Thursday, May 29, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

CDVS

Back when Spinal Tap, the subject of Rob Reiner's classic mockumentary, actually toured, I distinctly remember thinking, "How goddamn stupid are metalheads?" For a long time, I harbored the belief that the bone-jarring cacophony of amplifiers turned up to 11 had scrambled what little of their brains the drugs hadn't. I truly believed they didn't know that it wasn't a real band and was, in fact, a bunch of actors, including Lenny (or was it Squiggy?) from "Laverne and Shirley." The years have passed, and under the tutelage of the unrepentant metal-loving Mercury alpha males, I've developed a grudging respect for the genre and its proponents. I now realize they got the joke and didn't care, because although the band was a gag, the music was not. You certainly can't claim that Tap's "Big Bottom" is any more implausible a song than Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls."

About the same time as the tour, Spinal Tap appeared on "Saturday Night Live," and the actors who portrayed Tap opened the show with a short film about a folk trio reuniting. It culminated with Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer coming on stage as The Folksmen and playing their signature number "Old Joe's Place."

Flash forward to now and that short film has had a plot and an assortment of other characters added to it, and A Mighty Wind is currently playing at a theater near you. Like This Is Spinal Tap, this film has an accompanying album, and it plays the music straight. I had to check the liner notes to make sure they weren't just covering old folk tunes I had somehow missed the first time around.

The only obvious goof on the album is the Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up," covered by The Folksmen. There's nothing like a genre change and more precise enunciation to highlight how weird rock lyrics can be. Truth be known, even in the original the line "You make a dead man come" stood out like a creepy and depraved sore thumb.

Folk music, while it had a few centuries' head start, hasn't had the same popular appeal in the last two or three decades as the numerous forms of metal. It remains the province of a relatively small number of coffee-sipping ex-hippies and their progeny. Meanwhile, the concert halls from coast to coast regularly sell out when a pack of leather- and chrome-clad subliterates play three-chord progressions at levels only fit to torture ensconced dictators or sterilize livestock.

Thus, while it's true that my parents corrupted me at an early age by filling the house with Kingston Trio and Smothers Brothers albums, taking me to Unitarian summer camp and exposing me to live folk music, I have to, with some trepidation, award the ass-kicking winner's cup to Spinal Tap. While I'll undoubtedly play A Mighty Wind more often, I know I'm in the minority and This Is Spinal Tap jumps to the lead in the battle with a pair of tight jeans, a tinfoil-wrapped cucumber and the ubiquitous Bic lighter held aloft for all to see.

However, folk music fans can take some solace in the Pyrrhic victory of a moral high ground and undamaged hearing.--F. Andrew Taylor