Once every two years Adelaide come alive with The Adelaide Fringe festival. This year it ran from February 22 – March 17, at the same time as the Adelaide festival and the Clipsal 500 car race. Adelaide hadn’t seen this much action in years. Here are a few of the best shows I saw, including some mp3 recordings.
For those who couldn’t be there, I have compiled some clippings of the best shows I saw this year, and hidden in between are some mp3s I made myself.
Rich Hall is Otis Lee Crenshaw
Otis doesn’t know when to quit. America’s favourite trailer-park songbird is freshly paroled and back in Adelaide. He’s more hungover than ever, his head hurts and he doesn’t love Jesus. “Rapid-fire wit so spontaneous he should leave his brain to science *****” The Guardian
Download Otis Lee – Me.mp3
Download Otis Lee – Rodeo Man.mp3
Ennio Morricone Experience
Think Spaghetti Western movies… A Fistful of Dollars, A Gun for Ringo, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. These classic scores are transcribed and arranged for triggered samples, percussion, virtuosic whistling, live dialogue and incoherent grunting to create a mesmerising and often hilarious soundscape of heroic gunfighter ballads, saloon bar brawls, Mexican stand-offs and bungled shoot-outs.
Greg Fleet – I Wish You Were Dad
A portrait of the artist’s Father as a deeply wrong man. Bigamy, car design, Aliases, Green Berets, fake suicides, parent-teacher nights, and working with Hulk Hogan – just some of my Dad’s shining moments. Come round to Fleety’s place and laugh at his Dad. He lives in America, he’ll never know.
Scared Weird Little Guys
Scared Weird Little Guys are an hilarious, talented musical comedy duo from Melbourne, Australia. For over 10 years they have performed their exciting brand of dynamic original songs and mayhem to satisfied audiences all over the world. From their off the wall tourism song..”Come to Australia..you might accidentally get killed.”, to their 1001 versions of Princes’ ‘KISS’, their energy, harmonies, wit and award winning smiles make the Scared Weird Little Guys live up to their promise of …mindless stupidity
Download SWLG – SA.mp3
Scared Weird Little Guys Website
The Happy Sideshow
This is promoted as Australia’s Premier Freakshow, however as I found out, one for the freaks (the dislocator – Capt. Frodo) is actually Norwegian (from Haugesund). This was their first time in Adelaide with their whip-cracking, trap-snapping, sword-swallowing, dislocating torture for fun.
Acrobat
A five-member troupe whose show and company are called Acrobat. These people were amazingly strong and were voted best show to open in the first week of the Adelaide Fringe. Unlike contemporary circus companies Circus Oz and Cirque du Soleil, Acrobat has taken “a step backwards” to traditional circus. It has removed the fancy costumes, story lines and design elements to perform brilliantly-executed and raw acrobatics which nonetheless have plenty of spirit and comedy. The company, which formed in 1996, performs on the teeter board, static, double and swinging trapeze. They also perform hand balancing, rope act, tumbling and slack rope.