This Is Spinal Tap at 40: the note-perfect rock satire still goes up to 11

Christopher Guest and Rob Reiner made a 1984 classic that ingeniously straddles the ‘fine line between stupid and clever’

The bands that come together organically, without the aid of want ads or tear-off flyers stapled to telephone poles, are generally catalyzed by a mixture of chemistry, inspiration and boredom.

A few guys – more often than not, it’s still guys – hang out, realize they get along, bond through their overlapping tastes, and then grow fidgety to do something about it. Screwing around becomes noodling, noodling becomes jamming, jamming becomes something that can be passed off as a performance in exchange for beer money. For so many of the greats, rocking began as a gratifying, potentially lucrative way to goof off with one’s friends, their childhood spirit of play aged up from games to music; we can see the natural camaraderie in everything from the laddish pranksterism of A Hard Day’s Night to the hijinks on Boygenius’s social media channels. Such intimacy powers the alchemy activated when locking into a groove, an instinct-based communication coordinating several minds on a shared creative frequency. It’s one of the closest things to magic that exists on Earth.