Casio Brothers (FringeTIX)
Casio Brothers @ Piano Bar (Festival Centre)
11:00am, Sun 11 Mar 2007
The Guide quite prominently states that this is a kid’s show – the 11am Sunday morning timeslot is a pretty big hint, too. And as a mid-thirties guy strolling into a room full of parents with small children, I could only have more uncomfortable if I’d sported a short gray beard, worn a grotty trench-coat and had “pedofile” tattooed on my forehead. Some of the looks that were poked in my direction by pensive parents were… ouch.
There’s a great mix of music as we wait, though – Hall & Oates, The Beatles, The Smiths all mashed into a wonderful soft beat. Hey, it made me smile – probably not the smartest thing to do, given the suspicion I was already under.
Finally, the Casio Brothers take to the stage – Fabio and Mario Casio, along with the petite Coco Cassette. After a few initial problems with Mario’s mike, they perform a series of child-friendly beat-driven numbers… or “kid-hop”, as they like to call it. There’s a bit of audience beatboxing, and (after a typically lacklustre Adelaide response) they managed to get a fair swarm of kids populating the dance area.
The music is really quite good – Mario DJs, with Fabio alternating between keys, vox, and a neato Casio guitary-thing. Coco’s keyboard skills seem to be limited to the 2-key variety, and she also provides a lot of the vocals. The lyrics range from straight-out giggly (“Groovy Woovy”) through to the edumacational (“Slide City”, and that one about healthy eating); though I’m not sure the kids would have followed the ironic devolution of “I Like TV” to it’s eventual anti-TV rant, and the “Show Bag” closer was a little too rowdy to be entirely legible – though maybe that’s the result of my old-man ears.
But, by and large, the songs were generally just plain fun. The kids were (mostly) up and jumping, the parents all seemed happy they made the effort. Not having any connection with small children whatsoever, I reckon this would be highly appealing to them – and still brought a grin to this non-child’s face for most of the performance.
And, despite all the odd looks I got from parents at the start of the show, nothing freaked me out as much as the tubby child who stared at me for two full minutes, just in the corner of my sight. That scared the shit out of me – I thought she was sizing me up for exsanguination or something. Brrrrrrrrr, I’m shuddering just thinking about it. Bloody freakish hell-child.