Weird Al Yankovic is still alive
Posted on 25. Jun, 2010 by jessekg in Music, Pop Culture, Uncategorized
Weird Al, easily being mistaken for fellow-comedian Russell Brand
No jokes. Not only is he alive, but he’s doing well, almost as if we’re still waiting for the ’90s to happen. As recently as June 18 he was still touring, and little did I know that he released a best of double disc CD (album art above) in 2009. On top of all that, he’s still putting out new material. What!?
I’m actually pretty happy that Weird is not dead, which I found out after stumbling across this very recent NPR’s Tiny Desk concert. He played three new songs, two of them non-parodies, and one of them a White Stripes compilation/parody about Charles Nelson Reilly, a truly obscure bygone actor to pick for a parody. Out of the three songs, it was really the only one that got a healthy dose of laughter and applause, the others just being straight up not funny. But we can learn two things about Weird through this concert: the guy can make his voice sound however he wants; and his parodies are entertaining enough that he could probably do them until he actually dies. That is, afterall, what he is good at, and what anyone reading this blog likely remembers him for, myself included.
From his 1984 album Weird Al Yankovic in 3D onwards, Weird introduced pop culture (that was the “like a surgeon” album) to me, via of course my parents, because as if I knew how to work a cassette deck at five- or six-years-old. I followed him fairly closely, him being a regular fixture on Much Music (and ESPECIALLY his still awesome fake interviews) but it wasn’t until 1992, when his cover of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” introduced an older me to the very first band I would become a super fan of. In fact, after stumbling upon the original source of the song (I actually thought it was a Weird Al original) I was so hooked that I swore off cheesy parodies of good music and sought out pretty much any music that Nirvana cited as good: MudHoney, Sonic Youth, the Meat Puppets, the Pixies, etc… which led to anything coming from Seattle at the time, which of course led me to believe that I was pretty ‘in the know’ in terms of what good music was. Nevertheless, I never listened to Weird again. Shows how grateful I am of the guy who actually introduced me to good music, and ultimately turned me off bad music, i.e. his. Anyways, thanks for that Weird. Glad you’re still kicking.
