Weird Al Brings Laugh Riot to Arkansas

by Julian Spivey
Weird Al Yankovic, the most successful musical comedian and parodist of all-time, brought his Strings Attached Tour to Verizon Arena in North Little Rock, Ark. on Sunday, September 1 for a night of many laughs and great fun.
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It’s almost hard to believe, but Weird Al has been poking fun at the biggest hits in the world of pop music for almost 40 years now, has outlived the careers of nearly every artist whose music he has parodied and is as good as he’s ever been at the age of 59. In fact, his most recent album 2015’s Mandatory Fun won him a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album.

Weird Al Yankovic has long been a pop culture phenomenon and all you’d need is to hear the eruption in roars from the packed Verizon Arena crowd on Sunday night to realize that Weird Al is King of the Nerds.

You don’t have to be a Weird Al superfan to enjoy one of his shows – though for those who are it truly seems like one of life’s greatest achievements – all you have to have is a good sense of humor and an attitude to have fun. If you can’t have at least a little fun at a Weird Al show I suggest having your funny bone tested. I’ve always enjoyed his work, but have never considered myself to be a superfan, but I enjoyed the hell out of Sunday’s show.

The Strings Attached Tour features Weird Al backed by his normal touring band, as well as a 40-plus piece orchestra. Much like I felt when I saw The Who perform with an orchestra earlier this summer in the suburbs of Chicago, I didn’t really feel the orchestra added too much to the show. There’s just a lot going on onstage to really focus on all the strings and horns.

The orchestra was incredibly talented and also served as the opening act performing a trio of John Williams movie scores from “Star Wars,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Superman,” as well as Lalo Schifrin’s “Mission: Impossible” theme. All in all, I could’ve done without this segment and gone straight into the main event.

Weird Al opened his set, sort of interestingly, with a quick medley of “I Lost on Jeopardy,” “I Love Rocky Road” and “Like a Surgeon,” which may have played better later in the show or definitely would’ve been more enjoyable had he performed all of each song.

One thing that novice Weird Al fans may not realize is that he doesn’t just parody songs, but also parodies song styles or band styles. He’s more known for his song parodies because they’re easier to spot and sing along with, but some of his style parodies are just as fun and entertaining as the song parodies and one such of these is “The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota,” which pokes fun at the styles of artists like Gordon Lightfoot and Cat Stevens and just tells the funny tale of a family trip to see the titular ball of twine.

The first great moment of Weird Al’s show on Sunday night was his performance of “Word Crimes,” a parody of Robin Thicke’s 2013 smash “Blurred Lines,” which is a delight for writers like me as it nitpicks on bad grammar.

Another great moment from early on in the show was “Jurassic Park,” a terrific parody of the 1968 Richard Harris hit “MacArthur Park,” which was accompanied by images from Weird Al’s music video for the song. This was the one performance where you could really see the emphasis on the orchestra backing Yankovic up.

Yankovic was able to fit some fan-favorites like “Weasel Stomping Day” and “Harvey the Wonder Hamster” into the set, before launching into another of his more recent parodies, “Tacky,” a take on Pharrell Williams’ 2014 smash hit “Happy,” which appeared on Mandatory Fun.

It was the last segment of Weird Al’s show on Sunday that truly gave everyone in attendance their money’s worth – this was essentially the “greatest hits” portion of his show that featured costume changes and everything. In between songs during this portion of the show while Yankovic and the band changed into their different outfits snippets of Weird Al’s many pop culture moments were shown on the giant screen behind the stage, like clips from his 1989 movie “UHF” and appearances on “The Simpsons” and such. It was a very entertaining way to keep the crowd’s attention in between performances.

This portion of the show began with one of my favorite Weird Al parodies “Smells Like Nirvana,” his take on the iconic 1991 Nirvana breakthrough hit “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” The band would then perform a DEVO inspired “Dare to Be Stupid,” which has essentially become Weird Al’s theme song throughout his career.

My absolute favorite performances of the night were the back-to-back performances of “Amish Paradise,” his parody of Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” and “White & Nerdy,” a parody of Chamillionaire’s 2005 hit “Ridin’.” I think these two parodies are perhaps the funniest Weird Al has ever written in his long and legendary career of making folks laugh.

The encore of the show took on a “Stars Wars” theme beginning with “The Saga Begins,” essentially a funny summary of “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace” to the tune of Don McLean’s epic “American Pie.” Yankovic then broke out his iconic accordion, surprisingly for the only time all night (I would’ve thought he’d use it more), for the show-stopping “Yoda,” a parody of The Kinks’ “Lola,” which broke out into a crowd sing-along.

Weird Al’s Strings Attached show on Sunday night was simply a ton of fun and I highly recommend seeking out one of his shows if he’s ever in your neck of the woods – you will have so much fun you’ll want to stomp the next weasel you see.

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