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(If you purchase this, you might help me buy a copy of my own! That’s my way of telling you I get slight residuals.)
With the legend’s new album coming out on June 21st, it would mark the first time since 2006 that ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic released a full-length album full of new material.The album, entitled “Alpocalypse” features newly-recorded material with “previously” released material, as in the ‘Internet Leaks’ album available only on iTunes. While it’ll no doubt be a ‘typical’ Al album of parodies, originals, and downright sick-in-nature anthems, it goes to show that Mr. Yankovic is a man who never goes irrelevant and always stays on topical issues.
However, there are songs in his library that, like my prior blog about Billy Joel, are never talked about and thus feel like neglected children. Therefore today, we’re unearthing them, and perhaps you might take another gander at these true gems.
(As always, these songs are in CHRONILOGICAL ORDER, and there will be Amazon links after the numericals, just in case your record space needs some more filling!)
1. “Midnight Star”, In 3-D, 1984:
Jumping to Al’s second album, because quite frankly the best stuff from the first album has been hailed over while the second-hand stuff remain second-hand, In 3-D remains an underrated album in the ‘Weird Al’ cannon. This track is the second one on the album, and it’s a original tune whose topic is around those ridiculous tabloids you see in the grocery store. “It says the ghost of Elvis is living in my den.” That’s just a sample of the bizarre imagery that not only infiltrates this song, but the whole album.
The frog boy is on the loose again!
While the song may not sound familiar, the tune it parodies is celebrated the world over. A parody of “Eye of the Tiger” from Survivor, this ditty revolves around a hypothetical THIRTEENTH Rocky movie whose plot revolves around the main character owning a deli. Yes, I am serious. In the song, it talks about Rocky in his older (and apparently fatter) days, “sold his gloves, threw his eggs down the drain!” Follow the non-existent plot and then just bask in the glory of Al in his youth making up something goofy.
Stay away from the tuna it smells funny tonight!
Once again, another parody. This time its from a very popular band in the 80s’ called Huey Lewis and the News, who had a single called, “I Want a New Drug”. In typical Al looney-ness, it describes how Al desperately wants a new duck with the characteristics of a human, “not a swan or a goose… I’ll name him Bruce!” Look out for segments in the song where the “backup” immediately turns into ducks quacking! As a eight-year old that cracked me up, and as an older person it still does. And you thought I was going for the pun? Nah!
I want a drake I’ll dress real cute, I’m think I’m gonna name him Bruce!
4. “Slime Creatures from Outer Space”, Dare to be Stupid, 1985
One of the very first songs to be recorded for the album, this song in a way feels like it should have been recorded for “In 3-D”. The song revolves around, well, the slime creatures coming in from outer space and completely destroying Earth as we know it. “They’re not very nice to the human race,” Al says, as he hopes none of them come in because he just washed the rug. That’s lyrics you just don’t hear from anyone else, and again, eclectic Al does the impossible!
5. “Alimony”, Even Worse, 1988:
While it’s a parody, it reflects nothing of the track its life owes its existence to. “Mony Mony” by Billy Idol was a track made almost exclusively for clubs, “Alimony” is a sad tale about a man getting everything yanked off his back because of a divorce. Keep in mind, Al didn’t get married FOR THE FIRST TIME until a decade or so later, so this song was pretty much made for fun. “Workin’ three jobs just to stay in debt now.” That’s probably the least of his worries, as his car, and even his toothbrush are taken because of said “divorce”. A genuine Al torture song, but not in terms in gore and literal guts, but of hardship and figurative guts. The literal guts would be in the form of “Good Old Days” from the same album.
It’s a “live” parody of a “live” track! XD
(It’s a good movie! I swear!)
This song gives birth to a somewhat-tradition of Al’s: Put your longest song LAST on the record! At nearly seven minutes, this song feels as long as the road trip the characters of this song make, as you guessed it, they travel to Minnesota to look at the biggest ball of twine in the whole wide world! A song I wish was somehow worked into the movie, it sounds like something promoted on that channel! The imagery, that of kids jumping around in the back seat asking “are we there yet” is some old-time nostalgia, that of 20 years to the former. And who wants to eat pickled weiners and diet chocolate soda? Yum? I DON’T KNOWWWWWWW! As the dad character, Al wonders (in paraphrase) of what the hell the point was with this ball of twine? After the gift shop expenditure, time to go home, and there is seven minutes gone!
A road trip of a song. I wonder if anyone experienced the pickled weiners and diet chocolate soda?
THIS, my friends, is perhaps the author’s personal favorite Al song. The main character, a much-older Al of bitter and disenfranchised memories, talks about how the current generation (with Nintendos and water beds) is so spoiled (to his salt on snails and sleeping on broken glass). The exaggerations in this song are quite staggering, “Nobody ever drove me to school when it was 40 degrees below! I walked buck-naked, through 40 miles of snow!” Like “Good Old Days” briefly mentioned in the ‘Alimony’ entry, this song is a gore and guts torture song to the zenith degree. “They chopped me into pieces, and played frisbee with my brain! I’m gonna tell ya junior, you never heard me complain when I was your age!” I will also note, in a very schilling way, that if you buy the album above, has to be in CD form though, you will get an easter egg at the very last song (You Don’t Love Me Anymore). Trust me, it’s a good one!
Used old rusty nails, we had no Nintendo, we just poured salt on snails!
By far the shortest song on this countdown at just a shade under a minute and a half, but wow what a piece it is. Essentially, it’s a song talking about how Al misses his girl, who broke up with him. To get his feeling across, Al uses his wonderful library of gross imagery/exaggerations to describe the internal trauma, “I dropped a two-ton bowling ball on my toes… shoved a red-hot cactus up my nose”. The ending though is the greatest contradiction I may have ever heard, “I feel almost as bad I did… when you were still here!!!!” May I also add this song was done ENTIRELY in a cappella, so no instruments or sound effects were used, it was ALL voice, just adding to the raw undertones already in play. This whole album could have comprised this list!
An ice-cream headache that won’t go away!
If “When I Was Your Age” is my favorite SONG, then Running with Scissors is my favorite ALBUM. A tight set-list, not one skippable track, and while it might go through rose-eyed glasses for nostalgia, it holds up even more than a decade later. This selection, parody of “All About the Benjamins” by Puff Daddy (or P Diddy, or Sean Combs, or whoever the hell he is this week), essentially talks about technology getting outdated as soon as you unwrap it. Although no one will have 100 gigs of RAM anytime soon, the overall message of age of technology is as timely as it ever was. With Pentiums falling by the wayside to dual-cores, and then “Cores” (that’s your ‘I’ systems, of i3, i5, and i7) coming in, CD-ROM has now evolved to Blu-Ray, and RAM is now in the Gigs from Megs with huge speed to match. Bill Gates may not do your tech support, but at least Windows 7 is not as “holey moley” as Vista when it first came out. Also watch out for Drew Carey in a cameo appearance! And did I say this was my favorite of Al’s albums?
I don’t feed trolls and I don’t read SPAM!
Of all of Al’s albums, this is amongst my least favorite pile. It didn’t click with me on day one, and still doesn’t although there are still more than enough hits to keep me coming back. Of all songs on that album however, who woulda thunk cute lil’ Avril Lavigne and “Complicated” would be the inspirational basis for this parody? While the original’s core theme was about relationships, this one has to do with a chain of events related to eating WAY too much pizza at a party only Al attended. Or, trying to make a chain of events that makes the situation in question end in “-ated”. For example, constipated is beleaguered with irrigated and evacuated for his colon, related for his near “incest” with a girl who turned out to be his cousin, and then decapitated as his head flies off after hitting a beam on a roller coaster. Some people call it classless, I say it’s classic Al, no matter how the cake is cut.
EXTRA CHEESE…SAVE A PIECE FOR ME!
11. “Weasel Stomping Day”, Straight Outta Lynwood, 2006
This is a gory, GORY track. As a matter of fact, it’s probably the goriest track outside of “The Night Santa Went Crazy”. An original and very short (1:37) song, the tune is essentially polka-sounding with a lot of sound effects for crunching and oozing. The song is about, you guessed it, WEASEL STOMPING! A town celebrating this sick holiday, complete with Viking boots, lots of mayonnaise, and guns being put down in lieu of said boots. The music video is genius, as it is created by the same people who made the Robot Chicken series on Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim”. To find that, just flip the disc over. Straight Outta Lynwood is a “dual-disc” design where one half of the disc is a audio CD with the regular album, and the other is a single-layer DVD where it is primarily music videos and a DVD-audio version of the LP.
So come along for a laugh, snap their weasely spines in half!
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