According to weirdal.com, Jeopardy is doing a Weird Al tribute on tomorrow’s show. Every category in Double Jeopardy will be based on an Al parody. Check it out!
Weird Al is working on a brand new album, and some of the tracks will be made available before it comes out (weirdal.com says the whole album should be out some time next year). The online EP is called “Internet Leaks;” no word yet on the name of the new album.
”Craigslist” is one of the new songs, and there’s already a video. It’s Al’s tribute to The Doors, and while I don’t think the song itself is especially funny (The Doors have a lot more music than they do lyrics, so they’re not exactly ripe for parody) the video is pretty great.
Last weekend, They Might Be Giants played for the second year in a row at the 2nd annual Jiggle Jam– I know, silly name, but it’s a cool festival for kids. They played an adult show at the Beaumont Club in Kansas City on Friday, then the kids show on Saturday.
I’ve seen TMBG six times and the show they played at the Beaumont this weekend was the best I’ve ever seen. They came out and played seven or eight songs, all from various albums, including West Virginia from John Linnell’s solo album State Songs– it was really fantastic, and I never thought I’d see them play anything from that one. They also played Why Does the Sun Shine, followed by a brand new song from their upcoming kids album Here Comes Science that explains how scientifically wrong that song actually is– the sun is not a mass of incandescent gass, it’s actually a miasma of incandescent plasma!
Then they played the entire Flood album in order. Some of the more unusual songs to play on stage, like Letterbox and Hot Cha, they basically played straight, and they rocked out or did weird stuff with others, like Particle Man and Twisting. Flansy pulled out a big base drum they rented for Whistling in the Dark.
And at the end, as usual, they came back on stage twice and played some of their big closers– the final song of the night was The Guitar. I wasn’t sure what they’d close with because they actually played some of their big closing songs at the very beginning, like Alphabet of Nations and Damn Good Times.
It was a weird show because while it was the most entertaining I’ve seen, they also messed up a lot. There were two or three restarts, which I’ve never seen them do. And when they barely got through Why Does the Sun Shine, Flansy said they’ve played that song way too many times. But the crowd was right with them the whole time– every time they’d do something like that, the crowd would just think it was hillarious and it ended up adding to the whole experience.
The Beaumont Club has changed their layout quite a bit and there weren’t any tables except at the very back and reserved seating on the sides, so most of us were standing right in the middle. I ended up loving that because I was closer to the band, but since there were some tall people right in front of me, I wasn’t able to get any footage of the band.
I did film some of the songs at the Jiggle Jam on Saturday. It was a fun show but not nearly as good as the night before, since they mostly played their kids music. I like TMBG’s kids stuff, but they have a tendency to play the songs that I think are on the weaker end of the spectrum, like Pirate Girls Nine and Figure Eight. But Here Come the 123s is, in my opinion, the weakest of their kids cds. I’m really looking forward to Here Comes Science, now that I’ve heard a couple of tracks in concert, both of which were really clever and catchy. The Giants have always been good at fact-based songs and I think that gives it a chance at being the best of their kids albums (so far, I still think Here Come the ABCs is superior to 123s and No!).
There was another kids artist who played before TMBG (and he opened for them last year too) who I’ve been really impressed with and bought one of his albums. His name is Justin Roberts and he plays with the Not Ready for Naptime Players. His music is very melodic and clever like the Giants, but he writes about every-day kids stuff and is good at making it interesting. His best song, I think, is The Backyard Super Kid, which he did at the show and I’ve put it here. Look him up!
TMBG recruited a local KC horn player, Steve Malloi (no idea how to spell his last name) at the last minute, to play both concerts. He played on Istanbul and Seven Days of the Week (which is a 123s song I do like a lot). I ran into him after the Jiggle Jam show and he told me he was recommended to them by a friend of a friend of a friend, and he barely knew anything about them. He learned the songs and then was quite surprised to find how big TMBGs fan base is. I hope it leads to big things for him later– he was quite good.
