Kiss on Letterman. Anvil on Conan. Quite a night for headbanging. We've got a strong Anvil bias, of course, and the moment when he snarls "HEAVY METAL! FIGHT!" and then flashes the goofiest grin I've ever seen on television is really very sweet. But watch the Kiss thing too, if only for the fantastic visual joke of Dave walking out at the end, into the pluming smoke, to shake hands with the boys. He looks delighted.

Vindication! Would-be/might-still-be Canadian metal gods Anvil, a hard-luck crew whose three-decade quest for stardom is lovely chronicled in the new doc Anvil! The Story of Anvil (a fantastic film lovingly praised by Camille here) will be doing a modest little NYC show this summer: at fuckin' Giants Stadium, opening for AC/DC on July 31st. (The two bands hit Boston a few days prior.) Let's hope they bring the dildo out of retirement.

"The thing about a film is that it's like a really, really bad, extreme cocaine habit that's out of control--the cost is like, a small house, every few weeks."

Robb Reiner and Steve "Lips" Kudlow

The rockumentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil has been called a "30-year overnight success story"--and that's exactly right. A Canadian thrash band that formed in the late '70s, Anvil toured with Whitesnake, Bon Jovi, and the Scorpions, but never reached their early peers' level of riches, superstardom, or Ozzy-ant-snorting hagiography. Yet the band's co-founders--Steve "Lips" Kudlow and Robb Reiner--kept Anvil going for three decades. Despite wives and kids. Despite shit-job existences. Despite bald spots and hemorrhoids. Despite how absolutely impossible the idea of "making it" then seemed for hesher dudes in their 50s.

Anvil would have kept on toiling away in relative obscurity if Sacha Gervasi, the band's former teenaged roadie who'd grown up to become a screenwriter, hadn't discovered Lips and Robb 20 years later still rocking together in Toronto and decided to make this film. The result is one of the best rock docs ever--a Hoop Dreams for heshers, if you will--and now "the real-life Spinal Tap" is finally engulfed in a flood of attention. VH1 has acquired the exclusive rights to air Anvil! The Story of Anvil this summer. Random House will release the Anvil book. Rock Band will soon have Anvil tracks. Whitesnake and Judas Priest just added Anvil to open shows this summer; meanwhile, Gervasi is directing a film about Herve Villechaize's last week alive starring Peter Dinklage.

I sat down with Lips, Robb, and Sacha recently during a press day at the Bowery Hotel for this piece. The night before, approximately 100 people, including WWE superstar Chris Jericho, had packed the SoHo Apple Store just to screen the Anvil! trailer, and Lips was spotted quietly filming the crowd with his Flip Cam. "I just thought it was really weird thing last night," Lips explained later. "We got an audience to watch a trailer. I thought, 'Isn't that when you go to the washroom at the movies or when you go get popcorn?'"

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