AN EVENING WITH WEIRD AL YANKOVIC 7/25/2011

[Alinite27]

Ah, so nothing new really. Glad to know that the Toronto shows are done! Can't wait to see each of the final products through Comedy Central and whatever extras end up on the DVD version.

Anyway, just because it's YOU, your greatness, I'm glad that HolierThanThouHuggins didn't have to stoop to something so beneath him.

[Killingsworth]

I guess Comedy Central isn't allowing Al to mention when they will air his concert ahead of time. Oh well, since it's already done I guess we'll see it in about a month or two. Anyway, thanks for sharing with us what you picked up, Tony. I can't wait to hear what Jon and Bob heard from Al.

[rangerbob]

hi all. I got to meet Tony , Jon & a media rep named Diana after the show. Ill talk about that after i talk about the day in general.

I got to the museum early since i joined to be a member to be able to attend the weird al evening last night. anyway when i got to the museum i walked through it for a few hours in the afternoon talking to people all day some of which were going to the show and others who just were there for the day. Mind you now the last time i went to LA was to the staples center in 2002 for a lakers playoff game. LA live didnt exist as that whole complex was mostly a parking lot. i recommend any locals who live here to go to this museum as its a great place to see some of the history about the grammys & music industry.

back to the event. the clive davis theatre is a small place and a very pleasant small venue with all of 9 rows. there really isnt a bad seat in the place. they had the members line up early and gave us our tickets at 6:30. then we formed a line inside. once we got in it was 1st come 1st serve and it didnt quite fill up as i saw aprox. 6-8 empty seats in the back. this could be due to some no shows or they held back seats for emergencies.

once the program started there was al sitting in his chair after we were treated to a 7 or 8 minute video highlight of als videos. once the interview started Robert Santelli did the interview. he is no stranger to music as robert has written more than a dozen books including greetings from estreet ( the story of bruce springsteen & the e street band.) me being in from NJ this was quite a treat as he is also the executive director of the grammy museum. he was also involved in the evolution of the rock & roll hall of fame in cleveland so this gentleman knows a lot about music & being from NJ and he grew up in the asbury park nj area he is well known to people from NJ especually jersey rockers like bruce springsteen. he asked a lot of very intelligent questions & al as always was funny and candid in his responses. he was asked the standard questions about his career from the dr. demento days to the present.

much to my surprise i got to ask the 1st question as he had found out i flew in from NJ and he even acknowledged me before asking al my question. he told the audience i came in from nj and said i wasnt even the longest distance fan to fly in for a show,. he had mentioned some people who came in from other parts of the world for some of the other shows which just shows how special this place is.

anyway when it came time to ask al a question i borught up the idea of al about trying to do a movie about himself much like howard stern did and even mentioned that 3 minute spoof "weird" which he plays on tour in his concerts. al thought he wasnt worthy of making a movie but i think he is. he has enough fans and we should keep writing in to get him to make a movie eventually once again. I think he lacks confidence because while uhf didnt make money it has a cult following. anyway the questions kept flowing and they were quite intelligent and some of his answers were funny. on a nice note a few of the kids asked for autographs as part of their questions and in his usual classy self al signed for these kids who got to ask him a question. He didnt do a meet & greet but that wasnt what i came all the way out here for. to see him up close and personal and have him talk about his musical life and his wife and being a family man made me appreciate al even more.

after the event the 4 of us Diana, Jon & Tony went to the pantry which in itself is a historical landmark. we sat there and talked about al and some of the events that went on out west which i wasnt part of but was interested in hearing about them. what i learned from listening is al does apparently read the forums on occasion even if he doesnt write in any of them. that shows me he keeps in touch with whats on the minds of the fans.

I will be going to 6 of his shows back east in october and ill go thru them all once i secure all of my tickets. i have 3 of the shows so far with 3 more to purchase. Maybe i can try and get a meetup together with some of the fans before 1 of the shows. if anyone is interested in cohosting an event with me let me know.

ie. red bank nj, morristown nj, allentown pa, long island ny, the beacon in nyc & the warner in washington dc. those are the 6 shows im planning to attend.

I hope you all have a good summer & i look forward to meeting some of you back east in the fall.

best wishes,

bob groder ( ranger bob)

[Alinite27]

Thanks for that great review Bob!

I do agree that Al should make a movie, and I'd love to see it, but it's not as easy as just saying, 'Hey! I want a movie!'. I think Al's discouraged about the couple attempts he made for other movies after UHF, that ended up not being made due to different circumstances.

[rangerbob]

agreed and i know thats why he isnt making 1 at this time. but if the fans keep writing in and asking maybe 1 day al will just do it. thanks to the modern technology and information age and social networking he could make a movie succeed with lots of promotion. he didnt have that back when UHF was made. now between youtube , myspace, twitter & facebook he has made a nice niche for himself in selling cds & albums. he should take a chance and do it but only do it when he has a current album out as it would then be fresh. just a thought...... opinions.....? let me know your thoughts here fellow al fans!

[TMBJon]

I should start by saying this event was easily among the top Weird Al related events I've been to. Concerts and record signings are great but the chance to get to sit in on an 90-minute interview with Al, and an interview in which Al was taking it seriously and the interviewer was very well prepared, was such a great opportunity and I could never express enough gratitude to Al and the Grammy Museum for making this happen.
I thought I wasn't going to be able to get into this event since I didn't have an American Express card, and after realizing the museum wasn't going to offer any more tickets I was planning to just go down and see what I could pull off. As it turned out, I checked Craaaaiiigssliiiissst at just the right time because a guy had two tickets available and sold me one of them. The guy and his wife were very nice, as was the woman who bought his other ticket. I told all of them to join WOWAY so if any of you are reading this, .
The four of us got our tickets and new copies of Alpocalypse (I just gave away my extra copy, so now I have another one to get rid of...) and went inside the theater. It was very small, maybe 150-200 seats. Immediately upon walking in, I saw Tony and sat with him in the third row for the rest of the evening.
After a little while the event started with a video that spliced together nearly all of Al's videos. As Tony mentioned, it was basically the entire Ultimate Video Collection in order plus the two live action videos since then. I think the only missing video was Christmas At Ground Zero. It was definitely way too long. Did anyone in the room benefit from seeing This Is The Life, for instance? And also, I must say, it was a very poorly edited compilation. There were multiple jump cuts and awkward fades. And why oh why didn't the person de-interlace the footage???? Sorry, editing vent...
Finally, Bob Santinelli took the stage and introduced Al to a standing ovation. Al was dressed very nicely, in a full suit with a patterned blue dress shirt. The stage was dressed with blue and red lights throwing a nice pattern onto the rear curtains and an accordion conspicuously placed directly behind Al and Bob as a nice setpiece for the video. Oh yeah by the way: this entire Q&A was filmed by the Grammy Museum and will now be in its archive, so any time you come to LA and visit the Grammy Museum you will be able to watch the entire event.
The questions asked were mostly along the lines of what you would expect. They covered all of the usual bases, but they were asked in a very well researched way, and by someone intelligent enough to ask follow-up questions and really milk every topic. The segment on the Gaga Saga, for example, allowed Al to tell this oft-repeated story with more detail than I had heard him elaborate on before, even more so than the blog. There wasn't much in terms of hard news broken, but it was great to hear Al elaborate on many stories as much as he wanted to, as opposed to trying to fit it into a five minute TV piece.
Bob really got into the "early years" questions, asking him to elaborate on his earliest musical and comedy influences. A great question was: Which came first for you- music or comedy? I believe Al said they both came at such a young age it was hard to say. He talked at great length about Dr. Demento and who he was before he came to meet Al, as well as how Al met Dr Demento and what it was like working at the station. He also discussed his time at Cal Poly, his parents' influence, going from novelty-playing DJ to guy with a record contract, and his early affinity for MAD Magazine.
Another frequent topic was the creative process. Bob asked him a lot about how he writes for each album, how he comes up with ideas for both parodies and originals, whether he conceives of the video ideas as he's writing or if that's a later process, and how he came to direct all of his own videos. It was also revealed at this event that, after five days in the edit bay, the new live concert video is completely edited and color corrected, ready to go.
The audience also asked a lot of excellent questions, many of which Bob and Tony already mentioned. One of my favorite questions from the audience was from a young boy, probably around 10 or 11, who asked Al why The Weird Al Show was canceled. After Al's answer, the boy responded, "Oh because when I first got The Weird Al Show on DVD I saw there were three discs and I was like wow there must be so many episodes and then I was like oh wow there's only thirteen." So funny... There was also a good question about the origins of the Yoda Chant. Al said he had originally heard some other band doing "ya din din da" at a show and asked them about it and then the band decided it would be a funny thing to memorize and throw into the show and then it just kept on expanding. Al also told the full story about how he met Suzanne and their early dates.
I got to ask Al a question that I think has been on the minds of many forum members here. I was called on immediately after Tony, and said "You tried a couple of interesting experiments with the release of this album. First was the Internet Leaks with songs being released gradually over the course of a few months. Then was the idea to do an animated video for every single track on the album. Based on the feedback you've seen, what do you think the chances are for continuing either of those experiments for future releases?" Al explained that he feels strongly that there should be some kind of visual representation for every track on his album so they can get more exposure. He said that the days of multiple live action videos for each album are behind him, and further explained that if you took the cost of doing 11 animated videos this time around and then doubled it, it would still be cheaper than shooting a second video. Al then conspicuously did not answer the part of my question about Internet Leaks but I think he just forgot about the other half of the question rather than intentionally not talking about the future of Internet Leaks. I hope Al decides to address this in a blog post sometime because I am still eager to learn the answer. As Tony mentioned, Al alerted the authorities during the program that Tony and I were not actually AmEx card holders. That got a good laugh from the crowd as Tony and I awkwardly looked around and pretended to duck for cover.
After the event ended, as has now been said twice, I met up with Tony, Bob, and a music journalist named Diana, and we went out for a late dinner. We all had a nice time talking about being Weird Al fans. (When asked if she was a real Weird Al fan, Diana was quick to whip out her cassette copy of the debut album.)

Overall, this was a truly awesome experience. I would take this over ten concerts any time. I hope Al seizes the opportunity to do as many public Q&A events as possible. I've gone to several events like this since I've lived in Los Angeles for filmmakers, writers, actors, directors, etc. and they are always fun to attend, especially when the person being interviewed is someone I have so very many questions for. So again, thank you to Al and the Grammy Museum for doing this event!

[Kevbo1987]

Thanks for the great review, Jon! It sounds like it was an awesome night. You asked a great question too. I understand where Al is coming from on the animated videos, and he really put things in perspective in terms of the cost of live action videos.

[Alinite27]

Thanks for such a detailed review, as well, Jon!

Personally I'd much rather have the concerts, but it's cool that Al did this. Glad to hear how knowledgable the interviewer was. I guess if I'm ever out in LA, I'd watch it.

[Diva]

I joined the museum to become a member and im flying out to LA just for this show which appears to be once in a lifetime. this is not a cheap trip for me so i sure hope its worth it!!!!!

Now THERE'S devotion! I had tried, naively, to jump on the no-AMEX-sale and within the first 30 seconds [yes I was on Ticketmaster at 7AM sharp] kept getting the unavailability message. I don't have the stamina/obsessionality I once had to be able to stand outside someplace hoping for an available ticket. I take great compassion on those that do, as I also follow the various permutations of the Grateful Dead and the hopefuls holding up hands with 1or 2 fingers raised are a fixture there.

Your review as well as Jon's was spirited and lively and it sounds as if you all had a great time there.

Cheers, Diva
who has logged her share of frequent flyer miles tour-chasing

[crazygurl14]

Does the Grammy Museum put these q&a videos on their website or do you have to go the actual museum to see it?