First of all, The Quarry Amphitheatre is a beautiful setting, somewhere everyone in Perth should investigate – with sloping steps and a natural setting akin to The Belvoir Amphitheatre except smaller and more conveniently located in City Beach.
Diggy Bones was the warm up act, supported by his backing band The Tokens of Love. Bones is fast becoming a “perthonality” with duties of hosting for the ladies that are Sugar Blue Burlesque and apparently with his band or as a solo comedy act. His sense of style cannot be matched (tonight he was appropriately dressed like a pimped out santa) and his character remained intact throughout. We were only privy to a few songs, ranging from monkeys having sex in cuba; to Diggy (on the request of the Health Minister no less) being responsible for Perth having a reputation of good-looking people by “fixing” the uglies; to foot fetishes, making one wonder what other ridiculous concepts we’d get to hear if they’d had more stage-time. It was funny, and even if you didn’t think so it was entertaining purely for how ridiculous it all was.
When the emcee came on to introduce a second support act “The Kwinana Community Support Choir” it was hard not to second-guess the fact that this was part of the Tripod show, until 3 people carried in front of them cardboard cut-outs of choristers. We were treated to Nothing To See Here, a lovely song exclaiming sarcastically that there was nothing to see here – “just the fucking lord”, “just some dumb old baby”. For those that hadn’t heard the Christmas album they’re touring For The Love of God!, the song was a perfect introduction to the shock value of the proceeding songs. And to the musicality of all three performers, with pitch perfect harmonies carried on throughout their show. This musicality was stripped back to the 3 men and a couple of instruments, as opposed to the album which is an orchestral take on standard Christmas melodies.
They were entertaining and energetic throughout and even if all the songs weren’t laugh out loud material they managed to creatively explore different ideas related to the Christmas story which you wouldn’t have otherwise thought of or dared to even consider. They certainly had a wow factor either with their cheek and how politically incorrect most of the songs were or else with vocalising/harmonising skills.
Examples of these concept type songs include Fabian about the least famous reindeer of all who, like Rudolph, also has a nasal deformity but no redeeming qualities to compensate. The Homophobic Christmas Tree had to be heard to be believed. Tripod explained one form of their song-writing process as wondering “what if”, for example – what if they were in prison at xmas – which led into Someday The Lord about what would happen when they met Jesus that somehow led to them being suspended in a tank fed by a tube. Or something perhaps anyone with in-laws can relate to I Hate Your Family which turned outrageous fairly quickly.
Yes, unexpected turns towards outlandish outcomes seemed to be a theme of the night – they’d start out beautifully singing a regular carol then it would turn into some weird comment on something else entirely – one highlight in this category was The Little Drummer Boy parody which morphed into an attack on Daryl Somers. But, we did get some serious material, with perfect renditions of Oh Holy Night and the Paul Kelly Song Meet Me In the Middle of the Air.
In instalments between songs, Tripod re-created the story of the 3 wise men. There were some funny jokes within this, but the definite highlight was the unplanned (or so we assumed) audience member picked out to be the narrator. This man was a star in his own right – with a perfect narrator’s voice like Jack Thompson he provided many of the laughs, and was so good many in the audience assumed he’d been planted there, but the lads on stage reassured us this was not the case. Tripod must have either loved the choice they made or worried he might steal their thunder.
They ended the night with The Stuffing which they aimed to be a crowd sing-a-long but unfortunately they overestimated the crowd’s musical ability or willingness to participate as it seemed to peter out toward the end. It was a slightly disappointing end to a funny and clever night, which was completely appropriate to the time of year and also to the ambivalence a lot of people in our society have toward religion these days.
to listen to their music now on 
