Rock Off
I’ve been looking forward to Tenacious D for most of the day, sure they are more of a show than a band but they still have some fine tunes and are pretty much guaranteed to put a smile on even the most serious of faces. Unfortunately everybody else seems to have had the same idea (though I suspect a fair few were getting a good spot for Metallica) and the arena in front of the main stage is packed, so much so that I can’t even make it past the mixing desk.
They come on dressed as a wizard (Jack Black) and some kind of dinosaur (Kyle Gass) and it’s a shame that the first song is almost completely drowned out by the beats coming over from the dance stage. It’s not until the backing band kick in that they have any kind of impact. Probably the most amusing part of the set follows when Black tells Gass he’s ruined everything ‘I said dress as a wizard not a fucking lizard!’.
A slew of tracks from the first album follow with ‘Kyle Quit the Band’, ‘Friendship’ and ‘The Road’, all of which suffer from being too quiet to carry properly to the back of the arena, so much so that I’m almost tempted to tell the people standing next to me to shut up so that I can hear properly! Something’s not right when people talking drown out a band on the main stage. The songs are interspersed with comedy moments often well choreographed and of course featuring the devil and ‘the Metal’. When you can hear and see what’s going on it’s funny but with a crowd this size in the open air there’s not much room for subtlety and there are just too many quiet moments, which lessen the overall effect.
Unsurprisingly it’s ‘Fuck her Gently’ that gets the biggest crowd reaction with pretty much everyone singing along. A ‘rock off’ with the devil follows before they finish off with the excellent ‘Tribute’ and a version of the Who’s ‘Pinball Wizard’. Good in places but certainly not as good a performance as I was expecting and although they weren’t helped by the setting perhaps they are just better suited to indoor venues where everyone is paying attention?