Last night I saw my all-time favorite performer"Weird Al" Yankovic live in concert for the third time. This time he polka-ed the lederhosen off of Baltimore with a show at Rams Head Live, an intimate little venue near Baltimore's Inner Harbor. The space provided a great view of the stage from anywhere in the house, and I was fortunate enough to be about five rows back from the stage so I had a real good view and could see everything going on up on stage upclose. Even when the mics sputtered out from time-to-time I could hear Al singing over the music. It's thrilling to get to see someone so up close when you've been a fan of their's for 23 years.
The show itself was great. Al and his band opened with Polkarama, an upbeat polka medley of popular Top 40 hits by other artists. Then they played a few more songs from the latest CD, Straight Out of Lynwood. Over the course of the evening, Al performed 9 of the 12 songs of his new album. He also did some stuff not found on any album. The crowd was enthusiastic to hear "You're Pitiful" a parody of "You're Beautiful", which was released on the internet last summer but never made it to the CD. We were also treated to a brief new parody of the song "I'm in Love with a Stripper" entitled "I'm in Love with the Skipper" - an ode to the Gilligan's Island character of the same name.
The highlight of the evening (in my opinion) was the encore where Al and Co. performed their 1999 tune Albuquerque which clocks in at 11 minutes and 25 seconds. It's a great song, and it was cool to see Al just be Al without all the costumes and preplanned gags.
Another thing really neat about a "Weird Al" show is the crowd. There were all sorts of people there from early senior citizen all the way down to 6 and 7 year olds. In fact, it looked like some kid was having his birthday party there. It's fun when you can get all kinds of different people together just to laugh and be silly!
A great evening! I look forward to seeing Al again next time he tours!
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