World of Weird Al Yankovic

Bruce the Duck @ Mar 11 2004, 09:09 PM wrote: I agree whole-heartedly, OE. The problem is publicity. Isn't Jay Levey responsible for getting Al some exposure? Hmmmm....

Yeah...but Jay's "Wardrobe Malfunction" planned stunt at the Super Bowl fell through......



I agree with all the points, OE. Al doesn't need a little certificate and gold plated cd to know PH is a success. Still, it would be nice of course......

Orthography Enthusiast @ Mar 11 2004, 08:04 PM wrote: Going on tour again is bound to help with the sales.

I absolutly do not think Poodle Hat will become the next Polka Party. Like you said, Going on tour will definatly help record sales. Not only that, there was no video, and no single. And, Poodle Hat was released in May, it hasn't even been a year since it was released. So you can't really expect Al to get a lot of record sales if people don't really hear from him on TV/radio. But, Al got a Grammy for it, and it is an excellent album. So, I say lets just wait until the 2nd leg of the Poodle Hat Tour is over, then we will see how the sales are doing. Which I hope they will do better!

I had the opportunity to speak with Jay Levey a couple years ago (at the OC Fair) and I got the impression from him that his job is really more to agree (or not) to whatever exposure Al is offered.

Al will be on the Wayne Brady Show in a couple weeks, so that should be some good exposure. It's on during the day in most markets.

Wayne will most surely introduce Al and band by saying "and now to perform a song from the Grammy-award winning Poodle Hat."

Yeah, I just saw that. It must be pretty disappointing for Al. The album is much better than the sales reflect.

Dave

Orthography Enthusiast @ Mar 11 2004, 06:04 PM wrote: dadburnit!

Remember, this is a family friendly forum.

Orthography Enthusiast @ Mar 11 2004, 09:04 PM wrote: Look at it this way: Al managed to sell 336,000 albums with NO video, NO MTV exposure worth mentioning and not much from VH1 or any other TV...

This is a very good perspective to keep "Poodle Hat's" success in. Not only did it not have a video (and let's face it, Al's album success does depend a lot on the videos), but because of the poor timing of Eminem's stipulation Al was sort of stuck promoting only that one song. VH1 didn't rerun "Al-TV" nearly as much as it could have (cripes, "VH1 Goes Inside South Park" is only seen, what, 400 times a month?), while Al's talk-show appearances were limited to mostly bottom-of-the-barrel shows. And honestly, Volcano didn't seem to do that great of a job promoting the album before its release (getting "Couch Potato" on the radio would have been quite easy...if the company actually made a promo single for it!). Where was the usual zany full-page "Billboard" ad? Why not in lieu of a video make a quickie TV commercial? It seems almost as if the label expected the news story about the video to suffice as publicity.

But, despite all these media limitations, the album still gave Al his best "Billboard" debut and eventually it earned him his third Grammy. So, if I may channel a bit of Obi-Wan Kenobi, the album was a success...from a certain point of view.

On the other hand, "Polka Party!" had two videos to promote it (during a time in which Al videos were regularly seen on both MTV and Nickelodeon), somewhat strong radio airplay (there's a cool industry ad with a "roll call" of rock stations that had pushed "Hernia"), a two-hour "Al-TV" special, live performances on MTV's "Nero's Eve Party" on New Year's Eve, and Al spent the summer of 1987 opening for the then-uberpopular Monkees. Based on promotion alone, there was no way it could have flopped!

Yet, that's exactly what happened.

I think all this proves is that the formula to promote an Al album isn't infallible, and sometimes one problem can cause everything else to fall like dominoes.

So no, I can't liken "Poodle Hat" to "Polka Party!" Besides, after not even a year "Poodle Hat" only has about another 200,000 to go for a Gold Record. "Polka Party!" has yet to hit that mark after eighteen years!

But I like Polka Party...

You bring up a very good point CD. But I don't know how to respond to it other than..........um, nice job......

So do I, but it did do poorly on the charts. Poodle Hat already had a much better ranking than Polka Party. And going gold would be nice, too!

Patti

It was the punks on the cover that killed it. It couldn't have been the lederhosen...