Hey folks!

Today’s Best Album of 2001 match is:

#60 Tenacious D, TENACIOUS D

Listen on Spotify or YouTube

vs.

#69 Air, 10 000 HZ LEGEND

Listen on Spotify or YouTube

To vote, follow this link to the Google Form. You will need a Google login to vote. If you can’t or won’t have one, let me know ASAP (either through this newsletter, my email [kentmbeeson@hey.com] or on the Best Album Brackets Bluesky account) and I’ll see what I can do.

We have one Designated Cheerleader today, it’s for TENACIOUS D, and it’s from Head Cheerleader @bsglaser.bsky.social. Take it away, Brian!

Through a convoluted set of circumstances, I ended up with a VIP ticket and backstage pass to Tenacious D's show at the Roseland Ballroom in January 2002, the NYC stop on the tour to support the TENACIOUS D LP. My date was super-excited to meet Jack Black, but as we talked about what she was expecting from the experience, I realized...she expected to meet JB from Tenacious D. I pointed out that while the guys in Tenacious D used their real names, they were playing characters. We were going to meet Jack Black, not JB. I saw the disappointment on her face.

I mention this not to make fun of her, but to draw a distinction between TENACIOUS D as a Comedy Album, which it isn't, and as a Sketch Comedy Album, which it is. Jack Black and Kyle Gass were part of a rich LA-centered sketch scene, and you can spot them in episodes of David Cross and Bob Odenkirk's MR. SHOW. The duo developed characters and wrote songs to be performed in and as sketches, first at live shows and later on HBO. JB and KG aren't Plant and Page or Mick and Keith--they're Abbott and Costello or Laurel and Hardy or R2D2 and C-3PO.

When you listen to TENACIOUS D as comedy-duo sketches, it hits a little differently. A lot of the songs, like "Tribute," "Fuck Her Gently" and "Friendship," have the framework and delivery of sketches, paired with solid melodies and performances. They're not mind-blowing rock music, but they work as quick world-building and commitment to the bit.

There are also tracks like "Cock Pushups" and "Drive-Thru" that are like skit tracks from hip-hop records. Whatever you think of hip-hop skits (I'm not a fan), The D know the form and execute on it. And they understand the grounding that a lot of hip-hop acts have in old-timey performance: e.g., Chuck D and Flavor Flav are complementary characters that Carlton Ridenhour and William Drayton created and play in the context of PE. Skit tracks on hip-hop records come out of this tradition, and TENACIOUS D plays it in a faux-cock-rock context.

Does any of this make TENACIOUS D an amazing album? Certainly not. But as an album with a clear vision, writing and performances that execute on that vision, and some solid (if juvenile) laughs, it does the job it sets out to do. I hear this record like a musical version of a MR. SHOW or KIDS IN THE HALL episode: Sketch comics who inhabit their characters and perform songs that are not the best songs in the world, but very much pay tribute to them.

Thank you, Brian!

Click here to see the current results for the entire tournament, and click here to see the current results for the prediction bracket contest.

Thanks,

Kent