If you didn’t know, Jeff B. — aka @EsotericCD — has a fabulous podcast called “Political Beats” that takes an in-depth look at a musician or band. He and a guest recently looked at the career of Weird Al Yankovic, but they didn’t look as deeply as Linda Falkenstein, who reviewed a recent sellout concert in Madison, Wisconsin. As Jeff B. points out, he’d never seen Weird Al evaluated alongside such events as January 6, but the alt-weekly Isthmus did.
I lived long enough to see Madison's woke alt-weekly pan Weird Al Yankovic for "ill-advised" humor at his concert. Apparently, I kid you not here, after Charlottesville and 1/6 songs like "My Baby's In Love With Eddie Vedder" hit a bit too close to home. https://t.co/VLPARxnK3D
— Jeff B. is *BOX OFFICE POISON* (@EsotericCD) July 16, 2022
Seriously, check this out:
… I couldn’t help feeling that culturally, we — as a nation — have crossed some kind of line recently. After one mass shooting or another, or after the Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally, or on January 6, 2021, or during the pandemic, when circumstances forced a re-evaluation of a lot of things. Last night, as I was sitting in the audience with the shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde and Highland Park all within the last two months, I kept noticing how many times a Weird Al song centers on the extreme anger and resentment of a young man.
…
Are these songs really a critique of our culture? That case could be made. I don’t know if Yankovic senses that times have changed; after all, these songs were all in the same setlist. But in “Albuquerque” (on one level an absurd story-song in which the narrator is pushed to the brink from his mom force-feeding him sauerkraut, but on another level a song full of anger at all sorts of slights) he paused mid-song to apologize for a line about a hermaphrodite (“It’s some big fat hermaphrodite with a Flock-Of-Seagulls haircut and only one nostril”) in what struck me as a very “sorry/not sorry” sort of way.
No matter. By that time I was in no mood to sing along with the genuinely charming “Yoda” (a “Yo-Yo-Yo-Yoda” parody of The Kinks’ “Lola”) that closed the concert. I wanted to feel good. But I couldn’t.
Unreal. But no, it’s real:
The sellout Weird @alyankovic show at Overture Center featured polished musicianship, but many songs with themes that these days are newly troubling.https://t.co/n9hq7dSC2M pic.twitter.com/UnqwJonS7M
— Isthmus (@isthmus) July 15, 2022
My guess is that you'd really have to 𝑡𝑟𝑦 𝑒𝑥𝑡𝑟𝑎-ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑑 to find something to be offended about at a Weird Al Yankovic concert.
— Jeff B. is *BOX OFFICE POISON* (@EsotericCD) July 16, 2022
Wow, good thing he didn't play "Trigger Happy."
— Nathan Wurtzel (@NathanWurtzel) July 16, 2022
A huge number of people in niche journalism (sports, the arts as prime examples) obviously want to write about “hard news” so they find ways to shoehorn politics and culture into everything.
Meanwhile the folks on the front page want to be novelists.
— Evan (@stokevm) July 16, 2022
Imagine if Al had played the Locked in the Closet parody? Too soon for the sensitive writer?
— Allison M. Godfrey (@dougalgodfrey) July 16, 2022
“White and Nerdy” would be so canceled today
— Hampton Prescott (@hprescott1991) July 16, 2022
That is my ring tone.
— V for Vendetta is real (@MicroDoc9) July 16, 2022
As a Madison resident I am both shocked and not surprised. pic.twitter.com/8gEZeTUxvq
— Thomas Martinson 🇺🇦 (@DarthApathetic) July 16, 2022
Gen-Xers have a high tolerance for humor. Millennials and new generation do not.
— Brian Doherty (@BDOH) July 16, 2022
I suspect the writer spends a lot of time examining their experiences to see if they can find a reason to feel bad.
— TIME1234 (@TIME123411) July 16, 2022
Are all alt-weeklies like this? We have a feeling they are — they’re all far-left wing and miserable.
Related:
‘I pinky swear, I won’t destroy the world.’ TFW Weird Al Yankovic ZINGS Matt Yglesias and his tweet about ‘climate problems’ https://t.co/Q2vBLpagdz
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) December 31, 2018
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