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5 Great Rock'n'Roll Mockumentaries

The Rock movie . . . can be good (Rock 'n' Roll High School), or it can suck (Rock 'n' Roll High School Forever). The Rock Documentary - usually sucks. But the rarest of all is the Rock Mockumentary, and they've almost always been good.

I'll be honest, this one is kind of a stretch. But in it's own way, it's a brilliant little piece of work. I knew it was a "fake" documentary going in, and I still found myself believing it more than once. Not really about music or musicians, it's a look at two Canadian "metal-heads", two guys who drink beer, rock out, and grow the perfect Canadian mullets. These two guys, and their friends, are total losers, but in a way they are glorious in their simplicity. For all of their bluster, they're really just two guys you can't help but like, even when their pranks turn tragic, leading to the death of the documentarian. At least they manage to make the man's mother laugh at the wake (through the time honored tradition of the mildly racist joke)! This movie was made on a shoestring budget by some folks who had a dream and were willing to max out every credit card they had, and it paid off. It was rejected for inclusion in the Toronto Film Festival, then went on to win an award at Sundance. And any movie that can laugh at testicular cancer deserves a look, don't it? Give'r to your liver!



Have you ever asked yourself "What would Spinal Tap sound like if they had ditched Heavy Metal and played Folk music"? Of course not, why would you? It's a stupid question . . . but that didn't stop Christopher Guest from asking it, and thus we were blessed with "The Folksmen", one of the many Folk bands in Guest's mockumentary A Mighty Wind. Largely unscripted, like his previous works Best In Show, Waiting for Guffman, and of course This Is Spinal Tap, "A Mighty Wind" has a plot, but that doesn't really matter. Every scene is a brilliant sketch in and of itself, with some truly hilarious performances. The music is incredibly good, even when it's bad (for instance, anything by the "New Main Street Singers"), and I defy you not to be amazed at Eugene Levy's performance of "A Kiss At The End Of The Rainbow".



Technically not movies, these two entries were originally episodes of a British television series called "The Comic Strip Presents...", which was a rather unique series, in that each episode was a totally separate and unique "film", the only unifying thread being most of the actors were the same. The series spawned several other shows, the most well known among them being The Young Ones, French and Saunders, and Absolutely Fabulous. Bad News Tour was shot to resemble a very low budget documentary, shot by a less-than talented crew, with a horrible narrator, about a horribly deluded, not at all popular, British Heavy Metal band named "Bad News". It actually pre-dated This Is Spinal Tap, leading many to claim that Rob Reiner took the idea for that film from Bad News (although it's highly likely that Rob Reiner would not have known of the series existence at that time). Comparisons to Spinal Tap, while unavoidable, are unfair, as Spinal Tap was a popular band on a downward spiral, and Bad News is a nothing band on a doomed tour to nowhere. At least until the second coming of Bad news in More Bad News, which picks up several years after the events of the first episode. The band has split up, but lead guitar player Vim Fuego (Adrian Edmondson, better known as Vyvyan Basterd on The Young Ones) is contacted by the narrator from the first episode (Jennifer Saunders, from Absolutely Fabulous. A record company has decided they want to reunite Bad News, record an album, and have them play at the "Monsters of Rock" festival at Castle Donnington, filming the entire process for a new documentary. More Bad News also features cameo appearances from Lemmy, Fish, Joe Elliot, and Ozzy. While your average person will find it humorous, anyone who has ever been in any way connected to the music industry, especially a touring band, will find it side-splittingly funny. Whether it's the completely self-absorbed lead guitar player Vim Fuego ("I could play "Stairway To Heaven" on the guitar when I was 14. Jimmy Page didn't write it until he was 28. I think that says a lot", the dim-bulb rhythm guitar player (Den Dennis) who refuses to be in the band unless they SAY they are Heavy Metal, the poser bass player (Colin Grigson) who is only in the band because he owns the PA, or the drummer (Spider Webb) who seems to be channeling Keith Moon 24 hours a day, it all rings suspiciously true. The scenes from Castle Donnington were actually shot live during the real "Monsters of Rock" festival, and the angry crowd hurling things at the band - not staged! Also, they released an album, produced by none other than Brian May, that is one of the funniest comedy albums ever released, and in fact plays more like a movie than many movies I have seen. Check these out if you can find them. Here's a video of them doing "Bohemian Rhapsody".



Quite possible the best mockumentary ever made, in that it is a perfect parody of Beatlemania in general and several "serious" documentaries about the Beatles. Eric Idle does double duty, appearing not only as Dirk (one of the "Pre-Fab Four", but also serving as the narrator of the documentary, and Stanley J. Krammerhead III,Jr.,Occasional visiting professor of Applied Narcotics at the University of Please Yourself, California. The news clis, the interviews, the videos, and even the music are all sheer genius. Neil Innes (frequent collaborator with the Monty Python members, he wrote many songs for them, including "Knights of the Round Table" from Monty Python and the Holy Grail is responsible for most of the music, and his ability to nail the Beatles sound, at many different phases of their career, is a large part of what makes this mockumentary work. The cast is a who's who of comedy and music, with appearances by George Harrison, Paul Simon, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Mick Jagger, Michael Palin, Ron Wood, and Al Franken among others.


The. Greatest. Rock. Movie. Ever.
That's all there is to say. If you haven't seen this, you don't deserve to be here. Leave this web site and don't come back until you can answer the following questions:

A) How did John "Stumpy" Pepys die?
B) How much blacker could it be?
C) Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
D) What two words make up the entire review of the album "Shark Sandwich"?

And what the hell, here's a clip of Tap from a long-lost "Friday's" appearance. A long interview, followed by a live clip - appropriate for Christmas!