Sometimes 10 ain't enough

A few years ago I traded my dream-since-a-kid amplifier – a Vox AC30 – for a smaller amplifier and crucial upgrades on my Gibson guitar. It was a happy swap, my dream amp was made redundant by the smaller Vox I'd already owned for a over a decade. The Gibson required fixin' – as with all Gibsons made in the USA it holstered a G-string which loved jumping to G#.

The smaller amplifier I traded for was a Marshall, a Marshall! Never had a Marshall. Upon bringing it home, beyond the sound – a Marshall! – there was one other dream I got to tap my hand along.

The plate. The gold-tinted plate, scrapes and lines straight from an old hi-fi. Grain grinning back at you while digits scanned the dials. Couldn't get over that plate, why was I running my hand along the plate instead of playing my guitar through a Marshall? A Marshall!

It was Nigel Tufnel, I realized.

There weren't many extended shots idling over the front panel of a Marshall amplifiers in media, growing up. Not many dialed-in looks at the Presence control settings.

But Rob Reiner dug in on the image. Years before guitarists everywhere began pausing their VHS/DVDs/YouTubes on fleeting stills of the guitarist's amplifier, noses pressed up to the Austin City Limits, trying to cop where Nels Cline keeps his Treble knob.

It was that brush, actual guitarist Christopher Guest wiping ash away to showcase the glory gold of a 100-watt Bassman-derived beast, an air-moving machine created to create terror somewhere on either side of Paul Rodgers. Reiner lingers on the amplifier for the joke – some Marshalls feature volume knobs which roll to 11 – and in doing so burnished the legend with perspective we'd never seen before.

Someone knew what they were doing: Rob, the director in real life, the fake Marty DiBergi asking the imperfect, obvious question.

Nobody walked away from that scene wanting to play let alone buy the tagger'd-up guitar Nigel Tufnel wouldn't let Marty touch nor look at – I don't even know what it is without research – but darn near every time I accidentally sustain a note longer than anticipated on my new Les Paul, I say, out loud, "if it were playing."

I'm not joking about joking, I genuinely do the "if it were playing"-bit and do it all the time, and only since I got a Les Paul, only since I turned, like, 45 and a half.

By myself, watching basketball games while playing guitar, hit a note which hums a little Santana on me, I laugh and say "if it were playing." I can't stop joking about 'This is Spinal Tap,' because I refuse to stop being silly.

These are jokes I did not think would be in my life three decades after I saw the dang move, but it turns out I'm not alone in this. Social media drinks deep from Rob Reiner's movie legacy, without counting 'Seinfeld,' without wondering what the heck social media would look like in the 1970s (mustachioed, Sen. Sam Irvin suit and tie, polyester sweat) while responding to the previous episode of 'All in the Family.'

Never saw 'Princess Bride,' never saw 'When Harry Met Sally' because its best bits were often played on Comedy Channel/Central, back when the Channel/Central used to replay killer two-minute scenes from comedies, like MTV rolling from video to video. This is how 'Spinal Tap' happened to me, bit by bit, mime is money, all interspaced with Higgins Boys & Gruber sketches and (for my taste) never, ever enough Kevin Meaney. Or Dennis Wolfberg.

We eventually rented 'Tap,' R-rated, what a film, I don't remember when or how. I remember where I watched over and over for the first time, the following summer two older friends and I spent a bored afternoon on the beach quoting the movie until the point where we had to seek it out that evening, luckily stocked in a resort area with one video rental store within the 45 miles to Muskegon. One and a half, if you counted the half-dozen titles (notable example: 'Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man') hung from the stock door at the local Wishing Well gas station.

The door is gone now, knocked out by thieves who drove a Ford 2-250 through it, though the store was rebuilt.

Later, when it was time to replace the single knob on my starter guitar, the boys at the guitar store's checkout desk suggested a fun one, which went to 11.

Upon learning of the history of the band Status Quo – blond guy out front, psychedelic hit, wayward bassist – I pondered Quo's role in Tap's Creation. A decade later, hungover, the Spinal Tap DVD extras from my roommate Dave's collection helped noon turn to 3:30. And 3:42 is sundown, time to head out and get a beer, contribute to a jukebox.

I'm not saying Spinal Tap pulled Walter Becker out of retirement, but our man wasn't up to much beyond avocado farming before the Tap asked Becker to write liner notes for 'Break Like the Wind,' a portion of which I will post here:

But wait! For there are many problems inherent in a device [Crosley Phase Linear Ionic Induction Voice Processor System] of this sort, including mechanical resonances in the diaphragm itself, variations in the temperature and humidity of the air in the room, foreign particles issuing from the gaping maw of the vocalist himself (a particular problem for the Tap lads — corrosive smoke particles and bits of mango pickle from cheap Indian takeaways) and so on, all of which result in reduced fidelity for you, the listener. However, the Crosley device does not care one whit about all of these things, for it measures only the flow of ionic muons (small charged particles with an atomic weight of between 1.699669 x 10 -17 Electron Units and roughly twice that much, give or take a teenie bit here and there) past a negatively charged grid, itself roughly the size of, say, a gnat’s cock (to use a comparison to which most of us can relate).

I read and re-read this endlessly at a college bar in Missouri which sold vodka/grapefruits to 19-year olds (before letting them sing at open mics), the bar also sold used CDs and I'd slink back to that corner, slide the 'Wind' CD insert out of its case and pore over this text while the well and juice ran though my veins and, like, OK, so, you can see why I kind of write the way, I write. At least I keep my math out.

The resulting current is used to modulate a constant voltage which is self-referenced to the known inductance of the system itself and to the body capacitance of The Artist. For in order for the system to work, the vocalist must wear on his person a number of small balance plates which will offset the fields created by various inanimate objects on his body at the time of the recording (afterwards he may wear what he likes).

The Tap decided to run the liner notes, though in abridged format.

In the case of David St. Hubbins for example, after much experimentation the correct voltages were found to be applied to these small balancing plates when attached to his billfold, to his wristwatch (a fake Rolex which he evidently took for the real thing), and to the Raybans that he habitually wore in the studio (“Me lucky shades”). It was also necessary to put a plate in his groin region to offset the charge produced by, of all things, a roll of quarters tucked into his shorts. This combination — spectacles, testicles, wallet, watch — seemed to do the trick and soon enough a frighteningly realistic and three dimensional vocal image was suspended in space between the nearfields mounted on the console (Wombat G 7’s and Holographe 96/96, respectively).

This, the jokes 'Spinal Tap' encouraged, are how Rob Reiner re-introduced himself after a decade stuck with the same television character, a trillion primetime episodes per year plus whatever those three or four channels rerun on syndication overnight or mid-afternoon. Rob Reiner coulda taken an easy TV acting gig as the hip teacher at a fitful high school, California production and all the accommodations provided, but then Rob remembered his last name was 'Reiner' and got to working within the family business – silly.

Reiner's directorial career coulda started with any romcom, he'd have his choice at scripts. Or an Oscar bid featuring a dysfunctionally-funny, dryly disaffected suburban couple and their even drier kids, nah, Rob Reiner made the heavy metal movie.

Any of you guys – the actors, Rob – any of you listen to this shit?

Nah.

Rob Reiner encourages this, jumps into a world he and his buddies are wholly unfamiliar with, takes a decade-old, you know what would be funny would be a-bit, improvises, and turns it into a feature film, his first. Later, he makes 'Seinfeld' happen. When those 'Seinfeld' DVDs roll out, everyone's Christmas gift in 2004, Reiner defers credit for its survival to Rick Ludwin.

My Marshall's dials, incidentally, do not go to 11, but 10. The amplifier tends to alert authorities when pushed past 4. Also, decades before Dio, many 1950s Fender amplifier models featured volume knobs turning to 12. It was never about the "top" number but the frequency range available within a wider sweep. Nigel Tufnel's right, is what I'm saying. Hard to hear this, on account of all those Marshalls.

A sweep I wouldn't consider but for the spark of DiBergi, Reiner. I'm assured by the rest of the people in my 1989-90 fourth grade class ('Princess Bride') or every adult I've encountered since ('When Harry Met Sally') that others my age and older and younger share similar memories, thoughts.

I try not to think too much about these things, and that's where heavy metal helps.

HELL HOLE

Nigel Tufner's tagger guitar was actually a six-string bass, it turns out, thank you for reading! The "tap" reference in the first paragraph was an inadvertent pun which I am leaving in, dangit.

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