|
|
THIS IS SPINAL TAP (Mar 1984)
aka: (THIS IS) SPINAL TAP: A ROCKUMENTARY BY MARTI DI BERGI.
Director: Rob Reiner.
Writers: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner.
Starring: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner, R.J. Parnell, David Kaff, Tony Hendra, Bruno Kirby, Ed Begley Jr., Fran Drescher, Patrick Macnee, Howard Hesseman, June Chadwick, Paul Shaffer, Fred Willard.
 |
Tap into our epic rock souls with a cucumber stuffed down our snakeskin spandex.
by
Jon Dunmore ©
Spinal Tap is about a fictional British heavy metal band that were successful in the 60s and 70 and fell into obscurity, mounting a comeback tour. But that's not important. What IS impotant is the affect that SPINAL TAP had on the musical iconography of succeeding generations. If Rob Reiner does nothing else in his life, he will at least have imbued generations of touring musicians with a movie especially for their unique existence. He has immortalized himself . We still measure the worth of a bandguy's coolness by how quickly he can throw down a Tap one-liner in apropos situations.
Back in my KISS scrapbook in the mid-80s (stop that laughing in the back there) I clipped an article on Gene Simmons’s thoughts on that “new comedy” (long before the term mockumentary) THIS IS SPINAL TAP. He hated it. Said it was too close to the bone; that if the names were changed to any rock band on the road at the time, it would simply be a documentary; said it impugned the “sincerity” of bands like his and a thousand others. we see he was prophetically right. Nowadays, Gene is as reverent as every musician on Earth about the classic satiric nature of TAP, but back then, he unknowingly hit upon the “reverse engineering” syndrome that many unindocgtrinated are suffering from traumatically.
That is, in a POST-TAP world, if a child of today looked back at KISS (or their ilk) in their heyday, it would be like watching an Elvis or Buddy Holly biopic after watching WALK HARD: THE DEWEY COX STORY. “…what you see now will inform things that you go back and re-read and re-view…”
watched movie in a cinema full of the Sydney Rock Scene - and the camaraderie - even amongst rival bands - was the most fun we had all year. we were all laooking at the screen gape-mouthed and laughing "They know us so well - get out of our heads!"
Went into resident Sydney Metal Hangout UTOPIA looking for the spinal Tap album and got laughed at by the proprietors. They totally misunderstoond my intent. I knew Tap were not "real" - but I knew that with such a strong soundtrack, there MUST be a "soundtrack album" out there somewhere. Well, the last laugh was on the proprietors - when marketing kicked in.
spiankl tap came at a perfect time in history. talk about right place right time - - at the pinnacle apex zenith of that big hair metal scene -they didnt miss it, they didnt preempt it , they were not prescient - when all tohse cliches tropes were prevalent in the music industry. When even me at my feldgling bandguy stage, knew of how the mbiz was run by blockheads and small minds - and people who cared so little for your talent and worth that they would deign to put puppet show before your band. etc.
STINGER: How bad can it be? answer: None more bad.
END |
|
|
(THIS IS) SPINAL TAP (007)
Director: Rob Reiner.
Writers:
Starring: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner,
|
|
