Spinal Tap

Harry Shearer had some sound advice for anyone that was planning to hear him perform with Spinal Tap June 12 at San Diego`s Humphrey`s Concerts by the Bay.

"Bring ear plugs," he said, speaking from his Los Angeles office before the event. "It`s going to be (expletive) loud!"

The man, also known as Spinal Tap bassist Derek Smalls, chortled when told that Humphrey`s, located on the grounds of Shelter Island`s Half Moon Inn resort, limits the volume of its performers to a maximum of 96 decibels.

"What are they going to do?" he shot back, with an almost audible smirk. "Tell us we can`t come back?"

Another chortle.

"We`re at least as loud now as Deep Purple used to be," Shearer continued. "Of course, everybody of a certain age is loud now because they`ve all lost their hearing. So being loud has changed its meaning over the years."

Spinal Tap`s "Back From the Dead" tour San Diego stop was part of this proudly overamplified band`s first concert trek since 1992, which marked the group`s first formal tour ever.

At this rate, it will be 2011 before Spinal Tap lumbers back onto a concert stage. By then, it will have been 27 years since this gloriously dumb band of hard-rocking underachievers first lurched into public view on the nation`s movie screens.

Spinal Tap came to life in 1984 as the fictional namesakes of the 1984 film, "This Is Spinal Tap." Directed by Rob Reiner, the classic "rockumentary" satirized a marginally musical English band and the misadventures of its oafish, self-centered members during their first U.S. tour in at least a decade.

With a combination of biting wit and fond reverence, the film deftly lampooned the world of rock music like nothing before or since. It was fueled by wonderfully dimwitted dialogue (sample line: "There`s a fine line between clever and stupid"), and by such memorably lamebrained songs as "Sex Farm Women," "Big Bottom" and "Tonight I`m Going to Rock You Tonight," which were all featured on the accompanying soundtrack album. (The group`s second disc, "Break Like the Wind," came out in 1992.)

The film was not a box-office smash, but has since become a video and DVD hit, thanks to the sharp comedic skills of Shearer as perpetually baffled bassist Smalls and his Spinal Tap bandmates, David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) and Jeff Beck-look-alike Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest).

The role models for Spinal Tap ranged from Judas Priest and Jethro Tull to such second-division English metal bands as Uriah Heep and Saxxon, although Ozzy Osbourne and others have since claimed credit for inspiring scenes in the film.

"Spinal Tap was never supposed to be an incompetent band," noted Shearer, who is well-known to TV audiences as the voice of Montgomery Burns, Smithers and nearly two-dozen other characters on "The Simpsons."

"To us it was more a mediocre band," he continued. "They could play; it was more that they made awful choices, and it was a satire of their choices. In the movie, the idea was that they`d stuck around for a depressingly long time, without ever making it or getting booted out. So if you look at it that way, they`ve been flailing away ever since."

For better and worse, Spinal Tap has always marched to the off-beat of its own drummer.

Make that of many drummers, given the alarming mortality rate of this band`s hapless stickmen. According to Tap-lore, original drummer John "Stumpy" Pepys died in a bizarre 1967 gardening accident, while his successor, "Stumpy Joe" Childs, succumbed to a melanin overdose. Two other drummers, Peter "James" Bond and Mick Shrimpton, also perished under mysterious circumstances, with Shrimpton "spontaneously combusting" during a 1984 concert in Japan.

The latest edition of the band features Greg Bissonette, whose resume includes drumming with everyone from Dan Hicks and jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson to David Lee Roth and, ahem, Pat Boone. Just how long before Bissonette meets some tragic, Tap-ian fate remains to be seen.

"My philosophy of humor is that the truth is always better," said Shearer, who recently directed the upcoming feature film, "Teddy Bear`s Picnic."

"To me, the highest compliment is when people think the Spinal Tap film is a documentary."

(c)Copley News Service

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Author: George Varga