Comedy: some Spinal Tap snippets:
- a review of a live performance, noting the demise of the band’s own Web-based music downloading service, Tapster — David St. Hubbins is quoted saying ‘they shut down Tapster out of force of habit.’
- Derek Smalls notes regarding Tapster, ‘It has to start with saying, ‘look we’re worried about being ripped off’, so we started TAPSTER ourselves…so we’re ripping ourselves off. If a problem comes up, we’ll sue ourselves and we’ll pocket the difference.’ (guess this was before the aforementioned shutdown.)
- The A-Z of Spinal Tap: ‘For U2’s Popmart tour, the show’s designer Willie Williams and the band decided the group should emerge from a giant lemon.’ … ‘The Edge comes down from the stairs, and to start his guitar he has to kick a switch on his foot-pedal. Well, he ended up on his hands and knees, feeling around for the pedal. Later he said to me, ‘There I was at the debut, the premiere opening night, and this voice came into my head: I’m Derek Smalls.”
- So, as mentioned in the movie, Nigel and David grew up in Squatney, East London. But did you know that Derek Smalls grew up in Nilford — ‘a ‘very small, very wretched, very dire little place’ on the River Null, near Wolverhampton. Also known as Nilford-on-Null.’