Is This Spinal Tap?

By Michael and Joel

Michael: This...is...SPINAL TAP!!! I love declarative titles. Personally, I feel all movies should have a declarative statement for a title. I tried pitching This is The Island; Armaggeddon, I [Heart]; These are Bad Boys (II); You Should Watch The Lionel Richie Collection; and Hey, Look Over There! It's Pearl Harbor. Unfortunately, Hollywood said declarative titles don't work.

Joel: Yeah, I pitched Now is the Time to Kill, Batman & Robin Aren't Gay, and You're in Bad Company, but the Jews just wouldn't allow it.

Michael: Last year, however, a "director" by the name of Rob Reiner invented the rockumentary and proved the exception of a rule, or made rules about exceptions, or something about accepting rules.

Either way, This is Spinal Tap offers a gritty look at life on the road as the world's first band that dared to turn the volume up to 11, and paved the way for a number of bands that realized some volume dials go as high as 100.

Spinal Tap also won the award for most vibrant album cover in 1985. Just kidding. That was just a joke. Shit we're funny.

The movie follows Spinal Tap, on the verge of the band's latest release "Smell the Glove" and their first American tour, and ultimately acts as a metaphor for how women have Yoko Ono'd some of history's greatest rock bands. It's like Some Kind of Monster, but the guys are better looking.

Spinal Tap was a seminal act that inspired a decade's worth of cock rock and the death of John Bonham, and Reiner's film does them justice.

Which one of these guys got laid the least? Give you a clue--mustache rides were not as popular as many often think, and if you're playing the bass, you might as well be wear a t-shirt that says "I don't want sex."

Joel: True, but what I was disappointed in was Reiner's poor editing choices, leaving audiences to witness some of the band's mishaps and many a Flix Video employee to incorrectly shelve this in the comedy section. Sure, it offers a real insight into the backstage lives of Spinal Tap's members, but having been in a band myself with Michael "Sick Styx" Bay, I know just how hard it can be to find one's way to the stage, or replace death-prone drummers.

Jack Starrett, our original drummer, died by when we flipped our tour jet in 1989. Frank Capra lost his wonderful life to a drug overdose in 1991. He was followed by Stanley Kubrick, whose skull was crushed in an orgy mishap during one of our aftershow parties. Guy Richie is currently the 21st drummer to keep the stool warm.

In fact, the movie brought back many memories of my year's with Ünclë Töm's Cäbïn - A GLAMorous Tribute to Warrant. We shared stages with Vital Signs: A Tribute to Survivor, Sha Na Now: The Sha Na Na Experance Revisited, and Great, Great White.

Uncle Tom's Cabin had a solid live run in the South, but an excess of accents in the name and a subtitle misspelling made it hard to find once the Google generation kicked in.

We even formed Damned Yankees, a tribute supergroup with members of the Mr. Roboto: A Night of Styx, Stranglehold: featuring Theodore Nuegeant III and Night Ranger, and headlined the second stage at the Iowa State Fair. Man, those were some crazy times...

Michael: Yeah, they sure were. A lot of fun, too, until you squandered all our money on yet another drug addiction, and sold the rights for our renditions to Erik Turner for an autographed copy of Cherry Pie, which you traded for a gallon of acid.

Joel: Don't start this shit with me. Just because you couldn't handle your mescaline doesn't mean I was going to stop partying with the groupies.

Michael: Yeah, well, I guess that was a good thing for me. I also didn't impregnate six women.

Joel: Seven, you forgot that chic from the Whitesnake video, Tawny Kitaen.

Michael: Time forgot Tawny Kitaen.

Michael and Joel give This is Spinal Tap: 12