Mostly Origin-Al

[vovat]

Beth and I saw "Weird Al" Yankovic at the Apollo Theater last night after work. This is the second time we'd been there, and the other was when we saw Neko Case. Do I need to start an #ApolloSoWhite hashtag? Okay, I'm sure they're the exception rather than the rule; I just have pretty white (and nerdy) tastes, I guess. This was part of Al's Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour, where he plays mostly his original songs instead of direct parodies, and since there aren't any costume changes or the like, the setlist is different every time and the atmosphere informal and fairly relaxed. The opener was Emo Philips, the guy who had his finger cut off in a table saw in UHF. I really didn't know much about him as a comedian, but he has his own style, often very dark and with a lot of the jokes based on phrases that seem innocuous at first but mean something disturbing after the punchline is delivered. That probably applies to a lot of comedy, but I can't really think of a better way to describe it. Emo's Wikipedia entry describes it as paraprosdokian, a word which I'm hoping can become part of my lexicon in the future. He still has the weird haircut and delivery he did in the movie, although I've seen him without the former, in the "It's All About the Pentiums" video, for instance.

At the end of his set, Al himself paid tribute to the venue's history by dragging Emo off stage Sandman-style.


For most of the main set, Al sat down between guitarist Jim West and bassist Steve Jay, sometimes playing accordion and other times just singing or contributing something simple like the vibraslap on the Cake style parody "Close But No Cigar."

The show opened with "Dare to Be Stupid" in more of a Grateful Dead sort of arrangement. While I'd seen some of the other setlists for this tour, I was still surprised by a lot of what they played. I think "Nature Trail to Hell" might have been the most unexpected, but I certainly wouldn't have thought "I Remember Larry" or "Young, Dumb & Ugly" would have shown up either. For the latter, Al announced that he never did it live because the high key hurt his head, but he eventually realized he could do it in a different key. The weird thing is, as Beth pointed out, Neko said the same thing about "Duchess" when we saw her at the same theater a few years ago.

Al did "Dog Eat Dog" on the Poodle Hat Tour, but it's one of my favorites, so it was cool to hear it again. I've always liked the song, but I wasn't that familiar with the Talking Heads catalog back when I first heard it. Now I have most (maybe all?) of their albums, and it's interesting how much of their material Al was able to work into it. "Once in a Lifetime" and "And She Was" were obvious influences, but they had a more obscure song called "Found a Job," and those are the first three words of "Dog Eat Dog." I think "Jackson Park Express" is standard on this tour, but that doesn't mean it wasn't exciting to hear it. That song actually uses a fair amount of paraprosdokian, come to think of it: "I want you inside me...like a tapeworm" or "I never, ever want to see you cry...so please let me cauterize your tear ducts with an arc welder." For "Albuquerque," Al extended the list of doughnuts the shop was out of. I'm pretty sure he did this on the Straight Outta Lynwood Tour as well, but I can't remember if he included the extra joke of mentioning a bunch of berries, then ending with "You got any Halle Berry doughnuts?" They also started the song over again after the bit near the end where Al loses his train of thought. Obviously they didn't play the whole thing over again, but the idea that they might do that with an eleven-minute song was pretty amusing. The thing is, while I enjoyed it, I kind of don't think they should have included two extra-long songs in the setlist, and I've heard "Albuquerque" so many times that it isn't as funny to me anymore. No big deal, though. The main set ended with a medley of parodies done in acoustic arrangements. This was part of the last tour as well, but this time it included some he was still including in the main set at this point: "Smells Like Nirvana," "Amish Paradise," and "White and Nerdy." I believe the band does a straight cover during the encore at every show on this tour, and this time it was Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl," which I'm not sure I've heard before. Al claimed it was his guitar-playing debut, but I think he just strummed without even using the frets. The typical closing is "The Saga Begins," but here he did "Yoda" instead. I consider that a good thing, since it's shorter and more fun live.

After the show, we were able to meet Al! How this happened was due to someone Beth went to high school with and is now her Facebook friend somehow becoming a regular merchandise seller on Al's tours. That was quite nice of her. When I meet famous or semi-famous people, I typically do one or more of three things: 1) hardly say anything, 2) make a really awkward joke, or 3) try to tell them something about my life that has no relevance whatsoever to them. So many people had monopolized Al's time that we barely got a chance to do anything but introduce ourselves and get a picture taken, but it was still amazing. I mean, since I'll obviously never meet L. Frank Baum, this is probably the closest I'll ever get to one of my personal heroes.