Slash vs. Nigel Tufnel

You've seen that VW commercial with Slash, haven't you? He was wearing the goofy hat and he's got the slouch going and all, but man, that was a pretty lame solo. Well, what can you do - ask for another take? Right, if you don't mind him whipping a (mostly empty) bottle of Jack at your head.

If you haven't heard, VW is giving away a guitar when you buy a car. The guitar has a built-in preamp, so it can plug into a car stereo. Guitars like these almost always sound like crud.

Then I see Nigel Tufnel's commercial, and even though I'm ready to laugh at it no matter what, it's still funny as hell. He's standing on the car, soloing his nuts off (doing that chromatic thing he does so quickly) and he stops for just a sec to blurt, "This amplifier has an airbag!" That was good, but watching him work up the coordination to talk and play was even better. So much funny crammed into so little space.

On top of all that, his guitar sounds 1000x better than Slash (and I'm not counting the section where Nigel was using the wah pedal.) Go ahead and compare for yourself. Slash's sound has that annoying transister spuzz that these guitars are infamous for, and Nigel, of all people, finds a decent setting. Awesome.

Now I can't wait to see what John Mayer does. He can play well, in spite of the songs he writes, and in spite of the fact that, when he sings, he contorts his mouth in a way that makes him look exactly like my retarded cousin, Karen. Same hair. Same facial expressions. It's uncanny to the point of distraction. I can only assume that he must also like to poke fat people when he sees them.

In any case, I think his solo will be the best of the three, and I'm really curious to hear what kind of tone he gets out of that horrible thing. If you check the VW website, there are some lessons with Dweezil Zappa. (Like how I said "Zappa" so you wouldn't think it was some other Dweezil?) Anyway, Nigel beat him on tone, too.

So it's really down to Nigel vs. John Mayer in the third and final round.