Spinal Tap: Glastonbury Festival - Pyramid Stage

Saturday 27th June 2009

This is a Crackerjack review of Spinal Tap. Do you agree? Rate and review this event.

“Welcome back, you’ve missed us,” said Derek Smalls as rock gods Spinal Tap took to the stage in the Glastonbury sunshine. They were playing in Pilton as part of their world tour (number of dates: two) and in support of their new album Back From The Dead, which has half a dozen new songs alongside some reworkings of classics.

Pretty much any self-respecting music fan knows Spinal Tap the film, with its tales of Smalls, David St Hubbins and Nigel Tufnell, inside out. Anyone not in on the joke would have been pretty bemused at the site of these middle-aged men in comedy wigs - rumour has it that thick-as-mince Oasis singer Liam Gallagher once walked out of a Spinal Tap show after being informed that they were a) not a ‘real’ band and b) not English.

There were a couple of new tunes that ticked all the Tap boxes; loud, dumb and with guitar solos that manage to be impressive and ridiculous at the same time. But it was the old stuff that people wanted to hear, and there was lots of it, with Give Me Some Money a spot-on pastiche of early Sixties rock and the laugh-out-loud Sex Farm given a modern, funky makeover.

They were joined by Jamie Cullum for Stonehenge, but the Wiltshire piano-basher understandably failed to steal the spotlight from the inflatable rock and the midgets dressed as druids (anyone enjoying the delights of the pear cider at this point may have had to rub their eyes in disbelief).

And there was another special guest, Jarvis Cocker, for Big Bottom, as well as a group of women who shook their bottoms (for be it from me to say their posteriors were big).

Comedy rock really shouldn’t work but in Spinal Tap’s case it does – although having midgets on stage didn’t seem to catch on with many of the other bands at the festival.

11/10

PAUL DALLISON

This is a Crackerjack review of Spinal Tap. Do you agree? Rate and review this event.