Straight Outta Lynwood - Take 2
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Straight Outta Lynwood Weird Al Yankovic Just the CD: 2.5 out of 5 stars |
Reviewed for Coffeerooms by Mike Jefferson
Note: See Straight Outta Lynwood - Take 1 reviewed by Dr Mike
There are very few musicians who specialize in comedy, John Valby (a/k/a Dr. Dirty) and Sean Morey comes to mind (stop me if you’ve heard of them). Frank Zappa could very well have been the greatest unintentional musical satirist in rock, except he took himself way too seriously and expected everyone else to as well. Even though cantankerous Franco was a knockout guitarist, it’s hard to take anyone seriously who names his kids Moon Unit and Dweezil and sports titles in his catalogue such as “Hot Poop,” “Help I’m a Rock” and “It Must Be a Camel.”
Weird Al Yankovic takes nothing seriously, particularly his music, and has delivered many side-splitting parodies of classic tunes, including, “Living With a Hernia” (a lampoon of James Brown’s “Living in America”), “Another One Rides the Bus (a gut-busting take-off of Queen’s “Another One Ride the Bus”) and his send up of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” entitled “Eat it,” which sported more one liners than Henny Youngman on speed, including “Eat it, eat it, if it get cold reheat it!”
Al’s latest concoction, “Straight Outta Linwood” is a dual disk containing a CD, a glimpse of Al in the studio, karaoke versions of all the songs (accompanied by chronological photos of Al) and half a dozen videos. The CDs is not as strong as some of his past efforts, but the extras may make the dual disc a worthwhile investment. More on the extras later…
The CD…
With “White and Nerdy,” a parody of Chamillionaire’s “Ridin’ Dirty.” Al takes a few swipes at a genre that often seems to lampoon itself (rap). He pokes fun at a current rock icon (Green Day), aping their Ramones-on-speed approach to music with “Canadian Idiot,” which is tart enough to start a border war – “Don’t wanna be a Canadian Idiot, don’t wanna be some beer swillin’ hockey nut. And do I look like some frostbitten hosehead? I never learned my alphabet from A to Zed.” Two other parodies, “Confessions Part III” (a rip on Usher’s pompous “Confessions Part II”) and “Do I Creep You Out,” which turns Taylor Hicks’ “Do I Make You Proud” into an icky stalker tale are ambitious, but not amusing. “Pancreas” is a dead-on imitation of the Beach Boys. Hints of “God Only Knows” and “California Saga” abound and the multi-layered harmonies rival the Beach Boys’ best material. The irony is the lyrics are gross enough to turn your stomach -- and pancreas -- inside out. “Close But No Cigar” is the tale of a perfectionist looking for his idea of a ten. The lyrics are inventive, who else but Al would think to rhyme Manolo with Buddy Rich solo? --but the music isn’t, so the title fits all too well.
The epic “Trapped in the Drive-Thru,” a take-off on R. Kelly’s slick “Trapped in the Closet,” has moments of comedic brilliance, but slowly chokes to death on it’s 10:50 length. You could probably get in your car, pick up a meal and wolf half of it down before Al’s step by step by step tale is over. “Polkarama!” continues Al’s fascination with the accordion, one of the three most annoying instruments ever created by man. (Glad you asked, pedal steel and bagpipes are the others). Al’s had some success with the old squeeze box in the past, but this time he’s lampooning fourteen artists in about five minutes, spitting out quips faster than a submachine gun. The end result is you’ll be tired, only slightly amused and fully exasperated.
There are two classic Weird Al lampoons that will make you laugh hard enough to hit the replay button and both are originals. “Weasel Stomping Day,” uses the same quaint, pleasant string arrangement you might find on a Perry Como Christmas album, setting it against Al’s biting sarcasm: “Faces filled with joy and cheer, what a magical time of the year, howdy ho, it’s weasel stomping day. Put your Viking helmet on, spread that mayonnaise on the lawn, don’t you know its weasel stomping day?” Animal rights activists will be appalled by the song’s sentiment (or lack thereof), but somewhere Frank Zappa is smiling – and after listening a second time, so was I. “I’ll Sue Ya,” is a swipe at the pretentious heavy metal style of groups like Metallica and Rage Against the Machine and their propensity to litigate: “I sued Neiman Marcus…’cause they put up their Christmas tree out of season. I sued Ben Affleck… do I even need a reason?”
The reasons the CD only gets a 2 ½ out of 5 rating are: 1) I’m really hard to please. 2) It’s hard to sustain musical comedy for an entire album (okay, CD) and 3) I laughed the first time. It’s unlikely I’ll laugh a second time.
The Extras…
When he first burst on the scene in the 80s, Al’s career received a huge boost from MTV, who always seemed to have one of his outrageous videos in its rotation. The six animated videos included on “Straight Outta Linwood” continue Al’s tradition of coming up with creative, oddball vignettes that stay in your memory years later. Two of the videos, “Weasel Stomping Day” and “Close But No Cigar” are side-splitters with first rate animation. If you remember TV shows in the 60s that used Claymation (“Davey and Goliath,” “Gumby”) you’ll really appreciate “Weasel”. There’s a part of me that didn’t want to laugh at smiling blonde clay kids in work boots stomping on helpless critters, but I laughed from the first squish all the way through to animated Al’s emphatic stomp at the end. “Close But No Cigar” was directed by John Kricfalusi, and he pulls out all the stops. The narrator, a lecherous cat, is a cross between Sylvester and that annoying feline in the Paul Abdul videos and the women – ay, carumba – let’s just say Kricfalusi has an imagination to rival Hugh Hefner and now I’ve got issues with animated females. Kricfalusi may be weirder than Al, but his creative visuals take a mediocre song and turn it into a guffaw fest
“I’ll Sue You,” featuring a cartoon Al as an angry slacker performing the onstage then moshing with his peeps, and “Download This Song,” the cautionary tale of a boy whose illegal download leads him to a life of crime elicit a grin or two. “Virus Alert” and “Pancreas” are a waste of film, particularly “Pancreas,” which is comprised of stock footage of scientific experiments and an old radio show with a – you guessed it – pancreas superimposed on the screen.
It’s hard to recommend the CD alone, so if you’ve got a few extra bucks to spare, go for the dual disc -- and leave the weasels alone.
Posted October 17, 2006 Permalink
