I was reminded of the movie when the brilliant Japanese metal band Boris ( who generally sound like this http://pitchfork.com/tv/pitchfork-music-festival/991-2008/1975-boris-pink ) released 3 L.P.s in 2011. 1 was a parody of Japanese “j-rock” (basically, heavily pop-influenced progressive rock; think of what pop emo was to “real” emo). It was simultaneously mocking and reverent, a real conundrum. What’s most interesting is that it was the best album of the 3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVJ0YVkOAaA They were doing it for fun, not out of desperation. Still, like Spinal Tap, “Why move forward artistically in an ‘objective’ way when we can just alter our audience?”

Making it in a band is a difficult grind. Damn even unlocking songs with guitar hero on medium is hard work! Kudos to Spinal Tap for earning a living around the butt of a joke. Cult Classic? Check. Napster Parody, and copyright/fair use panel controversy? Check. Guitar Hero creed. Check.

Of course Guitar Hero 2 has a lot more real bands, because when the first Guitar Hero came out there was a bunch of aesthetic and moral status hand wrangling,by the lawyers/record labels/bands.

GNR and Nirvana=solid, both far more substantial than Spinal Tap.

Ironically in terms of guitar hero, it is factually true to say that Spinal Tap was a real band first, and that only latter did Nirvana get suckered into the fun/controversy… Including a joke about the newest version including a plastic gun(which was obviously false)

But if Nirvana was about ruining all the fun, then Novoselic, Grohl and Love stayed true to form by demanding that a Kurt Cobain Avatar not be capable of being unlocked… apparently he is only to appear with Nirvana Music, so he does not get diluted by 14 year olds jamming Spinal Tap.

Incidentally, I don’t see how Spinal Tap could have contributed to the death of hair metal. Spinal Tap came out in 1984, and hair metal continued to fly high through the end of the 80s, until, as has been said, Nirvana came along and spoiled all the fun.

I, too, have noticed that the fun element of rock seemed to dry up after Nirvana (although I recall there was an attempted garage rock revival in the mid-00s). Any thoughts on why this might be?

His gift to me at the end of the semester was a CD of his “music” — he liked me. Heck, I liked him, but not his music. His was a wall of sound band and he used some device when singing that made his voice sound like a buzz saw. He could have been singing about anything, how the daisies bloom in May, or a cover of “I’ve Got a Brand-New Pair of Roller Skates” and no one would have known. Whatever he said would sound like hate. “it’s meant to be Satanic, Mrs. Pitrone.” Ah.

The point about “Spinal Tap” was that you couldn’t really parody that stuff because of the level of absurdity inherent in the genre. Even Nirvana, although it went in a different direction, was all about being EXTREME and when anyone is that far out there, absurdity is just a wink of the eye away. Anyway, so much of that kind of music is about hate, but not hatred of anything that makes much sense, in the vague and generalized mode of adolescents for whom hate is a desirable pose that mimics a principled stand. Poor things.

Brian, no, it was no joke. In white suburban-land, from around 1969 to 1979, and even more intensely from then through the late 80s, hard rock was the dominant and most popular rock strain. This applies even more so the lower end of the middle-class and to poor whites. A band like Kiss may have started out partially tongue and cheek, but when your albums go double-platinum or whatever, all the joking becomes reality for much of your audience.

Otherwise, a great comment, absolutely right about GNR and Nirvana, and I like your resistance to “mope-metal.”

My recommendation for rockin’ and not-so-serious fun, however, would be to head less back to the hair bands, than to the rock and roll bands: Bobby Fuller Four, NRBQ, CCR, Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs, the honky-tonk side of country, etc. And my basis for saying that is what I have said ad naseum, that however much the metal guys claimed that they were rock n’ roll, their music became a distinct thing. Rock does not equal Rock n’ Roll, despite the usual usage of the terms. Enter “My Generation” into the First Things search bar for my sketching of that distinction.

It’s not like KISS was meant to be taken seriously. Or like any of the spandex and big-hair rockers were actually looked to by their fan base as paragons of fashion, style, morality, etc. It was all about having a good time, which to most people is what rock ‘n roll has always been about. How can you make fun of that? By pointing out that the rockers LOOKED silly? Really? That’s all you got?

Or maybe I’m just saying that because I was born in 1976, not 1966, and didn’t have to actually live through the 1970s (shudder).

Eventually GNR came along with the hair band look but a radically different sensibility than any of their contemporaries, as the Tyrannosaurus Rex of the 80s rock scene, i.e., the last, greatest, most awesomely spectacular of the type, but fatally flawed and unable to adapt to the impending changes about the impact the world. And Nirvana was indeed the meteor that killed everything else, to stubbornly stick to this strange metaphor (forget it–I’m rolling), and Nothing Else Could Be The Same. But the post-Nirvana mope-rockers just aren’t any FUN, and that’s a big part of the reason rock has lost its cultural mojo.

I’ve lost track–have you already said all that before?