‘Too Much Effing Perspective’ podcast asks guests to recount their ‘Spinal Tap’ moments

The iconic 1980s mockumentary “This Is Spinal Tap” follows a fictional British band as their first North American tour slowly — and hilariously — falls apart. The movie serves as inspiration for the “Too Much Effing Perspective” podcast, hosted by Portlander Alex Hofmann and LA-based Allen Keller. Hofmann and Keller kick off conversations by asking guests about their “Spinal Tap” moments, situations where everything that could go wrong, did. The podcast has featured several Northwest artists since it launched in 2021, including Sleater-Kinney, the Dandy Warhols and Nancy Wilson from Heart.

Hofmann and show producer Gretchen Kilby join us in the studio to talk about the best stories guests have shared, as well as their own “Spinal Tap” moments.

The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller:  This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The iconic 1980s movie “This Is Spinal Tap” followed a fictional British band as their North American tour slowly exploded. It skewered rock and roll excess, it pioneered the mockumentary style, and it has served as an inspiration for a Portland-based podcast. The podcast is called “Too Much Effing Perspective.” We’ll hear what the title means in just a few minutes. It’s full of musicians and other performers telling stories about their own Spinal Tap moments. times when everything that could go wrong did. Alex Hofmann is one of the co-hosts of the podcast. Gretchen Kilby is the producer and they both join me now. It’s great to have both of you on the show.

Gretchen Kilby:  Thanks for inviting us Dave.

Alex Hofmann:  Yeah, thanks for having us, Dave.

Miller: Let’s listen to a clip from one of your episodes first. Then we can talk about everything you all are doing. We’re going to hear Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker from the band Sleater-Kinney.

Clip from “Too Much Effing Perspective”:

[Carrie Brownstein]: I’ve been shocked so intensely that like, I basically just see stars and it feels pretty intense.

[Corin Tucker]: And people don’t realize it while you’re like trying to soundtrack or whatever and they’re like, ‘oops, sorry.’ You know, and you’re like, God, and trying to keep your cool and go on with the show. But it’s kind of impossible. And then sometimes they’ll just be, like, ‘put a sock over it.’

[Carrie Brownstein]: Oh, that’s so gross.

[Corin Tucker]: That is the worst. Like, we’re just gonna put a little muffle here. But you’re still physically being shocked the entire time.

[Carrie Brownstein]: But also then smelling someone’s sock. It’s very derelict.

[Allen Keller]: Come on, you two are punk rock. Isn’t that true? That’s just like the day to day, right?

[Corin Tucker]: That’s the day to day. That’s the dream. That’s it. That’s living the dream.

[Hofmann]: When you’re using someone else’s mic…

[Corin Tucker]: When you can smell the breath of someone else, like the mouth smell, the saliva of someone else.

Miller: Gretchen, my guess is that many of our listeners have either seen or have heard about Spinal Tap. But I’m sure that there are some for whom neither of those is true. So, what was the movie?

Kilby:  OK, as you mentioned, it sort of started the whole mockumentary movement. Christopher Guest ended up doing lots of other ones after that. But the film is funny because we heard from a lot of our guests and other people that, at the time when it came out, some people weren’t sure whether it was real or not. Because they present it like it’s a documentary.

Miller:  Very straight.

Kilby:  Yeah, very straight.

Miller:  I mean, until it’s not.

Kilby:  Until it’s not. Until you say, “OK, wait a minute. What? They did that?” Drummers don’t explode, spontaneously combust, have bizarre gardening accidents. But a lot of the players who we recognize today, as I mentioned, Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, Michael McKean are the main folks. But Fran Drescher was in there, Billy Crystal had a small part, Dana Carvey. At the time, they weren’t as recognizable. So some people were kind of confused, like, ‘Is this really a band?’ And if they are, they’re horrible. How did they ever think they had a chance?

You started the question by asking if some people haven’t heard of it. It wasn’t huge when it first came out. But then it took off on video. And then what we’ve learned from guests on the show is that it’s huge with bands. And so a lot of them know the references and the famous lines from it. So that has held true, as we’ve invited guests on the show, people who are of the era of Spinal Tap in the eighties remember it. And then newer bands say, ‘Oh yeah, we all play it on the bus when we’re touring.’

Miller:  Because for younger bands, Alex, it has just entered the culture of touring bands?

Hofmann:  Yeah, that’s right. I mean, everybody knows the expression, “It goes to 11.” But a lot of people don’t know where it comes from. And so it doesn’t take long for a band that’s on the road to realize they are living through, in real life, scenes that were very clearly portrayed in the film. So you know you’re living Spinal Tap when you’re on the road.

Miller: That reminds me of a line that I loved from Brian Ritchie from the Violent Femmes, who said basically that he and his bandmates in the Violent Femme thought they were authentic original punk rockers. And then they saw the movie and realized that this skewering of rock excess also captured so many things about their band. They realized that they were also part of the cliche, a sort of deflating moment for him in a poignant way.

Hofmann:  Yeah. And we’ve heard that consistently. All these bands have gotten lost between the dressing room and trying to get on stage. They have all done an in-store meet-and-greet or something like that, and no fans show up. It’s like there’s a perception that bands live in this rarified glamorous space. And they do for short periods. But they also go through all these humbling experiences that really are very level setting, so to speak. And the movie reflects that really, really clearly.

Miller:  Let’s have a listen to another excerpt. This is from your episode with Bill Stephney, the Def Jam Records executive, Public Enemy producer. He told a story about a time when Flavor Flav who, for him, was sort of like the Harpo Marx of the group, which is a great metaphor. Anyway, he didn’t show up for a show. Let’s have a listen.

Clip from “Too Much Effing Perspective”:

[Bill Stephney]: There was a point, the group was on tour. They’re in the city. They’re about to jump on stage. And there’s no Flavor. Chuck can go out there but what’s going to happen without Flavor? This is a frightening prospect. So anyone familiar with [Public Enemy] knows that they have a group that serves as onstage security. They’re called Security of the First World. So one of the members kind of looked like Flavor. He was fairly thin, pretty much the same complexion, pretty much the same height.

Someone on the road scratched their head and said, “You know what? If we put the hat, we put on the sunglasses, if we put a clock around his neck and he just does the movements and lip syncs. From a distance who’s really gonna know?” And guess what? Nobody knew the better. So 35 years later, we still refer to that as the ‘artificial Flavor moment.’

Miller:  Alex, it’s fantastic to hear your laugh, from the podcast episode, and live as you hear that at the same exact time.

Gretchen, where does the name “Too Much Effing Perspective” come from?

Hofmann:  So first of all, it’s a family friendly version of an actual line from the film.

Miller:  You’re a former OPB host announcer so you know family friendly.

Hofmann:  I know family friendly. I know I’m not allowed to say a certain word that starts with an “F”. So the scene is one which is another example of something a lot of bands have told us, which is that when they go on tour, people often stop at Graceland to pay respects to Elvis’ grave. So the guys from Spinal Tap do the same thing. But it’s not quite the experience expected because, to pay honor to him, they decide to sing “Heartbreak Hotel.” But they can’t get in harmony with it. So they’re totally messing up the harmony.

And then there’s this pause and then the Christopher Guest character says, “You know, this really puts a lot of perspective on things.” And then Michael Keane’s character says, “Like, yeah, too much effing perspective.” And so I have to say that Allen and Alex came up with the name beforehand. But when I heard about it, I thought this is perfect. Because all these moments, when you’re humbled, when you’re humiliated, when you feel horrible, they give you a lot of perspective on what you’re doing. And so I thought it was the perfect name for the show.

Miller:  Alex, why did you want to make this podcast?

Hofmann:  Dave, I was, at one point in my life, a concert tour manager. And so I was out on the road with Radiohead and PJ Harvey and a band called The BoDeans from the Midwest, and others. And I realized, as I said a little bit before, that I and these bands were living through every scene from the film. And I’ve always enjoyed telling those stories.

Miller: And I imagine that non-musicians liked hearing them because they’re a kind of behind-the-curtains version?

Hofmann:  That’s right. It’s behind the scenes. It kind of humanizes these rock stars. Like are they really living through these things? Because we all, every person in real life, at their job and their family, goes through these moments you could qualify as being Spinal Tap moments - not so funny when they happen. But when you look back on them, they make you chuckle. And so anyway, that was the idea. Let’s bring those kinds of amazing stories together and let’s share them in this podcast.

Miller: Is part of the reason that you long for those sort of crazy days, now that you’re just a more, I don’t know, stay-at-home person?

Hofmann:  No. You don’t miss it at all. I mean, there is nostalgia but I think that life, for me, was in my late twenties. And there was a point that I knew that I, personally, had gotten beyond it. Although I literally just got together the other day with someone I toured with 30 years ago who was the sound engineer for Sarah McLaughlin. I was on tour with her with another band and he’s still doing it. So for some folks, this is their life and that’s great.

Miller: But for you, it was a period of your life that you’re happy to have behind you?

Hofmann:  Yeah, because there’s a lot of great stories here.

Miller: Let’s listen to another clip. I mentioned the Violent Femmes earlier because you talked to the bassist, Brian Ritchie. Here he is talking about a show in Trenton, New Jersey.

Clip from “Too Much Effing Perspective”:

[Brian Ritchie]: We’re playing and suddenly we see a disruption happening and there was a side room, like the bar was off to the side of the music room. And somebody was waving a gun around in the air and then the person gets knocked out. And that was just the start of the chaos. My bass amp caught on fire. The PA stack started wobbling and almost hit Gordon. But Peter, our sax player, pushed Gordon out of the way and saved his little body from being crushed. Peter was rewarded for this by having his saxophone crushed by the PA stack.

And then another thing that was happening was the lights were very inappropriate. We would be doing “Add It Up” and the lights would be really dim. And then suddenly we were doing “Good Feeling” and the lights were flashing like mad. We finally told Peter to go check out what’s happening. And he said that it was because the lighting person was on LSD. So that show goes down on record as our most ridiculous event.

Miller: Alex, you were on tour for a chunk of your life with a bunch of different bands. And you were in your own bands as well, right?

Hofmann: Right.

Miller: What’s one of your Spinal Tap moments that stands out to you today?

Hofmann:  Well, when I was out with Radiohead, it was on their first record. “Creep” was a huge hit on MTV. And so the band did a performance outdoors at the MTV Beach House on Long Island. And that’s a pretty legendary performance because, and the videos are on YouTube, after playing a song, the singer Tom York, dives into the pool fully clothed. And one of the producers rushed over to me and said, ‘Make sure that when Tom gets out of the pool, he does not touch the microphone because he could be electrocuted.’ And so we pulled him out, whispered in his ear not to touch the mic and we just walked off stage and got him to towel off. But what I’ve learned is that many people, after the fact, have claimed that they saved Tom York’s life by preventing him from being electrocuted. So that could have been a Spinal Tap moment, had that gone wrong.

But at the end of the whole thing, the band got into the limo, took off, and I was supposed to catch a ride back to Manhattan. But I just missed [the limo]. So I ended up having to get a ride back in the cargo truck, going back at the very end of the night. So it’s just these kinds of things like this. It’s not very glamorous stuff.

Miller:  Gretchen has working on this podcast reminded you of your own versions of these moments?

Kilby:  Oh, yeah. In fact, I was just telling Alex about this the other day. I was in high school when it [movie] came out and we wore out the video cassette, renting it from the store, because we just thought it was hysterical. And a real life moment for me was a scene that almost everybody remembers of our guests. [It] is when the guys can’t find the stage. And they keep walking around and walking around. They meet up with somebody backstage who says, “’OK, you got left and you’re this.’ And then they’re [yelling], ‘OK, rock and roll, rock and roll and hello Cleveland,’ you know, hyping themselves up. And then they keep not finding the stage.

So I had a moment where two years ago, another sister of mine took me to the Grand Canyon. And we had gotten dinner. It was in January so it was dark already. And all of the apartments that you could rent looked exactly the same. And we couldn’t remember which one we were in. And so at first and then all of a sudden, my twin sister and I, who were the ones who watched the video all the time, were [yelling] ‘Rock and roll, rock and roll and hello Cleveland.’ And then my sister was like, “What are you guys talking about?”

When I think of that moment, I think of what Spinal Tap did. In addition to skewering people or skewering the music biz or whatever, it also normalized that we’re all in these moments. And you know what? We can’t find where we’re supposed to stay. So let’s just be goofy about this and walk around and we’ll find it. I feel like guests that come on the show, come to that conclusion too. Everybody shouldn’t feel like an idiot. This is happening to everybody.

Miller:  I want to play one more clip. This is Gerald Casale from Devo. They did a cover of the Rolling Stones song “Satisfaction”, a legendary song. And then their manager arranged for them to have a meeting with Mick Jagger so he could hear it and then hopefully give the song, the cover, his blessing. Let’s have a listen.

Clip from “Too Much Effing Perspective”:

[Gerald Casale]: Mick sits down in the club chair and swirls his wine and he goes, ‘All right, let’s hear it then.’ and Mark stands up and puts the cassette in the boom box because that’s what you did back then. And it starts and he’s looking down and he’s swirling his wine and he’s swirling his wine and we think, ‘Oh God, he hates it. He’s not looking at us, he’s not doing anything.’

He puts the wine down on the hardwood floor, stands up in his stocking feet and starts dancing across in front of the fireplace. Like Mick Jagger moves, like the rooster thing. And he turns, spins on his socks because the floor is nice and hardwood slippery, and he goes, ‘I like it. I like it.’ So we were all like “Bill and Ted’s Great Adventure,” you know, ‘We’re not worthy.’ Oh my God.

So we flew back, going to Elliott Roberts, our manager’s office, on Monday morning, all elated. We want to tell him the good news and of course he’s already known. Peter Rudd just called him and through the horn with the executives and he goes, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ He goes, ‘you know, look guys, I told Peter to tell Mick before you ever got there that Mick should come in and say he liked it because you’re gonna make him a ton of money. Because they’re not giving up any of the publishing on this song, just because the music is different.’ So it was like one of those deflating… ‘here’s the business pal you dumb little [bleep].’

Miller: I wanted to play that because it made me think that, on some level, this podcast is a little bit of a Trojan horse. That you suck people in with fun disaster fiascos.

But so many of the conversations, the bulk of them, are about behind-the-scenes looks at how stuff is made and the dynamics within bands or with executives. Was that the plan from the beginning?

Hofmann:  I think that’s just the natural outcome, Dave. My co-host, Allen Keller, is a comedy writer. He’s been in a great band. We both, and Gretchen too, all have been through this experience of how stuff gets made and the foibles that go along with that. And again, it’s just about the story time. I think it’s just a natural outcome, a happy outcome of sharing these kinds of stories.

Miller:  Alex and Gretchen, thanks very much.

Hofmann:  Thank you, Dave.

Kilby:  Thank you.

Miller:  Alex Hofmann is one of the co-hosts of “Too Much Effing Perspective”. Gretchen Kilby is the producer of the podcast and former host and announcer here at OPB.

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