Review: Weird Al’s fans lap it up

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/08/2010 (5872 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Wild shirt: check. Wild hair: check. Fifteen-year-old punchlines: Check.

Gales of audience laughter, pledges of undying fan love, and hearty cheers? Also check.

Welcome to the Weird Al Yankovic show. We are now 30 years into one of the most stubbornly successful careers in the both the music and the comedy biz and the joke, incredibly, hasn’t worn off… even though sometimes, it seems like it should have. In a genre which usually thrives on freshness, Yankovic’s yuks trade on the ultra-familiar. But his career has only flourished for it.

Take his Thursday-night gig at the MTS Centre. The show itself was standard-issue Weird Al, as predictable as your grandma’s grocery list but with more confetti cannons. But even though the small but eclectic bunch of fans had seen it all before — the costumes, ripped straight from 20-year-old music videos, the screaming-loud Hawaiian shirt, the hair — they couldn’t get enough.

As in any relationship, it’s the little things that mean the most. Little things like the first moment the spotlight lit upon Al, as he squeezed his trademark accordion into his kicky Polka Face medley. Little things like his classic melodic water-gargle solo during Smells Like Nirvana, which sent the crowd shrieking. Little things like his knees, gleefully knocking to and fro in safari shorts during the jaunty Skipper Dan.

And safari shorts were just the beginning. That Hawaiian shirt he opened the show with was soon traded in for a dizzying series of costume changes: a Spongebob Squarepants shirt and pink tutu during You’re Pitiful, New Wave jumpsuits for Dare To Be Stupid, and so forth. In fact, he changed his duds between almost every song, covering the lengthy breaks with videos from his hysterical Al TV parody interviews and clips of Simpsons, Friends and other TV characters invoking Yankovic’s name.

The audience chuckled for the videos, but it seems we could have done with fewer costumes and more live songs from a likable guy whose best TV moments are already seared forever on our long-term pop-culture memory.

On the other hand, some of the costumes added a gloriously goofy touch to a pretty exhaustive two-hour show. Consider when Yankovic emerged in a bright red, tiger-striped leisure suit for one of his lesser-known tunes, Wanna B Ur Lovr, which sent him swaggering into the crowd, waggling his hips in their faces.

Minutes later, in what was quite possibly the best impersonation of the entire night, he squeezed himself into Jim Morrison leathers and flung himself about the stage during Doors parody Craigslist.

At age 50, Yankovic has lost none of his energy, and his ear for impersonation only gets sharper. But by the time the regular set rolled to a close with Yankovic’s biggest-ever hit, 2006’s White & Nerdy and his iconic Michael Jackson riff, Fat (which he delivered wearing a boffo fat suit just like the one in his Grammy-winning 1988 video), the show seemed to be puttering out of gas… thanks to all those costume changes, I’d wager.

That said, I don’t expect the fans who screamed, clapped and stomped their way for an encore to agree.

MTS Centre
Attendance: 2,800
3 1/2 stars