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| Name: Ryan Roe Email: prawnrr-rmv@this.com-yahoo.com Position: Movie / Television / Comic Book / Trivia Geek View Ryan's Personal Profile |
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| On Thursday I saw “Weird Al” Yankovic at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan. I’d like to give a shout-out to the groovy Michal, who was largely responsible for my getting a ticket for a reasonable price. I own all of his albums and I’d seen him three times before, so I wasn’t especially excited about hearing Al and his band play the older big hits like “Fat” and “Eat It” again, although I knew it was inevitable that those songs would appear. There were people besides me in the audience, and many of them were seeing him for the first time, so they would have felt gypped without hearing the Yankovic standards. But I was pleasantly surprised when the first half of the show skewed toward the three most recent albums. There was "Close But No Cigar" and "I'll Sue Ya" from the new album. They even played “Why Does This Always Happen to Me?” a non-parody album track from Poodle Hat. Weird Al has managed to pull off a pretty amazing, long-running career for a guy who writes funny songs. During the show, as I glanced around at all the 10-year-old kids in the audience, it occurred to me that “Beat It” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” are oldies to them, which makes me marvel at Weird Al’s perennial appeal and makes me feel old. Of course it’s possible for young fans to be aware of music from before their time -- I certainly appreciated “I Love Rocky Road” and “Another One Rides the Bus” when I first became a Yankovic fan at the age of 12, even though “I Love Rock & Roll” and “Another One Bites the Dust” debuted when I was 1 and -1, respectively. Still… maybe I’m too young to be going on about how old I feel, but it struck me when I realized that for a fan who’s 10 now, “Fat” came out 10 years before they were born. Yikes. Anyway, Weird Al puts on a great show, with lots of costume changes and video clips projected onto a giant screen at the back of the stage. It’s always fun seeing the reactions of audience members who have never seen the fake interviews from the Al-TV specials as they realize that the interviews are not only fake, they’re hilarious.* The only problem with the structure of the show is that with all the carefully rehearsed transitions between songs, there’s no room for patter. Just once I’d like to hear Al speak to the audience between songs, just speaking without reciting scripted lines. It would terrific if they would do a smaller concert tour aimed at the true Weird Al geeks, maybe hitting just a few major cities, featuring some of the more obscure tracks, like “I Was Only Kidding” and “Generic Blues” and “Slime Creatures From Outer Space” and “Since You’ve Been Gone.” And they wouldn’t have to play “Eat It” or “Fat,” because we’ve all heard them before. But I’m sure a tour like that will never happen. So maybe instead, Al and the band could come over to my place and do a set. Other thoughts: • There was a big to-do when Atlantic Records refused to let Weird Al put the “You’re Beautiful” parody “You’re Pitiful” on the new album, but I think it worked out for the best. Could a video of “You’re Pitiful” possibly have been as entertaining, or as hugely popular on the internet, as the video for “White & Nerdy?” I really don’t think so, especially because so many of Al’s fans are exactly the Halo 2-playing, no-date-having dudes mocked in the James Blunt parody. “White & Nerdy,” on the other hand, celebrates and glorifies geeks rather than taunting them, which made it a much better song to help give Weird Al his first-ever top 10 debut on the Billboard charts. • A section of “Couch Potato” was left out. I wondered why until I remembered it included a reference to Anna Nicole Smith. What amount of time is appropriate for something like that? How long after Kurt Cobain’s death did Al go back to playing “Smells Like Nirvana?” • Speaking of “Smells Like Nirvana,” at the end of that song I happened to be watching Steve Jay, the bass player, as he threw his bass way up in the air. I don’t know if that’s something he does during every performance, but if so, I hope he always catches it. • My friend Matt (aka the Muuj) once remarked that the instrumental track “Welcome to the Fun Zone” from Weird Al’s movie UHF proves that Al is a musical genius. Matt knows a lot more about music than I do, so I can’t really music theory explanations for that claim. But they play that song at the very beginning of every concert before the band comes out, and it always gets me so jazzed I’m inclined to agree. • I didn’t catch any of the Yankovic dollar bills that rained down on the audience during “I’ll Sue Ya.” Maybe next time. So, yeah. Weird Al is cool.
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| Weird Al is definitely a person to respect and admire. Going to see him in San Antonio with you was so much fun, and definitely one of the better concerts I've been to. A guy over 40 (!) who can still put his leg behind his head whilst standing up is pretty damn cool. |
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