Tenacious D
Tenacious D
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NATN Recommended
Tenacious D
Tenacious D
Epic, 2001
RiYL: Ween, Led Zeppelin |
The twin spokesmen for hard rock's nadir, Creed's Scott Stapp and Staind's Aaron Lewis, point out in different ways how their chosen field has gone off message. Stapp's detestable mixing of religious messages -- does he want up to worship his god, or does he want us to worship him? -- is transparent enough to dismiss, but the infinitely more talented Lewis poses a different problem. Lowering his eyes to his sneakers and cradling himself like he wants to return to the womb, Lewis's endless parade of tracks about how unloved and hopeless he is offer little solace to his audience, most of which is assuredly quite less well off than he. If even a rich rock star is still miserable, what's the point of rocking? What, indeed, is the point of anything?
Enter the D.
Jack Black and Kyle Gass understand that the bluster and pomp of proper rocking are not merely the genre's style, but also its substance. Hard rock isn't about spiritual concerns or public therapy. It's about being ugly and out of shape but unafraid to storm a stage and declare yourself a star. It's about soft drugs, porn, and car crash movies. It's about making a connection with a plain girl in your 9th grade Spanish class because you both think "You're Crazy" is the best song on Appetite For Destruction. It's about itself. There is no reason to rock other than the very pleasure of the act of rocking. Perhaps that's why Black sings or shouts the word "rock!" on this album more often than Jon Spencer reminds folks of the name of his band on Blues Explosion records.
Tenacious D demonstrates that hard rock parody is an impossible task. How do you poke fun of a genre that has already been unwittingly silly for 25 years? There's nothing Black could write that would be weirder than the "wildebeasts and angels" of "Dio," or the Guns N' Roses video where dolpins save Axl from his messy divorce. So he goes with the flow, writing lyrics that brilliantly sound as if they were penned off the cuff yet are just good enough that you realize care was taken. Gass's contributions can't be overlooked; his "lead acoustic guitar" is always loudly present in the mix, even when the all-star backup band (featuring Dave Grohl on drums) has it turned up to 11. If the operatic Black were replaced by a less self-aware frontman, the band would be excellent on musical merits alone.
That's not the case, though. Jack Black is an outsized talent, one who cannot be contained by one field. He's like another John Belushi, with the attendant rowdy public behavior and worryingly unstable persona. Black's a gifted vocalist, and he fearlessly adapts his delivery to suit the song, from the hoarse bar-band croak of "The Road" to the pinched Tolkien-nerd pronouncements of "Wonderboy." "Tribute" is a tour-de-force, wending from a talking blues introduction to high harmonies to a wheedling coda (dig that final Zeppelin chord.) The only weak tracks on the record are the pointless (but short) "Lee," the disappointing back-to-basics acoustic track "Karate," and the unsuccessful political screed "City Hall," which suffers less from Black's convincing vocal performance than from an overly repetitive musical backing. It's all the more disappointing considering the variety elsewhere; songs like "The Road" by themselves demonstrate more musical flexibility than entire Motley Crue albums.
If you program your CD player to skip all of the spoken tracks on Tenacious D, you'll get an entertaining rock record with a far above average number of scream-along-in-the-car moments. Most people won't want to skip the comedy numbers, however, because they're by and large hilarious. The interplay between the boorish Black and unassuming Gass makes for a great funny man/straight man pairing, although Kyle gets his jabs in here and there. "Cock Pushups" is especially notable for its fabulous timing ("How many can you do? ... I guess you could only do one ... then ... One is all you need!") It's really funny for some reason that despite recording in a big studio with all of the sound equipment money can buy, Tenacious D elect to do all of the sound effects by mouth. The hi-fi tones of Black buzzing his lips to make a phone ring or both guys blowing raspberries to represent a car pulling away are repeatedly hilarious. One of the chief strengths here is that the songs and comedy bits are placed in such a manner that the album is best listened to end to end, something truly rare for a "novelty" record.
To describe Tenacious D as a comedy album would be unfair. It's too lovingly produced, too proficiently played, and too thoroughly ass-kicking to dismiss it that way. The comedy aspects of the record make it a Trojan horse, an album that young music fans will buy after seeing Jack Black's movies and soon will direct them to seek out other records that really rock. The morose patrol of modern hard rock is going to have to check themselves before they are passed over by a pair of fat guys with acoustic guitars.
MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.