There was a time when I really wanted this album. I had heard Yankovic’s Fat on a yoof music programme on the telly in the eighties and was amused enough to look out for the album on my regular trips to HMV in Church Street.
I saw it once in the racks but didn’t get it because, like 90% of the music I was interested in, it was on “imported” only so cost a lot more than non-imported albums.
I’m glad I didn’t buy it though. Fat is the only track that’s not too irritating and it is clear that Even Worse was released at a time in Yankovic’s career when his humour started to struggle. Fortunately he claws his talent back in later albums but Even Worse and its predecessor, Polka Party, really are fan only albums.
In case you’re odd, or perhaps you’ve been living as some sort of gimp in a cellar for the past 30 years or so, Weird Al is an American entertainer who takes popular music and turns them into parodies. Sometimes quite well.
Dare to be Stupid is Yankovic’s third studio album. Unfortunately, as an introduction to Yankovic it’s not a good choice. Nothing innovative or original here, just Yankovic going through the motions, and by motions I mean poo.
Two posts today. Why? Well, I hate to spoil the illusion but I’m not just listening to one album a day, I’m listening to several so at time of writing it is June 2014 but confusingly, the previous and the preceding entries were both written in May 2014. Even more confusingly, there is actually only one post today not two.
Why?
Well, firstly, since I started this project I have swapped over to an Apple Mac meaning that my previous music manager of choice, J River, won’t work unless I fork out a wedge of cash for the Mac version. Which I’m not going to do.
J River and ITunes both sort music differently. J River puts all the albums starting “The” down with the Ts, while, ITunes does as it pleases.
Secondly, although I am now an Apple bastard, I still use a windows laptop. So when I came to write an entry today I thought I’d check the running just to make sure everything is on track.
It’s not.
I seem to have missed a couple of albums which haven’t shown on my Mac. The first beingAeonand the second being this one. There are a few others, but I don’t care about them so in the interest of not having to muck about in the back end of this blog, I’m not going to cover them here and will delete them anyway.
Unless this happens again, or an album I really like is missing from ITunes, I will just stick with the alphabetised ITunes library.
So, Alapalooza. What’s it like? Well, it’s typical Yankovic fare. Spoofing McArthur Park (Jurassic Park), Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Aerosmith. Some amusing moments, some not so.
I can never be entirely sure how I feel about Weird Al. Some of his stuff is very clever, other stuff just feels forced or strained. This is one of those that sit in the middle. It helps if you know the music he’s taking the piss out of I guess.
There was a time when I really wanted this album. I had heard Yankovic’s Fat on a yoof music programme on the telly in the eighties and was amused enough to look out for the album on my regular trips to HMV in Church Street.
