No! We're out of bear claws!

[vovat]

Last night, bethje and I went to Atlantic City to see Weird Al at the House of Blues. I really don't think that was a good venue for an Al show (or, for that matter, for most shows). Every other time I've seen Al, I was able to sit down, but this was standing room only unless you paid for balcony seats, and even the standing room cost more than seats do at a lot of other venues. There were also announcements that the show was 18+, and while this might not have actually been true since I DID see some kids there, it wasn't very many of them. That's not to say that I WANTED to be surrounded by little kids, but considering that Al has a lot of appeal to the young 'uns, discouraging them from coming strikes me as a good way to lose out on a lot of money.

Anyway, as for the concert itself, there was no opener, and it started out with "Fun Zone," a bunch of stock footage, and then a montage of celebrities saying Al's name. Unlike the last few tours, the Weird Al Show Theme was not played. The setlist was the general mix of new stuff with stuff he's been playing at pretty much every show for years. Hearing "Bob" was pretty cool, but I'm a little disappointed that he played "I'll Sue Ya" (my least favorite original on Straight Outta Lynwood), but not "Virus Alert" or "Pancreas." Oh, well. As usual, there was a medley of parodies that he didn't want to do in their entirety, including a new verse of "Headline News" about Britney Spears, and a new song about Gilligan being in love with the Skipper. lozenger8 had mentioned Al doing this song when she saw him recently, and didn't know what it was parodying. From what I've found on the Internet, the original song was "I'm N Luv (Wit A Stripper)", which sounds familiar, but I can't recall for sure if I've heard it. So this is, what, the fourth Al song to reference Gilligan's Island? One thing that was disappointing about the medley was that, aside from "Eat It," it didn't include anything from albums before Alapalooza. On other tours, he worked in songs like "Another One Rides The Bus," "I Lost On Jeopardy," and "The Rye Or The Kaiser," but it was pretty much all newer stuff this time. While I haven't done a count of how many songs were included in this medley compared to others, it's possible that he couldn't fit in as many because he did the entire second part of "Trapped In The Drive-Thru."

The two encores from the last two tours, "The Saga Begins" and "Yoda," were moved to earlier in the set. Instead, when Al came out for the encore (if it can really count as an encore when you do it every time no matter what), he did the "we all have cell phones" song from the Michael Stipe interview, followed by "Albuquerque." While this was pretty cool to hear, and Al performed it as if he were really telling a story to the audience, I don't think it would make sense for it to remain in the setlist after this tour for the obvious reason: it's really, really long. In fact, the concert version was even longer than the album one, since he extended some bits, including the list of items he asked for at the donut shop and the build-up to "I hate sauerkraut."

After we finally managed to get out of the venue (lousy single-file escalators!), we had dinner at Johnny Rockets, and then came back home. And that's it for this concert review, but we do plan to attend three more shows this month, so there should be plenty more in the near future.

Comments

[loz]

Sounds pretty much exactly like the concert I went to. :D

Thanks for that info. Hmm. Never heard that song before, so, it doesn't really bother me one way or the other.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the setlists are generally identical from one show to another on the same tour. I've heard he occasionally works in a song that's relevant to the place where he's playing (like including "Albuquerque" back when it WASN'T part of his regular set when playing there, or "Addicted To Spuds" in Idaho), but since he doesn't really have that many songs that mention specific locations, I'm sure this is quite rare. (I wonder if he'll keep "Canadian Idiot" on the setlist for shows in Canada after removing it from his regular set.)

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Man, I was just innocently scrolling down the page and now I have this overwhelming craving for a bear claw.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Well, don't go to the donut shop in Albuquerque! They're out of them! {g}

Seriously, I remember when I used to get bear claws at some now-defunct store at the local mall called The Baker's Garden. I haven't had one in ages, though.