World of Weird Al Yankovic

DrDecay @ April 17, 2009 01:16 am wrote: Its ok if you don't, its just that image makes me really want whats in that picture.

I'm sure there are those who think the same thing about your avie...

scottidog @ April 17, 2009 04:09 am wrote: Are they still iTunable?

Yep.

Ok, I guess I will throw this here. This is an essay about Al - I think he means this to be the title:

Simulating the Simulacrum of the Established Order

My head hurts..

http://weirdalessay.blogspot.com/

Wizzerkat @ April 20, 2009 12:18 pm wrote: My head hurts..

http://weirdalessay.blogspot.com/

I SO want somebody to ask Al about the pataphysics of simulacra (your guess is as good as mine) in an interview sometime.

But I think that if you peel away the postmodernist grad-student-in-English, I'm-sitting-at-the-cool-kids'-table verbiage, he MIGHT be saying something sensible and true about Al. I'll have to take another look at it.

While it could be argued that the transplantation of Soul Asylum’s ‘They say misery loves company’ into ‘My whole family loves “Three’s Company”, see the re-runs constantly, they’re on my TV.’ is just silly and harmless, I believe it opens a portal to a more serious aspect of Weird Al’s work; a one which directs its polemical allusion head on with the world. This aspect critiques postmodern culture and in particular a chief protagonist in the television, perhaps the most glaring and dominant feature of late capitalism to have stunted social interaction amongst blah blah blah lotsa words and stuff I don't understand....

It's too early for me to try to wrap my head around all that. I was just glancing at it, and the above paragraph stood out to me. (Along with "the practice of Weird Al Yankovic" I guess he really IS like a surgeon, huh?)

If I understand what the author is saying in that snippet that I quoted, that Al is making a serious observation about our culture and society, but in a funny way... Um, isn't that what satire is? And haven't we been saying that for years about Al's work?

I have long been saying (and on this board, I've said it at least twice in the last week) that Weird Al is a post-modern artist. I agree 100% with this article.

I, too, have been enjoying this link to the analysis of Al's work. Pardon me, "oeuvre". I was an English major in the distant past, and I, too, wrote papers like this. Papers that I look at today and say, "...What the heck are all these WORDS?!??! I have no idea what these words mean-- AND I WROTE THEM!"

Fond memories aside, it's nice to see someone take Al's work seriously. It would be even nicer to take this thought and translate it into a common-English article that would make a nice feature in a magazine. Yes, Al has his share of silly, juvenile stuff. But he really _gets_ modern culture, and he often skewers it with.... dare I say, surgeon-like precision. It's nice to see that celebrated, even with a lotta lotta syllables, nominalizations, and passive voice.

I agree that it was written with overly-academic speech, but the core of what the article was saying - that Weird Al is in essence a post-modern artist - feeds into the very reasons why I first got into Al, and why I still listen to him to this day. Obviously, I didn't have a clue what post-modernism or irony were when I was nine years old, but the concepts therein I've always found humorous.

as Douglas Kahn says, musical practices that imitate have throughout history been considered to be ‘lower life forms’

I Googled up a Douglas Kahn who's in the Music Dept. at UC Davis, and I'm guessing he's the one being referenced here.

If so, and if he's being accurately quoted, Mr. Kahn is seriously overstating his case. It seems to me that TRADITIONAL music, that is, the music that has actually been composed, played and enjoyed throughout history, long before music copyrights or mass production or distribution of music, has always had lots of recycling, rewriting and borrowing, both attributed and unattributed. Our own national anthem took its tune from what can only be described as an eighteenth century drinking song

Orthography Enthusiast @ April 21, 2009 12:48 am wrote: Our own national anthem took its tune from what can only be described as an eighteenth century drinking song

That is awesome. I never knew that!