For many months, the Triforce (Tripod) has been sealed away in the sacred realm (community building). Legend speaks of its power (comedy festival show). In case you aren’t fluent in gratuitous Zelda-speak, though, here’s the sitch: acclaimed music comedy trio Scod, Yon and Gatesy are set to present an exciting new show, This Gaming Life.
A passion for video gaming runs deep within Tripod, from the proud proclamation that they’re each “first generation gamers”, to negotiating as a group which console they will each purchase. All three were taken with gaming from an early age. “I used to go and visit my Nanna at Rye,” Simon Hall, aka Yon, recalls. “There was a mini golf centre nearby. It had mini golf, slot cars and pinball machines. Then, about a year after going there, Space Invaders appeared.”
Equally, Scott Edgar – aka Scod – reserves a fondness for the game that soon proved iconic. “I remember the feeling of seeing Space Invaders for the first time and going, “This is for me. I am in. I am hooked, already!’” he gushes. “I hadn’t even touched the thing yet. I’ll never forget that, seeing the bullet hit the little block and the bit of the block going away and just going, ‘This is a whole new ball game.’”
Growing up, Steven Gates – aka Gatesy – fancied himself a “computer guy”, favouring the Amiga 500. But one day, Nintendo landed a critical hit. “ I remember my girlfriend having a Nintendo, an NES. She sat me down and we played Super Mario Bros 3, which was fucking unbelievable. That kind of blew my mind a bit. It changed me. I started becoming a Nintendo guy, then Super Nintendo. Our first touring rig was a Nintendo 64, four-way couch-gaming sort of stuff…nothing was close.”
Tripod’s new show is their love letter to video gaming. However, much like the Water Temple in The Ocarina of Time, there’s a complexity about it. “It’s about us, really, but video games are the backdrop. It’s about subculture and the relationships within and how being a gamer affects the relationships you have with people who aren’t gamers,” explains Hall.
“With every song we wrote, we were looking at it through the prism of, ‘If I didn’t know about games, would I still like this?’” adds Edgar. “Not only that, but ‘What’s this about?’ For me, if it’s not about relationships and people and people’s humanity, in some way, then what are you doing?”
Tripod have been collaborating with Grammy-nominated composer Austin Wintory and, this festival, have the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra at their disposal over two evenings at Hamer Hall. On the surface, This Gaming Life seems like the greatest undertaking of their entire career. “What I like about it, is that it’s actually quite a simple idea. It’s ambitious in a lot of ways, in terms of the amount of work that’s gone into it, but it’s not like we’re trying to twist some weird-ass, multi-layered concept-thing into shape,” explains Edgar. “But yeah, ambitious in terms of all the bells and whistles, absolutely. We’ve put so much into it.”
“We’re going to be jumping out of our skins,” Hall declares. “For a start, just hearing our music played by 60 other people is going to be a huge buzz.”
“The scale is the most fucking petrifying element, but the most exciting for me,” reveals Gates. “Having an orchestra be the backdrop of something we’re really passionate about, that’s just mindblowing to me. I’m pinching myself that we’ve finally got that opportunity. We’ve been dreaming about this forever.”
BY NICK MASON
