Wow. It’s been well over 15 years since I was a Weird Al fan but I apparently still knew every word to that song.

I’m an long time fan of the Dr. Demento show… but I haven’t listened to it in ages and ages and ages—I nearly never lived in an city where it was broadcast. But Dr. D did a lot to make my college years more fun.

I’m assuming you’ve heard about the note Mark Mothersbaugh sent Yankovic after “Dare to Be Stupid” came out…

There’s a pretty big difference between novelty songs and parody songs, IMO.  For one thing, you can have otherwise serious songwriters write a novelty song or two.  Grammy Award-winning folk musician Steve Goodman (writer of “City of New Orleans”) is probably best remembered for “A Dying Cubs Fan’s Last Request,” which gains an extra level of poignancy when you realize that Goodman was actually dying of leukemia when he wrote it and it was one of the last songs he released.

That link doesn’t go to anything, but I’m assuming you’re talking about the compliment Mothersbaugh gave Yankovic, telling him that song was more devo than Devo.  What I love about that story is there’s a slight whiff of ambiguity to it, since calling something “devo” can cut two ways.

I’ll be blasted. Wikipedia sticks parentheses in its URLs and makes it too freakin’ easy to break links.  :(

Here’s what the article says: “Shortly after the song was released, Yankovic received a letter from Mark Mothersbaugh congratulating him on writing “the perfect Devo song”. He has also said that it was “beautiful ... and I hate him for it, basically.”

... in other words, yeah, exactly what you said.

Amanda,

I actually have Dana Lyons’ Cow Pie Compilation CD I bought directly from the artist around September 2001 right after finding that song on Napster and getting a kick out of it. 

Later, also got a single of that very song in a Cows With Guns Book free off of someone doing some spring cleaning in his studio apartment. 

Also, love Weird Al’s music…..felt his goofy songs and parodies went well after blasting Green Day/Offspring on my walkman.  In fact, I used to dub Weird Al albums on the B-side of every Green Day or Offspring cassette tape. 

Weird Al is mostly known for his parody songs—-which I confess I never found very funny, since these songs were just goofy instead of pointed in their humor—-but he did do one song that I find kind of amazing.

Out of curiosity, what did you think of Headline News or Canadian Idiot?

I think you’ll like this, Amanda, especially the intro:

“You have to admire people who sing these songs.  It takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffee house or an auditorium and come out in favor of the things that everybody else in the audience is against for like peace and justice and brotherhood and so on”

I don’t know what those are.  Are they Weird Al songs?  I have no opinion, since I don’t know them.

Never really cared for Weird Al until someone sat me down with the complete video collection.  The homage songs are much better than the parodies.  Christmas at Ground Zero: “What a crazy fluke/We’re gonna get nuked/On a jolly holiday.” It takes some moxie to create that for Reagan era MTV.  I think my favorite is the do wop song One More Minute With You - “I’d rather clean all the bathrooms in Grand Central Station with my tongue/Than spend one more minute with you.”

Yeah, they’re both Weird Al songs. “Headline News” parodies the Crash Test Dummies song “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” and “Canadian Idiot” is a takeoff of the Green Day song.

That’s fucking amazing! I love Weird Al and DEVO, and I never knew about this song until now.

Yeah, they’re both Weird Al songs. “Headline News” parodies the Crash Test Dummies song “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” and “Canadian Idiot” is a takeoff of the Green Day song.

And both have some politically related commentary….especially Canadian Idiot.

It’s weird that Dr. Demento is pretty much remembered for Weird Al and… about nothing else.  Yeah, the Doc had his show, but this guy who made it big making fun of pop and stardom and all the rest… that’s the stuff that really is the story.

I really love Chamillionaire’s reaction to “White and Nerdy”, which was similar to Kurt Cobain’s response to “Smells like Nirvana”: they knew that they’d made it when Weird Al noticed them.  Still, my favorite Weird Al song of the moment is “Craigslist”, a thing that must be seen and heard to be fully appreciated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4sALru9IJk

Also, UHF is something my children and I each enjoy in equal amounts, which doesn’t mean it’s a great movie but certainly means it has something going for it.

Going off my anecdotal theory that junior high exposure warps your taste for life, I still think this is a kick-ass song and that Johnny Dangerously is still funny, although objectively speaking probably neither is true.

Add me to the “Dr. Demento is still on the air?” head-scratchers list.  His show was the last thing I listened to as a civilian, shipping out the next day to basic training at Fort Benning in November of 1990.

And my request (The Time Warp from Rocky Horror, which he had neglected to play the week before, which was Halloween) made the Funny Five, so not a bad send-off, all things considered.

In addition to his direct song parodies, which as Amanda points out really aren’t that funny, Weird Al does have a pretty decent oeuvre of “aesthetic tributes” like “Dare to Be Stupid” which aren’t direct parodies of a single particular artist’s song but instead he captures an artist’s/group’s overall style and writes a much funnier song based on that.

My grandmother thought Johnny Dangerously was funny once…Once

Anyway, it’s really too bad you didn’t listen to Dr. Demento much, or think Weird Al is mostly about “just changing the words to pop songs to make them goofier”.

At it’s best, Dr. Demento was nerdiness at it’s best:  Playful, intelligent, at times thoughtful, and not very concerned about the general public’s reaction.  Much like the cartoonists at Termite Terrace, the songs Dr. Demento played were songs that *he* thought were funny.  Just hearing about this has a ton of them tumbling around in my head:

“Outside of a Small Circle of Friends” - Phil Ochs
“Existential Blues” - Tom T-Bone Stankus
“Fluke of the Universe (Deteriorata)” - National Lampoon
“Fish Heads” - Barnes and Barnes
“They’re Coming To Take Me Away” - Napoleon XIV

He was also willing to do stuff like broadcast a full hour bit by Andy Kaufman where it’s just Andy and one of his wrestler friends having lunch.  Not my cup of tea at the time I heard it (I was fifteen), but also not the sign of someone “just into novelty songs”

As for Weird Al, I think you’re severely underestimating his abilities.  For one thing, he’s done a bunch of homages (see Craig’s List, above), and they’re all really, really good, and some of them are wonderfully obscure.  I first heard “Mr. Popeil” in 1984 when I was thirteen, and only when I reached college did I realize that it was a dead-on homage to the B-52s.  Another homage on that same album (*In 3D*, which is pretty great from beginning to end), is “Buy Me A Condo”, where a Rasta sings about selling out (“Ain’t gonna work in the fields no more/gonna be Amway distributor”).  For another, as others have alluded to, even his parodes have some bite to them, rather than just being “goofy”.

As for the other question the Salon article raises, I think we’re actually seeing a resurgence of humor in a strictly sound format:  Standup had a resurgence in the 2000’s, and songwriters like Jonathan Coulton and Flight of the Conchords have garnered more and more attention.

Best Dr. Demento song ever (or at least of the late 80’s): “We Shot the New Kids on the Block” by the Plastic Neo-Pseudo-Fascist Bastards.

Don’t Download This Song is still one of my favorites, especially with Bill Plympton animating the video.

I listen to dementiaradio.org quite a bit—they’re directly inspired by Dr. Demento.

As for Weird Al, I guess I agree that his style parodies and original work usually are better than a lot of his parodies, but it’s hard to miss one thing: he and his band are incredible musicians, maybe some of the most accomplished in pop music. I’ve always thought the best guitarist in the world is slaving away in a cover band somewhere where he (or she) will never be noticed, and I think Al and his band are strong evidence towards that point—it’s one thing to develop your own style, but it’s something entirely different to not only do that but be able to pick up other peoples’ styles and do them near-perfectly with little effort.

And I think I’d like “Cows With Guns” just a little more if the protagonist was, you know, a cow, and not a bull…

I will come out and admit it: I LOVE novelty songs.  Weird Al Yankovich is good the first time but I rapidly tire of a parody song.  Cows with Guns is one of my favourite songs in the whole world, to the point that my two-year-old is beginning to be able to sing it.  I also love Tom Lehrer, and wish we had a sharp political satirical songwriter of his ilk still around today.  “Vatican Rag” and “National Brotherhood Week” are two to start with if you haven’t heard Lehrer.  And as a Canadian, The Arrogant Worms (you may like another song lightly mocking vegetarians, Carrot Juice is Murder, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmK0bZl4ILM ) and Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie are also on my playlist.

Here’s the thing.  I am not an Insufferable Music Snob.  Good for you for being one, but I just don’t *get* it.  There is music I like and music I don’t, but I just can’t take it as seriously as some people do.  And sometimes (often) the music I don’t like is regarded by music snobs as Very Important Music.  I think there is something missing with me, in terms of musical appreciation, because it is not usually the music that decides whether I like it, but the lyrics.  So Fatboy Slim’s “Praise You” was terrible to me, so repetitive!  But everyone else loves it, so whatever.  I like music with meaningful lyrics (e.g. Leonard Cohen) and music with entertaining lyrics (novelty songs!).

You have to hear “Craig’s List” for what I think is the most sublime Weird Al ‘style parody’.  Straight up riffing on The Doors.  Man is a goddamn genius.

Thanks BrianX for noticing that cows with udders are not “he” cows - although I must say the whole thought process behind the song certainly seems stereotypically male.

For those who do think all Weird Al’s parody tunes are “just changing the words to pop songs to make them goofier”, then listen to ANYONE ELSE IN THE WORLD who does that and you’ll see the difference. The non-Weird Al folks are, one, not funny and, two, don’t have the chops Weird Al’s band has. Plus, the guy plays a monster accordion, and that is not an easy instrument to kick ass on. Witness perfection.

Plus, every time I hear that James Blunt song “You’re Beautiful” - which is way more often than I’d ever planned - I thankfully hear Weird Al’s version, “You’re Pitiful”, and my day’s a little brighter.

Wow. Doctor Demento was a huge part of my pre-teen and teen years, to the point that when my summer theater group had a showcase, I worked with a friend to choreograph a dance to “The Masochism Tango”. And Weird Al probably made the early years of Mtv much more interesting and fun than it is now.

I still sing “Fish Heads” to myself every now and then. YouTube is great for remembering old Doctor Demento songs.

I enjoy the polka covers.

Wow.

I was a regular listener to Dr. Demento’s show on KMET back when I was in elementary school (won’t say when that was). I had no idea he’d kept going all these years.

If Garfunkel & Oates aren’t novelty music, what is?

I like a few songs by Weird Al but given that we Quebecois are responsible for the pinnacle of humor singers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLiOX9qwHrM) everything you Yanks might come up with is always going to be second place for me.

If Garfunkel & Oates aren’t novelty music, what is?

“They’re not novelty music! They’re folk-pop! With a dose of humor! Edgy! Just don’t call it novelty—that shit’s for nerds!”

I always love seeing nerd artists (and nerd TV) escape from the nerd-ghetto—I just wish the insufferable music snobs who jump on the bandwagon would quit hatin’ on the nerds who weren’t fortunate enough to get declared hip…

“Dare to be Stupid” somehow reminds me of this:

“‘Tis the gift to be simple, ‘tis the gift to be free,
‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain’d,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be asham’d,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right”

Who doesn’t have an interociter?

Garfunkel and Oates are totally novelty music.

I suppose I wasn’t super clear in the post.  I don’t hate on novelty music.  I enjoy hearing a funny song, a lot.  I liked to listen to Dr. Demento when driving.  But I never understood listening to a novelty song twice.  I do think the internet is the best thing that could happen to novelty songs, because the point of them is not to be listened to over and over.  The point is to listen and laugh and then pay it forward.  Linking does that nicely.

I happen to think UHF and Johnny Dangerously are funny, but I have an inexplicable fondness for both MK and Weird Al.  I can’t blame Jr High as I was in college.  My kids certainly enjoyed them both.

I was a HUGE Weird Al fan as a kid, long before I understood how good he was at playing different styles of music, both in tribute and in parody.  I kind of outgrew him and moved on in high school and college, but this post is pushing all my nostalgia buttons and now I’m tempted to go see him when he rolls through town next month.  It’s neat how he’s slowly earned respect from a wide array of musicians across multiple genres over the years, and I’ve read in several places that his is one of the most underrated live bands working today.

And that tidbit about Devo/Mothersbaugh is too cool.

I forget who said it, but it bears repeating:  Who would have thought 30 years ago that today Michael Jackson would be dead and Weird Al would still be culturally relevant?

Plus, every time I hear that James Blunt song “You’re Beautiful” - which is way more often than I’d ever planned - I thankfully hear Weird Al’s version, “You’re Pitiful”, and my day’s a little brighter.

Matt T,

Heh.  Legal issues prevented an official release, but you can download it for free at his website.

Plus, every time I hear that James Blunt song “You’re Beautiful” - which is way more often than I’d ever planned - I thankfully hear Weird Al’s version, “You’re Pitiful”, and my day’s a little brighter.

Along somewhat similar lines, Neil Gaiman was directing people to Mitch Benn’s song, “I May Just Have to Murder James Blunt.”

Speaking of Flight of the Conchords, it’s hard to pick, but “Business Time” is probably my favorite combination of music and video from them.

The line between novelty songs and the pop charts isn’t so hard and fast. Remember “Pretty Fly(For a White Guy)” by Offspring? That’s really pushing the same buttons as Weird Al does.

I think every 11-year-old boy in the world is a Weird Al fan. My continuing favorites are “I Think I’m A Clone Now” and “This Song is Just Six Words Long.”

There are far, FAR too many songs for which I don’t know the original lyrics but do know the alternative Weird Al lyrics.  This is why I have found myself in a bar with my friends singing about Star Wars while everyone else was singing “American Pie”.  Actually, the only rock concert I have attended in my life was a Weird Al concert.  It was PHENOMENAL.

@41- I don’t know many songs by the Conchords, but someone used “Too Many Dicks on the Dance Floor” as background music for a montage showing the dearth of female characters in video games.  Very fitting.

Freshman year (1978-79) in my dorm, Sunday nights were when we’d listen to Dr. Demento.  Others have already mentioned some of the classics, but for my money the ultimate demented song was Wild Man Fischer’s “My Name is Larry”.

I really love Weird Al’s parody songs.  My favorite is “Ebay”.  Every word in that song is just so hilariously true.

Song parodies have a long and populist history.  It’s impossible to overstate the joy children find in new words to staid old tunes.  I too sometimes have difficulty remembering the real lyrics to tunes MAD magazine parodied when I was a kid.

X in the style of Y is a longstanding musical tradition, too, going back centuries, and it can easily slip from the sublime to the ridiculous.  It probably marks me as an insufferable music snob of a different stripe to say my favorite parody music is PDQ Bach.

Every word in that song is just so hilariously true

That’s exactly what I wanted to say above in response to the notion that Weird Al is “just” about making a song “goofy”.  What sets him apart is that even his parodies can transcend the notion of “it’s just a goofy song”.  Not all, I’ll readily admit, but the really good ones create a parallel song that’s fun in it’s own right, which is why his songs *are* relistenable.

Actually, that’s not the only reason, as a smile comes to my face when I replay “Polka’s On ‘45” in my head, which just takes rock songs from the ‘60s to the ‘80s and puts them to polka music (and was the first time I heard Jocko Homo).  So in the end, Weird Al is great because he just fucking is!

Weird Al is a trenchant social critic, but I can see how not everyone would be into him. I recently put on “Off the Deep End,” during a drive and remembered how awesome it was.

The Weird Al song that sticks in my head is the Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Crash Test Dummies parody.

But I do like “Money for Nothing” as interpreted by the Beverly Hillbillies. Or vice versa.

“leftist folk music”?  I’m not sure how to classify that song, but it certainly doesn’t fit in “folk music”.

When he wants to be, Weird Al can be brilliant, goofy & pointed all at once.  His piss-take on Geraldo Rivera from the underrated gem of a movie UHF is funny, sharp & mean & absolutely spot-on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdw1ZK585RU

Novelty music remains, in my mind, some of the best stuff out there.  “99 Red Balloons” has come and gone, but Tim Kavanaugh’s “99 Dead Babboons” endures (he performed it at w00tstock two weeks ago in Chicago).  “Bette Davis Eyes” is a strange and compelling song, but Bruce Baum’s “Marty Feldman Eyes” is far more memorable.  And it might have been Cracked or TVTropes.com, but a couple years ago someone said “if, twenty years ago, we told you that Michael Jackson’s career would be a joke of a shadow of itself and ‘Weird Al’ would still be going strong,” you’d have laughed your head off.

I’m forced to disagree that novelty songs are meant to be listened to once any more than pop music is.  Weird Al’s covers are surprisingly deep (sometimes—the “Flintstones Anthem” was uninspired by his own admission) and his music videos are often brilliantly choreographed and directed.  Go back and watch the “Eat It” video again.  Watch the video for “You Don’t Love Me Anymore.”  It’s weird, absurdist comedy, but some of it’s brilliant.  Beyond Al, novelty songs are a better way for some people to get an audience and a laugh than more serious pieces—it worked for Jonathan Coulton, and it still works wonders for Paul and Storm.

Not to pick on anyone who just doesn’t get novelty songs; like all things they have an audience that we’re not all part of.  I’d encourage everyone to give them a shot, though; novelty musicians are good to their fans.

I’m contractually obliged to drop a reference to Elio e le Storie Tese, a ridiculously talented Italian rock band (some say the best Italian band period) that has been exclusively doing novelty and parody songs for 30 years non-stop. I can’t express 30 years of cultural impact and artistic brilliance in a mere blog comment, so enjoy their (I shit you not) cover of Suspicious Minds-played-in-reverse (the original, for comparison)

Sorry to continue the James Blunt tangent, but I can’t listen to “You’re Beautiful” without hearing Tom Gleeson’s take on it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl7yDVy9swY