Pitchfork

Leave it to the conservative right to connive its way into the winner's circle once again! While the Decemberists' Chris Funk did indeed shred valiantly on tonight's episode of "The Colbert Report" (even if he did look a little more like a Von Trapp than a rawk titan), he was no match for the cunning of Colbert himself-- nor the man's uncanny catalog of celebrity connections.

As you may recall, possibly-sarcastic talk show pundit Stephen Colbert accepted the Decemberists' challenge to a guitar duel, which was itself a response to a green screen challenge from Colbert-- who was miffed by purported similarities between the band's "O Valencia!" video contest and Colbert's own lightsaber green screen shenanigans.

Tonight it all came to a head, with "America's last hero" Colbert devoting an entire half-hour episode of his show to the challenge, which he deemed the "Rock'n'Awe Countdown to Guitarmageddon". Dude pulled out all the stops, deploying enough ridiculous rock'n'roll puns to make Lordi blush and inviting a host of unlikely music celebrities and political types to help him conspire to victory over Funk and the Decemberists.

After an inexplicable indie pop homage to Colbert performed by the Apples in Stereo's Robert Schneider, the pundit unveiled his celebrity judges-- Rolling Stone scribe Anthony DeCurtis, Grammy-winning producer/engineer Jim Anderson, and New York governor-elect and payola buster-upper Eliot Spitzer-- and moderator: none other than Henry Kissinger.

Funk then laid down some competent riffage, and Colbert took the stage in response with a five-neck guitar stolen from Cheap Trick, then faked a finger injury (all in front of a green screen, naturally) and called in Peter Frampton to complete the challenge on his behalf!

Once the riff-dust had settled, not surprisingly, Colbert claimed a dubious victory, stemming mostly from his chokehold over the studio audience and his being in cahoots with Kissinger. His prize: The Crane Wife!

In the end, however, the real victor was you, television-watching American (or internet-watching foreigner), who never in a million years would've thought you'd see Peter Frampton, Chris Funk, Robert Schneider, Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen, and Stephen Colbert (with talk box!) perform an "all-star guitar jam" onstage together.

You can click here to watch the whole thing for yourself, but fair warning: It's Comedy Central and they make you watch some shitty commercial first.

Okay, back to roasting chestnuts for us. Enjoy your holidays, people!