Weird Al: touring with scissors

Weird Al performs tonight in Phoenix at the Celebrity Theatre.

photo by Johnny Buzzerio, courtesy Imaginary Entertainment

By Kevin Polowy

State Press Magazine

weird al yankovic
at the celebrity theatre tonite
7 pm
tickets range between $21 and $26

The day before his seventh birthday, Alfred Matthew Yankovic attended his first accordion lesson. He continued to play for three years before quitting to teach himself.

Fast forward 33 years.

There's only one man in this universe who could combine hit songs from the Spice Girls, Beastie Boys, Madonna, Marilyn Manson and Matchbox 20 into one songæ that is, in a accordion-led polka medley, "as God intended them to be heard."

And that's "Weird Al" Yankovic, the legendary comic rocker who only took three years of formal music lessons.

"I just played it on my own after that," Yankovic said in a phone interview. "That kind of informed my musical sensibilities. I guess that's what warped me and made me what I am today."

"Polka Power!," the track on Yankovic's latest album Running With Scissors that fuses those aforementioned artists together, exemplifies what the performer has been doing his entire career parodying popular songs and making us laugh like crazy in the process.

Bursting onto syndicated radio with the Queen parody "Another One Rides the Bus," Yankovic rose to true stardom with answers to the Michael Jackson hits "Bad" and "Beat it;" with "Fat" and "Eat It."

Running With Scissors, which was released this past June, is Yankovic's tenth album. It includes tracks such as "The Saga Begins," (a parody of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace to the tune of Don McClean's "American Pie"), "Pretty Fly

for a Rabbi" (a mock of Offspring's hit "Pretty Fly for a White Guy"), and "Grapefruit Diet" (Yankovic's contribution to swing -- set to the melody of the Cherry Poppin' Daddies "Zoot Suit Riot").

Yankovic said it's hard to be objective when comparing his albums.

"But I think as a collection of songs it's probably my favorite. I'm not sure if there's one song on the new album that I'd say is my best song -- but as a collection I think it's pretty strong."

As true with his previous efforts, Yankovic's lyrics are often hilarious while fitting the melody of the song he's mocking like a key in a lock.

In a parody of Puff Daddy's "It's All About the Benjamins," Yankovic offers advice to the Internet-obsessed teens of the year 2000 in "It's All About the Pentiums."

He raps, "What y'all wanna do?/ Wanna be hackers?/ Code Crackers?/ Slackers/ Wasting time with all the chatroom yakkers?/ 9 to 5, chillin' at Hewlett Packard?"

Yankovic chooses songs he wants to remake based on how much airplay they receive and also how much he actually likes the music.

"I tend to pick songs that I actually enjoy because I realize that in many cases I have to perform these songs every night," he said. "And I have to live with them for pretty much the rest of my life. So I'd rather play songs that I actually like as opposed to songs that make my skin crawl.

"But probably the number one criteria is just whether the song is popular, or whether it's getting a lot of airplay on radio stations and music video channels."

With "Jerry Springer," Yankovic satirizes the popular talk show to the tune of the Barenaked Ladies' "One Week." Some of the lyrics include, "It's been one week since the show about/ Psycho killers with problems they should work out/ Five days since the big surprise/ When someone's loser wife said that she's still dating twenty guys/ Three days since he interviewed/ A bunch of psychic porn star midgets who were all nude."

Yankovic admitted, "I don't think I watched an entire Jerry Springer (episode) until I decided to write the song. I watched the show a few times when I was doing research. It's that morbid curiosity, it's like that whole train wreck thing. It's hard to look away but you're kind of embarrassed for staring at it."

But what do the writers of the original songs think of Yankovic's twisted tributes?

"Nowadays most artists are actually flattered when I do a parody," he said. "Because in a way, it's a sign that they've achieved a certain level of success when they get the Weird Al treatment."

Yankovic added that he has a personal policy to make sure that the songwriter is okay with him doing a parody of their work. However, one artist did not respond too well to "the treatment." After Yankovic released the single "Amish Paradise" (from his last album, 1996's Bad Hair Day), a parody of Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise," the rapper allegedly felt some contempt.

"I was under the impression that Coolio was okay with it," Yankovic explained. "My record label told me that they had talked to him personally and that he had approved it. Then, after the fact, he contended he never approved it and publicly stated that he was offended by it."

Though it was parodies like "My Bologna" (a spoof of the Knack's "My Sharona") "Smells Like Nirvana" that jumpstarted and preserved his role in pop culture, Yankovic has always written and included original works on his album. Running With Scissors, for example, includes five Weird Al conceptions such as "My Baby's in Love with Eddie Vedder" and "Your Horoscope For Today."

"I love doing parodies and I love doing originals," Yankovic said. "I really don't prefer one over the other. They're two different kind of releases for me in a way. I don't think I'd ever give up one for the other because they're both fulfilling."

Expect to see a fair mix of the two when Weird Al performs tonight at the Celebrity Theatre in Phoenix. Yankovic, who still plays with the same band that's backed him up since his first album, described his show as a "high-energy rock and comedy multimedia extravaganza."

Yankovic got his foot into the door of the entertainment industry in California at an early age. As a teen, he began sending homemade tapes of his songs to Dr. Demento, a nationally syndicated disc jockey known for playing comedy and novelty music.

"And he played the songs even though they were horrible and badly-recorded," Yankovic said. "He saw some spark of creativity and encouraged me to continue sending him material, which I did, and by the time I graduated from college I actually had a couple records out."

The entertainer recalled his parents' apprehension when he started leaning away from school and toward the music industry.

"There was no one in our family even remotely involved in show business," he said. "And everybody was a very suspect of the evil of Hollywood.

"But it's not like I ran away to Los Angeles to become a rock star. I was always pretty adult-minded. I always had a fallback plan. I went to college and got my degree in architecture. I was fully prepared to have an adult life. But somewhere along the way I got sidetracked.

"And now I get to be Weird Al full time."

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