Spinal Tap Should Replug

It wasn't hard to get excited going into this show.

Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer are comic geniuses, and the personas and songs they've created through various film projects like This Is Spinal Tap, A Mighty Wind and Waiting For Guffman have been making people howl for more than two decades.

By night's end, though, one couldn't help but feel disappointed.

The show's official tag was Unwigged & Unplugged: An Evening With Christopher Guest, Michael McKean And Harry Shearer. The unplugged concept has created some interesting music through the years, but a lot of the time it's used by loud rockers in the hopes of legitimizing themselves by showing that they have songs and it's not all bluster and pyrotechnics.

But Spinal Tap aren't the type of band that need to be, or should want to be, legitimized. They're a parody and, stripped down to this kind of scrutiny, it really doesn't work. They need the spandex, blow-dried hair, glow-in-the-dark skeleton T-shirts (which were on sale in the lobby) and tin-foiled zucchini trouser stuffers.

The same thing goes for the power. You can't take that away, which was painfully obvious when the trio turned up the amps for their classic slow pounder, "Heavy Duty." It only served to magnify that the show was missing, to quote Tap, "the majesty of rock."

It's hard to listen to "Sex Farm" or "Stonehenge" without the context of their associated characters who go hand in hand with these songs. It's like going to see Alice Cooper and he doesn't try to scare you. Where's the fun in that?

If the trio had done this same concept unplugged but as the Tap characters, it would've be an unqualified success. That wasn't what we got, though.

That's not to say the show didn't have its moments. All three guys worked hard and tried to make up for the casualness by adding lots of extras like showing the original Tap movie trailer (a silly little film about cheese that never even mentions the movie) and doing a mock dramatic reading of all the bits that NBC wanted taken out of the movie if they were to show it during Saturday Night Live's time slot. In this same spirit, they had a Q&A in the middle of the show — though it didn't reveal much.

Some of the new arrangements for the songs were fun to hear. "Big Bottom" only had one bass and was done in a jazzy style. "Sex Farm" had a rap in it. Even the Folksmen stuff was good. But again, the characters were missing. They should have had the Folksmen open and Tap come on as the main event.

Ultimately, you can't help but wish the one-off show they're going to do in July in Britain as the full-on Spinal Tap is a success. Guest, Shearer and McKean may then realize that they have to tour with wigs, spandex and ear-bleeding, fueled to 11 amplification one more time.