No, they are not dead. The official website has relauched and the band has released a new album, Back from the Dead (also on 11-inch vinyl). Download a free track, Saucy Jack or any of their singles at Amazon MP3. The Amazon digital version of the new album includes a bonus track, (Listen to the) Flower People (2009).

If you have an iTunes account, you can download a Spinal Tap iPhone app so you can get updates on news, tweets, music, video and tour dates, or download the new album. The band also discusses their music on its official YouTube channel.

Tap has launched a music video contest for fans. Create your own video for "Hell Hole," "Warmer Than Hell," "Big Bottom," "Stonehenge," "Back From The Dead" and/or "Short & Sweet." The entries will be judged by Colman Hickey, who created a video of Lego versions of the boys performing "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight." The winner will receive a Spinal Tap prize pack, including autographed swag from the band.

"This is Spinal Tap" will be released on Blu-ray on July 14, 2009. You can pre-order a copy at Amazon. Note that this DVD will only play on Blu-ray players; it won't work on a standard DVD player.

Ethan De Seife, a visiting professor of film at Gettsyburg College whose writings on Tap first appeared on this site, has written what is without a doubt the best critical analysis of the film for a volume of Wallflower Press's Cultographies series. De Seife recounts the production, promotion and initial reception to the film and the audience and critical reaction before getting to the meat of the matter, which is his analysis of the film and its secrets. This slim volume is a must-have for any serious Taphead. You can buy it at Amazon, Amazon Canada or Amazon UK.

The Sacramento Bee reports that the California DMV is attempting to recall the vanity license plate GO 2 11 that attorney Keith Wagner has on his car, after the agency received a complaint that the message can be read as "Go to hell." Here's coverage from the local CBS affiliate. And here is the spirited response by Wagner.

From Q Magazine (February 2007): " 'Somebody had to out-Spinal Tap Spinal Tap, and I think we did.' So said Edge about Popmart mirrorball lemon: an impressive 40-foot fiberglass shell covered with inch-thick reflective tiles from which the band were supposed to emerge for every encore. Except in Oslo on 6 August 1997, when in true Tap fashion the lemon failed to open, trapping them inside. Today it lies dismantled in a Dutch warehouse since, claims Edge, it failed to sell when auctioned on eBay." [download article at U2.com]

From The Week (16 June 2006): "When Vince Welnick was invited in 1990 to become the Grateful Dead's keyboard player, the position already had a reputation as the most dangerous job in rock n' roll. Three of the band's previous keyboardists had died in tragic circumstances—alcoholism, a car crash and a drug overdose. After being told about the "curse," Welnick said, "I am aware that I could die doing this job, but I was dying of boredom before the job came up." Welnick apparently killed himself, "the fourth and last in a grim series."

From Nice Guys Finish Seventh, page 45: "During a conversation with one of his ambassadors following the Russian debacle of 1812, Napoleon kept repeating, 'From the sublime to the ridiculous there is but one step.' After this ambassador reported their conversation in a book, the mot was attributed to Bonaparte. It still is. But this thought was not original to him. In Age of Reason (1795), Thomas Paine wrote, 'One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.' " And, finally, as Albert Einstein once said, "The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits."

In 2003 the National Physical Laboratory in the U.K. went beyond black with a new NPL Super Black that reflected only about .16 of the light shined on it. However, in 2008 scientists at Rice announced they had broken that record with a carpet of carbon nanotubes that reflect only 0.045 percent of light, or three times darker than NPL Super Black. (By comparison, black paint has a reflectance of 5 to 10 percent.) However, neither of these findings eliminates the possibility that a substance is out there that is none more black.

On 7 March 2002, the Saskatoon StarPhoenix in Saskatchewan, Canada, citing witnesses inside the Pine Grove Correctional Centre, reported that some female ex-heroin addicts so desperately crave methadone that they routinely consume the fresh vomit of fellow inmates currently on methadone treatment because enough is still present in the regurgitation. The newspaper uncovered the practice while investigating the death of an inmate. Said a source, "The whole building knows (that the inmate choked on vomit). That's how she died." —from News of the Weird, compiled by Chuck Shepherd