Ditto. I hadn’t heard this one before yesterday. Listening to it was like hearing every FZ tune I had ever heard in the past. I wonder if WAY has ever done this piece live? THAT would be impressive.
I’m a big Weird Al fan and have been for many years- as others have said, his music is fun, inoffensive, humorous, and on several occasions has inspired me to go and listen to other music by the artist being parodied.
I agree his “style parodies” (where he does a song in the style of, but not directly copying a specific song) of an artist are the best, and I’ve always found it interesting that Weird Al’s career has lasted longer than that of many of the artists he parodies.
Incidentally, this thread is the first I’ve heard of someone actually not liking Weird Al’s music- I’ve come across plenty of people who can take his stuff or leave it, but never someone who doesn’t actually like it. Only on the SDMB, as they say…
The whole thing is virtually an MST3K version of the story, done brilliantly. I’d always thought the same thing about the fate of the duck. Their Carnival of the Animals Part 2 off the same recording also does a masterful job of copying and often surpassing the style (and jokes) of the original.
The poodle’s a slimy carnivorous beast
In pastures you might find it grazing
Its fangs measure 23 inches, at least
Its antlers are simply amazing
Sometimes it will bury its head in the sand
Its our main source of pork, ham and bacon
But, then again, on the other hand,
I could be completely mistaken.
It’s hard to do parody and keep up the quality consistantly. Weird Al has some great parodies, such as “Eat It,” “Ricky” and “Like A Surgeon.”
Part of it is when you choose your material. Not all songs lend themselves well to it. Another problem is Weird Al became mainstream. This makes parody artists “uncool.” As soon as Greg Kihn said “I couldn’t wait for Weird Al to parody my song,” (“I lost on Jeopardy”) it was the beginning of the end for Weird Al’s parody.
Ray Stevens was another, some of his songs like “Ahab The Arab,” “The Streak” and “Gitaarzan” are classic, while most others pale in comparison.
The cool thing about the Internet is the ability for everyone to try this now. I’m not saying to the OP “If you can’t do better, don’t complain,” but what I’m saying is why not try.
Take your computer remove the vocals from the track and do your own parody and throw it on YouTube. Who knows you could be the next Weird Al.
26 years and 11 albums is a hell of a long end.
Does Ray Stevens do parodies? I don’t recall any. As far as I know (as a former Ray Stevens fan) he just does originals. You may be conflating ‘parody’ and ‘novelty’.
Wow. That’s the creepiest thing you’ve ever experienced? 
I mean, I’m happy that your date with Young Al was so innocuous, but come on - given the setup (“19 year old man goes on blind date with 14 year old girl”), a mini-golf outing full of fart jokes is pretty much the best case scenario.
If he’s not funny than why would I have bought all his albums? Some of them twice even! No, I say you sir, you are not funny!
That said, I’m in the camp of people who often no longer know the songs he’s parodying on recent albums. But that’s more a problem with the music industry sucking than anything Al can control.
You beat me to it! This is so true.
In my imaginary fantasy rock star life, in which I am now transitioning from established alternative to proto elder statesman, I was recently reminded of something I mumbled out during one of my breakout interviews when I said something like two of the greatest honors I could ever hope for was to have Weird Al parody one of my songs and Johnny Cash cover one. At the time it was assumed to be a sarcastic missive to a twerp corporate magazine writer tool, but no one could really tell for sure if maybe I wasn’t, in fact, sincere. (As was the custom of the day.) “When those things actually happened,” the self styled proto elder stateman rock star interviewer tool asked, “was it as big an honor as you thought it would be?”
“Bigger.”
I say he’s performed a great public service just by coming up with “Jurassic Park” as a treatment for that ear-worm of ridiculous lyrics it truly improves, “MacArthur Park.”
I know little about music as an academic subject, but I could easily see Weird Al’s approach to style parodies as the topic of at least an undergraduate course. I imagine you have to have a deep appreciation and understanding of a band or a genre to pull that kind of thing off convincingly. (And to persuade some of the principals in the genre to play along with you, no less.)
Have you heard the version where Al sings it in Japanese? :eek:
True Story ™: a friend of mine in college unintentionally preempted the gag.
Friend: “So, whatcha listening to there.”
Me: “Weird Al’s new album.”
Friend: “Cool. Anything good?”
Me: “There’s a pretty funny parody of ‘Got My Mind Set On You’.”
Friend: 
“How do you write a parody of a song with no lyrics?”
Me: Laughing too hard to speak, just cued up my Walkman to ‘(This Song’s Just) Six Words Long’ and handed it over.
I’ve seen The Eagles, Billy Joel, The Rolling Stones and Tom Petty all in concert. NONE compared to Weird Al. He’s the man.
In short, I disagree strongly.
When I saw Al’s “Bob” video, I’d never seen the Dylan version, so I assumed he was parodying INXS’s “Mediate”.
The uncanny thing about that song is that Al wrote the entire thing based on Internet rumors and leaks well before The Phantom Menace was released in theaters.
I’ve always thought one of the most impressive things about Al’s parodies is that, in most cases, they’re still funny even if you haven’t heard the original.
Meta? You want meta? I’ll give you meta! In “Fat”, his parody of Michael Jackson’s “Bad”, he replaces Jackson’s “Jam on … jam on…” with “Ham on … ham on … ham on whole wheat”. Did you know that the Spanish word for ham is … “jamón”, and is pronounced, roughly, “ham on”?
Another meta aspect is Al’s line, “No I never wrote the lyrics”, which I always assumed was Al’s poke at the fact that Harrison, a respected songwriter, did not write “I’ve Got My Mind Set On You” himself.
The problem with Ray Stevens is that, after he made his big “comeback” with “The Mississippi Squirrel Revival”, practically every song on his followup albums sounded exactly the same. It was like, “Hey, this formula works! Let’s do ten more just like it!” And the fact that he didn’t actually write most (any?) of them himself. I do have to tip my hat to his song, “Dudley Do-right of the Highway Patrol”, in which he gets pulled over by a Southern cop who just happens to be related to just about every character character who has featured in one of Ray’s songs (“Like I was saying to my wife, Ethel … you remember Ethel? That ‘shameless hussy’?” And the song ends brilliantly as Stevens is being hauled off to jail and the cop says, “I guess everything ain’t so dad-burned beautiful now is it?” 
I’m a grad student in musicology, and I intend to write something about Weird Al someday–some of my classmates are trying to convince me to do my Master’s thesis on him, but I think that might jeopardize my career prospects a little. Once I’ve published something serious, then I’ll do it. 
You should do your master’s thesis on jazz music. I bet that would be really easy because you can just make it up as you go along.
Most of the time, I listen to Weird Al because he’s funny. He writes some really clever jokes, and does it in rhyme. He makes someone else’s composition work for him.
But when I really look at what he’s done, I’m amazed at the levels in a lot of his stuff. On the most basic level, he’s written new lyrics to a familiar tune, which is amusing by itself, and is often all anyone else’s parody song has going for it. Then there’s the level where the lines don’t just fit into the same lyric structure as the original, but they’re actually good jokes. Then there’s the level where you notice he’s also making fun of some completely different aspect of modern life, such as eBay or computer nerds.
Most parodies aren’t so ‘deep.’
Hmmm…I wanna go back on part of what I wrote here. But only part.
What I meant to say was that in the 60s, parody (of anything, really) was more restrictive. It wasn’t a sophisticated, intelligensia thing - hell, 10yos read MAD and played the little flexible 45s inside - but it was definitely not something any old wacko with a guitar and some talent could do. Comedy was more of a trade then. You had to be a recognizable regional, ethnic or class type, for one thing. And you had to poke fun on the level of the man in the street - nothing absurd, nothing surreal, nothing that was going to rock anybody’s world.
What Weird Al did, for song parody anyway, was open up the field. Here’s this guy who’s basically just a smart music geek with a sense of humor - he doesn’t do trade comedy - and of course, if trade comedy is what means funny to you, you’ll find him sophomoric and dull. But if you have even a little po-mo in you, a little self-reflexive spirit and irreverence for what makes money and fame, you’ll get him.