On June 5th I listened to “Weird Al” Yankovic Dare To Be
Stupid and Daft Punk Random Access Memories.
A few years ago I was in L.A. to produce Grammy coverage for
a radio station I was working for in New York City. The Grammys have a media
day on the Saturday before the broadcast and a hundred radio stations set up in
a big room and wait for big stars and nobodies to drift around and talk to
whoever is interested in their bullshit. It’s a long day, but there’s catering
and you usually do get a couple cool interviews.
Towards the end of the day, one of the talent wranglers
asked me if we’d be interested in “Weird Al” coming over. “FUCKING A!” was all
I said and ten minutes later, there he was! I initially thought the two hosts
of the show would give me some kind of shit for asking for “Weird Al,” but they
were happy to have him. The interview went great and afterwards as we were
taking pictures, I was like a little girl meeting that harry cunt from
One Direction.
I was 12-years-old when “Weird Al” came into my life with
“My Bologna,” “Ricky” and “Another One Rides The Bus.” I loved that somebody
was skewering a bunch of songs that I had heard on the radio or watched on MTV
way too many times! It was my first lesson in “building up and tearing down,”
and I loved it! “Weird Al” was doing it in a G Rated format, but he
was having a lot of fun poking at Rock stars.
A year later my mother was busting into my room to tell me
to stop listening to “Eat It,” over and over again. “Weird Al” was a big part of
my childhood and I followed his career for many years. I love his movie
UHF, and still get down to his music once in a while.
Meeting him was definitely a treat and I wanted a cool
picture to document the occasion. I've met a few Rock stars in my career and I
got sick of boring pictures, so I usually ask if we could do a simple pose to
make it more interesting. I told “Weird Al” I’d love to do something fun
and asked if he’d pose like he’s really pissed off at me. “Oh, yeah!
Definitely!” he said in his “Weird Al” voice. A little pee came out when he said that. The picture is one of my all-time favorites with a Rock star.
I remember every song on Dare To Be Stupid, even though I
may not have heard a lot of them in years. This was probably my last really big
hooray with “Weird Al.” I was getting older and by 1985 I still liked him, but
I was discovering a world of new music and wasn't sitting in my room listening to his songs on repeat anymore.
The Devo inspired “Dare To Be Stupid” is brilliant! “I Want
A New Duck” is still unbearably lame. The Polka medley is inspired! “Like A
Surgeon,” and “Yoda” are classics I still think about when I hear “Like A
Virgin” and “Lola.” A couple of years ago I tried to eat five McRib sandwiches
while listening to “Girls Just Wanna Have Lunch.”
Dare To Be Stupid is me at puberty!
It reminds me of that delicate time in the 80’s when I came of age. I was painfully
immature, I just started getting some real pubes, I was a “Weird Al” fan, and I
spent a lot of time desperately trying to get hand jobs from 14-year-old girls.
Thank you “Weird Al!” You wrote the soundtrack to my burgeoning adulthood!
Here’s a dumb story. In the spring of 1988, I was a junior
in high school and two of my best buds where Joe Bagodonuts and Judas Iscariot.
(Not THE Judas Iscariot. Two years later he would give my girlfriend crabs,
she would give it to me and somehow I would get blamed for catching them in the
first place! So, he became known as Judas. Yes, I had crabs once! FUCK YOU!)
Regardless, Joe was only a sophomore and was recently dumped
by a senior he was dating. At the time, Joe was a dopey pretty boy and the girl
banged him a few times and dumped him in preparation for all the college dick
she was going to get the following fall. God bless.
Joe wasn't handling the breakup well and was determined to
win “Candice” back! One night while Joe, Judas and I were chilling at Joe’s
house on a Friday night, he concocted a plan to make a video to recapture her
love. His parents were out for the night, so we drank a few beers and made a
set in his bedroom. Joe had a canopy bed in his room and we wrapped the whole
thing up with white sheets. We set up the VHS camcorder at the foot of the bed
and started shooting.
In a pair of acid wash jeans, a loose fitting white tank top, and
an awful teenage mustache, Joe laid on his bed and lip-synched “Careless
Whisper” by Wham! It was fucking priceless! I still see it in my head. He was
really selling it too! I believed he was never gonna dance again. He nailed it. The whole thing was touching and fucking hysterical.
I think he did three takes and each one was better than the
last. After he was done, Judas decided he wanted to make a video for the pig he
was dating. I say she was a pig because two years later, I’m 99% sure she was
the source of the crabs that Judas gave to my girlfriend and she gave to me!
Pffft! Anyway, Judas lip-synched a moving version of The Righteous Brothers “You've
Lost That Loving Feeling,” for his little pig girlfriend. Given the material
his video should have turned out a lot better than Joe’s, but his was cringe worthy without the ironic humor.
I wasn't about to be let out of the whole thing, so I
decided to make a video too. I had just broke up with a girl I had started
dating that fall and decided for my video I was going to do “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “One More Minute.” It’s
a very moving break up song about all the things a man would rather do than
spend one more minute with an awful ex-girlfriend who has already moved on. My
favorite line of the song is “I’d rather clean all the bathrooms in Grand
Central Station with my tongue, then spend one more minute with you.” Having
picked my song, I put a jock strap on my head, hopped onto the bed and fired up the song. Once we got rolling, Joe and Judas started throwing everything in
Joe’s room onto the bed. When they ran out of stuff, they started scouring the
house and as the song came to its crescendo I was dodging a toaster, all the laundry that was in the dryer, and several two liter
bottles of soda. I actually thought the whole thing was hysterical.
We eventually talked Joe out of ever showing “Candice” his
video because she already didn't like him and that would definitely make it
worse. Regretfully, Joe erased the whole tape and all that brilliance is gone forever!
Believe me, if I had the tape it would have been online years ago!
Let me get this straight; a couple of frogs are bringing back Disco and the whole fucking planet is buying into it? Great. I believe it was Harvey Pekar who first opined, "Why does everyone have to be so stupid?"
Speaking of stupid, here’s how ignorant I am about Daft Punk. I had no idea they
guarded their identities like Kiss did back in the day. Apparently, some loser
band posted a picture online of the “robots” without their helmets on the other day and
it caused a big stink. (Get it? Stink? They're French.) Regardless, who cares?
Whenever I listen to an unbelievably hyped album like this I think,
“what’s the big deal?” The international hit lead single “Get Lucky” is all
right, I get it. It's no "Hey Ya!" Am I right? I dunno, maybe?
The disc's opener is the call to arms! "Give Life Back To Music," might as well just be called "Disco Or Die." Is this a joke? Am I missing something? “The Game Of Love” and “Within” sound like porno music for
robots. Boring robots that leave their socks on, only do it in one position and there's definitely no robutt sex. (HI-OH!)
Why does the album take a nine minute dump on track three?
Some old school disco Eye-talian talks about how important disco dancing in Germany
was in the 70’s and a jumpy old school synth track builds annoyingly under him. It's no "Everybody Should Wear Sunscreen." Am I right? I dunno, maybe?
After Julian Casablancas embarrasses
himself worse than me wearing a jockstrap on my head lip-synching a “Weird Al”
song, I wanna quit this record, but skip to the Paul Williams track. It is a delight! "Touch" is like a time capsule dug up from the past when songs were crafted and sang with honest to goodness showmanship. Paul Williams is an American treasure! I love you Little Enos!!!!
God bless Daft Punk! Apparently they just saved the world from certain
destruction and I was standing around going, “what happened?”
Up next... I listen to Elton John and The National.
