Pledge Music (2017)
Over the next several weeks, we're going to celebrate Weird Al Wednesday as I go through each of the 15 albums in the Squeeze Box accordion box set. There are many albums in this set that were hugely influential to me as a young kid and there are no shortage of incredible songs throughout. Weird Al and The Blues Brothers are definitely the building blocks for my earliest appreciation of music.
Alpocalypse came out in 2011. I was no longer working in the music industry and had actually started putting together the building blocks of this website by taking pictures of records and posting them on Flickr. I didn't really write anything about Alpocalypse when I posted that picture, but if I had, it probably would have been similar to what I think about it now. I don't really know any of the song parodies at all. I'm now aware of the Lady Gaga song, but that's really only because of the brouhaha surrounding the release of this record back in 2011. Past that, I don't know any of these and I really don't like them.
On the flip side, this record is home to some of my very favorite Al originals. "CNR" is a wonderfully ridiculous tribute to my favorite Match Game star, Charles Nelson Reilly. This song is in the style of early 2000s garage bands, primarily The White Stripes. It's a hoot. But the real highlight is "Skipper Dan." This might actually be the Weird Al song that's most similar to a song I would listen to day to day. To me, it sounds like something Fountains of Wayne would have written for Utopia Parkway, but with better harmonies and a tremendously silly story about someone working on the Disney World Jungle Cruise ride. It's such a hit song and I love it.
Ultimately it's an uneven Weird AL record, but the highs are high enough to where I still enjoy it immensely.
"Weird Al" Yankovic - "CNR":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLnapb-30hA
"Weird Al" Yankovic - "Skipper Dan":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0cCRRFi1aA
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