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Spinal Tap to Reunite for Live Earth
Maximum Prophet noted that one of the most influential and loud rock bands in the history of music is coming back together to perform at Live Earth this summer. Yes, that's right
Tap is Back. The article has some good news (a new single is coming) and some bad news... apparently Derek is in rehab for addiction to the Internet. Best wishes to him on his recovery- I'm sure it won't impact the performance... if Spinal Tap is anything, they are a band.
Always been confused over this. Is Spinal Tap a real band, or just a movie made band that parodies the rock industry. Thought it was the latter, but people talk about it so passionately as if it was a real band.
I'm hoping their amps can now go up to 12 instead of 11, due to advances in sound and rock technology since their last tour.
I hope they play Stonehenge!
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
I clearly remember the first time I heard their music.
they'll go all the way to 11.
how's it coming wiping your butt with one piece of paper?
the Political Inquirer
The subsequent release of carbon would be detrimental to the planet.
"The official cause of death is he died of choking on CO2 emissions. It wasn't his own CO2 emissions. He choked on somebody else's CO2 emissions."
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
As much as I look forward to the new single, nothing will ever take the place in my heart reserved for the song "Lick My Love Pump." Hopefully it will get more than just a two word review.
What this really has to do with Slashdot is t-shirt color. How much more black can our t-shirts be? And the answer is none. None more black.
This is Spinal Tap is an utterly hilarious "mockumentary" about a hard rock band in the eighties, brought to you by the same folks as Waiting for Guffman and A Mighty Wind. It's news for nerds because, like everybody else in this world, nerds like Spinal Tap. Why don't you?
> I'm hoping their amps can now go up to 12 instead of 11
Question: if sound amplification technology had progressed at the same rate as chip speeds have since 1984 (when ST last played) what volume number would be required on their *new* amps to get the same sound level as 11 did back in 1984 ?
Since when does Internet addiction has rehab? All you need to do is rip out the network/wireless card(s) and subscribe to the newspaper to cure your Internet addiction.
Advertisement as expected on Craigslist!
The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. - HGTTG
Baby, you're too young
And I'm too well hung
It's an unusual band, not a very well known band. Although they've earned their place in history as one of England's loudest bands.
I am not a crackpot.
I think the appropriate tag would be 'politics', not 'science'.
I don't know, you'd have to ask Sheryl Crow. But this article is about Spinal Tap, whose amps go up to 11, not Sheryl Crow, who sometimes doesn't even use amps.
My blog
It's news for nerds because, like everybody else in this world, nerds like Spinal Tap. Why don't you?
I DID like Spinal Tap, until they started spewing all this environmental garbage. If I wanted that kind of crap, I would just listen to Mitch & Mickey!
--fatboy
I saw these guys perform a couple of years ago at a Howard Dean rally. They appeared as "The Folksmen" from "A Mighty Wind," and they rocked the house. (Or, more accurately, I guess, they folked the house.)
i thought, therefore i was...
You seem to forget that this is basically CmdrTaco's site. He can do what he wants, and if you don't like it, you're not being forced to visit, so don't.
I, for one, welcome back England's loudest rock band.
When is "Disaster Area" going to be touring this end of the galaxy again?
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
What's your definition of "real?"
I for one would like to distance myself from the original poster's comments regarding Derek's current stint in rehab. Wishing him well on a website is tantamount to buying a round of drinks and saying "cheers" to congratulate a recovering alcoholic.
Derek, if you are reading this, step away from the computer you weak-willed fool.
Sick, sick, sick.
- The final level, appropriately enough, is Stonehenge.
- Kick ass on an encore? Your drummer may explode.
- One of the playable songs? "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You (Tonight)"
There's likely loads of more references that I haven't even caught onto yet. Good times.
I don't see them on the UK or USA bill.
April fools???
"You had this look that of an angel, it was such a bad disguise" --Dishwalla
Uhhh not at all, it hasnt been his site since he sold it to Andover in June 29, 1999 and the subsequent buyers.
Of course this "if you do not like it you can just go" is the Linux zealot mentality... (play by my rules or give me my ball), which does not accept any kind of comments and critiques...
Derek Smalls, on bass. Sheesh. Read the wikipedia page and enlighten yourself. I don't quite get the "This article or section may fail to make a clear distinction between fact and fiction" warning, though. What's up with that?
Anyway, Spinal Tap (with an umlaut over the "n") is known as "England's loudest band", and are world famous for such albums "Shark Sandwich" and "Intravenus de Milo". Of course, everybody's favorite these days is "Smell the Glove", but I was a fan before they became popular. I've still got a poster of the "Smell the Glove" album art hanging on my wall. It's a rare collector's item!
Tap! Tap! Tap!
If you've never watched the DVD with the commentary track on, I highly recommend you do so. It's like getting the film for the first time all over again. The band watches the film in character, and comments on it from their perspective 20 years later. They spend the whole time bitching about what a horrible hatchet job Reiner did on them. "29 shows out of 30 those pods open just fine, but which one makes it into the film? I ask you."
Great stuff.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
You do realize that she was making a joke when she said that, don't you?
I heard you can download the songs for free on the Interweb but you can't play them unless your speakers go up to 11.
Anyone know when the next Disaster Area concert is?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Fortunately, Spinal Tap and music have very little to do with each other.
I hope after this reunion show, that we loyal fans of all things rocking will see the Clash of the Titans as the almighty Tap (the loudest band on earth) tours with Tenacious D (the greatest band on earth). Imagine the non-stop rocking!
the article mentions something like a 15 minute film short by r.r., showing what each band member had been doing. Wouldn't it have been funny to have nigel working in a shoe store? Maybe to predictable tho.
anyway, this post goes to 11.
I do mean that literally.
Best Slashdot Co
I think I remember seeing footage of their tour bus careening off a cliff and exploding. I assumed there were no survivors, but it seems I was wrong.
Live Earth is Al Gore's doing, right?
Y'know, Al Gore, husband of Tipper Gore - the obsessive censorship advocate who, among other things, attempted to sue Jello Biafra, singer of the Dead Kennedys until the rest of the band sold the fuck out, into the ground?
Tipper Gore, who's Parents' Music Resource Centre attempted to have heavy metal, hip hop and other records she didn't happen to like blacklisted?
I wonder what Tipper thinks of "Blow Me (Like the Wind)"?
Well, I'm off to listen to some Gorerotted before it's outlawed and we all have to listen to Christina Aguilera and James Blunt.
The greatest rock bands in world...oh man I would buy that ticket
I am writing a post about Spnal Tap without a single one liner from the movie. Shock, gasp.
We're all going to die. i intend to deserve it.
Spinal Tap did not exist before the movie.
I beg to differ. When I was a wee lad (and allowed to stay up late), I remember watching a special (read: pilot) that Rob Reiner put together called "The TV Show" in the late 1970s (on ABC-TV I think). It was basically skits that parodied TV (much like "Robot Chicken", though horribly dated of course).
The skits included a telethon ("Stop Death During Our Lifetime!"), a commercial for the chemical company Proto-Chem (with CEO Tom Proto-Chem no less), a send-up of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom (the prey of the intrepid crew that week was "the white collar worker"), and.. Spinal Tap.
I was too young to do any drugs, so I know I wasn't hallucinating. Anyone else see this too?
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
Spinal taps are quite painful. Though I do not understand the idea behind giving one to the Earth.
Support your local school shooter, give them your firearms.
Actually I still use three. One up, one down and one to polish.
ttfn
A.Nonymouse
"Environmental concerns of unnecessary cardboard waste from artists and consumers alike created controversy over continued use of longboxes. Musicians like David Byrne would incude a sticker over the packaging of his albums reading ""THIS IS GARBAGE", referring to the excessive material use of the longbox form. The satirical band Spinal Tap's 1992 studio album Break Like the Wind was sold in an "extra-long box" (an 18-inch longbox) -- a deliberate parody of the prevailing longbox packaging controversy, as well as a deliberate phallic metaphor."
(From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longbox)
So is it hypocritical for them to be performing at Live Earth? Or is it just hilarious? I'm tending toward the latter.
I for one WELCOME BACK our Rock and Roll OVERLORDS!!!
Now, if the Rutles got back together that would be big news.
Spinal Tap are the pioneers of overclocking. Their infamous "Amp Hack" allowed them to go to 11.
They also wrote one of the very first version of the Unix kernels, and developed TCP/IP in between gigs. Linus Torvalds was once quoted as saying "If it weren't for Spinal Tap's work in the field, I would have never been inspired to develop Linux." The entire concept for broadband internet access - Spinal Tap. Cisco Corporation was started by the proceeds of an early Spinal Tap show. Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap doodled the first design for the Cray Supercomputer on the back of a napkin at a diner while on tour. David St. Hubbins is also credited for inventing SATA drives because "I just didn't like the sound of the IDE drives".
There, that enough for you, or shall I continue?
"But this one goes to 11!"
I recently saw an AmEx commercial using the proto-Spinal Tap song "give me some money". Just by looking at my Dad, who introduced me to Tap, I knew we were thinking the same thing - they were using a song by a fake band to sell a real product. Kind of a parable for the state of the advertising industry.
But will the Folksmen open for Spinal Tap?
Test your net with Netalyzr
So let me get this straight, are they playing before or after Puppet Show?
Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap doodled the first design for the Cray Supercomputer on the back of a napkin at a diner while on tour.
Unfortunately, back then nobody could figure out how to cram all those components into an six-and-a-half inch tall case.
Do they still have armadillos in their pants?
-- Joshua
If only there was a "-1, Bonehead" mod....
They write their own songs, play their own instruments, record albums, and go on tour. They're a real band with a fake history.
bkd
... this story needs more cowbell.
You really gotta wonder how dumb Sheryl Crowe is when she's dumped for being too stupid to deal with by a Texas trailer-park redneck like Lance Armstrong...
Actually the mentality is this: If you like it, you can have it.
The opposite is implied.
While Spinal Tap is probably one of the funniest movies ever made, and one of the best satires of the music business, there's one idiosyncrasy of bands that has become the stuff of legend, but has its roots (usless trivia coming up) in a rational and functional purpose.
It used to be Van Halen that included, among other things in their contracts, a requirement that a bowl filled with a specific mass of M&M's in all colors EXCEPT absolutely no brown. Since the days of their wild contract riders, many recording artists have followed suit with their tour promoters and required some utterly bizarre requests to be fulfilled. One of the funniest moments in the film for me is Nigel being baffled by the meat tray. It's inconceivable to him that the meat could just be folded to fit the bread... to him, the bread isn't big enough. I was backstage at a concert where precisely this kind of stupidity reared its ugly head, and specifically concerning a meat tray that arrived late where the band still had time to send someone down the street at least and pick up some takeout. Of course that never occurred to them.
Regarding Van Halen, though... their tour managers actually included bizarre requests like the one about the M&M's (which has been repeated ad nauseum in other contracts in homage to Van Halen) as a safety check. Their reasoning was that if the promoters weren't paying attention to items like this they also might not be reading carefully through critical safety requirements included in the same contract.
He didn't say how BIG the napkin was, just that it was a napkin. We can't assume these sort of things, ya know?
Nigel Tufnel: "It's like, how much more back could Spinal Tap be? and the answer is none. None more back"
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
Sir Dennis Eton-Hogg: "And so say all of us: TAP into the environmental protection movement!"
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
Now, a Rutles reunion, *that* would be something!
Nigel's drawing inadvertently lead to an obsession with miniaturization. Much of today's world economy has benefited from his visionary musings.
Anyone else remember tapster.com back in 2000? There was apparently a mixology site by that name that they borrowed for a few months to make a parody of Napster. I still have a couple of songs I downloaded from there, including Stonehenge, which I have on my iPod. They even had one mis-named song... I can't remember what it was listed as, but one mis-named song was actually Zappa's "I Am The Slime", which I had never heard of before. Or listened to since.
Alas, that site is now occupied by a squatter domain. They should upgrade to something newer like BitTorrent anyhow.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Hey everybody! Welcome to the Woodchuck Festival of Peace Love AND DEATH! Now the idea is for everyone here, a million of us, to off ourselves by the end of the show! Now if your buddy's too stoned to off himself, just roll him up in a sleeping bag and leave him in the north 40 where the tractors can run him over. And remember - there isn't enough food. There just isn't enough food - so remember - the man next to you is your dinner! Now, we're going to hear from a great band - this is the first and last time they've ever played together - so let's give them a big welcome - FREUD, MARX, ENGELS, and JUNG!!!
One of my favourite parts is when Chevy Chase pretends to be a member of the Weather Underground:
You know - you don't need a weather man to tell which way the wind blows... ALRIGHT! Every single one of you out there - YOU'RE AN OPPRESSOR - PIG! You owe it to the third world to Off Yourself! Everytime you shit or piss you dump uraeic acid on the mother earth, and then you wipe your ass with the guts of a TREE! You're not worth the life of the cow that went in to making your BELT you RUNNING DOG JACKAL! If you're not a black homosexual working class woman - you're an OPRESSOR! PIG! you deserve to DIE! NOW - as we all know, the bourgeoisie own all the means of self-extermination, like ropes, razorblades, and bullets. So if you want to do something really meaningful, you'll beat yourself to death in a four foot hole of organic compost. For the rest, we have TNT suppositories. Power To The Correct People!
One of the funniest Records EVER. EVER!
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
The fact that my mom drew the original skeleton t-shirt that Nigel wore in the Spinal Tap movie gives me a tremendous sense of pride, I just had to chime in to brag a little ;)
Accept no imitations, Leslie Arwin is the original artist of the skeleton t-shirt from Spinal Tap (and other movies of the era). She created the shirt to put herself through Med School in 1978, before I was born. She already had a Medical Illustration degree, hence the amazing accuracy on the shirts.
Cheers,
-Ben Arwin
Spinal Tap was a real band in the late 70's and early 80s. Its been an inside and ongoing joke on the internet now for 20 years to pretend that Spinal Tap is really a parody of a rock band. After the joke had been going around for a while, the band made a movie thats a parody of a rock n' roll parody to capitalize on it.
This article reminded me again of something I saw a few years ago at a local film festival. It's called Rok Dabla (Year of the Devil), a film/mockumentary (well, partly) about another struggling band, in Czech Republic's own fashion. It seemed to be influenced a lot by Spinal Tap, and even had a few homages to its predecessor. And it's also just as hilarious.