The first attempt at compiling a Spinal Tap discography was in Peter Occhiogrosso's 1984 book "Inside Spinal Tap." While precious and few song titles were given, it was still an interesting and well-thought-out overview of their output, including singles. The 1992 edition of the book (updated to include coverage of "Break Like The Wind") featured a complete rewrite of the discography, replacing the descriptions of the releases with critical reviews.
Since both versions make for fun reading, I thought I would transcribe both of them here. Enjoy!
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[The notation "E1" refers to the original 1984 edition, while "E2" refers to the revised 1992 edition. I removed references to other areas of the book. My own personal notes, wherever an error should exist in Occhiogrosso's text, are marked with "SW".]
"Gimme Some Money" b/w "Cups and Cakes" (Abbey, 1965)
E1: 'Their first single, released under the name of the Thamesmen.'
"(Listen To The) Flower People" b/w "Rainy Day Sun" (Megaphone, 1967)
E1: 'First single as Spinal Tap, with Ronnie Pudding on bass.'
SPINAL TAP (Megaphone, 1967)
E1: 'Released in the U.S. as SPINAL TAP SINGS "(LISTEN TO THE) FLOWER PEOPLE" AND OTHER FAVORITES. First LP.'
E2: 'Clear, crisp, scintillating, the first fresh breath of a new dawn sweeping over the sludgy, self-satisfied rooftops of rock 'n' roll. Or was it a new, gritty realism putting the lie to the prettified homogeneity of early-Sixties "Bobbie" rock? Who cares? We know vintage gold when we smell it. What's really amazing is how well this stuff has aged. Our advice: Buy a few cases and lay them down in the cellar for your grandkids. Standouts include the mellow title track and the wryly portentous "Have a Nice Death," featuring a killer drum solo from "Stumpy" Pepys. A+'
SW: One of the big inconsistencies in both editions of the book is the identity of Tap's drummer at this point. It was *not* John "Stumpy" Pepys as Occhiogrosso seemed to believe, but rather, Eric "Stumpy Joe" Childs. (Pepys was the blond, geeky drummer seen in "Gimme Some Money.")
"(Again With The) Flower People" b/w "Break With The Wind [sic!]" (Megaphone, 1968)
E1: 'Derek Smalls replaces Pudding on bass.'
SW: As you might've guessed, 'With' should be 'Like'. The song title's appearance in the Heavy Metal Memories commercial confirms that this was always the case.
WE ARE ALL FLOWER PEOPLE (Megaphone, 1968)
E2: 'When a flower begins to fade, it gives off a faintly sickly smell, and much the same could be said for Tap's attempt to cash in on their surprisingly successful debut LP. If that one was premier cru Bordeaux, this was pure red ink. A few of the songs were molded around a questionable proto-concept: the story of a lad who, like ill-fated Icarus, decided that he would put on wings and fly - except that he would be a kind of human airliner and sell seats on himself to pay for the project. Needless to say, the boys were "heavy into acid" at the time. When sales proved as disappointing as the concept, the LP was retitled THE INCREDIBLE FLIGHT OF ICARUS P. ANYBODY and reissued minus the title track. The new title, however, proved eerily prophetic as far as chart position was concerned. C-'
THE INCREDIBLE FLIGHT OF ICARUS P. ANYBODY (Megaphone, 1968)
E1: 'Sort of a preconcept album-concept album. It was, in fact, a retitled version of the poorly selling WE ARE ALL FLOWER PEOPLE, minus the title track.'
SW: All other sources of Tap lore give the release date as 1969.
SILENT BUT DEADLY (Megaphone, 1969)
E1: 'Recorded live at the Electric Zoo, Whimpton. Although the legendary two-hour Tufnel/St. Hubbins guitar solo on "Short 'n' Easy" was included only in severely edited form, bootlegs of the entire thing are known to exist. (Our lips, however, are sealed.)'
SW: Though the song's title would even re-appear as "Short 'n' Easy" in the recent 'Official Compendium' book, Tap more often called this song "Short and Sweet", seen in both the 1992 edition and the lyrics of the song.
E2: 'Tap are, needless to say, the pre-eminent live band, as this LP, recorded at the Electric Zoo, Whimpton, conclusively hints. I say "hints" because, due to the classic shortsightedness of the button-down nerds at Megaphone, the meta-legendary two-hour Tufnel-St. Hubbins twin guitar solo on "Short and Sweet" was chopped to a niggardly 18:37. Fortunately, some bootlegs exist (see below), and despite poor sound quality, are worth ferreting out. Humorous highlight: the snap-crackle-pop sound effects during Nigel's spoken intro to "Breakfast of Evil." B+'
BRAINHAMMER (Megaphone, 1970)
E1: 'Incorrected listed as 1973 on the sound-track LP from the "rockumentary" THIS IS SPINAL TAP. This and the next couple of LPs are described by Nigel as being stylistically pre-glam rock, whatever that means.'
E2: 'Here the band has clearly hit their lumbering stride full tilt, moving with the lean, mean aplomb of a brontosaurus in fighting trim. "Big Bottom," one of their earliest evergreens, brilliantly foreshadows Queen's later lesser ode to the bum cheek, "Fat-Bottomed Girls." Allegations of sexism miss the point - as Derek once explained, the song doesn't demean women but merely a part of their anatomy. Also delectable for the sheer brute force of their execution are "Lie Back and Take It" and the sultry "Swallow My Love." A'
"Big Bottom" (Megaphone, 1970)
E1: 'From the Brainhammer LP this track brilliantly foreshadows Queen's later, lesser "Fat-Bottomed Girls."'
NERVE DAMAGE (Megaphone, 1971)
BLOOD TO LET (Megaphone, 1972)
INTRAVENUS DE MILO (Megaphone, 1974)
E2: 'Alas, a certain, how shall I say, sameness has set in during this period of the band's meteoric rise to the middle of the pack. Apart from a hard-rockin "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight" and the devilishly witty deconstruction of Social Darwinism, "Saliva of the Fittest" on Intravenus, not much of substance has survived from this three-year musical backwater. But hey, they're entitled. B-'
"Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight" (Megaphone, 1974)
E1: 'After a two-year recording hiatus, Tap came back with the Intravenus LP and this single, which, for them, was relatively successful.'
THE SUN NEVER SWEATS (Megaphone, 1975)
E1: 'Tap's first full-blown concept LP, based on a somewhat skewed vision of the British Empire as a world-uniting force.'
E2: 'Ponderous is the word for this late-blooming concept album that only a Taphead could love, padded as it is with creaky period pieces ("Daze of Knights of Old") and too-precious Donovan knock-offs ("The Princess and the Unicorn," "The Obelisk"). Riding the rising tide of British chauvinism implied in the title, Tap end up sounding, in the words of the overwrought title song, like "the hardest concrete" that "never quite sets." But when Tap stumble, at least they stumble big. Their nostalgic orgy of Britannophilia, which also brought us the deathless mytho-historico-romance "Stonehenge," is further proof that this fine band's reach sometimes exceeded its gasp. "Even the biggest elephant never forgets," David sings; in sooth, prithee forget this one, lads. C'
"Stonehenge" (Megaphone, 1975)
E1: 'Although never officially released as a single from The Sun..., its popularity on AOR radio in the midst of conceptmania and British historophilia resulted in overpressing of DJ and promotional copies in several different lengths, of which the shortest and most palatable was collected on TIST (4:36).'
JAP HABIT (Megaphone, 1975)
E1: 'Tap's second live outing, this three-LP set recorded in the Far East was notable for being released in England with two pounds of gimmick packaging. The American version was cut to two disc sans the packaging. What with two albums and a single in one year, this was clearly a busy if unprofitable time for Tap.'
E2: 'Triple-live barnburner that shouts a loud banzai! in the face of anyone who had lost faith in Tap's ability to soldier through the dreariest of times. Other bands may have already been cranking out double and triple live LP's in Far Eastern venues, but Tap's is somehow, well, longer and louder than most. Former session drummer Peter "James" Bond provides a welcome (if short-lived) steadiness to the ever-turbulent percussion chair, and Ross MacLochness churns out some monster (no pun intended) keyboard riffs on the breakneck "Devil Take the Hindmost" and the dreamy instrumental "Nocturnal Mission." But "Nice 'n' Stinky" proved to be the sleeping time-bomb that would explode into unexpected mega-hitdom two years later in the US. B+'
BENT FOR THE RENT (Megaphone, 1976)
E1: 'Although it yielded the nearly classic "Heavy Duty," this LP marked an all-time low in record sales for the bandwagon-hungry band, and the beginning of the end of their contract with Megaphone. The details of that exchange of legal fusillades are will documented in the author's end-of-an-era tome Suit Countersuit (q.v.), and needs no further comment here.'
E2: 'With the exception of the memorably anthemic "Heavy Duty" ("No page in history, baby - that I don't need/I just want to make some eardrums bleed"), this tardy entry in the glitter-rock sweepstakes is best forgotten. Ask yourself if you really want to hear Tap perform titles like the ill-conceived glam-soul pastiche "When a Man Looks Like a Woman," or the New York Dolls/Mitch Ryder homage, "High Heels, Hot Wheels." Nor did the LP go very far toward paying David, Nigel, and Derek's respective rents, for that matter. C-'
[SW: In both books, TAP DANCING goes unmentioned, which raises a curious point later on.]
ROCK AND ROLL CREATION (Megaphone, 1977)
E1: 'An air of mystery surrounds this otherwise unremarkable album. Release dates vary, depending on whom you ask. For instance, the TIST sound-track compilation (which if you recall, erred on the Brainhammer date) lists this as 1977; yet the band's own discography (compiled, it's true, by latecomers at Polymer Records) places it between Blood To Let and Intravenus de Milo. Go figure. We favor the later date, as the notion of a vengeful Megaphone releasing these rather forgettable tracks, post-departure, rings true to us. The title track did garner modest airplay in England, but since the nation was in the throes of the Punk Explosion at the time, it was all but lost in the shuffle (or pogo, if you must). No loss, really, after all.'
SW: It's accepted that 1977 is indeed the release date for this album.
E2: 'Score one for the bean-counters. Tap may even have got the idea for the infamous SMELL THE GLOVE cover when their former label "rubbed their noses in it" by releasing this shoddy collection of rejected tracks after the band's much publicized lawsuit against Megaphone. Was it gratuitous irony on Megaphone's part to include an especially off-key version of the band's rarely performed punk excursion, "Young, Smug and Famous"? We won't dignify the bastards by giving this one a rating.'
"Nice 'n' Stinky" (Megaphone, 1977)
E1: 'Ironies within ironies, or in their end is their beginning. In one last apparent attempt to wring a few droplets of lucre from the desiccating fortunes of poor Spinal Tap, Megaphone released a "specially edited" version of this cut from the two-year-old, triple-live Jap Habit, based on a small underground buzz in Great Britain. Perhaps all they really wanted to do was rub Tap's noses in it, who knows? But fate made a last minute U-turn, the track became an unprecedented surprise hit in America, and the Band that Refused to Die sprang back to life.'
IT'S A SMALLS WORLD (Unreleased eight-track "super demo," c. 1978)
E1: 'Although never released - and probably with good reason - this solo work of Derek Smalls's, which arrived during the same period of "suspended animation" that gave birth to the [following] LP, must be noted here for completeness's sake. Derek's comments on the recording shed probably as much light as ever will be shed upon this darkest of dark Spinal Tap hours. Let's move on.'
NIGEL TUFNEL'S CLAM CARAVAN (Plutarch, 1979)
E1: 'After what is politely referred to in the industry as "Le debacle Megaphone," the band retreated to Nigel's castle in Scotland, reportedly to ponder their future and pursue solo projects, of which this was the only one to see the light of day. Tufnel himself has been famously reticent on this LP - at least until recently. As it turns out, his memory is not much more revealing than the mists of myth and rumor.'
E2: 'Ah, yes, the solo albums, product of Tap's banishment from Megaphone and their near-legendary sojourn in Nigel's Scottish castle. To be perfectly honest, the infelicitously mistitled CLAM CARAVAN (the label should've read "Calm") is right up there with such fish-out-of-water efforts as Bill Wyman's A STONE ALONE and Ross MacLochness's DOESN'T ANYBODY HERE SPEAK ENGLISH? Just as MacLochness's solo LP sprang from his experience of missionary work in Namibia, Nigel's exotic sound-trip to the North African desert seems to emerge from some dark, arid patch of his troubled psyche. If this is any indication of the sheer torpor of Tap's collective dark night of the soul, it's probably just as well that Derek's solo opus, IT'S A SMALLS WORLD, never saw the flourescent light of record stores. C-'
SHARK SANDWICH (Polymer, 1980)
E1: 'Without missing a beat (a rarity for them), Spinal Tap picked up a new drummer, Mick Shrimpton, from an ex-Eurovision Song Contest house band. Replacing Peter ("James") Bond (a victim of spontaneous onstage combustion during the "Isle of Lucy" Jazz & Blues Festival) with Mick, Tap signed a new contract with Polymer Records (a Polydor subsidiary), and released this LP, as well as their first new single in over four years.'
E2: 'Having languished a significant three years in the tomb-like limbo of contractual lawsuits and solo meanderings, Tap are luminously resurrected here with a new label, a new direction, and (natch) a new drummer. A joyously nihilistic "No Place Like Nowhere" and their late-disco hit "Throb Detector" lead the way. But the sheer suggestive brilliance of "Sex Farm" presages their eventual ascension into Heavy Metal Heaven. Who needs the self-serving "Wild Man" posturings of today's trendy Iron John set when we can hear Tap singing about real men swinging real pitchforks? You'd have to go clear back to Breughel for an equally heady brew of hardworking everyman earthiness and primal barnyard lust. We can almost see the steam rising off the cow chips on this one. A+'
"Sex Farm" (Polymer, 1980)
E1: 'Not nearly as controversial as the earlier "Big Bottom," standards of permissiveness having inevitably relented a bit, this still caused enough of a ripple to reestablish Tap among the more offensively obvious of heavy metal misogynist bands. And why not?'
SMELL THE GLOVE (Polymer, 1982)
E1: 'The album that relaunched Tap as an American touring-band phenomenon. Oddly, all their press material of this period referred to Smell as the band's seventeenth album, though even if you count the Smalls nonrelease, you still come up with only sixteen. Which has led some observers (not to mention record collectors) to scour their memories and not a few cutout bins in search of that missing seventeenth. In all, the fuss over that nearly buried the controversy about the suppressed "sexist" cover.'
SW: The 'missing seventeenth' is TAP DANCING.
E2: 'They may have come out of the depths, but their reminiscences of that tedious time still burn on in the thundering "Hell Hole." Yet the band seem curiously ambivalent: are they glad to be out of a place where "the rats are peeling," or are they even more nauseated by the high life they've regained, however briefly ("The sauna's drafty, the pool's too hot/The kitchen stinks of boiling snails")? You figure it out. As for the notoriously suppressed cover and lurid title track, gimme a break! Tap as misogynists? Smell this, buddy! B+'
SW: This has been the only mention of a title track for this LP; even the discography in the back of the 'Official Compendium' fails to mention this. A discography very similar to the one in that book appears on the semi-official SpinalTapFan.com, and does include the title track, but this was added after I pointed out its mention in the 1992 edition of "Inside."
HEAVY METAL MEMORIES
E1: 'Pictures of this album's cover exist - one can be glimpsed on the inner sleeve of TIST, in fact - but the record itself appears to be strangely nonexistent. Rumored to have been a compilation album of some of Tap's earlier "glories," it may have been released by Megaphone during the band's well-known recording hiatus. Or it may simply be a pirate recording. Unfortunately, even the members of ST don't quite remember the facts surrounding this elusive platter, now merely another page in rock history's palimpsest. So be it.'
SW: This is odd, especially given that the faux TV commercial for this was produced shortly before this book. Apparently someone didn't tell Occhiogrosso about that! (No mention is made at all in the second edition.) Anyway, the accepted info on this LP was that it was a 1983 release on Metalhouse records, containing all of Tap's classics.
THIS IS SPINAL TAP - THE SOUNDTRACK (Polymer, 1984)
E2: 'More of a greatest hits package - albeit with many of their later tunes given new live treatments - than a bold step forward. Still, the LP does have one unassailable advantage over most of the others reviewed here: IT'S STILL IN PRINT! A-'
SW: The 'new live treatments' statement is hard to decipher, given that these are studio recordings; but fans agree that the modern sound of some tracks such as "Big Bottom" show that they must be re-recordings, and not the versions originally heard on their source albums.
BREAK LIKE THE WIND (Dead Faith/MCA, 1992)
E2: 'Tap's first new LP in a decade presents both the ultimate enigma and the ultimate challenge to their credibility. Daringly interlarding hot new tracks in the band's reborn molten metal style ("Bitch School," "Cash on Delivery") with classic period pieces ("The Sun Never Sweats," "Clam Caravan," "All the Way Home"), BLTW offers a uniquely valuable panorama of the band's development. But it also begs the question, Have Tap Sold Out? Squeaky clean production values, all-star guest soloists like Jeff Beck, Steve Lukather, Dweezil Cappa, and Cher(!), flawless engineering, and socially relevant issues raging from ecology ("Stinking Up the Great Outdoors") to euthanasia ("Track 13") - are these the qualities we've come to expect from England's Loudest Band? The real payoff just may be "Rainy Day Sun," a deliriously psychedelic foreshadowing of Kinks/Small Faces/Beatles modalities that was the original B-side of "Flower People." The story is that the 1967 tune was yanked by the band after "I Am the Walrus" and "Itchycoo Park" came out, so as "not to cause confusion in the marketplace," and was never included on its debut LP. How fitting that Tap's one legitimate chance to be ahead of its time ended up as an obscure collector's item until 25 years after its time! Overall, I'm strongly ambivalent about this one, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt; as with the previous LP, you can actually buy it in stores. A'
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[In addition, the 1992 printing added an additional section containing reviews of five Tap bootlegs, as follows.]
AUDIBLE DEATH (Gaswind, 1969)
'Sounds like someone had a small cassette recorder in about the 50th row of the Electric Zoo the same day Silent But Deadly was recorded. Audio quality is zilch, and the constant sound of someone choking on what must have been incredible bad dope is distracting, but it's worth a shot, if only for the justly famous two-hour "Short and Sweet."'
LIVE AT BUDOKKAN (Japtap, 1975)
'In case you didn't get enough to feed your JAP HABIT, this Budokkan's for you. Stellar acoustics, although some overheated fan keeps screaming Bonzai! in the middle of Nigel's guitar solos. A mixed blessing, but more blessed than mixed.'
GOT THAMESMEN ON TAP (Merseybleat, ND)
'If our ears don't lie, this is historic stuff, with Ronnie Pudding and a pre-gardening accident "Stumpy" Pepys in top form. Early hits and a cool smattering of cover versions, purportedly taped in an underground club in Rotterdam. On the other hand, it may just be an incredible simulation, which pretty much amounts to the same thing.'
IT'S A DUB WORLD (Skaface, 1979?)
'The bass tracks only to Derek's never-released solo LP, somehow pirated from the studio where he was working at the time. Lets the imagination run wild.'
OPENFACED MAKO (Hammerhead, 1980)
'A collection of outtakes from the SHARK SANDWICH sessions, replete with some very revealing in-studio banter (near-fistfights would be more like it!). A real must, especially for the never-released, XXX-rated version of "Sex Farm." Naughty, naughty.'
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Just a note about "Smell The Glove" being the seventeenth album... excluding the solo albums, and the retitled version of WAAFP, this is still possible - at least in terms of what the Tap mythos dictated by this point:
- Spinal Tap Sings "(Listen To The) Flower People" and Other Favorites (1967)
- We Are All Flower People (1968) / The Incredible Flight Of Icarus P. Anybody (1969)
- Silent But Deadly (1969)
- Brainhammer (1970)
- Nerve Damage (1971)
- Blood To Let (1972)
- Intravenus de Milo (1974)
- The Sun Never Sweats (1975)
- Jap Habit (1975)
- Bent For The Rent (1976)
- Tap Dancing (1976)
- Rock and Roll Creation (1977)
- Flak Packet (unreleased album not mentioned in IST, date unknown)
- Lusty Lorry (unreleased album not mentioned in IST, date unknown)
- Here's More Tap (unreleased album not mentioned in IST, date unknown)
- Shark Sandwich (1980)
- Smell The Glove (1982)
Confusingly, Tap claim on their Joe Franklin Show appearance that the "Spinal Tap" soundtrack, not "Smell The Glove", is their seventeenth album. This would leave the count as such:
- Spinal Tap Sings "(Listen To The) Flower People" and Other Favorites (1967)
- We Are All Flower People (1968) / The Incredible Flight Of Icarus P. Anybody (1969)
- Silent But Deadly (1969)
- Brainhammer (1970)
- Nerve Damage (1971)
- Blood To Let (1972)
- Intravenus de Milo (1974)
- The Sun Never Sweats (1975)
- Jap Habit (1975)
- Bent For The Rent (1976)
- Tap Dancing (1976)
- Rock and Roll Creation (1977)
- Nigel Tufnel's Clam Caravan (Nigel, 1979)
- Shark Sandwich (1980)
- Smell The Glove (1982)
- Heavy Metal Memories (1983)
- This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
Take your pick.
