NEWS: Welcome to Thunderdome: Colbert vs. Meloy

CELEB: Welcome to Thunderdome: Colbert vs. Meloy

Music press darlings The Decemberists may be a swashbuckling bunch of swaggering rapscallions, but wordsmith Colin Meloy et al may have just met their match in Stephen Colbert. Or at least Colbert hopes so. Either way, who cares? It's good TV.



A few weeks ago, Colbert called out the band for ripping off his "Green Screen Challenge" with their own contest, in which fans are encouraged to splice footage of the Decemberists, playing their new single "O Valencia!" against a green screen background, into a music video. Colbert got his elephant-print manties in a bunch because he claims to have pioneered the Green Screen Revolution back in August, when he asked viewers to create a background for footage of Colbert prancing around with a lightsaber. Charging, "Why can't they just be like every other indie rock band and rip off the Pixies?" (touche, Stephen, touche), Colbert urged his own audience to edit HIS sweet Jedi action footage into the Decemberists' video.



Not easily intimidated by the "right wing," the Decemberists made a counter-challenge (for those of you who are detail-oriented, that's actually a counter-counter challenge) on their Myspace page to edit Colbert into "O Valencia!"_but featuring him going down like that gangster's ill-fated sweetheart in the song.



And thus an epic feud began, which will be consummated on tomorrow's extra-truthy edition of The Colbert Report. Colbert will reportedly duel with Decemberists' jack-of-all-instruments Chris Funk in a guitar-solo fight to the death. Given the audience overlap between said combatants, it is this SG staffer's opinion that the Decemberists and Stephen Colbert go together like Pabst and Parliaments, like pantaloons and prog-rock, or political extremism and the resulting satirical backlash, if you will.



So even though my spider-senses tell me a throwdown between Stephen Colbert and the Decemberists is going to look a hell of a lot more West Side Story than Boyz N The Hood, that's exactly why we'll tune in.

me too,
even though i have no cable and i have to watch it at my boyfriend's house.

i can't really choose, but solely out of allegiance to my fangirl crush on colin, i have to pick team decemberists.

wow, so he's got a hardship?
i didn't know that.
but if colbert can fight the cancer, he should be able to give our saucy oregonians a run for their money!