Dare To Be Stupid, Weird Al Yankovic Still Resonates

As I enter my mid-forties I€™ve made it a point to find a way to see as many musical acts from my young adulthood that I€™ve missed. Last year I was fortunate enough to catch Alice Cooper. While he has slowed down considerably since his heyday, the man can still wail, and the show was every bit as powerful as I suspect it was twenty five years ago. There are also a few acts that I am hoping to revisit. I simply cannot see the likes of Billy Joel, Chicago and Huey Lewis and the News enough times. Call it a mid life crisis or a simple yearning for nostalgia, but I€™m committed to the cause nonetheless. Don€™t judge me. It was about 27 years ago. I was a bright eyed teenager, about to graduate high school, attending the rite of passage for Florida seniors (the 12th graders, not the ones that eat soft food and complain about their bursitis) known as Grad Nite. Grad Nite was a gathering of the senior classes from throughout the state for an evening of loud music, bad dancing and all around tomfoolery at a little amusement park called Walt Disney World. The park was reopened after normal hours so we could have full access to the attractions and enjoy the musical acts they had booked for the evening. The joke was that Disney never paid big bucks to bring in top talent for these events. It was either has beens or wannabes. I felt fortunate enough that Night Ranger was still in wannabe status at the time. I saw their show three times that night. The girls spent their time Dancing in the Sheets with Shalamar on the main stage. But then I heard a distant wail coming from one of the small stages tucked away in a far corner of the park. As I got closer, I could almost feel the tractor beam of geekness pulling me. Some people find God. I found Weird Al Yankovic. It€™s hard to argue Weird Al€™s contribution to the world of pop culture over the past thirty years. His music aside, you€™d be hard pressed to find any other medium of entertainment that he hasn€™t bled into. Countless movies and television shows over the years have made references to Weird Al. He is a singer/songwriter, a musician, an actor, a comedian and a music producer. He is a three time Grammy winner and continues to churn out the hits, most recently via his new studio album, Alpocalypse, which debuted this past summer. But what of the music? He just makes parodies of other, more talented musician€™s works, right? It€™s more than that. Weird Al is more than a singer. He is a showman. His concerts are an experience to be savored. Amongst the clever lyrics and catchy rhythms there exists a potpourri of hyper active interludes that are one part Vaudeville act, one part variety show and all parts love letter to geek fandom. Fast forward twenty seven years. When I got word that Weird Al was playing Boston€™s Orphuem Theater for one night in October, I jumped at the chance for one more live action journey into the warped mind that once planted the seed of my pop culture infatuation. Just one more opportunity to relive the magnificence of iconic musical gems such as Eat It, White & Nerdy and Yoda. Al did not disappoint. It was a fantastic trip down memory lane. The irony of hearing one of Al€™s newer original songs, Skipper Dan, about a failed actor who ended up working the Jungle Cruise ride at Disney World, was not lost on me. It was that same place that I first encountered Weird Al, and here I was almost three decades later, sharing a connection with a man who in part unknowingly shaped the course of my future self. I guess that sounds sappy. Heck, it might even sound a little weird.