Smalls Change (Meditations upon ageing)

Derek Smalls is the bass player for Spinal Tap. Derek grew up in Nilford, England, and was the son of Donald “Duff” Smalls, who ran a marginally successful telephone sanitization business, “Sani-Fone”. He joined Spinal Tap in 1967 after the departure of bassist Ronnie Pudding.

Spinal Tap is a hard rock parody (disputed, litigation ongoing) band, made up for the mockumentary (same) “This Is Spinal Tap”, a satire (again, litigation) of the hard rock and heavy metal music scene. It is both made-up and real because the band members are American actors posing (final warning) as British musicians, yet they have performed concerts and released records under the name Spinal Tap (stylized with a dotless i and an n-diaeresis, mocking the heavy metal umlaut). The band has also given a number of in-character (that’s it – expect a summons) interviews over the years. Their drummer fatalities are unrivalled in the Pantheon of Rock – here are a few of them:

John “Stumpy” Pepys (drummer)
An original member of the Thamesmen and Spinal Tap, Stumpy died in a “bizarre gardening accident”. When asked about it, Nigel says, “It was really one of those things the authorities said, ‘Well, best leave it unsolved.'”
Eric “Stumpy Joe” Childs (drummer)
Childs was the band’s second drummer, replacing gardening victim Stumpy Pepys. He died from choking on vomit, which, as the band helpfully points out, was not his own. Exactly whose vomit was never determined by the police. As Nigel so aptly put it, “You can’t dust for vomit.”
Peter “James” Bond (drummer)
Replacing Childs, Bond played with the band for three years before spontaneously combusting onstage. Nigel described it: “He just was like a flash of green light, and that was it. Nothing was left. Well, there was a little green globule on his drum seat. It was a small stain, actually.”

Tracklisting: