Just woke up from the concert aftermath; I had planned on writing this last night, but my ears were still suffering from a little bit of sound shock, so I decided to go to bed instead.
But anyway, the concert was awesome. Really good show. I would recommend that anyone who is even remotely a Weird Al fan should try and see him in concert if he’s coming near your area; he doesn’t tour very often, and the show is a one-of-a-kind experience. I don’t think there’s another artist who quite puts on a show like he does. He did a fairly good mix of old and new stuff, including a medley in the middle that was really, really long (something on the order of 20 abbreviated songs in a row), with some nice breaks in between the music because of costume changes - which were covered by video segments on a projector screen over the stage to keep people interested. There were at least a dozen costume changes, maybe a few more.
The costume changes make the show. Between that and the overhead video, the production values are really good. The whole band goes through costume changes really fast, and they always fit in with the material they’re performing (which often means you get one costume per song in parts of the concert). They came out in Jedi robes for the encore of “The Saga Begins” and “Yoda.” The fat suit for “Fat” (natch) was really cool, and the flashy suit + strobe light combination for “Pentiums” was entirely too cool. The band is great - and they’re all really good, really serious musicians, despite the funny nature of the lyrics. Weird Al is an unbelievable musician.
The concert was about two hours post-encore and post-standing around, so it wasn’t that bad. The Pageant was a lot smaller than I had expected it to be - I couldn’t estimate the number of people in there, but the balcony was closed, and we actually had really good seats where we were - if we had been two rows further up, it would have been perfect. The place had a bar and everything - It reminded me more of a comedy club than anything else, but I suppose it’s kind of like a House of Blues or something similar. Really nice and comfortable as far as the size - not too big, but seeing a major group in there would be something. Too bad they don’t have anything cool scheduled for the next three months. The local engineer was way off in what he was doing - the sound mix wasn’t all that hot to be honest - but the source material totally overpowered that.
Two more observations, though:
1. About fifteen minutes before the concert began, Ken looked around and pointed out to me that there was not a single non-white person in the entire room. He was completely right. In his words, “it looked like a Klan rally,” only without the sheets, hoods, and burning crosses. We spotted one black man on the way out of the venue. It was weird.
2. We also noticed a decidedly large contingent of people who were either overly large, or had ridiculously long hair (especially men). It was pretty freaky. There were some people who were there that I’m sure don’t get out except to go to Weird Al concerts - they climbed out of their parents’ basement or something.
But it was a total blast.
If you go, don’t forget to wear a Hawaiian shirt, OK?
