Long time crowd pleasers Scared Weird Little Guys returned to the Speigeltent where they filmed a show for their current DVD ‘The first 15 years’ in 2004. This time they were recording for a new album which will be called “Mindless Stupidity” and selling their DVDs. (I must recommend the DVD, if only for the Superband footage from the Melbourne Comedy Festival Club). Wearing the snazzy red suits from the DVD cover, they looked fabulous in the Speigel décor and were brimming with energy. There was quite a bit of audience participation and they organised a joke for the CD that would sound like they were doing something visually funny, but weren’t and only we, who were there, would know the truth. We were asked to laugh uproariously and then lamely at nothing and complied with gusto.
Mostly they did a lot of songs, several of which I hadn’t heard before and showed off their superb musicianship which included playing a duet on a single guitar and harmonising in whistle pops (the lollies). I saw them attempt their first whistle pop performance at the Prince Pat several years ago and now it was being recorded for eternity. There were a lot of the old favourites like ‘Phone Book’, ‘New Zealand’ and the suburbs of ‘Melbourne’. Some of the new songs had very up to date lyrics, for example a song satirising the wonders of Australia had a final verse about the Cronulla riots which had occurred only two days before. They had not quite memorised the new verse and had to sing the line a few times before getting it right, for the benefit of the recording. Its actually fun to see how entertainingly they deal with stuff -ups; being relaxed and good natured, you also get a sense of how long they’ve been working at this double act. Their humorous between-song banter was tight and sharp. The audience loved it all and enjoyed being part of the excitement of recording…and we all got free stickers!