AP hide caption. In honor of Nigel's very special day, contributors Elizabeth Nelson and Timothy Bracy examine a piece of pop-culture iconography. Some are reluctant to say it, or perhaps too blinkered and myopic to even acknowledge it, but the inextricable reality is that the history of rock and roll is a bell curve.
It begins in the late '50s with Chuck Berry and the Sun Sessions, rises gradually throughout the British Invasion, Psychedelic, the birth of metal and punk, the flowering and waning of the New Romantic movements and then, around , begins a slow trending down, until we get to where we are now, that sad and fallow place in which it is as if rock and roll had never existed, or perhaps should never have been allowed to. There are great artists and great moments on both sides of this graph, working diligently to this day, attempting to pump some breath back into the lifeless cadaver.
That effort is worthy of admiration, but almost certainly doomed this could be understood as meta-narrative for the Lou Reed-Metallica incident. Anyway, given this trajectory, it is especially interesting to note the absolute apex of rock and roll, the top of the graph as it were, the greatest rock and roll record ever made: 's soundtrack for the movie This Is Spinal Tap.
Now some will take this statement as ridiculous simply because Spinal Tap is not a "real band. Rock and roll has always been a costume drama, a comedy, and more then occasionally a minstrel show. The "realness" of a given band could not be a more ludicrous criterion for taking their measure.
That is not to say that the music of Spinal Tap is not ludicrous. Let's not kid ourselves: this is a very silly set of songs. It is not more silly than any given Queen album, or, say, Tommy , but still it is definitely asinine.
