Last Saturday, July 27 1996, Mark Duell and I went to see "Weird Al" Yankovic in concert at the Nautica Stage in the Flats in Cleveland.
What can I say?
I last saw Al in 1985 with Mark, Eric Ulm, and 3 other people that we knew from high school. It was interesting to note that there were many people in the audience that hadn't even been born the last time I saw Al. I was hoping to wear the "Stupid Tour '85" shirt that I bought then, but for reasons that I won't explain here, I wasn't able to. There were a few people that were wearing "Alapalooza" shirts from the previous tour (~'94?), but those were the oldest that I saw.
Overall Al is definitely still Al.
There were a good number of costume changes. For example, for "Like a Surgeon", Al wore a surgical gown, for "Eat It", he wore a red jacket, and for "Fat", he wore a 400-lb. suit like in the video. During the costume changes, they showed stuff on the video screen. Unfortunately, there were some problems with the video, and we probably only saw 2/3 of what we were supposed to, but the audio was fine. During costume changes, one thing they showed was the "Al-TV"- type interviews. I think Al interviewed Robert Plant, Billy Joel, Madonna, and Paul McCartney. The interviews would go something like this:
Al: So Robert, would you do anything that I ask you to?
Robert Plant: Of course.
Al: Would you scratch your head like this?
(RP scratches his head.)
Al: Would you drink this cup of warm goat's blood?
(RP drinks a red liquid from a cup.)
Personally, I would have preferred less costume changes and more music!
The best part of an Al concert is always when he does songs that I'm not familiar with. Since I have about all his albums, that dosn't happen that often. Al did "Headline News", a parody of the Crash Test Dummies' "Mmmm, Mmmm, Mmmm", that talks about the guy who got caned in Singapore, the Tonya Harding kneecap incident, and the Loreena Bobbit incident. I don't have this song, since it only appears on the box set, so it was nice to hear.
Unfortunately, Al didn't do the "Fabulous Food Medley" from '85.
Other new songs were:
Overall, though, it was a great show, even with the video problems.
You would have liked it! I certainly hope to be able to see Al again sometime
before 2007.