Pop and Jazz : Spinal Tap Gets Real (Funny) at Universal

They came, they found the stage, they rocked: Spinal Tap hit the Universal Amphitheatre on Friday night with the funniest show in that venue since Warrant’s concert there late last year.

This is the satirical band’s 25th-anniversary tour in pretend-time and its first in real life, and the career-encompassing two-hour set didn’t disappoint the nearly full house, skewed more toward serious video renters than metalheads.

It was a night of conceptual quotation marks, as the “group” plowed through a sex farm’s worth of “hits,” as largely heard in Tap’s ’84 “documentary” film and new “comeback” album. Accordingly, it was quite “good,” if a tad too long to fully sustain the ironic conceit.

Not wanting to tempt fate, Tap didn’t bring any potentially malfunctioning pods to step out of; working giant eggs sufficed during “Rock and Roll Creation.” Derek Smalls and Nigel Tufnel did not escape unhumiliated, however, being lowered on wires at the start of “Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight” and left uncomfortably dangling inches from floor level for the song’s duration.

The only other technical snafu later was the inevitable battery of Stonehenge replicas--not too tiny this time, but so large that only their bases were visible. “It’s not too big, the place is too (expletive) small!” complained Smalls, echoing Gloria Swanson in “Sunset Blvd.”

A video screen afforded the opportunity to watch Smalls dine at a local eatery and David St. Hubbins get a backstage facial while guitarist Tufnel indulged in a lengthy Van Halen-esque solo. From the giant devil skull to a “power ballad” to the acoustic mini-set, no arena-rock cliche turn was left unstoned--not even the U2 tour’s belly dancer, a role filled here by one of the “Stone Henge” dwarfs.