Weird Al does Idaho Falls
Tonight I attended Weird Al Yankovic’s concert here. Part of his “Straight Outta Lynwood” tour. What can I say? It was FREAKIN’ AWESOME! ^_^ V
Of course, being a tour for his new album, you’d expect his new songs, but we still got plenty of classics, too. I don’t remember the exact order of stuff, but let’s see. I do remember hearing a bunch of stuff from Running with Scissors, including “It’s All About the Pentiums”, and “The Saga Begins”. Of course, there were the classics, songs such as, “Eat It”, “Fat”, and “Amish Paradise”. There was a medley where they did a verse or so of each song, and did a bunch of his old songs. Interspersed in that medly, was a new verse for “Headline News” that talked about this girl who was arrested for drunk driving, and then when she got out, she was interviewed on Larry King, and I think the last part of it was something like “why should we care about her?” or something like that.
Ah, yes. The first song of the concert was a polka medley track, I believe it was the one from Straight Outta Lynwood. They had projectors setup onto screens in the back of the stage for video to go along with the songs, as well as they played video clips (mostly of “Al TV”, which was mostly funny parody interviews with famous stars) between certain songs to allow time for wardrobe changes. There were three projectors and three screens that were side-by-side. Most of the time, you were seeing the same thing on all three screens, but for certain songs, such as “White and Nerdy”, the three of them were used in concert and basically made one giant wide screen.
The wardrobe changes were awesome, every song had its own wardrobe. And most not just for Al, the whole band had song-specific wardrobe. Some changes were quick and could be done during the segue between songs, but most used the video clips to allow time for them.
There were some really awesome things during the show. Such as when he performed “You’re Pitiful”, the song that wasn’t included on Straight Outta Lynwood because of a dispute with Atlantic Records, the label that published James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful”, so it’s available for download for free off of Weird Al’s official website. During that song, he had several shirts on over each other, which he pulled off one-by-one during the song. One of which said “Atlantic Records Sucks” on it. XD
I mentioned “The Saga Begins” earlier. For that song, Al and the guitarists were dressed up as Jedi, the keyboardist like the emperor, the drummer was just wearing the white Jedi clothing w/o the brown outside coat, I believe. They also had a bunch of Star Wars cosplayers in a line behind Al. A bunch of Storm Troopers, a Darth Vader, a Darth Maul (with double-bladed lightsaber), and a kid dressed up as the child pilot version of Anakin.
Right after “The Saga Begins”, he sang “Yoda”. This was awesome because during the end part where he’s singing “Yoda, yo-yo-yo-yo-Yoda, yo-yo-yo-yo-Yoda” over and over again, he had the audience sing.
“White and Nerdy” was great, the back screens were used quite well for that song, and both the guitarists were dressed up very nerdy and singing backup for Al (of course the entire band sings backup at one point or another, just not everyone for every song). What was even more awesome was that he started out the song on a Segway! That was freakin’ sweet! ^_^
There’s probably alot of other awesome stuff I’m forgetting to mention at the moment, but I did want to cover one more thing, the encore! He did this great short cell phone song that was from one of the “Al TV” clips. Everyone pulled out their cell phones and waved them back and forth like they were lighters or torches or the like. Al even had everyone who had a cell phone stand up and wave it back and forth.
And after that, he went into a song that I’ve been told by several friends he rarely does live, ALBUQUERQUE! It was awesome!! ^_^ He even added some extra stuff, like a bunch of extra donuts/donut-related goods to the list that he asked the guy behind the counter at the donut shop if they had any of, and was told they were all out of. All of these extra ones came right before the bear claws, which, if you know the song, is the one where the clerk goes to check, but they’re still out of ‘em. He also added extra “pet names” that his wife (in the story) called him (like “sugar pickle” for instance, IIRC) when asking if he wanted to join the Columbia Record Club.
At the end of the song, he had the Audience do the response vocals. The part where he’s spelling out Albuquerque, he’d say a letter, and then the audience would say it back. He did the same thing with the part afterwards where he’s just saying the word Albuquerque over and over again. He’d say it, then the Audience would shout it back.
Anyway, that’s enough rambling about the concert for now. Hopefully I’ll add new posts more often sometime in the near future. ^^;
– Tasunke
