<\/p>\n
CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio – If you ask the average music fan for the type of people who attend Weird Al Yankovic concerts, they would likely say 12-year-old boys and 30-year-old men. They wouldn\u2019t be entirely wrong. <\/p>\n
But after more than 40 years of smart and silly parodies and \u201cin the style of\u201d songs, Weird Al is a pop culture institution, and Saturday night at Blossom, the energetic 65-year-old singer-songwriter-accordionist gave his multigenerational audience two hours of comedy music hits, costume changes and constant reminders via quick-cut video montages that he has been embedded in pop culture for a long time. <\/p>\n
There were still plenty of 12-year-old boys and 30-year-old men, (white and nerdy) but also multi-generational families in bright Hawaiian shirts and curly wigs, couples, friend groups in gangsta Amish getups and various other visual cues and references from Yankovic\u2019s storied and unlikely career as the most successful comedy musical artist ever.<\/p>\n
The \u201cBigger and Weirder\u201d show mixed Yankovic parodic and \u201cin the style of\u201d hits interspersed with many video clips, covering the frequent costume changes, many of which included his entire eight-piece band costumed as Amish folk for \u201cAmish Paradise,\u201d or wearing yellow jumpsuits and energy domes and doing herky-jerky moves for the Devo-inspired \u201cDare To Be Stupid.\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u201cBigger and Weirder\u201d intro film featured an oversized Weird Al digitally inserted into a \u201950s-era giant monster horror movie. The music began with \u201cTacky\u201d from Yankovic\u2019s ostensibly final album \u201cMandatory Fun,\u201d which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard chart in 2014. <\/p>\n
The parody of Pharrell Williams\u2019 global hit \u201cHappy\u201d found Yankovic singing the lyrics about a tacky person doing tacky things (\u201cWear my belt with suspenders and sandals with my socks\u201d) while walking through the Blossom backstage area, before entering through the excited crowd to the stage.<\/p>\n
In addition to the direct song parodies, among Yankovic\u2019s talents are matching completely disparate music styles and genre pastiches with mundane or silly subject matter. <\/p>\n
\u201cMission Statement,\u201d musically modeled on Crosby, Stills & Nash\u2019s classic \u201cSuite: Judy Blue Eyes,\u201d deftly turns a string of hollow corporate jargon (\u201cIn order to holistically administrate, Exceptional synergy, We\u2019ll set a brand trajectory, Using management philosophy\u201d) into a lovely three-part harmonized, hippie folk-rock jam performed well by his eight-piece band. <\/p>\n
Fan favorite \u201cWord Crimes\u201d takes Robin Thicke\u2019s lyrically lunkheaded \u201cBlurred Lines\u201d and turns it into a clever piece of grammar pedantry. The \u201950s-style doo-wop ballad, \u201cOne More Minute,\u201d had fans singing about how they would \u201crather clean all the bathrooms in Grand Central Station with my tongue, than spend one more minute with you.\u201d Hardcore fans even shouted the dialogue in the video intro of the Michael Jackson parody \u201cFat\u201d (\u201cDing Dongs, man. Ding Dongs!\u201d). <\/p>\n
Yankovic also broke out the latest in his long line of polka medleys to fans\u2019 delight, mixing in bouncy polka-ized snippets of chart-topping hits of the past decade, including \u201cUptown Funk,\u201d Adele\u2019s \u201cHello\u201d, Billie Eilish\u2019s \u201cBad Guy\u201d and Cardi B. and Megan Thee Stallion\u2019s controversial \u201cWAP.\u201d<\/p>\n
The interspersed video clips and montages not only served to cover costume changes but also were reminders that \u201cWeird Al\u201d has woven through American pop culture for four decades.<\/p>\n
The clips included his brief but beloved MTV television show featuring funny and fake celebrity interviews, his impressive amount of cameos on TV shows and movies and cartoon themes songs, including \u201cCaptain Underpants Theme,\u201d which had fans smiling and shouting \u201cna-na-na, Captain Underpants, more powerful than boxer shorts!\u201d alongside their spouses, kids and parents.<\/p>\n
The parodies and pastiches are so well done that when he performed a pleasant and totally straight cover of Paul Simon\u2019s \u201cYou Can Call Me Al,\u201d half the audience seemed to be waiting for the punchline that never came.<\/p>\n
Following a short film parody of the chair-throwing scene from \u201cWhiplash,\u201d the opening set ended with the heavy-duty rap twofer of \u201cWhite & Nerdy with Yankovic rocking his \u201cStraight Outta Linwood\u201d shirt and a sing-along \u201cAmish Paradise.\u201d<\/p>\n
The show wound down with a stage full of stormtroopers and a slightly too short Darth Vader for the \u201cAmerican Pie\u201d parody \u201cThe Saga Begins\u201d and the Kinks\u2019 \u201cLola\u201d parody \u201cYoda,\u201d both of which became huge sing-alongs underneath the shed and out on the quite full lawn.<\/p>\n
Yankovic may be done recording and releasing albums, but if he\u2019s settled into legacy mode, he has a pop culture legacy like no other artist in the modern era, and he still puts on multimedia show that inspires two-plus hours of knowing smiles and chuckles.<\/p>\n
For the clown averse, meeting show opener Puddles Pity Party would be a waking nightmare. Puddles, a bald, 6\u2019 8\u201d clown in ghostly white greasepaint wearing a white clown jumpsuit, white fingerless gloves and black nail polish, is an objectively terrifying sight even for folks who are generally fine with clowns. <\/p>\n
But his nine-song set mixing silent mime-style comedy, oddball short films, audience participation, and odd covers and comedy tunes was very entertaining, funny and certainly different. <\/p>\n
Puddles pulled an elementary school-aged fan from the crowd (\u201cWho wants to help the clown?\u201d a jaunty 1930s tune asked as he picked his marks) to play a fake guitar for his dramatic cover of Ozzy Osbourne\u2019s \u201cCrazy Train\u201d and dug deep in his low tenor for a melodramatic piano-ballad reading of The Pixies\u2019 \u201cWhere Is My Mind.\u201d <\/p>\n
Another clown helper, an eager, gray-headed man was roughly adorned in a cheap tequila bottle costume for a near operatic take on the Los Lobos song \u201cEstoy Sentado Aqui.\u201d<\/p>\n
Puddles also broke out a very fake triple-neck \u201cguitar\u201d for the solo of his cover of Little Roger and the Goosebumps \u201cStairway to Gilligan\u2019s Island\u201d parody, matching the music from \u201cStairway to Heaven\u201d with the lyrics to the theme from \u201cGilligan\u2019s Island,\u201d as clips from show and the \u201990s film \u201cWaterworld\u201d were shown on screen. <\/p>\n
Puddles is also apparently obsessed with Kevin Costner, evidenced by the \u201cWaterworld\u201d clips and his torch ballad take on \u201cMy Heart Will Go On\u201d sung to clips and photos of the Oscar-winning actor as fans waved their phone lights in solidarity.<\/p>\n
While we still wouldn\u2019t want to bump into Puddles in a dark alley on a dark night alone, from the stage, his act fits right in with Weird Al\u2019s clever and chaotic charms.<\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.cleveland.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio – If you ask the average music fan for the type of people who attend Weird Al Yankovic concerts, they would likely say 12-year-old boys and 30-year-old men. They wouldn\u2019t be entirely wrong. But after more than 40 years of smart and silly parodies and \u201cin the style of\u201d songs, Weird Al […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2021394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2021394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2021394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2021394\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2021394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2021394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2021394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}