MUSC 3323 Music Theory Spinal Tap Songs Analysis Paper – Description
In 1984, Rob Reiner directed a film about the career of a “hard working rock band”—a spoof, or a “Rockumentary” about a fictitious band called Spinal Tap. He wrote the film with the three main actors who play the group: Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean, and who themselves are good musicians. The film has gained notoriety for what it did on a small budget (Reiner’s first film) and for the level of sarcastic humor laid over the likely path of a somewhat successful rock band of the 60s, 70s, and the 80s. For this assignment, please do the following:
Watch the Movie “This is Spinal Tap,” which hopefully will be an entertaining 84 minute undertaking. During this time, start to gather some parallels to the History of Rock issues that we have considered thus far in our studies. I will introduce some thoughts about the movie, but some questions on the final quiz will be drawn from this movie. The movie can be seen by
1) paying for it on various streaming services (Amazon Prime, is one), or by
2) seeing it at the links provided in our Brightspace assignment (video is choppy), or by
3) finding it on YouTube. I have seen in recent months that it appears for free there (sometimes with subtitles in English or Spanish), and then that link gets taken down. So hopefully this will remain—I was able to find a good quality stream of it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwqO1Bif434 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwqO1Bif434)
(Hopefully it will remain on YouTube until we close the course!)
Write analyses of individual songs from Spinal Tap, specifically THREE* out of these five songs:
1) Gimme Some Money
2) All the Way Home
3) (Listen to the) Flower People
4) Rock and Roll Creation
5) Stonehenge
Do this in the style of the book’s “Listening Guide” boxes in each chapter. Provide the following items:
1) Form**
2) Time Signature (as best you can determine)
3) Instrumentation
4) Form breakdown*—section by section with a description of what happens per:
a—time code, b—section name/number and c—brief description of what goes on musically/production-wise in that section (see a few of the text’s LG boxes to see these 3 columns—a, b and c).
**Remember when assessing the flow, in order, of all of the song’s sections, that several sections will not be “sung” sections, either to start the song, end the song, or in the middle of the song—these sections still matter to the form, but what are they typically called?
5) Style parallels—Spinal Tap’s songs are usually typical of famous bands, artists or genres, and these five songs are particularly this way. For the three that you will do, please provide some ideas about what groups or artists these songs parallel and why. What sounds, instrumentation, musical gestures/events, subject matter or socio-cultural issues—that are used, included or alluded to—make theses Spinal Tap song like one or more of some of the artists or genres that we’ve reviewed in our course (or that you already know of), and can you identify who that might be? Accuracy is not as important (there is not “one” right answer for these) here, as is some personal insight and investment in thinking about how the song is inspired by real Rock-based music we know about and have heard. One paragraph is what is asked for here.
The entire movie is no longer available on YouTube, as far as I can see. I purchased it for my own use on Prime video, and it might be available elsewhere for streaming or for DVD purchase. But I have captured the movie in good audio/bad video MP4 format, and the 84-minte movie is now viewable in three parts that I provide links to in the assignment on Blackboard (pts 1/3, 2/3 and 3/3).
To assist a bit, I made an instructional video to watch about the way that one song (I use one by REM in the video) can be analyzed for form and some other things. My video is not what your written assessment will look like, because I do not include the paragraph there. But it is a good way of thinking about assessing the Listening Guide part of the analysis.
Included are word files of the lyrics, which will be of central importance as you analyze the song’s form (most song sections are sung, but a few are not…). When you are doing the song analyses, listen while looking at the lyrics. One reason is the YouTube files for some of these songs—especially if excerpted from the movie—may omit a section (this is true for the live video from the movie for Stonehenge—a verse is missing and may be true for a few others. So, although I have prepared links for the movie and the individual songs you can play, you may want to use a streaming service for the songs (they will likely be complete there), and you may want to stream the movie however you can find it (maybe you subscribe to a service that has it).
1) Gimme Some Money
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-BYzaDwNoE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-BYzaDwNoE)
2) All the Way Home
Album version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lnI1IA01-s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lnI1IA01-s)
Royal Albert Hall concert version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFDkT7DbOD4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFDkT7DbOD4)
Outtake in the control room excerpt:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JSgH6thyHw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JSgH6thyHw)
3) (Listen to the) Flower People
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrJlyapt6OY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrJlyapt6OY)
4) Rock and Roll Creation
Movie excerpt which omits a large concluding section (so use the album cut):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOSDrT_eDhk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOSDrT_eDhk)
The “album” song audio:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-bfep7wp40 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-bfep7wp40)
5) Stonehenge
Movie excerpt omits a vocal section (so use the album cut):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg5Ovdu6bOE&t=89s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg5Ovdu6bOE&t=89s)
The “album” song audio:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4NTXWz4cMw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4NTXWz4cMw)
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