Weird Al Yankovic - Hawaiian shirts and all - to host TV special here
By J.K. Radomski
MONTREAL — After weeks of election coverage taking over television programming, a new threat to the tube is coming next week: Al TV.
That’s what Weird Al Yankovic calls his planned takeover of the MusiquePlus studios.
The parody expert will be in town to “guest-host” live on the music-video station Monday afternoon. He’ll also be taping a special, to air Friday, Nov. 12. Both appearances will be in English on the francophone channel. His live segments will be translated into French by one of the station’s hosts, and the taped show will either follow that format, or use French subtitles.
Yankovic pulled a similar stunt last year when he appeared on MuchMusic in Toronto and recorded a two-hour special that featured everything from musical parodies and off-the-wall videos to interviews that had been re-edited to make celebrities seem to be answering stupid questions.
Currently in New York City to promote his new album Alapalooza, Yankovic said his programming in Montreal is still unplanned: “They have some plans for me. But I don’t know what I’ll be doing yet.”
Looking for a pop single to mock this summer and drawing blanks, Yankovic came up with a “fond tribute” to the movie Jurassic Park, a song he sings to the tune of the Jimmy Webb classic “MacArthur Park”.
“I wanted to be topical,” said Yankovic, 34.
The parody video, featuring Claymation-style dinosaurs, is MusiquePlus’s current Buzz Clip, or hit video of the week.
But while Yankovic’s main target is a film this time, the pop music industry isn’t safe yet.
He also parodies Aerosmith with “Livin’ in the Fridge”, does a cover of two Red Hot Chili Pepper songs, and does a polka version of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhaspody”.
His most scathing attack is aimed at Billy Ray Cyrus’s “Achy Breaky Heart”, and is sung to the tune of that song: “Don’t play that song/ That Achy Breaky song/ You know I hate that song a bunch/ And if you play that song/ That nauseating song/ It might just make me lose my lunch.”
“This is the closest I’ve come to doing a put down of an artist on record. And it’s all done in good fun, but it’s still harsh,” he said. “But I wanted to do a song about how sick I am of hearing that song, and Billy Ray had a good sense of humor to let me do it.”
Yankovic won’t be bringing his band with him to MusiquePlus, but he said he will be bringing his standard Hawaiian shirts.
“I normally wear them because I have pretty bad taste in clothes and they’ve become my trademark,” he said. “They’re 90 per cent of my wardrobe.”
He said he may return to Montreal with his band during a tour soon.
Craziness rules when Yankovic takes charge of an interview or an entire network, but he insists he’s just an average guy who left behind a degree in architecture for a career in music.
Sure, he spent a little time as an accordion repo-man for a music school, repossessing the borrowed instrument from students who stopped taking lessons.
But who didn’t?
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