[ATTENDED: October 28, 2022] “Weird Al” Yankovic
This was my ninth time seeing Weird Al. I’m shooting for ten. We’ll see if he can muster up one more tour (why did I skip the Strings Attached tour)?
I was pretty thrilled by the first Ill-Advised Vanity Tour. It was great seeing so many songs that rarely got played (amusingly, I had seen some of those songs on their original tours back in the early 2000s, which is pretty crazy.
I was hoping that this tour would be a whole new set of obscure old songs. I thought that for this reprise–The Unfortunate Return of the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour–he might pull out “Buckingham Blues” for the Queen’s death or something really odd like “Slime Creatures from Outer Space” or holy cow, “Genius in France” would have blown my mind.
I see that he actually played a largely different set in NYC (which I considered going to, but decided against). Including “I’ll Sue Ya” (not a favorite, but I haven’t heard it before) and “Velvet Elvis (talk about an obscurity!). But he also did the two songs that I would LOVE to hear live….and it might have been worth the hassle of Carnegie Hall just to hear “Nature Trail to Hell” and “Albuquerque.”
Having laid out that complaint, we did get four songs I hadn’t heard live before including a wonderful “Don’t Download This Song” and the sheer surprise of “Buy Me a Condo.” And this new, improved, extended version of “Craigslist” was outstanding.
I will never complain about hearing “The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota”–and the crowd was really into it.
Of course, any “Weird Al” show is a good time. Al gave amusing introductions to all of the songs and even did an amusing “encore” bt where he stood at the side of the stage checking his phone and then arguing with the band about whether they were going to do an encore or not.
The encore was worth the price of admission. He did a (straight and fantastic) cover of Elton John’s “Saturday’s Alright for Fighting.” And the closing medley of songs in very different styles was outstanding. I especially enjoyed that someone in the audience was able to do the Yoda chant dance. (more…)
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