Speaker 1: Of Course.
Speaker 2: Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode
Speaker 2: was produced by the team at Pandora. Hey, Hey, what's up.
Speaker 2: This is QLs classic April fourth, twenty eighteen with the
Speaker 2: Great Matthew Alfred.
Speaker 1: Yankovin that's right, y'all.
Speaker 3: Weird Al Yankee Vic.
Speaker 4: Joins us and he talks about hilarious songs that Prince
Speaker 4: would never clear, why he turned down the opening slot
Speaker 4: on Michael Jackson's nineteen eighty eight bad Tour, and how
Speaker 4: he got away with poking fun at Kurt Copaine, Cooglio
Speaker 4: and Azalea and many more.
Speaker 1: Not to mention.
Speaker 3: I gotta say this roll call intro is.
Speaker 1: One for the record books. Hope you enjoyed QLs with
Speaker 1: Weird Al Yandy Vick. All Right, yah ready, yeah, you
Speaker 1: yelling already like you. Let's go.
Speaker 5: Sub cram well sun Subpremo. Oh called Suprema Son, So
Speaker 5: supreme role called Supreme Son Son, Supremo role called Suprema Son,
Speaker 5: Suprema Roll call, rewind select the three right, come back
Speaker 5: again select Yeah, I want to do.
Speaker 1: We are in the greatness of of of of greatness
Speaker 1: right now, gentlemen, Yes, we are in the greatest of greatness.
Speaker 1: We are we are in the yo. We are remixing
Speaker 1: this role call. Thank you very much.
Speaker 6: Supremo Supremo, Ro Supreme, Supreme roll call, Supreme Supreme, roll call,
Speaker 6: Supreme Supreme.
Speaker 1: Yes to all of y'all. Yeah, I just had the remix.
Speaker 1: Yeah the brand.
Speaker 6: Carrio Suprema roll call, Supremo Supremo roll so Premoth sock
Speaker 6: Supremo call Suprema southing Suprema.
Speaker 1: My name is Fante. Yeah, this is my home.
Speaker 7: Even Ezekiel thinks my mind is gone.
Speaker 6: Supreme Supremo, roll call, Supremouth, Suprema Ro Suprema spriva ro
Speaker 6: call Suprema.
Speaker 1: My name is Sugar.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I got the Sugars, I got Sciattica, and now
Speaker 8: I'm living with a herd.
Speaker 9: Supremo Ro Supremo suthing something Suprema roll Supremoth sucks up
Speaker 9: Primo roll Supreme up from southing Sason.
Speaker 7: Sure of all the concerts, Boss Bill has been yeah weird.
Speaker 10: Yeah, in the top two.
Speaker 6: Roll call, So pray my South suck Suprema roll call,
Speaker 6: Supremo supping sup It's a Prema roll call, so pretty
Speaker 6: much sucking suck.
Speaker 3: It's a prima roll.
Speaker 1: So pre u s pre roll call.
Speaker 11: Yeah, far from emerging.
Speaker 1: Yeah, weird Al's here.
Speaker 10: Yeah, like a sober day so.
Speaker 6: Pretty much shopping shut up Prema roll Supreme up sucking
Speaker 6: sup sup pre roll call so pretty much southing suck
Speaker 6: so pra my roll call Supreme sun pre roll call.
Speaker 10: I know, free style, I am the worst. Yeah, it
Speaker 10: wouldn't be better if this won't reheart.
Speaker 1: Pray, pray pray sho. That was He was like, they're
Speaker 1: going to beat your ass. Is that you all playing? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah that was last minute, like zero o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 1: That was shout out to the school.
Speaker 11: Yes, the first time we've done that out.
Speaker 1: We've never changed the music up before.
Speaker 10: First pokemonsh up, Yeah, we had to.
Speaker 1: We're in the greatness of greatness, ladies and gentlemen. What
Speaker 1: more can I say? We have one of the greatest.
Speaker 1: I mean, he shut down his own category. He is
Speaker 1: a one of one. There.
Speaker 10: The job is taken.
Speaker 1: It's just like, you know, you are the greatest parody satire, right, satirist, Yes, satirist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you are the goat.
Speaker 10: Thank you man, you are the goat. You're the goat.
Speaker 1: As well, thank you. I feel goadus pleasy, gentleman. Please
Speaker 1: welcome Alfred Matthew yank wow go, I have to use it.
Speaker 10: My social Security numbers five six, n.
Speaker 1: Man one. I'm grateful that you did this. I'm thankful
Speaker 1: because you know, we've all been fan of yours. But
Speaker 1: I mean, it's to the point that you're not even
Speaker 1: a proper nown. You're a verb.
Speaker 10: You're i mean, like a weird out of the song. Yeah, oh,
Speaker 10: you're weird about that song exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: How are you though, place for asking?
Speaker 10: Doing very well? I just just got back from uh,
Speaker 10: Hawaii last night.
Speaker 1: We were there.
Speaker 10: We lived there part time, and I'm just kind of
Speaker 10: getting used to uh uh not seeing the ocean and
Speaker 10: flowers and beautiful things all the time.
Speaker 1: Thanks.
Speaker 10: We live in the east side. Hey, we live out
Speaker 10: in the jungle. We're about another half a mile down
Speaker 10: the road and we there's like no internet, no nothing.
Speaker 10: We're in the jungle, baby really yeah, why because it's
Speaker 10: a whole different kind of Hawaii. Mean, you can go
Speaker 10: to the west side and there's like, you know, you
Speaker 10: can have your drinks by the pool and it's very
Speaker 10: res already and very nice. But but the East Side
Speaker 10: is like old Hawaii and it just feels like, you know,
Speaker 10: you can really kind of it's a place where you
Speaker 10: go and do nothing. A lot of people like go
Speaker 10: to to Hanna and they go, oh, there's nothing here.
Speaker 10: That's kind of the point. It's like a great place
Speaker 10: to unplug.
Speaker 1: So you needed to uh sort of recharge and and yeah.
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's a it's a whole. It's kind of like
Speaker 10: the opposite of l A. So a couple of times
Speaker 10: a year my family goes out there and just kind
Speaker 10: of unplugs and you know, talk, talk to the cows,
Speaker 10: you know, hang out.
Speaker 1: No, you just scared me with no Internet. Yeah, get
Speaker 1: you away from Instagram? Why would you ever want to
Speaker 1: do that? But I understand it's necessary.
Speaker 10: Where are you from from Linwood? Straight o Linwood? Yeah.
Speaker 10: In fact, Shiat Knight went to my high school.
Speaker 7: What wow wait wait wait wait, sarcasm detectors right.
Speaker 10: Now, that's absolutely true.
Speaker 1: Wow Okay.
Speaker 10: Fred Winn from The Monsters, Mark Spitz, I believe, and
Speaker 10: Kevin Costner also went to the same time.
Speaker 1: Wow wow. Uh So, first of all, what were you
Speaker 1: like as a kid? And I asked that very slowly
Speaker 1: because I don't think people are yeah accurate in describing themselves.
Speaker 10: But I mean, well, this might come as a huge
Speaker 10: shock to you, but I was a little nerdy really, No, No,
Speaker 10: I was. I was definitely well, I was sort of
Speaker 10: a you know, sort of a weird kid, I was.
Speaker 10: But I was always a good student. I was always
Speaker 10: a straight a student, the kind of guy that you
Speaker 10: try to copy off of during math class and then
Speaker 10: beat up at recess.
Speaker 1: But you know, because you try to, you gave the
Speaker 1: wrong answers anywhere.
Speaker 10: Just mess with them. But no, I was always a
Speaker 10: good kid, but I was always a little strange. I
Speaker 10: kind of kept to myself and and ate with the
Speaker 10: other nerdy kids during lunchtime, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, basically yeah, yeah, this room read backstory. So your
Speaker 1: your gift of music? How did that start?
Speaker 10: Like, well, I guess it started when my parents decided
Speaker 10: I should take accordion lessons.
Speaker 1: Uh why, well they could.
Speaker 10: Well, I think you know, the joke answer is that
Speaker 10: they realized that according music was going to take over
Speaker 10: Western civilization. But really I think they honestly thought that
Speaker 10: it would make me more popular, because you know, when
Speaker 10: you play the accordion, you're a one man band, you're
Speaker 10: the life of any party.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know something though, they were right.
Speaker 10: In their own weird way.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no one in this world that does
Speaker 1: not know who you are.
Speaker 10: So it's like it was actually kind of a stroke
Speaker 10: of luck that they decided on such a dorky instrument.
Speaker 10: Because Doctor Demento the Distract really started my career. He
Speaker 10: says that. You know, when he got my first tape
Speaker 10: in the mail, he said, if it was some teenage
Speaker 10: kid playing the guitar and doing those same songs, he
Speaker 10: wouldn't have given it a second thought. But because there
Speaker 10: was this teenage kid playing the accordion and somehow thinking
Speaker 10: he was cool, he said, well, that's the novelty. That's
Speaker 10: worth the maritime Wow.
Speaker 12: So can you write down for us how the accordion works,
Speaker 12: like as an instrument, like how like physically? Weeks Yeah,
Speaker 12: how physically works and how you read the music? Does
Speaker 12: it is like a piano or the right hand.
Speaker 10: Part is like a piano. It's talking about piano acordions.
Speaker 10: They're different kind of accordions, but that's the one I use.
Speaker 10: So the right hand part is exactly like a piano
Speaker 10: and the left hand part is buttons. Their accordions have
Speaker 10: different numbers of buttons. One twenty is like the standard one.
Speaker 10: The top two rows are basses and all the rest
Speaker 10: are chords. Like the next row of chords is major chords,
Speaker 10: then minor chords and seventh chords and then diminished chords.
Speaker 10: And there's a lot of repeat buttons because you don't
Speaker 10: want to have to like do one button on one
Speaker 10: side of the accordion then immediately go.
Speaker 13: You know.
Speaker 10: So it's just, you know, looking back on it, it's
Speaker 10: kind of a hard instrument to learn. And I figured
Speaker 10: out because I gave my daughter accordion lessons a few
Speaker 10: years ago. She out of the blues, decided she wanted
Speaker 10: to play the accordion, which you know, I have to
Speaker 10: say that so they don't send me to send it
Speaker 10: to child Protective Services.
Speaker 1: She actually asked.
Speaker 10: And we got her a little accordion, and I taught
Speaker 10: her some Christmas songs and she lost interests after couple
Speaker 10: of months. But but she actually, you know, can play
Speaker 10: a few songs.
Speaker 1: This is there a left handed according for those that
Speaker 1: whose lead hand is their left.
Speaker 10: You mean to play like the keys on the left hand.
Speaker 10: That's a really good question. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 10: and maybe you could play it upside down. I've never
Speaker 10: seen that done though. That's I have no idea. I
Speaker 10: don't know.
Speaker 1: Are you related to now? There was a clip when
Speaker 1: you first came to the Tonight Show to sit in
Speaker 1: with us, and we did this extended polka jam and
Speaker 1: it was based on a Yankovic.
Speaker 10: Who was Franky Yankovic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, are you related to him? Not?
Speaker 10: Not as far as I can figure. I mean, maybe
Speaker 10: several generations ago. I'm sure we're all We're ALLTD somehow,
Speaker 10: but no direct relation. But that might have been another
Speaker 10: reason why my parents decided I should take take according lessons,
Speaker 10: because there was already America's polka King, Frankie Yankovic, and
Speaker 10: they thought, oh, there should be at least one more
Speaker 10: accordion playing Yankovic in the world. I actually I met
Speaker 10: Frankie passed away some time ago, but I actually got
Speaker 10: to bring him out to LA and feature him in
Speaker 10: a TV special called A Weirdoul's Guide to the Grammys
Speaker 10: because polka was a category for the first time that year.
Speaker 10: Sometime in the late eighties, I guess, and we did
Speaker 10: a whole thing where we you know, gave him a
Speaker 10: fake star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and we
Speaker 10: did a poolside interview. We did a whole Frankie Goes
Speaker 10: to Hollywood.
Speaker 1: So, growing up or at least being a teenager in
Speaker 1: the seventies and on the dawning of disco, how are
Speaker 1: you able to have a high school existence sort of
Speaker 1: like you know, with band practice and that sort of
Speaker 1: thing with the accordion? Like were you starting bands and
Speaker 1: those things?
Speaker 10: I tried, and for some reason, none of my friends
Speaker 10: that had bands felt the need for an accordion player.
Speaker 10: I don't know why. I just I found out early
Speaker 10: on that if I really wanted to to play the accordion,
Speaker 10: I could either you know, play for bar Mitza's and
Speaker 10: Italian weddings, or it could go my own way. And
Speaker 10: I was always drawn toward the bizarre and comedy, and
Speaker 10: and when I was exposed to Doctor Demento, that really
Speaker 10: kind of opened the door for me because I thought, oh, well,
Speaker 10: these are my people.
Speaker 1: I see so with well, I want to know, like
Speaker 1: right before Doctor Demento, like were you could you play
Speaker 1: any other instrument or not?
Speaker 12: Not?
Speaker 10: Really? I mean, you know, when when you played the accordion,
Speaker 10: that means you can also play the piano, of course,
Speaker 10: but so so technically I could, but my right hand
Speaker 10: is very used to keys and my left hand is
Speaker 10: not so to this day, if I'm playing piano, I'm
Speaker 10: you know, my left hand is just either I'm playing
Speaker 10: some very rudimentary lines or I'm waving to the crowd.
Speaker 1: That is weird. Okay, So explain me the Doctor Demento
Speaker 1: connection in seventy six with you given him.
Speaker 10: When I when I actually gave him a tape. Doctor
Speaker 10: Demento came my high school oddly enough and was doing
Speaker 10: an assembly sometimes he was on a show where he does,
Speaker 10: you know, does an educational assembly of comedy and demented music,
Speaker 10: and he happened to be at Lynwood High School and
Speaker 10: I at the same time, he was doing a contest
Speaker 10: called a contest for Peko and Supulvita, which is his
Speaker 10: theme song, and people were sending in their own versions
Speaker 10: of the Peako and Supulvia Pico and Supulvita Pico and Sapulvita.
Speaker 10: And I did my own horrible version of it and
Speaker 10: gave him the cassette tape in person, and I think
Speaker 10: he promptly lost it. It was terrible, and I never
Speaker 10: made it to air, but that was my first contact
Speaker 10: with him, and since then I would send him stuff
Speaker 10: on the mail, and eventually it got good enough that
Speaker 10: he started playing them on the radio. But when I
Speaker 10: first started, I was like thirteen years old. They were
Speaker 10: I mean, even the stuff he played was horrible, but
Speaker 10: before that they were extra horrible.
Speaker 1: Were these originals or did you even start the world
Speaker 1: of parody then, like I sort of thing.
Speaker 10: It was a little bit of both. I mean, Peoples
Speaker 10: a pub but it would have my cover. But yeah,
Speaker 10: the first songs I sent him, it was a combination
Speaker 10: of originals and and and parodies, but none none of
Speaker 10: it had much of a rock feel to it, because
Speaker 10: you know, I was used to my classical training on
Speaker 10: the accordion was was Polka's and some classical pieces, so
Speaker 10: didn't I really kind of got into playing rock on
Speaker 10: the accordion by just playing along with my Elton John
Speaker 10: records and things like that, just trying to figure out
Speaker 10: like rock chord structures.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the first time I've heard of you was
Speaker 1: I think another One Rides the Bus and I think
Speaker 1: it was like eighty one, like someone Wall.
Speaker 10: It was the actual date that we did that was
Speaker 10: September fourteenth, nineteen eighty, which was it was live performance
Speaker 10: because we never re recorded that. I just played it
Speaker 10: live on the Doctor Demento Show and he had that
Speaker 10: was it. It was live on the show and he
Speaker 10: just happened to turn the tape recorder on for it
Speaker 10: for an air check. And that air check of that
Speaker 10: live recording that is the master tape to this day,
Speaker 10: the original tape. I would assume Doctor Demento has it,
Speaker 10: but I mean it it sounds just like you know
Speaker 10: what's on the record.
Speaker 1: Is he still Doctor Minio is still alive?
Speaker 10: He is, Yeah, he he's not on terrestrial radio anymore,
Speaker 10: but he is still doing a weekly show at Doctor
Speaker 10: Demento dot com. So he's still doing it, same, same
Speaker 10: same show.
Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, see your initial rhythm section kind of had
Speaker 1: this fart noisy thing that I used to always be
Speaker 1: obsessed with. Like that started. You know, every kid has
Speaker 1: an obsession with farting, uh huh. But it was when
Speaker 1: I heard another one rise the bus. Then I started
Speaker 1: like like trying to do fart right. First of all,
Speaker 1: who's making that noise? And then who's how do.
Speaker 10: You that that is? Musical Mike Keefer. Mike Keefer has
Speaker 10: been part of the Doctor Meno show for many years
Speaker 10: and he is the technical term is manualist, a person
Speaker 10: that makes those flatulent noises with his hands. And I
Speaker 10: used him a lot. I used him a lot for
Speaker 10: the first few albums, not so much in later albums.
Speaker 10: But it was quite a process because he would have
Speaker 10: to make a it was a whole process to record
Speaker 10: that in the studio. First, he'd have to wash his
Speaker 10: hands very thoroughly because they couldn't be at all greasy.
Speaker 10: They had to be super squeaky clean dry. And then
Speaker 10: we use two microphones because when he puts his hands together,
Speaker 10: one noise would come out of the top of the
Speaker 10: hands and one noise would come out of the bottom
Speaker 10: of the hands, so we get real actual stereo separation.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, no, don't yeah right now. Uh so how
Speaker 1: did you well, I know that, uh was my BALLOONA
Speaker 1: on the B side? I'm not certain, but how did
Speaker 1: you how did you get to the next level from
Speaker 1: just like making this stuff for Dotor Demento and then
Speaker 1: like there's labels out there, I want to.
Speaker 10: My balloon was the year before that was recorded literally
Speaker 10: in a bathroom. Uh, and it wasn't the northern wris
Speaker 10: of the bus. And then and that was still while
Speaker 10: I was in college. I was getting my degree in
Speaker 10: architecture at the time, uh the California Polytechnic State University
Speaker 10: at San Luis Obispo. And uh so and after I graduated, Uh,
Speaker 10: basically I knew that I didn't want to be an architect.
Speaker 10: I wasn't sure that I'd ever be able to make
Speaker 10: a career in the music industry, because just because you
Speaker 10: have a hit on the Doctor Atmano Show, that doesn't
Speaker 10: really mean anything in the real world. But I decided, well,
Speaker 10: you know, I'm young, and uh, I've got some time,
Speaker 10: and let me knock on a few doors. And uh Luckily,
Speaker 10: within a couple of years, I was able to rent
Speaker 10: land a record deal. So based on the early recordings
Speaker 10: and some new demos that I'd donated I Love Rocky
Speaker 10: Road for I love rock and roll, and and based
Speaker 10: on that, we were able to land Rick Deringer as
Speaker 10: a producer and a Scottie Brothers as a record label,
Speaker 10: and that we did. The first album did okay, it
Speaker 10: didn't brint up the chart, but it did fine, and
Speaker 10: it was it did well enough to merit me doing
Speaker 10: a second album, and the second album, yeah, that's when
Speaker 10: it happened with yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but even even then, what was the selling point
Speaker 1: that you know, like this is were you trying to say,
Speaker 1: look as a comedian, Were you trying to be billed
Speaker 1: as a comedian or you know, well shatteririst.
Speaker 10: Or just I you know, I wasn't so much into labels,
Speaker 10: but uh uh, you know I I I was going
Speaker 10: for grins. It was obviously a comedy act. It was
Speaker 10: meant to be meant to be novelty, and that that
Speaker 10: was the reason why it was hard for me to
Speaker 10: get signed to a record deal, because we you know,
Speaker 10: we know, we approached basically every record store in a
Speaker 10: record company in town and uh record stores too, but
Speaker 10: record company in town, and they all said, oh, this
Speaker 10: is really funny stuff, this is brilliant work. Yeah, we're
Speaker 10: not interested. This is novelty. You're going to be like
Speaker 10: you know, if you're lucky, you'll be a footnote and
Speaker 10: you'll be gone in six months. So we want, we
Speaker 10: want artists are gonna have a lot of lasting career.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So with in three D, did you think like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be my one and only album, And.
Speaker 10: Well, I mean it was sort of a you know,
Speaker 10: you never know because when I was signed, it was
Speaker 10: I was signed to a ten album deal. And that
Speaker 10: does that doesn't mean, oh, I'm going to do ten albums.
Speaker 10: That means on the extremely off chance that I'm successful
Speaker 10: enough to have ten albums, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, anytime, right,
Speaker 10: So you never know, you never know. And my first album,
Speaker 10: like I said, it did okay but not great. And
Speaker 10: you know, every album could about my last, so you
Speaker 10: always have that in mind. But after Edith came out,
Speaker 10: after N three D came out and it did so well,
Speaker 10: I was pretty sure there's gonna be another album after that.
Speaker 12: Can you explain to us just, uh, I guess the
Speaker 12: legal way that you're able to do the parody? What's
Speaker 12: the line between parody and you know, right in friends?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, how do you how do you navigate that?
Speaker 10: I always try to go a little above and beyond because,
Speaker 10: according to the Supreme Court rulings, UH, fair use would
Speaker 10: imply that I could get away with a lot more
Speaker 10: than I do. Uh, you know, in terms of parody
Speaker 10: and satire, I don't necessarily have to ask permission but
Speaker 10: I always do because part of my logic is that
Speaker 10: I want to have long term relationships with all the
Speaker 10: artists that I'm parodying, and I want, I really honestly
Speaker 10: want them to feel like there and I'm the joke.
Speaker 10: I don't want anybody to be upset or offended that
Speaker 10: I'm doing a parody of one of their songs. It's
Speaker 10: all making good fun and I want them, you know,
Speaker 10: I don't want to step on anybody's toes.
Speaker 12: So then with the parody works that you make, how
Speaker 12: is the publishing split between is it you or is
Speaker 12: it all the old artists?
Speaker 10: It's I'll tell you it's It's literally a different case
Speaker 10: every time, every single one is negotiated. I would say,
Speaker 10: by and large, the standard deal is the original artist
Speaker 10: keeps all the publishing, and well you get the writer.
Speaker 10: Well we split the writer. I mean, I'd love to
Speaker 10: get some of the publishing, but people are very loath
Speaker 10: through give that up.
Speaker 1: Well damn, we already rushed to your nose versus your yeses.
Speaker 1: And I guess your most famous no was Prince. But yeah,
Speaker 1: first of all, I want to know what song did
Speaker 1: you try to parody of? Prints? And then what's the
Speaker 1: what's the asking process? Uh?
Speaker 10: Well, but a half a dozen songs that I approached
Speaker 10: Prince for. One of them was going to be in
Speaker 10: my movie U a Chef like, which was let's Let's
Speaker 10: go Crazy, but with the lyrics of the Beverly Hill
Speaker 10: Believes theme song. Oh wow, it would have been fun.
Speaker 10: Uh they're at nineteen ninety nine. I wanted to do
Speaker 10: that about like a mister ron Pope peel kind of
Speaker 10: like add for like you can buy this for nineteen
Speaker 10: you know, and they were like a half it doesn't
Speaker 10: like that that I wanted to try.
Speaker 1: But uh, no you can now you said no, no,
Speaker 1: oh they welcome it now you no, No.
Speaker 10: The Prince isn't going to change his mind. Now that's
Speaker 10: the thing, you know. But you know, I respect the
Speaker 10: artist wishes, you know, even if it doesn't matter what
Speaker 10: the state says. No, I mean, you know you would
Speaker 10: know that he were not their wishes. I'm concerned about
Speaker 10: his Prince's wishes.
Speaker 1: And you know, good man, good man, but please demo it.
Speaker 10: Do There's no need to do a demo for parody
Speaker 10: because you know how it goes, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, you didn't do a full scale nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: I did.
Speaker 10: Not, you know, for a lot of songs. I don't
Speaker 10: even write any lyrics until I get permission because it's
Speaker 10: really a bummerdoo hard like yeah, because I spend some times,
Speaker 10: like weeks on a single song and to go through
Speaker 10: all that effort and then to go, yeah, I don't
Speaker 10: really like parodies, and that's a heartbreak.
Speaker 11: So how far did you get to the point of
Speaker 11: asking can I do a parody? Or asking can I
Speaker 11: do a parody of?
Speaker 1: This? Is what?
Speaker 10: No, we always we always picture a specific ideas, so
Speaker 10: we always say we want to do parody of this song,
Speaker 10: and here's the general idea.
Speaker 1: I don't know where I heard from. I think someone
Speaker 1: that asked him a question about it, and he he
Speaker 1: said something like it actually I like him or whatever.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't. It wasn't an eye roll or like
Speaker 1: a no, my song is.
Speaker 10: But the only thing I've I've heard I've heard audio
Speaker 10: of him talking about my fat video. I was going
Speaker 10: to maybe he said something else. Best I've heard any
Speaker 10: like that at the time, So what.
Speaker 1: Do you say?
Speaker 7: He it was it's a rehearsal tape and he's basically
Speaker 7: asking the band if they saw the video for fat
Speaker 7: and he's like talking about him in the fat suit,
Speaker 7: and he's just like cracking up the entire time he
Speaker 7: saw him.
Speaker 1: The story, it's pretty great. That would have been encouraging. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would have been damn man, Now you would have
Speaker 1: killed nineteen. Do you think of the other print songs
Speaker 1: that you us?
Speaker 10: Those are my favorites. I think I think there was
Speaker 10: something with when Dove's Cry, Like I think like a
Speaker 10: fast fruit, a fast food guy, when Spud's fry or
Speaker 10: something like that. Another food song, another food song.
Speaker 1: How do how do ideas come to you? Like? Do
Speaker 1: you have these dictaphones on standby or you know, like
Speaker 1: just when moments.
Speaker 10: Like well, in the in the very beginning, it was
Speaker 10: just like whatever stupid idea came to I had to go, oh,
Speaker 10: I'll go with that. But after I started getting some
Speaker 10: success and realizing people actually, you know, care about what
Speaker 10: I do and a lot of people will obsess over
Speaker 10: but I think, well, I should put some more effort
Speaker 10: into the So now, whenever I find a song that
Speaker 10: I think has potential for parody, I'll think of like
Speaker 10: a hundred ideas for it. I'll think of every variation
Speaker 10: on the thing I possibly can. I'm very analytical about it.
Speaker 10: I'll go down and listen and try to see which
Speaker 10: of those ideas have any comedic potential and would be
Speaker 10: able to sustain comedy for three or three and a
Speaker 10: half minutes. And sometimes none of them do. I mean,
Speaker 10: sometimes they're all bad ideas, but if I'm lucky, one
Speaker 10: will stand out.
Speaker 1: So are you obsessively reading Billboard and listening to music?
Speaker 10: And I certainly used to. I haven't been that obsessive
Speaker 10: in the last couple of years. I'm kind of kind
Speaker 10: of slowing down a little bit. I'm looking at other projects,
Speaker 10: but in the thick of it, when I'm actively trying
Speaker 10: to figure out what are the parodies, Yeah, I'm listening
Speaker 10: to a top forty radio and definitely studying Billboard.
Speaker 1: Well, I was going to say, like, you know, there's
Speaker 1: there's always as a musician and as a music fan,
Speaker 1: there's a point in life where you're actually gave aged
Speaker 1: in contemporary music culture, and then there's a point where
Speaker 1: you're like, you feel like, uh, I hate music now
Speaker 1: or not I hate music.
Speaker 10: But it's well, I'll tell you you know, I like
Speaker 10: Top forty music. I like that, but uh, you know
Speaker 10: it's not my first choice. I mean, if I could
Speaker 10: listen to any radio station, I wouldn't automatically listen to
Speaker 10: the top twenty hits.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 10: So whenever I was it wasn't that I was not
Speaker 10: enjoying it, but I kind of felt like I was
Speaker 10: on the clock, you know, I was working.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was going to say, does it make it
Speaker 1: harder for you? Now? Like if you hear something as
Speaker 1: insanely popular as bad and Boogie or Bowdak Yellow and
Speaker 1: you're like, Okay, I know this is this can be
Speaker 1: an instant viral moment for me, But am I really
Speaker 1: emotionally invested to it?
Speaker 11: Would be interesting, though, Bodak that would be interesting weird
Speaker 11: out parody.
Speaker 10: Yeah, well I'll consider all that.
Speaker 1: They both wait, they both would be I think you
Speaker 1: said they both are parodies.
Speaker 8: Well, I mean, what's what's your actual favorite type of music,
Speaker 8: like when you're just at home, Mostly like Viking songs
Speaker 8: and whaling music, you know, thank you, like thirteenth century stuff.
Speaker 10: Wow, it's like Game of thro Oh no, that's contemporary.
Speaker 3: That stuff's still better than pop music.
Speaker 10: So that's while music was good?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I don't particularly engage in the music that
Speaker 1: I make a living in. But you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: if I'm driving a car, I'm rather listening to jazz
Speaker 1: and something completely opposite, or at least to get inspired.
Speaker 10: So I find I listened a lot to the music
Speaker 10: that I was listening to in high school and college.
Speaker 10: That's sort of like my comfort food of music. It's like, oh, remember,
Speaker 10: that's what I'm asking you. What what kind of stuff
Speaker 10: is that?
Speaker 9: You know?
Speaker 10: It's a lot of British invasion stuff, a lot of
Speaker 10: singer songwriter stuff from the seventies, like a lot of
Speaker 10: you know, the kind of the garage bands from the
Speaker 10: nineties kind of thing, the grunge movement, a lot of
Speaker 10: artists that are not necessarily comedy your novelty, but have
Speaker 10: a sense of humor and you know, alternative stuff.
Speaker 8: What about your record collection? You still have your record
Speaker 8: collection from when you're a teenager?
Speaker 1: You know that.
Speaker 10: You know, I should have held onto all my vinyls.
Speaker 10: My my wife talked me into a you we got
Speaker 10: the c D like but I but I, but I
Speaker 10: want to stay married, so.
Speaker 3: Damn yeah, they take up space.
Speaker 6: It is.
Speaker 1: The wife was coming. Sorry, So on the I guess
Speaker 1: the opposite side of the fence. Oh wait, before I
Speaker 1: get to even get to Michael Jackson, how important is
Speaker 1: it to you to sort of nurture relationships because I
Speaker 1: find that oftentimes if you go the traditional business route, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna parody, I'm gonna do something on Rod Stewart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then your manager calls their manager, the label calls
Speaker 1: it a label. Then usually it's like some red tape
Speaker 1: shit and it never happens. But you know, if you
Speaker 1: happen to be friends with Rod Stewart and you're like, look,
Speaker 1: I have a really cool idea. Oh yeah, I'll be
Speaker 1: honored for you to bet you.
Speaker 10: Know, that sort of thing that happens a lot, you know,
Speaker 10: because sometimes it's just hard to get through to another artist.
Speaker 10: So if I ever have a direct connection, and I've
Speaker 10: used that several times, I mean that was I did
Speaker 10: that with Kurt Cobain, like, you know, you know, my
Speaker 10: manager couldn't get through to his, you know, their manager.
Speaker 10: And finally, you know, I knew somebody at Saurday Night
Speaker 10: Live and they were performing that day, and I said,
Speaker 10: could you please get Kurt on the phone, And I
Speaker 10: got to talk to them directly.
Speaker 1: Wait that easy?
Speaker 10: Well basically, and then I told my manager and I said,
Speaker 10: Kurt's fine with it. And then then his manager could
Speaker 10: call back their managers say, Kurt fine with that.
Speaker 1: How did you pitch Kurt Cobain?
Speaker 10: Well, this is a famous story. I talked him on
Speaker 10: the phone and this is their first time on Saturday
Speaker 10: Night Live. I'm not sure if he was in his
Speaker 10: right mind, but I was talking about the phone and
Speaker 10: I said, hey, curtis a word all Yankovic and I
Speaker 10: wanted to do. I want to do a parody of
Speaker 10: your song that smells like teen Spirit. And he goes, oh,
Speaker 10: that's cool. And then there's a kind of a pause
Speaker 10: and he goes, is it going to be about food?
Speaker 1: He's a fan, yeah, yea.
Speaker 10: And I said, well, no, that's actually about how nobody
Speaker 10: can understand your lyrics. And he goes, oh, yeah, sure,
Speaker 10: that's funny.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 10: He was a very cool guy. He actually wrote some
Speaker 10: very nice things about me and his journals. Remember when
Speaker 10: they published the journals, he wrote, ah, well, a humble bragger,
Speaker 10: but he wrote weird Al Yankovic is a modern rock genius.
Speaker 1: You are I mean no, no, you are so you
Speaker 1: doing eat it in the at the height of Michael mania.
Speaker 1: I would think that it was actually easier to uh
Speaker 1: get permission from Prince at that time dude, than Michael Jackson.
Speaker 1: That was then Michael's like one of your most accommodating.
Speaker 10: That was a real shot in the dark because you know,
Speaker 10: at the at that time, I certainly wasn't any you know,
Speaker 10: kind of household name. I was just this weird kid
Speaker 10: from LA that was making these stupid records and we thought, oh,
Speaker 10: maybe Michael Jackson will sign off on those, like ha
Speaker 10: ha ha. But mantra was you know, it never hurts
Speaker 10: to ask, you know, what's going to do?
Speaker 1: Say no.
Speaker 10: Uh So we put it out there and uh, I
Speaker 10: forgot forget how long it took.
Speaker 1: But was it a thing or no? No, no.
Speaker 10: I got to meet Michael after the pack a couple
Speaker 10: of times, but at the time it was sort of
Speaker 10: it was just sort of like, uh, okay, Michael signed
Speaker 10: off on it, and there is a contract I've I've
Speaker 10: got a copy of it with my signature next to
Speaker 10: Michael Jackson's signature saying that we are the co writers
Speaker 10: of Eat It.
Speaker 7: Wow, that is cool, which, by the way, was one
Speaker 7: of the first records I ever owned.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so uh, Scottie Brothers, were they seeing Dallas
Speaker 1: signs as in like let's do the video full scale
Speaker 1: or you know, how did you convince them to?
Speaker 10: Well they had either Tiger money by this point, did
Speaker 10: they not survivor Yeah, so they had that, didn't you do?
Speaker 1: I think you did?
Speaker 10: Uh yeah, very yeah you did that on the second
Speaker 10: album as well. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, they're happy about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 10: I think that was probably the same studio the Originals
Speaker 10: recorded in.
Speaker 3: So that was nice. Oh wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 10: And they also had James Brown.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they had the it was the Unreal album. They
Speaker 1: had Gravity Yeah.
Speaker 10: Yeah, gotta support those Scotti Brothers artists.
Speaker 1: You know, Dan Harmon was happy.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So uh.
Speaker 1: Who's what was the brain child?
Speaker 11: Uh?
Speaker 1: Kind of genesis of the edit video to go full
Speaker 1: scale on it?
Speaker 10: Well? That was you know, that was that was in
Speaker 10: the days when people were obsessed with m t V.
Speaker 10: Were you know, if if a video is on heavy rotation,
Speaker 10: like Michael Jackson obviously was, you knew every minute detail
Speaker 10: of the video and it was very get a parody
Speaker 10: because all you had to do was recreate it and
Speaker 10: just tweak things just a little bit and it would
Speaker 10: be funny. And at the time it was my most
Speaker 10: you know, expensive video because my first video costs like
Speaker 10: three thousand dollars. My record lab was like, oh great,
Speaker 10: we'll do all your videos for three thousand dollars. Like no, no, no, no,
Speaker 10: hold on, I think eat it. At the time, my
Speaker 10: manager hates want to talk money, but I'll tell you
Speaker 10: it cost forty thousand dollars and that was a real video.
Speaker 10: Mone that was at the time. That was yeah, but
Speaker 10: I mean that was the best forty thousand dollars I
Speaker 10: ever spent my life.
Speaker 1: But how did you find the jacket? And how did
Speaker 1: you get Cheryl's in the video to buy a jacket?
Speaker 10: And then you store At the time it was nineteen
Speaker 10: eighty four. Man, I was like, there were the Michael.
Speaker 1: Jackson jiano tea you had on and all that.
Speaker 10: That was the piano t We had to have an
Speaker 10: art director cookout for us. But then yeah, the jack
Speaker 10: was just off the rack, Like if you want to,
Speaker 10: you know, pay whatever. It was six hundred dollars to
Speaker 10: get a leather Michael Jackson jacket that could be had.
Speaker 1: Who directed? Who do you know who directed the video?
Speaker 10: I do that was my manager, Jay Levy, Hey is everywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 10: he was making his directorial debut. I mean I story
Speaker 10: boarded it out and figured out the shots and then
Speaker 10: I said, here, Jay, you deal with this.
Speaker 1: I was impressed that you had Cheryl's song in the video,
Speaker 1: the the long haired Asian woman from Soul Train. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: who heard her hair head comes off? Whatever? Wait? Was
Speaker 1: that wasn't? Uh? It was Michael wasn't actual head?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 1: No, no, I'm trying to figure if you got Michael Peters.
Speaker 10: Yeah, is that his name?
Speaker 1: No? No, Michael Peters was the choreographer, well, the one of.
Speaker 10: The choreographersons and what was gosh, I'm going a blankht
Speaker 10: his name was? It sounds like Peterson?
Speaker 11: Must he was the original white jacket.
Speaker 10: Yeah, he was the original guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah that Michael, Michael Peter, Michael Peters. It was the
Speaker 1: white jacket.
Speaker 10: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's him.
Speaker 1: That was him.
Speaker 10: How we asked him, he said, Okay, damn, how much is.
Speaker 11: The original beat it video? Callt y'all think?
Speaker 1: I think? Well, I know Billy Jean was sixty five.
Speaker 1: It was still under one hundred thousan was it really?
Speaker 6: Wow?
Speaker 1: Yeah? It was under Yeah, I mean Thriller it was
Speaker 1: a million, but I know Billy Jean was sixty five
Speaker 1: and and beat it was like eighty five half the
Speaker 1: price under yeah, like slightly under hundred. Yeah.
Speaker 10: We had to recreate the barroom scene and if you
Speaker 10: have the thing, we looked for the original locations, but
Speaker 10: it was all uh they all had the pool. Yeah,
Speaker 10: that was just a set on stage.
Speaker 1: Wow, man, great, congrats on the details.
Speaker 9: Man.
Speaker 1: Actually, my favorite thing about your repertoire is your polka methleys.
Speaker 1: And I'll say that the first time that I saw you,
Speaker 1: not on Solid Gold or or MTV the Tonight Show,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you did you did poke yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: ye dog. That was the most jaw dropping. That's when
Speaker 1: I started buying your albums, like you were just the
Speaker 1: weird out guy and like, oh, the eaty guy whatever,
Speaker 1: you know. But when I saw that, it that was fun.
Speaker 10: I remember that we had to have the actual Tonight
Speaker 10: Show band playing the horn section behind if they had
Speaker 10: all the charts.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So that's the thing, like you're not just the
Speaker 1: parody guy, like you're these arrangements and and just the
Speaker 1: clever nuances of like how you do on a lonely
Speaker 1: heart with the clarinet arra stuff. Are you notating this
Speaker 1: stuff on on scoring it or oh?
Speaker 10: Yeah, absolutely? I mean now I use notation software, but
Speaker 10: at the back, back then in the day, I just
Speaker 10: would print out, uh you know, I wouldn't even print
Speaker 10: out to go. I'd use the uh you know, the
Speaker 10: staffs and just write it with with pencils right on there.
Speaker 1: Okay, you can help me and Steve out on this
Speaker 1: because I'm so okay, uh when you do uh the
Speaker 1: bang your head man, Yeah, okay. The what is the
Speaker 1: the hornhunk? That's what is that called. We we were
Speaker 1: looking for it for least a half hour. It's a.
Speaker 10: That's called the bulb horn. So it has a rubber
Speaker 10: the rubber thing squeezed.
Speaker 1: I was going through every like every time I couldn't google,
Speaker 1: like I was. I was, oh god, I was looking
Speaker 1: for her right for the longest.
Speaker 10: And but that sounds pretty good.
Speaker 3: I mean that was really sounds like a horn that
Speaker 3: actually sounded. And there's small there's different sized ones too. Yeah,
Speaker 3: obviously big one, really big one.
Speaker 1: One. Yeah, Because I was going to go full scale
Speaker 1: with the theme and do the sound effects. But I
Speaker 1: wasted almost a half hour. It was four in the morning.
Speaker 1: It's like going through every horn. Man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I have a question before you move on.
Speaker 3: You're moving on from eat It, so on eat It.
Speaker 8: Even though it's a parody song, it seemed like you
Speaker 8: were taking the acting and the choreography and everything real seriously.
Speaker 8: And I was wonderfing. I was wondering how long it
Speaker 8: took you to to, you know, put on all that weight,
Speaker 8: to do that, to do the part that was a
Speaker 8: different video. I'll get back to when we're talking about fat.
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, let's go to Derby. I was trying
Speaker 1: to make a joke.
Speaker 3: That you actually gained the weight but ship.
Speaker 10: Salads and I, you know, hit the ball.
Speaker 1: No, I'm not hitting the bullhorn, but I am some wizo.
Speaker 3: That's supposed to be when I say something.
Speaker 1: Actually, was there to be stupid? Your first national tour?
Speaker 10: I think I think that there. We did a national
Speaker 10: tour in eighty four, which is kind of funny because
Speaker 10: my first tour is eighty three. It was a very
Speaker 10: small tour, and I think in eighty four I went
Speaker 10: out with Doctor Demento as his opening act, and it
Speaker 10: started with like Doctor Medow featuring Weird All Yankovic, and
Speaker 10: the tour started before Edith came out, and we're on
Speaker 10: the road and ed It comes out and it zooms
Speaker 10: in the top twenty, and in the middle of the
Speaker 10: tour it became the tour became Weird Out yank with doctor.
Speaker 1: Wait was this so syndicated? It was?
Speaker 10: He was nationally syndicated.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Really.
Speaker 10: He did a live show at Kamie Tea in Los Angeles,
Speaker 10: and then he did a separate show syndicated out of
Speaker 10: Westward One, which went to I forget how many markets,
Speaker 10: but but all over the country.
Speaker 1: Okay, so was there? I mean after just talk about
Speaker 1: the pressure of life after eat it? Well, you became
Speaker 1: known as the eat It guy? Right, how did one?
Speaker 1: How did life change? I think I saw a raw
Speaker 1: footage of you even at the Purple Rain premiere?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: Was that? Was that a star moment for you? It's
Speaker 1: like Eddie Murphy came in, then Mars Day, then Weird
Speaker 1: Al Yankovic and you have this whole like, I'm just
Speaker 1: happy to be here.
Speaker 10: I think you said, Yeah, everybody knew Prince could act,
Speaker 10: but who knew he could sing?
Speaker 9: So?
Speaker 1: How how different was life after? Because you you captured
Speaker 1: lightning in the bottle, like even you know your video
Speaker 1: made Soul Train. Oh yeah, that was my favorite introduction
Speaker 1: darker news is And now this is the closest that
Speaker 1: we will ever get to Michael Jackson. This is weird
Speaker 1: Al yank and eat it. Oh man, I was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: weird Al is on Soul Train. That's amazing.
Speaker 10: Well, I mean, the biggest change was that it was really,
Speaker 10: in the true sense of the word overnight fame. I mean,
Speaker 10: you hear about overnight things like that, and uh, it
Speaker 10: really was overnight. I mean that the day that uh ed,
Speaker 10: it went into heavy rotation on MTV, which is several
Speaker 10: times a day. You know, people were recognizing me on
Speaker 10: the streets. I'd be in the line at a fast
Speaker 10: food or restaurant and people be staring at me like
Speaker 10: this is odd. This has not happened before. And yeah,
Speaker 10: all of a sudden, I was the eating guy and
Speaker 10: that it just changed in an instant.
Speaker 1: Would you look like weird Al Yankovic even off duty?
Speaker 1: Like were you always in Hawaiian shirts?
Speaker 10: I've always liked Hawaiian shirts, but certainly, certainly after I've
Speaker 10: gained some notoriety, I kind of dressed down a bit
Speaker 10: more in public. I tryed it to be too loud or.
Speaker 1: Garish, started wearing hats, and I never, I never.
Speaker 10: You know, went into the big disguises because then people
Speaker 10: are like, oh, what's weird I'll do when we're like
Speaker 10: a dark hat and dark glasses.
Speaker 1: Wow? Uh So, how how our heart was it adjusting
Speaker 1: to a follow up record?
Speaker 9: Like?
Speaker 1: Was it? Is there such a thing as writer's black
Speaker 1: for you know, for doing parody records?
Speaker 10: Or oh? Yeah, I mean every every album I started
Speaker 10: out with writer's block because like, oh, what I'm gonna
Speaker 10: do now? Like, because like, you know, you don't want
Speaker 10: to keep repeating yourself, and you know you want to
Speaker 10: still be funny, and but you don't want to like
Speaker 10: kind of rely on the same tropes and memes and
Speaker 10: devices that you use before. You want to try to
Speaker 10: find different ways to be funny.
Speaker 1: But how is it that you don't want to be
Speaker 1: pigeonholed as the comedian parody guy when you're the comedian
Speaker 1: parody guy.
Speaker 10: Well, I'm not saying I didn't want to be the
Speaker 10: comedian parody guy. I mean I knew that parodies were
Speaker 10: bread and butter, and I enjoyed doing them, and it
Speaker 10: was I was wasn't trying to get away from that.
Speaker 10: I just didn't want to, like, you know, it kind
Speaker 10: of horrified me when my record label put out a
Speaker 10: compilation called the Food Album. Here's all else about food?
Speaker 10: Maybe I should write so many songs about food?
Speaker 1: You know, I was going to say, were they coming
Speaker 1: to you like, okay, like you know, do more you
Speaker 1: know food songs?
Speaker 10: Well? No, they were basically you know the thing about
Speaker 10: Scotti brothers. They were wonderful to me, but every fourth
Speaker 10: quarter they'd go, you know, we could really use some
Speaker 10: money for a bottom line. We're gonna put out a
Speaker 10: compilation album like really another one, like here's all of
Speaker 10: Al's songs. They begin with the letter are.
Speaker 1: That already so soon? There's like two records in you
Speaker 1: already held?
Speaker 10: But I'll tell you after two records, I don't think
Speaker 10: they weren't talking about the greatest pits after two records,
Speaker 10: but they were saying, like, how about a Christmas album?
Speaker 1: Like really, I don't think so.
Speaker 10: No, you know, they're looking for any way to quickly
Speaker 10: cash in because they didn't know that I'd still be around,
Speaker 10: you know, you know, thirty years later they were thinking like, okay,
Speaker 10: you know, here's our cash car. Let's milk it.
Speaker 1: Right. So on the opposite side of the fence were
Speaker 1: there artists now giving you elevator pitches on how to
Speaker 1: turn their songs into weirdolse songs.
Speaker 10: By this point, I won't mention any names. It happened. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 10: I don't mean, but well, I've had people more often
Speaker 10: more than giving me pitch, they would say like, when
Speaker 10: you're gonna get rounded doing one of my songs?
Speaker 7: Wow, this is almost like a sign like you made
Speaker 7: it when yeah, yeah, if he covers his stuff like yeah,
Speaker 7: you've officially arrived.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 10: I think when I met Paul McCarney for the first
Speaker 10: I mean he off handedly said that. I think he
Speaker 10: was kind of joking, but still, you know, it kind
Speaker 10: of blew my mind.
Speaker 1: Did he tell you the scrambled eggs story? No, but
Speaker 1: I didn't know that one. Okay, I was.
Speaker 10: I was the first original for Yesterday. Yeah, that was
Speaker 10: his original lyrics.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, scrambled eggs.
Speaker 10: Baby, hell, I love your legs whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I know that the Dare to be Stupid
Speaker 1: tour for anyone that I know that, and to you
Speaker 1: that was I really truly wish I'd seen this tour.
Speaker 3: That's the one Jimmy always talked for.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but no, I know, like ten other people
Speaker 1: they're like, you know, the there to be stupid to
Speaker 1: like what exactly happened on this tour that just changed
Speaker 1: these people's lives. Not sure.
Speaker 10: I mean every every tour got bigger and better up
Speaker 10: until event I kind of felt kind of green, and
Speaker 10: I think it kind of all clicked into place on
Speaker 10: there to be stupid, because I've some YouTube videos of
Speaker 10: me and concert in nineteen eighty four versus nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 10: and there's definitely something that happened to like happened to
Speaker 10: my confidence between those two years, because eighty four I
Speaker 10: just seem a little manic and desperate, and in eighty
Speaker 10: five I kind of, you know, feel like, Okay, I
Speaker 10: know what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: Here I go.
Speaker 10: So there's probably something to that that the performances just
Speaker 10: felt a little bit more, you know on point.
Speaker 1: Okay, I want to go to Poka party and break
Speaker 1: down your harmony game on Here's Johnny. Oh wow, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's some serious shit, like you, I know,
Speaker 1: you think that like these small minuscule things are like
Speaker 1: over people's heads or whatever. No, but it's really art to.
Speaker 10: It, like all about the minuscule things.
Speaker 1: How But you're you're self produced, correct? Yeah?
Speaker 10: I am now with the first six albums or Rick Derricter,
Speaker 10: so he was officially producing.
Speaker 1: At that time. Okay, do you I mean what was
Speaker 1: the give and go relationship on that? Was he just
Speaker 1: like do what you do out and I'll just well
Speaker 1: he wasn't that. It's like when you and the movies,
Speaker 1: like you know that sort of thing.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean, I mean he was in charge of
Speaker 10: the sound. I was walking in with all the arrangements
Speaker 10: and things like that, and you know, Rick wasn't saying
Speaker 10: we should have clarinet's here. It is sort of like
Speaker 10: you know, that was that was my gig and he
Speaker 10: would just make sure that that he he was sort
Speaker 10: of like the director. He made sure that everything that
Speaker 10: I did sounded as good as possible in the studio.
Speaker 1: And matching, like for matching the patches and stuff like
Speaker 1: is that you are you sizers? Yeah? Are you actively
Speaker 1: going after these like same keyboards and the same drums
Speaker 1: and those sort of things.
Speaker 10: And within reason?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean you know.
Speaker 10: Oftentimes, if we have access to the original band or
Speaker 10: the original band members will contact them and say, what
Speaker 10: were the pickups on that guitar or what did you
Speaker 10: you know, use for this particular thing.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 10: Sometimes, especially if it's an odd sample, we'll try to
Speaker 10: figure out where that came from and see if we
Speaker 10: can license that as well. So that's not all the time.
Speaker 10: Sometimes we just wing it, but whenever we can, we
Speaker 10: like to be as uh, you know, as official as possible.
Speaker 1: Have you have you ever not blacked out but had
Speaker 1: a great idea that you just couldn't make funny? You
Speaker 1: you know, like you had a great title for line
Speaker 1: of Richies all night long, but you couldn't.
Speaker 10: I'm a pretty good judge of knowing if an idea
Speaker 10: has potential, So if it might be some ideas might
Speaker 10: be funny for like a throwaway gag, but they won't
Speaker 10: be you know, funny for three minutes. So that and
Speaker 10: sometimes in concert I would do a medley of those
Speaker 10: kind of songs where like there's basically just one gag
Speaker 10: to it, like oh here she comes, she's a spam eater,
Speaker 10: Thank you good night, you know, and and that's sort
Speaker 10: of like there's really not a whole lot more to
Speaker 10: say after that. So all the ones that I wind
Speaker 10: up making the parodies, I think, Okay, well I can
Speaker 10: I can build on this, I can put layers to this,
Speaker 10: and there's there's a direction to go. It's not just
Speaker 10: like a one joke thing.
Speaker 1: How many were these the Grammys that you won? Were
Speaker 1: they for comedy recordings or for polka or.
Speaker 10: They were comedy? They were different ones though, the first
Speaker 10: one was for Comedy Recording, and that was an odd
Speaker 10: category because it was singles competing against albums, which it
Speaker 10: seemed like apple and orgous to me. But that's how
Speaker 10: they did it back they how really yeah, because they
Speaker 10: eat it one. They eat it single and one against
Speaker 10: like Rodney Dangerfield album and Eddie Murphy's album like how
Speaker 10: do how do you really?
Speaker 1: I think I might have Sorry, it depends. How could
Speaker 1: it be? How could it be? The singing album? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That was a comedy record?
Speaker 6: Was uh?
Speaker 10: Then eighty The next one was eighty eight, and that
Speaker 10: was for Better Concept Music Video, which was a category
Speaker 10: that I think only lasted a few years. But I
Speaker 10: won that for fat for Best Concept Music Video, which
Speaker 10: I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I got
Speaker 10: to win the Grammy. Then I won for Best Comedy
Speaker 10: Album for Poodle Hat in two thousand and three and
Speaker 10: for Mandatory Fun.
Speaker 1: A couple of years ago. We year did UHF come
Speaker 1: out eighty nine? Okay, so that's after even worse. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was about to say by this point, where other
Speaker 1: avenues calling you to do certain things as far as
Speaker 1: like television.
Speaker 10: Well, since you brought that up, you know, I had
Speaker 10: to make a very hard call talking about a UHF.
Speaker 10: The summer of nineteen eighty eight is when we were
Speaker 10: scheduled to shoot my movie UHF. And that was also
Speaker 10: when Michael Jackson wanted me to open Foreman as the
Speaker 10: European tour.
Speaker 1: Wait what what? Yeah? We got? I got He was
Speaker 1: really a fan of yours. Yeah, yeah, he liked it.
Speaker 10: He liked the whole thing.
Speaker 1: I mean past like I'm really flat about my music.
Speaker 1: I mean like, did he buy your records? And did
Speaker 1: he laugh at he?
Speaker 10: He tells me he used to show UHF at the
Speaker 10: Neverland Ranch to his guests. He told me, well, when
Speaker 10: we did the fat video, that was actually Michael Jackson's set.
Speaker 10: He actually let us use his set to shoot that video.
Speaker 1: Off that you went to Hoyt and skimmer Horn Inland.
Speaker 10: Now, that's because it was great because that that set
Speaker 10: was built in Culver City and it was for the kids.
Speaker 10: Remember he did like the baby bad when he did
Speaker 10: the Moon video. So the set was like at nine
Speaker 10: tenth scale to make the kids look a little bigger.
Speaker 10: But also great for the fat video because I made
Speaker 10: the fat Yeah, sooth that set? Yep, yeah, wait a minute,
Speaker 10: because we knew the set was still there and they're
Speaker 10: about to tear it down and we're like, no, no, no,
Speaker 10: don't tear it down. We want to use it. And
Speaker 10: they're like, okay, cool wait.
Speaker 1: Old boy from House Party made me some dig great.
Speaker 1: Ludy Washington, Yeah, yeah, ding dong Man.
Speaker 10: Yeah, Ludy was great. He was also in the in
Speaker 10: UHF in the movie he played the cameraman of that
Speaker 10: really yeah, oh man, so funny.
Speaker 1: Loudy Washington.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you don't remember from like the Robert Towns in Speciality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I didn't. You guys. You two are the
Speaker 1: we read credits and we read the line of notes
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Were you hesitant to revisit Michael
Speaker 1: Jackson a second time around? Or was it just too
Speaker 1: irresistible a little bit.
Speaker 10: I mean it was sort of low hanging fruit. But
Speaker 10: at the same time, it's sort of like Michael Jackson was,
Speaker 10: so you know, I'm the president in the eighties, it
Speaker 10: was sort of like, you know, how could you not
Speaker 10: do Michael? If I didn't do you know, a parody
Speaker 10: on Bad, people were like, how can we're not doing
Speaker 10: that bad?
Speaker 1: Or I'm bad.
Speaker 10: It's sort of like and and that was one of
Speaker 10: those cases where, uh, you know, like I said, usually
Speaker 10: I think like a hundred different variations on a theme
Speaker 10: and I like analyze it to death. But I remember
Speaker 10: the first time I saw the the Bad video, saw
Speaker 10: the World premiere, and before the video is even over,
Speaker 10: I said, I'm doing fat It's gotta be fatting. Yeah,
Speaker 10: Like you're gonna have these huge people trying to get
Speaker 10: through a turnstyle only quite get through.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be great. Nothing.
Speaker 3: I must have been watching You must have been watching
Speaker 3: world premiere videos back then.
Speaker 10: Oh yeah, Like you had to stay on top of
Speaker 10: the zeitgeist.
Speaker 1: So as far as Turnaround is concerned, like it's the
Speaker 1: same that the Internet wasn't around back in the eighties
Speaker 1: for you to turn things over in record times, So
Speaker 1: for you, was there sort of an expiration date on
Speaker 1: ideas like I have to have this out within the
Speaker 1: next four months.
Speaker 10: Or yeah, I mean, I mean cause it's like a
Speaker 10: two month turnaround between like having the master done and
Speaker 10: having a record in stores. And they sometimes they can,
Speaker 10: if they really want to, they can bump it a
Speaker 10: couple of weeks, but it's still like, certainly more than
Speaker 10: a month.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 10: And that's if you have an album done, Like if
Speaker 10: I have a if I want to do a parody,
Speaker 10: and the album's like not even close to being finished,
Speaker 10: it's like, well, this isn't gonna come out for several months,
Speaker 10: which is why I generally, you know, the way I
Speaker 10: usually do it is I record an entire album except
Speaker 10: for one track, and I wait for what I perceived
Speaker 10: to be like, yeah, the big one, like here's a
Speaker 10: big single, here's a big video, but and the rest
Speaker 10: of the album just sort of like in the can
Speaker 10: waiting to go.
Speaker 1: Oh, so all the other non parody ideas get.
Speaker 10: Right right, uh, and and hopefully those those are all
Speaker 10: songs that you know, uh, people will still remember and
Speaker 10: they'll still be funny. But but back then the things
Speaker 10: have changed nowadays, but back then it really was all
Speaker 10: about here's a single driving the album because you know, uh,
Speaker 10: regardless of whether radio got behind it, MTV would would
Speaker 10: play it. And you know, if you had a big
Speaker 10: hit on MTV, you had a big hit album, what.
Speaker 1: In your concert? What is your unlikely? Uh, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: see this. You're you're a free bird, Like, what's the
Speaker 1: what's the the non single? There was one song that
Speaker 1: we actually did on the show that I was shocked
Speaker 1: at Jimmy because I wanted to do uh hooked on Poker.
Speaker 1: But then thankfully I realized that song was way too
Speaker 1: complex for a Stephen to even conquer it. But I
Speaker 1: forgot the It's a slow song that's on either someone
Speaker 1: drowns Now, got to look it up.
Speaker 10: But is a ballad?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a ballad?
Speaker 10: Is it you Don't Love Me Anymore? No?
Speaker 1: No, it hang it's hang on. It's definitely on Drey
Speaker 1: to be stupid song, but as a sort of twisted
Speaker 1: not is it a parody?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no it isn't. It's Oh god, I
Speaker 1: hate this moment. I'm having a brain for it because
Speaker 1: we rehearsed it in the we did it as an
Speaker 1: Internet extra song.
Speaker 10: Oh you mean good old Days? Yes, oh that was
Speaker 10: off of even worse.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, good old Like what is what is your
Speaker 1: your free bird? When people are yelling like what's a
Speaker 1: fan favorite?
Speaker 10: There's not just like one song. I mean there's not
Speaker 10: like one song everybody's into. There's like a half a
Speaker 10: dozen parodies that that are sort of like the big
Speaker 10: hits that that people basically come to expect. In terms
Speaker 10: of original songs. I think probably the biggest fan favorite
Speaker 10: is there to be Stupid, and that's maybe partly because
Speaker 10: he was used in the original Transformers movie and people
Speaker 10: have affection for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so for you, I guess as well. I
Speaker 1: want to get to the Coolio's scenario. I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: besides Coolil, was there anyone that had indifference to the
Speaker 1: to a cover that they previously approved but then they
Speaker 1: didn't like or not really?
Speaker 10: I mean, I've never after somebody who's approved the parody.
Speaker 10: I've never heard back afterwards that they were disappointed.
Speaker 6: I think.
Speaker 10: Well that I heard on behind the music. I think
Speaker 10: Flea was like not that thrilled with a red hot
Speaker 10: Chili Peppers. Praider is like, yeah, it was okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wait which song it was about? The Flintstones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 10: He he didn't dislike it was sort of like a math.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, I mean, once you're covered, then
Speaker 1: you're you know, you're immortalized. You're super immortalized. So for you,
Speaker 1: what is what's the the daily preparation of your band
Speaker 1: and your tour and that sort of.
Speaker 10: Thing, like, well, there's no like, you know, typical day,
Speaker 10: you know, my my life at home and my life
Speaker 10: on the road or completely different realities. And uh uh
Speaker 10: when I'm on tour, I basically try not to use
Speaker 10: my voice up I can help it, because I've gotten learyingitis.
Speaker 10: I totally lost my voice on tour before, and that's
Speaker 10: not pleasant because if you lose your voice, I mean really,
Speaker 10: the only cure is not talking for a week, and
Speaker 10: you can't do that if you have to do a
Speaker 10: two hour show every night. So I'm very careful, uh
Speaker 10: you know, stay out of air conditioning, stay at a
Speaker 10: smoky rooms. I just try to use my voice as
Speaker 10: infrequently as possible. So basically after the show, go back
Speaker 10: to the bus, uh you know, probably surf the internet
Speaker 10: for a few hours. And then when I wake up,
Speaker 10: we're already traveling to the next city, and I just,
Speaker 10: you know, try not to talk until the sound check.
Speaker 1: So do you turn off the air conditioning on stage? No? No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's that's a Marintha frame.
Speaker 10: People. Now, I don't want to make the whole world uncomfortable.
Speaker 10: I just you know, just the back of the bus.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I see, as far as your h the
Speaker 1: ritual of I'm having a brain fart moment right.
Speaker 3: Now, can you make that fart sound with you?
Speaker 10: No?
Speaker 1: The uh damn. The as far as your your your
Speaker 1: your sets are concerned, and because I know now it's
Speaker 1: you do these elaborate changes and all those things like
Speaker 1: how full scale is are your concert performances?
Speaker 10: Well, they have been very full scale. I mean I
Speaker 10: could love to get you out to a show sometime,
Speaker 10: but it was you know, it becomes sort of like
Speaker 10: almost like a like a Broadway show in that there's
Speaker 10: costumes and props and uh, everything was timed out to
Speaker 10: the second. Like you know, I do a big song
Speaker 10: with full costumes, and then we play a video on
Speaker 10: a big screen on stage, which is just long enough
Speaker 10: for us to write backstage and do a costume change
Speaker 10: and come back up for the next song. So it's
Speaker 10: it's as much spectacle in theater as we could put
Speaker 10: into a live show. Having said that, the next tour,
Speaker 10: which is starting the end of February, we're not doing
Speaker 10: any of that for the first time, and you know, ever,
Speaker 10: we're going out and just just playing songs, no costumes,
Speaker 10: no props, and we're playing the deep cuts. We're playing,
Speaker 10: not playing the hits. We're playing like say what, yeah, totally,
Speaker 10: it's called the ridiculously I'm gonna mess it up, the
Speaker 10: ridiculously self indulgent, ill advised Vanity Tour. And yeah, we're
Speaker 10: not playing the hits. We're playing all the obscure, you know,
Speaker 10: deep cuts and B sides and stuff that you'd never
Speaker 10: expect us to play live. And we're doing a different
Speaker 10: show every single night, which is fun for us because
Speaker 10: when we do the normal show, it has to by definition,
Speaker 10: it has to be the same exact show because it's
Speaker 10: all calculated. But the next tour is going to be
Speaker 10: wildly different from night to night.
Speaker 1: So when you're saying no hits, so you won't be
Speaker 1: doing teen Spirit or eat It or do you, we
Speaker 1: still do eat it in concert.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, not the whole song, but part of a medley.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so it's just strictly the non parody things or.
Speaker 10: Yeah, we might throw in a couple of surprises, but
Speaker 10: you you should definitely not come to the tour expecting
Speaker 10: to hear the hits because it's really all about the
Speaker 10: stuff that nobody wants to hear. I want to do
Speaker 10: an audience displeasing show.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, I mean, well, I'm not saying Costello did that,
Speaker 1: but he did the.
Speaker 10: Wheel. Yeah, yeah, that was very cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my friend just told me to do a cover
Speaker 3: of a radio radio.
Speaker 10: You know, we do that whenever something screws up, which
Speaker 10: didn't happen hardly at all in the last tour, but
Speaker 10: there were some tours where we were having problems with
Speaker 10: the computer server. And the computer server you know, does
Speaker 10: the video and it does whatever click tracks we're using,
Speaker 10: and it's an integral part of the show, and if
Speaker 10: there's a hiccup or if something goes wrong, you know,
Speaker 10: it's a train wreck. And sometimes when that happens, instead
Speaker 10: of just you know, standing on state stupidly, we go
Speaker 10: into radio radio like ladies and gentlemen there's no reason
Speaker 10: to play this.
Speaker 3: I get it. You don't change the words to computer,
Speaker 3: just a straight version.
Speaker 1: How extensive will the tour be?
Speaker 10: Uh, We're we're doing like seventy five seventy six dates.
Speaker 10: The show Emo Phillips is opening for us, which is Woo.
Speaker 10: So he's doing half an hour. My band was doing
Speaker 10: like ninety minutes, and Uh, it's gonna be. I'm really
Speaker 10: looking forward to it and I'll get to it. We
Speaker 10: want to really intimate vibe. It's gonna be. I want
Speaker 10: it to be kind of like a hanging out in
Speaker 10: your living room vibe, you know, like like everybody in
Speaker 10: the in the audience just sort of in your living room.
Speaker 10: And we're just kind of being very you know, casual
Speaker 10: and uh, you know, spontaneous, because because my shows are
Speaker 10: not normally spontaneous, they don't normally like chat with the audience.
Speaker 10: And so I don't just want this one to And
Speaker 10: I'm a little lot of sut of my comfort zone
Speaker 10: because I like annoying in advance what I'm going to say.
Speaker 10: But I'm trying to break out of that and just
Speaker 10: you know, just trying to try to hang.
Speaker 1: You're trying to challenge yourself a little bit. Is that
Speaker 1: arable your tours? Is it just national for the United
Speaker 1: States or.
Speaker 10: It's a world tour? Playing Canada too, I've.
Speaker 1: Ever done other Like how do you fare in other countries?
Speaker 10: Canada very well?
Speaker 1: All right, Saskatchewan? Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 10: Australia is a good market for US. We played there
Speaker 10: three or four times. Uh, And and pockets of Europe.
Speaker 10: We did a couple of small European tours and I
Speaker 10: definitely have some fans over there, But North America is
Speaker 10: really the main market.
Speaker 11: When was the moment that you knew since you you
Speaker 11: dive into so many genres, like at this point, you're
Speaker 11: a treasure to all kinds of communities, all kinds of music.
Speaker 11: Was there a moment when you knew it and you
Speaker 11: felt it like, oh, I'm not like the other kids.
Speaker 1: I can do this, I can do that.
Speaker 10: I can go here like before my career, like during
Speaker 10: your career.
Speaker 11: Yeah, because you I mean from hip hop to country
Speaker 11: to good to pop to rock to grunge. Yeah, and
Speaker 11: nobody says no, you don't belong here. Everybody is like
Speaker 11: he's ours.
Speaker 10: It's hard to say. I mean I first kind of
Speaker 10: felt the fame during the you know, the N three
Speaker 10: D and edit days. But I don't think I really
Speaker 10: kind of felt like the mass acceptance until about ten
Speaker 10: years ago, because people kept waiting for me to go away, like, oh,
Speaker 10: weird All was still hanging around. What's he doing here?
Speaker 10: I checked up because everybody thought, you know, that I
Speaker 10: was just some kind of phase that you know, people
Speaker 10: are gonna get tired of, and some people did. But
Speaker 10: I mean, in general, I was able to maintain some
Speaker 10: semblance of a career since the early eighties, and it
Speaker 10: wasn't until about ten years ago. People are like, oh,
Speaker 10: I grew up with weird Out, Like really, okay.
Speaker 12: Nah, seriously, no, this is like a direct You're a
Speaker 12: direct link to my childhood, like straight up, like just everything.
Speaker 12: When you did the Amish Paradise, First off, where did
Speaker 12: that idea come from?
Speaker 3: Dude?
Speaker 10: Well, it's funny. I I was trying to think of
Speaker 10: an idea for for for Gangster's Paradise and uh and uh.
Speaker 10: When I as soon as the thought Amish Paradise came
Speaker 10: into my mind, I thought the idea was so good
Speaker 10: it made me depressed. I thought that was perfect because
Speaker 10: like the Amish lifestyle is the is diametrically opposed the
Speaker 10: gangs the lifestyle. So to see homage people acting like gangsters,
Speaker 10: I thought was just hilarious and I thought I can
Speaker 10: definitely do this, And it made me depressed because as
Speaker 10: soon as I thought of that, I thought, Okay, the
Speaker 10: machine is gonna, you know, snap into action. Now now
Speaker 10: I have to write it, and now now I have
Speaker 10: to like book video time, we have to like figure
Speaker 10: out the release date. And I just saw my whole
Speaker 10: like next six months ahead and be like, okay, we're
Speaker 10: doing this.
Speaker 1: Come on, whose idea was it? I don't know who
Speaker 1: directed it.
Speaker 7: The scene where all the sweat is pouring off your.
Speaker 10: Head I directed the video?
Speaker 1: Oh god, yeah, because that was.
Speaker 12: Something that I always noticed in the original Singer l
Speaker 12: V where he was sweating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then to see I was like, yo, he
Speaker 1: caught it too.
Speaker 11: Her conditioning and Florence Henderson, yes, yes, was she like
Speaker 11: your first? Just what was the approach to her and.
Speaker 10: How did you get her to In all truth, we
Speaker 10: did ask Michelle fire for first, because she was okay,
Speaker 10: and then I obviously Florence Henderson gets all the work
Speaker 10: that Michelle Fifer turns down. So we went to her second,
Speaker 10: and she was amazing. She was like, you know, she
Speaker 10: really was into it. She was like sucking in her cheeks,
Speaker 10: like Michelle, just really really going for it.
Speaker 1: What was the what was the issue and what was
Speaker 1: Coolio's problem with the song?
Speaker 12: And how did that even get to be a thing,
Speaker 12: because did you have to approve it from him first
Speaker 12: or did you have to approach him first to put
Speaker 12: the song?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 10: I mean, like I said, I always get permission. And
Speaker 10: unfortunately I'll never to this day know really what happened
Speaker 10: because it's it's very he said she said kind of thing.
Speaker 10: My record label at the time told me that they
Speaker 10: talked to Coolio and that he okayd uh. And then
Speaker 10: after the fact, uh, you know, Coolia made a public
Speaker 10: statements saying that he never approved it and that he
Speaker 10: was essentially offended by it. And it was it was
Speaker 10: horrible because you know, I, you know, I like my
Speaker 10: track record of not upsetting anybody and having good relationships.
Speaker 10: So that was uh, And clearly it was fine now,
Speaker 10: by the way, but there are a number of years
Speaker 10: that there was you know, I don't say bad blood,
Speaker 10: but you know I kind of kept my distance so coolly.
Speaker 1: I fell some type of way. But t I he
Speaker 1: was cool.
Speaker 10: Yeah, no, he was great.
Speaker 11: Yeah, tell me about the the t F hitch. And
Speaker 11: I'm sure he was over the roof because he probably
Speaker 11: is like us. He's a child, he was a child
Speaker 11: and fan of viewers.
Speaker 10: But I'm not sure about that. I mean, I don't
Speaker 10: have a really personal story about that. That was one
Speaker 10: of those kind of things where like I told my
Speaker 10: manager why wanted to do, and he contacted t I
Speaker 10: S people and it came back that he was cool
Speaker 10: with it.
Speaker 11: Damn, I wonder what your percentage rate is of that.
Speaker 10: I will say that was part of my pitch to
Speaker 10: uh familiona no no, no A fancy.
Speaker 7: H yourself fancy Uh, I can't remember.
Speaker 10: I'm blanking yes no no, no no, no, Ziggy, I'm
Speaker 10: so big sorry, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: So we forgot it.
Speaker 10: But but that was that was one where I couldn't
Speaker 10: I couldn't get permission through their management. Uh, we weren't
Speaker 10: getting through and and the I was like one song
Speaker 10: away from finishing mandatory fun and I wanted to do
Speaker 10: uh my period of fantasy because fantasy was sort of
Speaker 10: like the song of the Summer, like I just you
Speaker 10: know we have a release date. I want to record this,
Speaker 10: but we don't have permission, and nobody was getting through.
Speaker 10: And finally I basically had a stalker. I had to
Speaker 10: I said, Oh, she's doing a concert in Denver, Colorado.
Speaker 10: Was like, I'm flying there, and I flew to Denver
Speaker 10: and I hung out backstage and literally as she was
Speaker 10: walking off stage, and said, hey, it's weird, al I
Speaker 10: really love to.
Speaker 1: Do a pretty good Does she know who you were?
Speaker 10: I think so. I think it's hard to say, but
Speaker 10: I think so.
Speaker 1: And she said, well, just so loose to me that
Speaker 1: I wouldn't imagine that I wouldn't.
Speaker 10: She said, you know, i'd have to see the lyrics first,
Speaker 10: and I said, well, actually happened to happen. And I
Speaker 10: put them in front of her, and while she was
Speaker 10: reading it, I said, you know, t I was cool
Speaker 10: with it. That was because you know.
Speaker 1: That the most extreme that you had to travel to
Speaker 1: get it might be.
Speaker 10: I mean, yeah, I don't think I've ever gotten on
Speaker 10: a plane to get permission them from somebody before.
Speaker 11: But wait, but wait, because as I'm looking at this
Speaker 11: video for Tacky, I'm like, so and the other people
Speaker 11: that you had My man from Modern Family and Eric.
Speaker 10: Stones Street and Jack Black and Kristin Shaw and Margaret Show.
Speaker 11: When you asked them, I'm sure they were like, hell
Speaker 11: fucking yeah, I'm sorry, but right like, tell me what
Speaker 11: was there?
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean I was kind of went through my
Speaker 10: address book and I picked some of my friends and
Speaker 10: and everybody that was available on that day. We're happy
Speaker 10: to do it. That was the most fun I've ever
Speaker 10: had doing a video. It was just such a blouch.
Speaker 10: I mean, that was what we got done so quickly.
Speaker 10: I was almost sad. It was like, I wish you
Speaker 10: could do this all night long. This was so fun.
Speaker 1: That's dope.
Speaker 12: How did you approach doing the r Kelly Trapped in
Speaker 12: the Man? Because that was I mean, that was one
Speaker 12: of the moments I'll say, like you've been Because I'm
Speaker 12: a person, I work. I do a lot of work
Speaker 12: like in TV, and I do like musical parodies and
Speaker 12: stuff for shoor whatever. And the thing that I think
Speaker 12: listen to your music has taught me is that in
Speaker 12: order for something to be funny, it has to be good.
Speaker 12: Like so if you're gonna parody something, you've gotta really
Speaker 12: be singing it, and like you really gotta go. You's
Speaker 12: gotta it's gotta be believable. And the thing with all
Speaker 12: your stuff is that it always it's funny. But if
Speaker 12: you just listen to that song, it's like, Yo, this
Speaker 12: motherfucker's really singing, Like even like the harmonies from the
Speaker 12: uh the Joint to the Other Night. Yeah, Johnny, it
Speaker 12: was like, Yo, he really singing and ship. So when
Speaker 12: I heard the Trapped in the Closet was.
Speaker 1: Trapp drive through. That's what.
Speaker 12: Trapped in the Closet is a song that is probably
Speaker 12: a parody in itself.
Speaker 1: So for you to do it, like what what is it?
Speaker 10: Well, yeah, that was a tough one to do because
Speaker 10: that was one of those things. Trapped in the Closet
Speaker 10: was just such a monumental composition. It was sort of like,
Speaker 10: you know, it was such a thing that again it
Speaker 10: was sort of like, you know, if Riddell doesn't do
Speaker 10: anything with this, like what what's he thinking? But at
Speaker 10: the same time, it's it was so weird anyway, like
Speaker 10: where do you go with it? You can't really make
Speaker 10: it more bizarre or more ridiculous, So well, you know,
Speaker 10: the humor of opposite, I'll just make it as boring
Speaker 10: and banal and motinous and mundane as I possibly can,
Speaker 10: and just make it about eleven minutes about like a
Speaker 10: couple discussing what they want to do for dinner, you know,
Speaker 10: and but still keeping all the drama, keeping all the
Speaker 10: high drama of the original, but making about something ridiculously stupid.
Speaker 3: Man, Nah, you you definitely you know that that shit
Speaker 3: was hilarious.
Speaker 7: I haven't quite figured out how this idea but would work.
Speaker 7: But have you ever considered doing a duet's album? I
Speaker 7: was gonna ask, have you ever did any collaborations?
Speaker 10: Not as such, I mean that my first single was
Speaker 10: sort of a duet with because I did a song
Speaker 10: called Ricky, which was me being Ricky Ricardo. I thought, no, no, no,
Speaker 10: that was Tress McNeil, who now is like one of
Speaker 10: the most famous voiceover artists in the world. I mean
Speaker 10: she's on Animaniac, she's on Simpsons, I mean she's like
Speaker 10: one of the top people. But at the time she
Speaker 10: was new in la I mean brand new, and we
Speaker 10: put out an ad in some music papers saying we're
Speaker 10: looking for somebody to impersonate Lucille Ball, to somebody who
Speaker 10: singing like Lucille Ball, And we got literally two responses
Speaker 10: and one of the most.
Speaker 1: Trusts getting backstage paper and yeah.
Speaker 10: It was one of those kind of things. And she
Speaker 10: came in. She was great, and she played Lucy in
Speaker 10: the video as well. That's the same person that does
Speaker 10: it on the record, And unfortunately she couldn't tour with us,
Speaker 10: so whenever, you know, it was kind of weird because
Speaker 10: during that first tour, our big single, we couldn't do live,
Speaker 10: so we basically just played the video. I think back
Speaker 10: then it was like on a sixteen millimeter projector like
Speaker 10: and here's our video. Really we couldn't. We couldn't, you know,
Speaker 10: costume have my drummer, like, you know, we couldn't have
Speaker 10: them trying to do trust part.
Speaker 1: That's the costume change time. Yeah, said Terry Bozio did
Speaker 1: it with friend Zappa.
Speaker 11: Anything that happen you ever think of doing other not
Speaker 11: that I would assume to have known that you haven't,
Speaker 11: but other genres. There any other genres that you would
Speaker 11: like to dip into?
Speaker 10: Like, is there a reggae weird there is? I mean
Speaker 10: I've covered most of the there's I'm sure there's something
Speaker 10: I haven't yet, but yeah, I did a reggae song
Speaker 10: called buy Me a Condo. It's sort of like a
Speaker 10: Bob Marley ish kind of like a like a like
Speaker 10: a Jamaican yuppie song.
Speaker 1: And some of the new genres I was about to say,
Speaker 1: you wrapped you have you wrapped your head around trap
Speaker 1: music yet? And mumble culture?
Speaker 10: So some some genres are a little bit harder to
Speaker 10: uh to parody because there there's not enough uh words.
Speaker 10: Raw materiy, Yeah, like eight m would be fun to do,
Speaker 10: but you know, you can't be too repetitive, or.
Speaker 13: Maybe you could just do poka covers of them that's
Speaker 13: true to what I do, Like you know depasito you know, yes, yes, yes, yeah,
Speaker 13: I would like to on according.
Speaker 1: And like no payoff when you get to the top,
Speaker 1: no dry Yeah, I would love that. Have you ever
Speaker 1: have there been any pitches for you to do uh
Speaker 1: like kids shows or children's show? Yeah.
Speaker 10: I did a children's show in the late nineties called
Speaker 10: The Weird Al Show on CBS. It was like ninety
Speaker 10: ninety seven, ninety eight something like that. But yeah, it
Speaker 10: was on for one season, thirteen shows.
Speaker 1: I was also twenty six years old.
Speaker 10: Yeah, show you weren't the chord?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'll tell you what TV show I would like
Speaker 7: to see back, come back, and that's ALTV.
Speaker 1: Oh thank you.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I used to love those specials. It used to
Speaker 7: be like almost one Like whenever you put put out a.
Speaker 10: New album, it was a people some people, I used
Speaker 10: to watch your old series like it wasn't a series
Speaker 10: or like a special that I would be like every year,
Speaker 10: every whatever, I had an album to promote. Really, uh,
Speaker 10: but MTV would play play them a lot.
Speaker 7: Yeah, those are brilliant. To interviews, the fake interviews, Yeah,
Speaker 7: I used to those.
Speaker 10: Take levels of interviews out of context and play as
Speaker 10: sorts of random, weird videos. I mean that was back
Speaker 10: in the day, you know, when MTV would, uh, first
Speaker 10: of all, they play videos like this, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm proud he interviewed Prince where you know Prince did someone?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, hey could you do your like this? Prince?
Speaker 10: What do you think about this beach ball? It's multi
Speaker 10: colored and it's very fun. It's just just stuff like that.
Speaker 10: But yeah, I mean that was in the days when
Speaker 10: MTV kind of you know, was free formed. They're very
Speaker 10: gorilla and to some extent they didn't care. They're like, oh, well,
Speaker 10: you've got this four hours just do whatever you want.
Speaker 10: I would I did whatever I wanted for four hours.
Speaker 1: And I would watch all four hours.
Speaker 10: They gave me no money, but they said do whatever
Speaker 10: you want and and and UH kind of went nuts.
Speaker 1: It was like, I said, I love those questions. How
Speaker 1: come you didn't pursue more movies after Uh?
Speaker 10: I would have liked to have done more movies, but
Speaker 10: the crushing failure of my first movie kind of dampened every.
Speaker 1: But it's almost why do you think it failed? I
Speaker 1: mean it was funny, I mean, why do you think
Speaker 1: it didn't?
Speaker 10: Yeah, it's hard to say. I mean, critics, you know,
Speaker 10: generally hated it. Ciskel and Ebra thought I was the
Speaker 10: anti christ I think, and it came out. You know,
Speaker 10: this is sort of an excuse, but it's it's also true.
Speaker 10: It came out in the middle of one of the
Speaker 10: biggest blockbuster summers ever. So it came out while you know,
Speaker 10: Batman and Lethal Weapon and honeyt Shrunk the Kids and
Speaker 10: Do the Right Thing, and you know, a bunch of
Speaker 10: stuff was out at the same time. So it would
Speaker 10: have done a lot better if it had come out
Speaker 10: during a slower time of the year. But you know,
Speaker 10: there's there's no telling. I mean, I'm just very happily
Speaker 10: happy that you know, it's found its audience and now
Speaker 10: it's at least got cult status.
Speaker 1: No, it definitely has that.
Speaker 3: When was Ala Palooza, uh.
Speaker 10: Nineteen ninety three?
Speaker 3: I have an autographed copy of that CD? Somehow cool?
Speaker 1: Somehow? So do you often meet I mean the way
Speaker 1: that like cats come up to me like, yo, man,
Speaker 1: God's been if you bars well? You know, like people
Speaker 1: are always trying to I'm certain that every night there's
Speaker 1: someone that when you're doing in stores and autographs and
Speaker 1: of the like, that someone saying like, hey, the new
Speaker 1: you or that sort of thing.
Speaker 10: Like they they always try to give me ideas like
Speaker 10: you know, what you should do? And it's always some
Speaker 10: awful parody idea that they thought of in the third grade.
Speaker 10: But they were just waiting for their chance to meet me.
Speaker 10: You know, tell them this a great idea, how do
Speaker 10: you parody from the eighties that it'll see great?
Speaker 1: How do you laugh?
Speaker 10: And moretfully, Oh yeah, that's not answers. I'll get right
Speaker 10: to work on that.
Speaker 1: They want to do that. No, No, no, I member
Speaker 1: people that meet you and say that you know, I
Speaker 1: too want to be in the same because the thing
Speaker 1: is is like there's one weird out and you've literally
Speaker 1: shut you shut it down for anyone trying to come.
Speaker 1: I mean there's some like morning shows that do you
Speaker 1: know things on radio.
Speaker 10: But the thing is, nowadays there's YouTube, there's avenues for
Speaker 10: people to get their stuff out there. When when I started,
Speaker 10: it was sort of a mystery, like how do you
Speaker 10: penetrate this black box of you know of on TV?
Speaker 10: And then it was, you know a little bit harder
Speaker 10: to navigate.
Speaker 1: You have like high humor and your level of humor
Speaker 1: and your pinning game is past just you know, twisting
Speaker 1: a verb, a nown and a verb. Yeah. So it's
Speaker 1: it's like, are you have you thought about like, is
Speaker 1: there anyone out there like that you like to produce
Speaker 1: that's the next weird hour?
Speaker 10: Gosh, why the next word?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 10: Coming up? I mean there's a lot of people that
Speaker 10: do funny music. I love Lonely Island, Tenacious, Deep of
Speaker 10: the Concord, and there's a lot of people doing great,
Speaker 10: great comedy stuff. As far as coming up, you know,
Speaker 10: I don't know, there's a lot of funny people, uh
Speaker 10: on YouTube. Brandy Rainbow is really funny. You know, I
Speaker 10: I don't know about producing other other acts. I mean
Speaker 10: i'd be I'd entertained that idea, I guess, but I
Speaker 10: don't know. Well we'll see on that one.
Speaker 3: America. Can you tell the story or why don't you
Speaker 3: tell the story about the Dyla sample with the.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, no, with no it's yeah, you're
Speaker 1: thinking of accordion, Yeah exactly.
Speaker 3: I don't even know what I'm.
Speaker 1: Asking, but yeah, yeah, no, one of my favorite momes.
Speaker 1: Do you ever wash you? It actually made pitchwork, which
Speaker 1: is weird. It's like the nicest thing Pitchwork said about
Speaker 1: me twenty thirteen. No you you you playing uh uh
Speaker 1: accords accordion, which you know that that was brilliant.
Speaker 3: No, but you're not telling the like for the listeners
Speaker 3: like me who don't really know.
Speaker 1: But wasn't no, no, no, it wasn't a weird ol song.
Speaker 1: It's just that when Weird Out came on the Tonight Show,
Speaker 1: he has an Accordian. I was like, yo, we have
Speaker 1: to do Uh what was the project Mall Villain? The
Speaker 1: Mad Villain cover of Accordion, which is basically a song
Speaker 1: that's looped over in according Actually what I found that loop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it is wow.
Speaker 11: Do you know what they're talking about?
Speaker 10: I do, absolutely.
Speaker 1: He was there with me.
Speaker 10: I kind of jammed on that for all. I gotta
Speaker 10: tell you, man that some of my favorite times of
Speaker 10: my life are just hanging backstage with the roots and
Speaker 10: playing you guys, didn't.
Speaker 11: I see you one year like a roots jam? Like
Speaker 11: when it the Grammy thing? I swear I saw him
Speaker 11: one year in l A at a roots jam.
Speaker 1: You came inside of a roots.
Speaker 11: Jam every year month.
Speaker 1: You Oh wow, Yeah, a couple of years.
Speaker 8: So I have a question, So did you end up
Speaker 8: doing ten records for Scotti Brothers or or what actually
Speaker 8: happened to Scotty?
Speaker 1: But I feel like they're tied up in the river.
Speaker 10: Scotty Brothers also owned I think All American and Broadcasting,
Speaker 10: which owned Baywatch, so they they're sitting on a pile
Speaker 10: of money somewhere. I don't think they're a record label anymore.
Speaker 10: But I was sold as an asset, you know, because
Speaker 10: they still owned however many albums on my contract, and
Speaker 10: I got sold to somebody else, and then I got
Speaker 10: sold to somebody else, and I renegotiated the contact twice
Speaker 10: and each time I renegotiated, they tacked on a couple
Speaker 10: more albums, So basically it became a fourteen album contract
Speaker 10: and my last album mandatory fund was album number fourteen, just.
Speaker 1: Or No No.
Speaker 10: But in just thirty two short years I was able
Speaker 10: to fulfill my contracts.
Speaker 1: You're still quote on the label no No.
Speaker 10: I fulfilled it when I when I delivered the last
Speaker 10: album and that was it. They wanted to uh to
Speaker 10: reassign me, which is very nice, and they made a
Speaker 10: very generous offer. But after being under contract for so long,
Speaker 10: I just really kind of wanted to be a free agent,
Speaker 10: not beholden to anybody. I hate the idea of just
Speaker 10: owing people stuff. You know, I just I don't you know,
Speaker 10: I just just want don't want to have that kind
Speaker 10: of pressure hanging over me.
Speaker 1: Do you know who Richard Cheese is?
Speaker 10: Sure? Yes, Mark Davis, have you?
Speaker 1: That's I mean, I'm starting to figure out, like who's
Speaker 1: the then who's the closest person that could that has
Speaker 1: a following?
Speaker 10: Yeah, mar Mark does sort of like with lounge music
Speaker 10: what I do with polgar music. He does like, you know,
Speaker 10: the hits of the day, like in his kind of
Speaker 10: like small too Biggest Lounge.
Speaker 1: What is the Latter day tupac to your Latter Day Biggie.
Speaker 10: He's an old friend.
Speaker 1: I went to school with Sugar Dite. Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 3: What what other labels did you end up being on
Speaker 3: a BMG or something?
Speaker 10: Yeah, BMG and some version of CBS and EPIC and
Speaker 10: RCA and Volcano Records, and you know, and you know
Speaker 10: they're even even one of.
Speaker 1: Those sounding labels.
Speaker 10: Yeah, even when it was on the same label, sometimes
Speaker 10: they change their name or they'd add some subsidiary, and
Speaker 10: you know, I've probably been on a dozen different label
Speaker 10: imprints over my career.
Speaker 1: How how how did it feel because your last album
Speaker 1: actually went to number one? Correct? How surreal was that
Speaker 1: that you're you had the number one pop album?
Speaker 10: It blew my mind, it really did, because you know,
Speaker 10: it was basically unprecedented that the UH never before had
Speaker 10: a comedy album debut a number one military fund right, yeah,
Speaker 10: Midlistry fund and and and the last time a comedy
Speaker 10: album even reached number one was in nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 10: That was Alan Sherman. But back in the early sixty
Speaker 10: I mean, you know, comedy albums go to number one
Speaker 10: all the time. Alan Truman had three number one albums
Speaker 10: and Bob Newhart won like the Album of the Year
Speaker 10: the Grammys. I believe it was like, you know, back then,
Speaker 10: like comedy was, you know, viewed as more important. But yeah,
Speaker 10: there hadn't been a number one album since then, and
Speaker 10: I just kind of thought that that was you know,
Speaker 10: there was a glass ceiling or whatever. It just was
Speaker 10: like not within the realm of possibility. I thought, Oh,
Speaker 10: I really hope that's my last album cracks the top ten,
Speaker 10: because that would be cool for me to kind of
Speaker 10: go out in a big way. And then when I
Speaker 10: found out that, you know, I had a good chance
Speaker 10: of hitting number one, it was very surrealistic for me
Speaker 10: because you know, I'm obsessed with the Billboard charts. I've
Speaker 10: been studying them for decades, and to think that I
Speaker 10: would have a number one album was just beyond my comprehension.
Speaker 1: That's weird.
Speaker 8: So you have to do a parody of one of
Speaker 8: your songs, that's possible the world the section, that's crazy.
Speaker 1: Oh h thank you for doing this for us.
Speaker 10: It's such a pleasure, man.
Speaker 1: They're such fans of yours. Congratulation, thank you on a tour, Yes.
Speaker 7: All those things, Yes, I also have to come back
Speaker 7: into my roll call. I wasn't lying when I said
Speaker 7: that was one of the top ten shows I've ever
Speaker 7: seen in my entire life. How were you when you
Speaker 7: see I was in my twenties, it was I was
Speaker 7: in college at the time, and it was like maybe
Speaker 7: ninety nine, two thousands or something like.
Speaker 10: That, and running with a Scissors store made Yeah, I
Speaker 10: think it was.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, And like I considered myself a fan, but
Speaker 7: I didn't really realize how many of your songs I
Speaker 7: knew until I saw you before them all back to
Speaker 7: back to back to even sitting.
Speaker 1: Here just talking. I was like, damn, he did do
Speaker 1: that one. Yeah. It was like, yeah, it's like, oh man,
Speaker 1: I forgot about that one.
Speaker 7: I forgot And then I started realizing, yeah, I remember
Speaker 7: the lyrics too, and so I'm just like, I'm a
Speaker 7: bigger weird, weird out fan than I thought I was,
Speaker 7: you know. And so like after that, I started really
Speaker 7: going back deeper and deeper into the catalog and it
Speaker 7: was just yeah.
Speaker 10: Well, you know, I'm still going through my raid all phase.
Speaker 1: Damn.
Speaker 7: Now you know my first show is going to be
Speaker 7: the you should go Like I saw this man was
Speaker 7: hopping around on one leg with the other leg behind
Speaker 7: his head.
Speaker 1: It was amazing. It was amazing. Yes, can I still
Speaker 1: do that? You still got it?
Speaker 9: Wow?
Speaker 1: Be careful, that is ship done.
Speaker 10: Wow an old man.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 10: The one of the most bones removed, you know.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: One of the most entertaining shows I've ever seen the
Speaker 7: entire life. Wow, that's amazing. Anyway, how do you describe
Speaker 7: that what we just seen?
Speaker 1: Got? We got photo? We'll post it up on contortionist
Speaker 1: Alan Convic Yeah, so on behalf of Sugar Steve and
Speaker 1: Boss Bill and fan Tickelo and it's like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: thank you very much for coming on the show.
Speaker 10: Pleasure.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to finally see you in concert the
Speaker 1: deep cuts. Maybe we'll just do one of the hits
Speaker 1: for the encore, just for me. This course, Love of
Speaker 1: the Quest, Love Supreme, and we will see you over
Speaker 1: the next go around. Thank you. Course.
Speaker 2: Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode
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