationship between a lonely man and his gun had me in hysterics. The final triumph was the wild and wonderful “The Good the Bad and the Ugly” which was executed with grand style and had the audience cheering. Whether you are or are not a fan of Spaghetti Westerns (I’m not) go see them when they return to perform in Melbourne, they are hilarious.