{"id":1396,"date":"2016-09-01T23:25:05","date_gmt":"2016-09-02T03:25:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/?p=1396"},"modified":"2016-09-01T23:26:27","modified_gmt":"2016-09-02T03:26:27","slug":"weird-al-yankovic-in-concert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/?p=1396","title":{"rendered":"Weird Al Yankovic, In Concert"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"WeirdWeird Al Yankovic<\/a> was a big part of Meghan’s and my childhood, and pretty much anyone in our generation.\u00a0 You could say he’s a hero of sorts.\u00a0 When I found out, quite by accident, that his latest tour had dates near us I bought tickets the same day.\u00a0 The only decision was which venue.<\/p>\n

I chose the Lowell Summer Music Series<\/a>; as Meghan said, if it rains we would be able to say that not only have we seen Weird Al live, but we saw him in a high school gymnasium.\u00a0 (The high school next door is the rain location.)\u00a0 It’s outdoors and BYOBlanket; so long as it didn’t rain and move indoors the kids are free.<\/p>\n

So, on the appointed date and earliest possible time after work (which was earlier today, as I write this) we packed up the kids and a blanket and headed to the park to stake out a spot.<\/p>\n

\"Mandatory<\/a>
The stage, shortly before the show started. They waited for dark so they could recreate the roaming camera scene from the ‘Tacky’ video (which was the opening number)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The show was flawless.\u00a0 It was small enough to be fun, large enough to let the crowd’s energy really flow, and turned-down enough that I wasn’t deaf at the end.\u00a0 Alpha and Beta spent most of the show in a corner of the park with some other kids, but they enjoyed the show immensely as well.\u00a0 Their view was better than ours, despite the distance\u00a0\u2014 they could see over the crowd, while we had to contend with the sound booth\/tent.<\/p>\n

\"weird<\/a>
Weird Al in the fat suit singing ‘Fat’. My childhood has been redeemed. Apologies for the potato quality, all I had was my cell phone and the stage lighting was particularly bright and direct during this song.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There was a good mix of old and new songs over a couple of hours, interspersed with video clips while the band changed costumes.\u00a0 Among other songs (in no particular order), there was Tacky<\/a> (the opening number), Dare to Be Stupid<\/a>,\u00a0the aforementioned Fat<\/a>, Amish Paradise<\/a>, White and Nerdy<\/a>, an awesome arrangement of Like A Surgeon<\/a> set to the “unplugged” arrangement of Eric Clapton’s Layla<\/a> (really), a couple of polkas interspersed throughout (of course), and closing with Yoda<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Mandatory
Cover of Weird Al’s latest album and tour<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The girls were buzzing as we left the park, and wide awake despite a) being 10 pm, b) after a regular day of school, and c) on the first week of school.\u00a0 They can sleep in tomorrow, there’s no school, and Meghan and I aren’t setting an alarm \u2014 our jobs are flexible enough that we can afford to be a little late.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Weird Al Yankovic was a big part of Meghan’s and my childhood, and pretty much anyone in our generation.\u00a0 You could say he’s a hero of sorts.\u00a0 When I found out, quite by accident, that his latest tour had dates near us I bought tickets the same day.\u00a0 The only decision was which venue. I … Continue reading “Weird Al Yankovic, In Concert”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[292,293,291,290],"class_list":["post-1396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","tag-concert","tag-mandatory-fun","tag-music","tag-weird-al-yankovic"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4o3FW-mw","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1396"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1403,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396\/revisions\/1403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jonesling.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}