Tenacious D

[Mangle]

This is an essay I wrote a couple years ago. Enjoy:

Goat Legs, a Guitar, & Four Chicken McNuggets: The Salvation of Rock

“I believe in rock ‘n’ roll but I don’t believe in Rock ‘n’ Roll … and I believe in the Party as an exhilarating alternative to the boredom and bitter indifference of life.”
- Lester Bangs

Everyone comes to Tenacious D in their own way. My awakening occurred when I saw the video for “Tribute” on MTV and figures it would be something good to smoke pot to. I was more than right in this assumption but this is much more than just a head album. I would discover that the one and only hope for the future of rock music, barring Jimi’s immediate reincarnation, lies in the stubby hands of two heavyset dreamers.
Many would write this off as a purely comedic outing possibly classifying it along side Victor Borge, Billy Connolly or Cheech & Chong as it is a mix of offbeat sketches with adjoining songs in album format. Others would see it as the musical dabbling of Hollywood actors like Bruce Willis and David Hasselhoff but they would be wrong and basing their opinions about this project quite superficially. Jack Black and Kyle Gass have no illusions about this project. They know it’s the greatest rock ‘n’ roll album of the past twenty years, possibly of all-time … but why is this?
For one, it’s not infected with the dreaded Superstar Virus which was first studied by legendary rock critic Lester Bangs way back in the golden age of music, a horrible syndrome you can see at a Strokes or Robbie Williams concert whereby the zombies dressed as fans that fill the stadium in body but not spirit are so elated by the mere presence of an actual live musician that they’ve seen on television that Robbie or whoever could play “Twinkle Little Star” backwards for two hours and still get a standing ovation. This is where the musician crosses the invisible line and becomes more important than the music he or she performs and the Party becomes a naughty afterthought only sought by the unwholesome crowd with no family values, work ethic, or sense of governmental duty but a bad haircut, dirty clothes and ten grams of speed. KG can play the guitar fairly well but surely nobody would place him in the world’s elite while Black’s singing, though impressive, is far from cathartic. They will never be elected to the Rock & Roll hall of fame, which, in reality, would only diminish their accomplishment anyway, so it’s doubtful anyone would go to a D show and be paralyzed with awe at the godly talents on display.
Second, but most importantly, when they rock out, they rock out and they do so for the purity of rock for rock’s sake. They don’t carefully construct an analytical piece for suits to discuss over a dry martini while the wife pukes up her dinner roll. No, KG just hammers away on his acoustic and Jack wails out some of the most honest and forthcoming lyrics ever written. Like their contemporaries, they talk about drug use, fucking, and make up amazing stories about their abilities and exploits, but they don’t cloud their vision with bastardised forms of poetic devices. They don’t talk hypothetically about drugs like Mary Jane soaring eight miles high or smoking trees, whatever the hell that means, they “smoke a big ass bowl of weed.” Nor do they dance around phrases like “make it with you” or collaborate with a pseudo-rappers like Nelly, Usher, P.Diddy to plead for a girlfriend. They just “fuck her gently” which is a fabulous message to all men egging them to be sensitive to a woman’s needs in a straightforward, honest manner without killing the English language with misleading innuendos, fifties sex jargon, or anything approaching Bing Crosby’s “Try A Little Tenderness.” They use the language of the common people to which they preach, a language so common and accessible that no one over five and under the age of seventy-five could misinterpret it. And when they tell a story it’s right out of the pages of the Johnny Cash poetic license handbook. There’s no flying higher than an eagle, moving mountains, pretentious Hallmark Rock here, just powers of levitation, telepathy, body raising cock prowess, and a chance meeting with the Devil which plays out a lot less corny than when the dark lord went to Georgia. In the end, it’s the kind of storytelling you quote and joke about around the old water cooler instead of the cancerous greeting card music girl/boy/Nickelback bands make where you are fed their poorly conceived stories like a toddler and honk like a seal to show approval for the fish they threw you.
With this unmistakable honesty, blue collar credibility, and fantastic humour, the salvation of rock ‘n’ roll from the evil clutches of the Corporate Rock Machine is pretty much on their souls because they believe in rock above all else and demonstrate a believable return to the absurd that used to be a major part of it, most notably in the work of Frank Zappa. Tracks like “One-Note Song” and “Inward Singing” are a direct parody of pretentious Rockers who acts like they’re geniuses for doing something new or even old in a new way with a child’s instrument in a childish profession that is supposed to be childish but keeps trying to grow up and get a job. But pull-up diapers don’t make you a big boy and this isn’t just music or art. This is rock the way it used to be served up red hot with a joint and a dripping, slutty hamburger! “The Friendship Song” speaks to this return. There is no rockumentary, Get Back sessions, cute and quirky band tension as a group of individuals come together with differing opinions to make something beautiful that will stand the test of time and forever change the soundscape of an entire generation. No, they come right out and say it, “as long as there’s a record deal, we’ll always be best friends.” At one point, Kyle symbolically quits the band. There’s not a dull second on the disk in true Ezra Pound fashion as every moment is necessary and builds toward a greater understanding of the whole and the whole, of course, is worth more than the words and notes that make it up. Those of us with the tools to appreciate such a work are left with a true rock ‘n’ roll album that is as comical, accessible, disposable, and musical as Zappa’s Live At The Fillmore East, 1971. I never thought I’d see the day … but now, after so long a wait, there is hope in the world again.

Filmore Mescalito Holmes