World of Weird Al Yankovic

Driving. Late coming out on skipper dan. Snoop out stipe in

Dear Cleveland,

If you're going to close every street that leads to the venue, except some tiny abandoned side street, please put up detour signs that are correct. Also, please educate your venue staff on where things are. Thank you.

Needless to say, we drove around forever once we got to Cleveland trying to find the venue, but finding nothing but closed streets and incorrect detour signs. Frustrating was we could see the venue, but not get to it. Finally asked a cop who said it was in that general direction. Then when we get to the venue no one in the staff knew where the will call widow was. Turns out their will call was some lady in the parking lot with a clipboard who would give us general admission tickets to get us into the venue where the real will call window was hidden somewhere inside.



Anyway, we made it and literally sat down a minute or so before Fun Zone started. Its amazing what an Al concert will do to change your mood around. We got a dress rehearsal of the UK show tonight. So spoiler warning for UK people yadda yadda yadda..

Pretty much the same as the US setlist, only some different video clips and placement. The only song that was cut was "I'm In Love With The Skipper" No new songs added.

Clips that were cut that I can remember from the last time I saw him are the Snoop interview, Avril interview, Tim & Eric clip, Craig Ferguson, Squid Hat, Yo Gabba Gabba, Spice Girls, Twitter, maybe a few others.

New clips are Justin Timberlake interview, Keith Richards interview, Dirt. Also he changed the Michael Stipe interview to include cell phones.

Dave

Man it felt good to be back at my first Weird Al in almost 3 years - and first time in Ohio!

You Make Me & Good Ole Days,just what I was hoping for...and while I had SOME details of the setlist this time around,Grim Grinning Ghosts in the Yoda Chant was a HUGE HUGE HUGE surprise for me. I almost totally lost it when they sang that!!!

Sorry I didn't get to stick around and meet anyone (i also didn't get to my seat until 5 min before Funzone) but I was on a real tight schedule today - boarding my train home (with a stopover in DC first) in a couple minutes.... And I was ttally coincidentially assigned seat 27, no joke. Longer review to come when I get back to NYC.

I need to seethe Halloween 2 remake now! BTW what was the dog in the urinak clip from?

Great mini-review, Dave! Did Al announce that this was going to be the dress rehearsal show for the UK dates at the beginning of the show or did you find this out some other way? I find it a bit strange that apparently he thought the brits would get references to The Beverly Hillbillies and Charles Nelson Reilly but not Gilligan's Island out of all the songs (either that or for some reason Al thought that T-Pain wasn't as big of a name across the pond) but I guess I'm just not as familiar with British culture as some other Al fans out there.

Dave, some of the things you mentioned (not all) were in place already for the California shows that I saw. Possibly just the natural evolution over the summer?

Jon, I was in Rockford the night before, and last night's show felt very different. Some of the clips were switched out earlier in the tour, but there were still quite a few differences. The change I didn't understand was replacing the Avril interview with Justin Timberlake - I can't imagine that people in the UK wouldn't appreciate the Canadian jokes.

Killingsworth, they may or may not know the Beverly Hillbillies (though I suspect they do) but they are VERY familiar with the song being parodied!

I might be off on when some of the video clips were removed, but previous changes to the clips have been minor, like cutting a clip here or there, or shortening a clip as needed. But like Nancy said, it was a major change, clearly different then all other dates so far.

Al told me after the show the changes were for the UK tour. He said he cut IILWTS because UK wasn't familiar with Gilligan, and the video clips were replaced because, since it was the first time they are playing UK, all the video clips were new to them, so he could bring back some clips that were overplayed in the US or the US was tired of seeing. My impression was that the video clip changes were more his personal preference than a cultural thing, though I'm sure that factored in a bit too.

Dave

My review is up!

http://weirdal.0catch.com/cleveland.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Dave

while i was clearing out a SD card to take pix, there was a polka band on 1st at 6p, the 2nd song Al went out to jam with them, see being early pays off at times, got pix, and during the show 4 security ppl came to me, you cant use that kind of camera here, oh sorry, the last one didnt understand my pass

Cool review! I think I misread your first post and thought you were listing clips that had been added rather than removed so that makes more sense. Still I wonder why they feel the need to "rehearse" in front of a live audience two months in advance.