The Deaner does what he does best
Fubar star’s new Nightseeker revels in heavy-metal parody
It was a moment of perfect popculture symmetry.
A few months ago, actor-writermusician Paul Spence discovered that Derek Smalls, the fictional bass player made famous by the mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap and played by Harry Shearer, was releasing a solo record. In fact, it was coming out within weeks of Spence’s own record, which he was releasing as Dean (The Deaner) Murdoch, the fictional bass player in the 2002 mockumentary Fubar.
So Spence requested an interview with Shearer, who stayed in character the whole time. The resulting piece appeared on the Vice website last month.
Like most musicians, Spence is an obsessive fan of Rob Reiner’s 1984 classic This Is Spinal Tap, which follows a tour by the fictional British heavy-metal band.
Near the end of the interview, he told Shearer/Smalls about his own upcoming album for his band Nightseeker: 3069: A Space-Rock Sex Odyssey.
“It was totally surreal,” Spence says from his Montreal home. “I mentioned it to him and told him that he was always my favourite in Spinal Tap as a bass player. I said, ‘Well, what do you think of the band Nightseeker?’ He just kind of rolled with it; he’s such a great improviser.”
This Is Spinal Tap spearheaded mockumentaries and influenced films such as Fubar, Michael Dowse’s no-budget masterpiece that chronicles the dim-witted adventures of metalheads Dean Murdoch and Terry Cahill (David Lawrence). They were characters Calgary natives Spence and Lawrence created as teens.
Fubar became a sensation at the Sundance Film Festival in 2002, attracting enough of a cult following to justify a sequel, 2010’s Fubar: Balls to the Wall, and most recently a TV series for Viceland that found Dean and Terry discovering the internet for the first time.
But while the premise of last year’s eight-episode Fubar: Age of Computer was amusing, Spence thought it was a little thin to carry the show. So he also brought Dean’s fledgling music career front and centre, which led him to writing a bunch of songs for Nightseeker.
While the songs on 3069: A Space-Rock Sex Odyssey may not be as self-consciously goofy as those on Spinal Tap’s 1992 record Break Like the Wind, they do share common ground. Specifically, it’s performed by stellar musicians. Musical incompetence isn’t particularly funny.
As with Spinal Tap, much of the humour comes from the fact that fairly silly songs are presented with full-on musical ability and studio polish.
3069: A Space-Rock Sex Odyssey will be released April 20.