Posted on 04/13/2020 11:24:24 AM PDT by billorites
Last summer, in the middle of what struck me as an otherwise very full life, I went to my first Weird Al Yankovic concert. Weird Al, for anyone reading this through a golden monocle, is the most renowned comedy musician in the history of the multiverse — a force of irrepressible wackiness who, back in the 1980s, built a preposterous career out of song parodies and then, somehow, never went away. After 40 years, Yankovic is now no longer a novelty, but an institution — a garish bright patch in the middle of America’s pop-cultural wallpaper, a completely ridiculous national treasure, an absurd living legend.
I have spent much of my life chortling, alone in tiny rooms, to Weird Al’s music. (“I churned butter once or twice living in an Amish paradise” — LOL.) And yet somehow it had never occurred to me to go out and see him live. I think this is for roughly the same reason that it has never occurred to me to make my morning commute in a hot-air balloon or to brush my teeth in Niagara Falls. Parody is not the kind of music you go out to see in person — it’s the joke version of that music. A parody concert felt like a category error, like confusing a mirror for a window. To me, Weird Al had always been a fundamentally private pleasure; I was perfectly content to have him living in my headphones and on YouTube and — very occasionally, when I wanted to aggravate my family — out loud on my home speakers.
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San Luis Opisbo? I didn’t know that. I’ve heard it has near-perfect climate.
The first Weird Al I heard was also on Dr Demento, “Another One Rides the Bus”. Dr D also wrote liner notes for that “The Best” LP for Leo Kottke, and wrote liner notes for the John Fahey box. Mostly though, he introduced me to “The Cockroach that Ate Cincinnati” and “Irving” etc.
Tom Lehrer!
I sure do; “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” was one of Tom Lehrer’s creations. He’s still alive, but retired from the music business in the 1970s. The last song I heard from him was “If You Just Add Silent E,” and he did that for “The Electric Company,” a PBS kiddie show.
That would sound too much like a parody he did in his early days, “My Bologna.”
Weird Al, John Madden, Burt Rutan, Devin Nunes, Ozzie
Smith, Mike Krukow, and yours truly all have one thing
in common.
Give up?
We all graduated from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. I
happened to be living in SLOtown when Al was a
college student. His first accordion parody got a
lot of play on the local R&R station. It was called
My Bologna and it was a send up of My Sharona by
The Knack (?).
The guy is funny.
You’re in very interesting company.
Went to a Weird Al concert in Dayton maybe 7-8 years ago. Great fun. His band is top notch too, capable not just of playing anything, but playing it so that it sounds like the original.
Other songs:
Elderly Man River
Shaving Cream
The ballad of Irving (even on the range, he used two sets of dishes).
:)
He’s 60?
Noooooooooooooooooooo!
But he is still spry and healthy. So I’ll take what I can get.
Every boy has the same epiphany the first time they hear “jingle bells, Batman smells” or “on top of spagetti”... that you can make a song funny by changing the words. Weird Al made a career out of it. I was fortunate enough to see him in Boise for the Alpocalypse tour. My favorite (and appropriate now) us “Cats in the Griddle”.
He isn’t from SLO - he went to school there though as did I. He was an Architecture major. Have friends that were his roommates. One of the roommates organized a trip one of his concerts in San Jose. Got to go back stage and meet him. Lots of fun all the way around.
Jimmy Buffet did a great parody of the old song, “A white sport coat and a pink carnation”
He changed it to “A White sport coat and a pink crustacean”
You and I have something in common ;-) EL 79.
You mean San Luis Obispo (not Opisbo although that is
pretty funny and I will use it)
Weird Al is not really “from” SLOtown. He was a college
student like me. We both grew up elsewhere. I did live
there 3 times in my life. The first in the early 50s
as my dad turned in his farm tools for an ag teaching
credential. I was 3 at the time. The second time was
to attend Cal Poly in the late 60s. They bounced me
in ‘72 and I went home to NorCal. Bored, I moved back
in ‘75 and stayed until ‘80. First heard of Al in ‘79.
My mother was a San Luis girl, my dad a GI Bill student.
The SLOtown climate is fantastic! You could be up
Hwy101 in Atascadero w/101° and drive 15 miles down
the Cuesta Grade to SLO and find the temp to be 82°
Its about 8-10 miles to Avila Beach and Pismo Beach.
Doesn’t rain a lot & no snow like my Cali hometown.
BTW I got my degree finally in 2001.
Then you know “My Bologna”.
Ride high, you MUSTANG!
He can sing. Check out his cover of George Harrison’s “What is Life”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXMq3QJwJiA
The CDs are good but a “cleaned-up” version of what the 1970s era Dr. Demento radio shows were like. Those shows got quite raunchy (and they were typically broadcast late at night so they got away with it).
I’ve met Madden and knew Krukow and his gfriend (now
wife). Along w/partner Duane Kuiper Kruk is considered
among the best of the best MLB broadcasters (SF Giants).
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