The three men behind Spinal Tap have announced plans to release a DVD of their recent US tour. Titled "Unwigged & Unplugged: An Evening with Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer", it will consist of 35 songs recorded when the trio performed at the Riverside Theatre in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Featured are tracks from the band's beginnings, as well as from their 2009 release, "Back From the Dead" and some of their Folksmen tracks from the movie "A Mighty Wind", which was written and directed by Guest. The DVD will reportedly consist of the concert with no additional material.
"It's a great way to present these songs," Shearer, who wrote liner notes for the DVD, said in an interview. "We had done this a couple of times in just very casual and almost accidental situations...and people seemed to enjoy it. So it was in the back of our minds, 'Well, one of these days we'll do more of that.' "
The band wanted to do something in celebration of the 25th anniversary of "This Is Spinal Tap", but shied away from doing another tour.
"We're not big fans of repeating ourselves," he explained. "And in terms of the state of the economy, it wasn't the time to be going around with three semis worth of stage stuff and charging people 75 bucks to see us be Spinal Tap. So we thought, 'Let's do that other thing now. That'll be fun.' "
Shearer also said that the trio enjoyed showcasing their music without all the characters.
"When we're up there up there doing it as ourselves, our heads are in the place of being musicians," he explained. "When we're up there as characters, when we do performances as Tap or as the Folksmen, then there's that other layer of, 'Yes, we're doing this as musicians but we're doing this as <I>other</I> musicians, not as ourselves. So we might make different choices or play differently based on how we think <I>they</I> would do it.
"But when we're doing it as ourselves, there's no place to hide. This is us playing these songs that we've written, and this is our best effort at playing them."