The Return of the Jingleberries

The Stage
Parodying children's television is well-trodden territory but this production wins by virtue of the sheer skill with which it tackles the subject.

The scenario is this - the Jingleberries are a disgraced eighties musical group who decide to make an untimely comeback. Since their glorious children's BBC days, life has been hard for the intrepid threesome. Frank (Anthony Macari) has been reduced to playing the big bass drum in a holiday camp while Jerry and the libidinous Penny (Mark Katz and Kate Van Dike), have tied the knot and also had career meltdowns.

Their superbly performed songs are rich in innuendo and the banter between the three of them is sharply written. Furthermore, much comedy is made out of the rivalry between Jerry and Frank and their mutual lust for Penny.

Other highlights included the story of the tragic demise of the fourth Jingleberry, the insulting behaviour of a grammar obsessed puppet and their cruel song about bullying.

Throughout the show, the pace is fast and the performances are strong. And the eurovision finale is tremendously funny, leaving the three of them panting like dogs and stripped down to their underwear.

Three Weeks
Welcome back to the eighties! Children's TV presenters 'The Jingleberries' have returned, bringing an entirely different type of show for their original audience as tongues in cheeks and double entendres with added smuttiness arethe order of the day. Jerry, Frank and Penny charm the audience with a repertoire of three hundred jingles and stories of the old days (that is, before they killed off their fourth member Gemma).

With cheesy jokes and songs abound, this show presents itself in a manner so seemingly friendly for children, you'd almost believe it was, if it weren't for Jerry's tight trousers and Penny's beaver that is. A fantastically funny, lewd, entertaining show.

The Scotsman
Back in 1984, the Jingleberries were something. They had radio and TV ads under their belts, a kids' TV show and a Song for Europe.

Now reduced to a trio, Jerry, Frank and Penny, inspired by Dollar's display on Reborn in the USA, have decided to return.So Mark Katz, Kave Van Dike and Lou Macari look back on their TV shows, grumble about their rivals and reminisce. They play songs, revisit jingles and mix daytime TV platutitudes with broad smut.

It's fun material, well preformed - and there are times when you feel like you're watching the real thing.

Edinburgh Evening News
Jingleberries Prove Ripe for Comeback
Boys and girls rejoice, for the Jingleberries are here to wring the last gasps of musty air from nostalgia's kipper-tie bedecked throat. Right from the moment Penny, Frank and Jerry bounce on stage, we know we're in for a treat. Catchy tunes such as tight trousers, Brazil Nuts and the moving anti-bullying anthem Stop Hitting Me fill the gloomy GB caves with fun and laughter, while the witty banter between the three quickly denegrates into petty bickering and name-calling. Great role models for kids! The songs, however, remain the greatest aspect of this show, and there's plenty of them.

When Jerry and Frank aren't sniping at each other, goaded on by tarty Penny, the comeback CD is given a fair bit of a mention. The lampooning of nostalgia mania in this spoof 1980's children's show is spot-pn as well as highly entertaining.

The songs and dances, the big cheesy smiles, the annoying educational puppet (Mr Macadamia the grammar squirrel) - the Jingleberries have it all. Even the decade is well chosen given the current obsession with all things mulleted and polka-dotted at the moment.

And of course, it's with a song that the Return of the Jingleberries reaches it's chaotic trousers-down climax. D-Day, The Jingleberries cheesy old Eurovision entry, is surprisingly likeable, and the performance is like a cross between Abba and Bucks Fizz.

Whether you love or hate nostalgia and all it entails, you'll certainly love this highly enjoyable show. Oh, and it's all right - you don;t have to eat the brazil nuts!

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSORS PART 1

Weird and wacky hosts for the night - The Argus, Brighton Publication
May 2005

Anxious that nothing should detract from the visceral power of their live shows - performances which have already led one critic to describe them as "the best band I've ever seen" - frontman Adrien Munden would "prefer it if you didn't mention that I used to be an actor".

But if Audioporn's melodramatic showmanship and spoken monologues don't give the game away tonight, their stage garb might - the band's live wardrobe consists largely of costumes nicked from the Royal Shakespeare Company, including a white fur coat once sported by the Vicomte de Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

Having grown up obsessed with the likes of Clash and Bowie, Munden insists he only got into acting in order to "get the money to buy a guitar". It proved a solid game plan.

While accompanying the RSC on their first ever tour of South Africa, he was offered a weekly slot at the national theatre, playing his songs in the bar and eventually winding up on TV. While others were setting their sights on Hamlet, Munden returned convinced he had to form a band.

So he teamed up with bassist Pete Coombs, drummer Che Albrighton and keyboardist Simon Abbot and, sensing they weren't the only ones bored by "bands following the three-minute formula of verse, chorus, verse, middle eight", set about creating something that was "more of a performance, a slightly other world. Music with the balls of punk and the cleverness of the Seventies stuff".

The result is, to be frank, a concept album. But not in the sense of "pixies and fairies and wizards and goblins", and not in the sense of Mansun's The Attack Of The Grey Lantern (God rest its soul).

Played from start to finish, Tank is a sci-fi dub-rock opus which, in a bizarre collision of Beat poetry, Blur's Parklife and Charles Dickens, charts the journey of a Tank - left to the hero in a will, uncovered in a cavernous underground warehouse and used, in the finale, to crush the TV sets children throw in its path.

It's conceptual for sure (unlike Super Fury Animals, Audioporn's tank is purely metaphorical). But it's done with sleazy panache, quirky danceability and lashings of dark humour.

"The record companies told us it was commercial suicide to do a concept album with no singles," says Munden. "But we decided to throw the rule book away, to make something a bit cutting edge that wasn't pandering to the music industry. We made a big f*** off piece of art. And the minute we did that the world turned for us."

After witnessing the album's first play-through, Richard Daws of Komedia Entertainment took on the band's management. And now Audioporn are fresh from a tour with ex-strangler Hugh Cornwell, set to play Glastonbury's Lost Vagueness, and working on their first DVD. Alongside footage of tonight's gig, it will include an album trailor, filmed in Brighton, which takes the form of a fake documentary and includes a scene of Munden "skate-boarding down rolling hills wearing a boiler suit with UN written on it".

There's no denying Audioporn are clever little so-and-so's. But we'd advise you simply to kick back and enjoy the ride. After tonight, Audioporn will be as big a secret as that mag under your mattress.

Bella Todd

Catriona Killin Daily Record
September 2004

AUDIOPORN'S frontman Adrien Munden cut a suitably theatrical figure for a former thespian as he sashayed into the surrealist fable Tank.

Like a visual cross between Clockwork Orange-era Malcolm McDowall and Killing Joke's Jaz Coleman and a musical hybrid of Bowie and The Electric Six, Munden dominated the tiny Edinburgh Underbelly.

Ploughing the same self-conscious furrow as The Dandy Warhols (but with a more mischievous sense of fun) the London four-piece brought a potentially arena-filling blend of scuzzy funk and Talking Heads-like danceable quirkiness to a delighted Edinburgh Festival crowd. Driven by the propulsive drumming of Che Albrington and ignited by their frontman, Audioporn looked able to provide the soundtrack to a crazed night at Hugh Hefner's Arty Party House (should it exist). Their mish-mash of Beefheart-like shaggy-dog-tale lyrics and 21st century Roxy Music sci-fi sound could see them elevated to the higher levels of the 'bizarre-rock' landscape. Muse should book their perfect support act before U2 do.

Barry Gordon, Sunday Mail
August 2004

Don't let the silly name put you off - Audioporn are one of the best bands I've ever seen. A cross between Frank Zappa and the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, this super-cool quartet effortlessly fuse different genres without sounding like a train wreck.

Their intertwining songs are colourful, highly disciplined and attention-grabbing. From sizzling opener Welcome To The World to the sublime Turn Me On, Audio Porn are a sexy band well worth listening to.

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