Author: Eric Fritzius
September 23, 2016
On September 2, 1985, 31 years ago, I turned 13. In addition to becoming a teenager, I became a man. A giant nerd man. Why? Because it was for that birthday that I got to see “Weird Al” Yankovic in concert for the first time.
His breakout album, In 3D, had only been released the previous year, ramming his “Beat It” parody, “Eat It,” into the ears of popular culture. I never purchased the album–at least not with money. Instead, I traded a cassette of it from my friend Bo. I forget what he got out of the deal. Probably some comic books. But I got the better end of the bargain, for In 3D was a towering achievement to my 12-year-old brain.
“Eat it” might have been the most famous song from the album, but it was loaded with greatness. I wasn’t always even familiar with the songs and artists he was parodying, but it definitely put those artists on my radar when later I would hear “The Safety Dance” (“The Brady Bunch”) or “Our Love’s in Jeopardy” (“I Lost on Jeopardy”) or “King of Pain” (“King of Suede”). 
It also introduced me to the concept of stylistic parody, where Al did not parody a specific song by an artist, but parodied the style of the artist instead. “Buy Me a Condo” was a basic Bob Marley reggae, without parodying a specific song. “Mr. Popeil” is a brilliant sendup of the B52s–a realization that only hit me this year when it got stuck in my head one day and I had to stop down and try and recall who it was parodying. It’s so obvious now. Sadly, I didn’t know who the B52s were in 1984 and wouldn’t for another five years. But maybe my favorite song on the album was the final track, an epic five minute long rock tale of about a horror movie called “Nature Trail to Hell.” The song, I think, is a general parody of heavy metal music–possibly with an eye in the direction of Black Sabbath. Funny thing, though: because the cassette listed all the songs on the album at the bottom, and because of “Nature Trail to Hell” featured the word HELL prominently, and because we were Southern Baptist, I knew there was no way I could ever play that song in my dad’s presence. I also decided to manage his inevitable unhappiness with my listening material by “accidentally” spilling green metallic paint pen ink all over the bottom of the cardboard insert. In retrospect, I could have achieved the same effect by spilling it on the clear plastic cassette cover.
While my dad would have had a negative reaction to his son listening to songs with the word HELL in the title, all I really needed to do to counteract this was let him listen to the other songs, which I did. And thereafter he was a Weird Al” fan too. When Al was going to appear on the Tonight Show in July of `85, I got to stay up and watch it. I wondered what song he would do. Probably “Eat It,” but maybe “Rocky XIII,” I thought. What I didn’t realize in that moment, though, was that Al had a new album out, that was only a month old, called Dare to Be Stupid, and the song would be from that. He came out, with his Stupid Band (as were called) and did a parody of a song by the Kinks’ I was unfamiliar with then called “Lola.” Al’s version was the now classic “Yoda.”
I lost my damned mind. Not only was Yoda one of my favorite fictional characters, the cleverness of the song just fractured my 12-year-old funny bone. I told EVERYONE about it. (And forever after, whenever I heard “Lola” on the radio I was disappointed, because it wasn’t as good as “Yoda.”)
DIGRESSION: Okay, I just went and looked up the lyrics to “Lola” to see if it was as nonsensical as I remember. WOW! That song’s about things 12-year-old Eric didn’t realize it was about and 44-year-old Eric is shocked it took him this long to realize it. Don’t let the weak-sauce spell-singing put you off as it did me. That song’s both layered and in-your-face all at the same time. Pretty impressive, Ray Davies!
Turns out I only thought I lost my mind then. Not too long later, I learned that “Weird Al” would be appearing in concert on the Mississippi State University campus, scant miles from my house, and BOOM it was gone again.. Not only that, but the concert would be in early September, just in time for my 13th birthday. Dad said that not only could I go, but I could have a sleepover party and invite all my friends to go as well. Why the heck not? The concert was free!
The concert was in a big open grass space in front of Frat Row on the Mississippi State campus–an actual amphitheater is located there now, but in those days it was just open space. We got there extra early, because it was all lawn seating so we needed to get a good spot. Then we abandoned this idea to instead go hang out near Al’s tour bus in the hope of getting a glimpse of him as he ran to the stage. And after much waiting, out he flew and we were mere feet away from “Weird Al” himself. Then we booked it back around front, as close as we could get for the concert.
The concert was everything I wanted it to be. He played lots of stuff from In 3D, but also a good mix from Dare to Be Stupid. (This isn’t from memory. I found his set list online.) And there I was, with fingers crossed and prayers uttered, that one of the new songs would be “Yoda.” But he finished out his set without it, and he and the Stupid Band left the stage.
Being a fairly new concert goer at that point in life so I didn’t know much about encores. (I’d been to some gospel and contemporary Christian shows and about five Tammy Wynette 4th of July concerts in Malden, MO, but I somehow didn’t know from encores.) But everyone stayed put and continued to clap and cheer until Al took the stage again and finally graced us with “Yoda.” And I lost my damn mind again. It was one of the most satisfying things I’d experienced in my life to that point. Before leaving, I purchased one piece of Al memorabilia, a “Weird Al” button.
Cut to this past summer, when I learned that Al would be playing the Clay Center in Charleston, W.Va., a scant 112 miles from my house, as part of his Manditory Fun tour. As soon as tickets went on sale to the public, I was on their website. The wife, unfortunately, could not come with as her new job didn’t let her out until 6p, leaving us not much time to get to Charleston by show time. She liked “Weird Al” well enough, but is not the life long fan she agree to marry nearly 17 years ago. As much as I regretted the wife not getting to go, running solo meant I could buy a better seat because the only ones we could have gotten together were in the far back. I picked an aisle seat, midway back from the stage. Turned out to be a good choice.
Cut to last night. I turn up to Charleston, eat some excellent pizza at Graziano’s down town, and make it to the theatre. I hung out in the lobby for a while, looking at all the other tubby white guys with facial hair. Some people wore aluminum foil hats. Some–I believe the ones who had been to the special Al signing beforehand–wore red revolutionary berets. Some people were dressed as the Amish, I presume either as costumes related to Al’s Amish Paradise, or perhaps the real Amish are just fans. Regardless, I saw more than one instance of other attendees being extra polite to those dressed like the Amish, which amused me.
I went to find my seat, but went down the wrong corridor and wound up behind the box seats. I turned around and went back, moving past some nice wooden wall-paneling in the process, then found the left rear entrance to the theatre, which led to my seat.
The show began with the band taking the stage as “Fun Zone,” an instrumental track from UHF, played. Then a screen lit up above the stage and Al could be seen walking out of one of the other smaller theater spaces at the Clay center and into a hallway, singing his “Happy” parody “Tacky” to camera. As he moved down the hall and into another lobby area, I began to recognize some of the guts of the Clay Center building itself. I’ve performed there on a couple of occasions before and have been all through it. Then I saw a familiar looking area with steps leading up to box seats and then the familiar wood paneling of the corridor leading there and knew Al was approaching the lobby of the main theatre itself. I think I was one of the first people to turn around and see him come in the back doors of the theatre on my aisle, the camera man and cable tech moving just ahead of him. Once again, Al passed within mere inches of me on his way to the stage. Part of me wished that I’d taken a picture or even video of that, but the rest of me told that part of me to shut up and enjoy the moment. I’m sure the moment was captured by one of the 300 other phones being aimed at Al anyway. That wasn’t going to be the only brush with Al of the evening, though.
The concert was spectacular though, much like when I was a 13-year-old, I was often unfamiliar with the music being parodied, now due to the fact that I simply don’t listen to the radio. And between many of the songs were intermissions featuring video of Al from other media throughout his history, such as his appearances on the Simpsons, Scooby Doo, My Pretty Pony, etc., or clips from the ALTV takeovers of MTV. Usually these would thematically lead into the next song, and gave he and the band time for some pretty impressive costume changes, including into a fat suit for “Fat.” One of the intermissions featured a very funny ALTV interview with Eminem as the lead in to “Word Crimes,” which may be my new favorite Al song ever. But it was his song “Wanna B Ur Lovr” that brought him out in a sleazy pimp outfit, then down into the aisle again, where he proceeded to sing directly into the faces of a number of ladies, climbing onto the seats on occasion to gyrate in character. He continued on up the aisle, singing to ladies along the way, until he past my seat again and began singing cheek to cheek at the girl directly behind me. And she could not have wanted the attention less. Which he sensed. So he kept coming back to her with perfect comic timing. Every time she thought he was finished, he would press his microphone between their faces and sing away again. It was fabulous.
Al ended the evening with “Amish Paradise,” said some slow goodbyes and left the stage James Brown style. (Though, unfortunately, not with the accompanying “Living with a Hernia” which would have made me even happier to see.) The crowd stood and chanted “Weird Al! Weird Al!” until at last his band filtered in, dressed in Jedi accouterments. Then a variety of storm troopers, what looked like a female Jango Fett and Darth Vader himself filed out as backup dancers for Al in Jedi robes, singing “The Saga Begins.” And this, of course, led right into “Yoda” which made the 13 year-old-boy inside me lose his damn mind all over.
