#49 "Weird Al" Yankovic

#49 "Weird Al" Yankovic

Best Song: I’ll Be Mellow When I’m Dead



Now Weird Al gets a lot of grief. At least he used to until everyone thought that “White and Nerdy” was the best thing since slice bread and for the first time in his over 20 years of recording he had a top 10 hit. But either way his earlier work is still very niche and under exposed. Now Al has always done the parody stick and has always done a good job but with that it is easy to keep following the same tropes and cliches. (great example is the song “Grapefruit Diet” which is where he put all the fat jokes that weren’t good enough for “Fat”)

Which is why his debut is also his best and my personal favorite of his. Some of his later albums have betters songs but this is the most consistent from beginning to end. The parodies don’t ever feel like they were forced and chosen only because that song is popular now. The sense of humor is also much dryer then latter releases. “Ricky” (a parody on Mickey by Toni Basil) is simply about ‘I Love Lucy’ and includes the talented Tress MacNeille. “I Love Rocky Road” is a treat because out of all the parodies it is the one that represents what is to come.

But of all the parodies the best are “My Bolgna’ and “Another One Rides The Bus”. My Sharona and Another One Bites The Dust respectively, both really strip Weird Al to his core basics: accordion, nerdy vocals, and juvenile noises that are used to humorous effect.

But where this album really shines is the original material. While on later albums the originals would be style parodies these are not attempting to mock a style. Happy Birthday is a very chipper driving force as Al tells you to enjoy your birthday before the world goes to shit…kind of morbid but it really makes me chuckle. The closer Mr Frump In The Iron Lung is a delightful shuffle about a man stuck in an Iron Lung that the character of the song treats as a good friend and conversationalist.

But the best is I’ll Be Mellow When I’m Dead. Now this song would not be out of place on a Frank Zappa record mocking the hippies. Well it is less complex then Zappa but that makes it easier to enjoy. While there are some funny images the song is actually a pretty serious denouncement of hippie/yuppie life style. I actually think this is a great song that doesn’t deserve the obscurity it gets simply because it is done by a “novelty act”

5 "Best" Wost albums ever

There are some albums that are so bad that transcend to a new level. They will never be good, not by a long shot and one of these may very well be the worst music ever created on a either an artistic of technical scale. But there is a little something in these that make them special. Something that makes them worth being heard or maybe even revered, but they are not great or good or ok. They are bad and all the more important because of it.

5.) Peter and the Wolf- Weird Al Yankovic

Weird Al does "Peter and the Wolf" and "Carnival of Animals". Of course Peter and the Wolf is filled with some juvenile humor that rarely hits the mark and Carnival of Animals is about animals such as Aardvark, Amoeba, Unicorns, and Poodle. The reason it is so bad that it is fun is the Carnival of Animals part two. The silly openings to the short motifs are smile worthy.
can't find the music but here is Al's spoken intro to all the Carnival of Animals parts

4.) Mad Cap Laughs- Syd Barret

This album has a cult following and is truly fascinating. But with out the knowledge that Syd Barret was going mad at the time this album would just sound like a pretentious anti-music statement that would leave me cold. As it is it is one of the most brilliantly disjointed albums that makes you marvel at the poor state of Barret’s mind as he switches tempo forcing his backing band to change to and even though they didn’t do it right keeping it on the record.
No Good Trying

3.) Attila – Attila

Now this one is really obscure. It is one of Billy Joel’s early bands and as he himself called it, the music is “psychedelic bullshit”. And it sure sounds like the average garage psychedelic crap of the time until you realize something. There are NO guitars. Just Joel on organ (feeding it through wah-wahs and feedback) and Jon Small on drums. This was Billy Joel’s only truly revolutionary work and unfortunately it didn’t workout. Billy Joel could have been the Hendrix of piano, it just so happened that Hendrix isn’t for everywhere
Holy Moses

2.) The Transformed Man-William Shatner

You listen to this album and you think, is he serious or is this a joke? Let me tell you it sure seems like a joke when he is doing “Mr. Tambourine Man” but during the spoken word reading of classic monologues over psychedelic backing makes him seem deathly serious…which in turn makes the album all the more ridiculous. It is beatnick at it's worst.
Mr. Tambourine Man

1.) Philosophy of the world- The Shaggs

Ah the band Frank Zappa called “Better then the Beatles”. (of course knowing Zappa he was probably both joking and deadly serious at the same time.) Before you listen to this album, or any song by The Shaggs, read there story here (or read it in this Octopus Pie storyline that introduced me to them). These girls could not write and could not play. They had a total talent pool of zero. Their story is heartbreaking and kind of creepy. But I dare you to read how this band came to be and then listen to the horribleness that is “Who are Parents” without feeling something.
Who are Parents