Weird Al Yankovic, Palladium London 16 Februari 2023, The Unfortunate Return of The Ridiculously Self-Indulgent Ill-Advised Vanity Tour
Somewhere in November last year I saw that Weird Al Yankovic on
The Unfortunate Return of The Ridiculously Self-Indulgent Ill-Advised Vanity Tour
was also coming to Utrecht! So getting tickets was a good idea, especially
when it turned out the tickets were going really fast.
So I went on 20 february 2023 and I had a great evening. The concert was at
Tivoli Vredenburg in Utrecht, which is cycling distance from my house. A friend
came along and he found it a great idea to park at our house and cycle to a
bicycle parking really close to the concert.
I looked up the setlist: “Weird Al” Yankovic Concert Setlist at TivoliVredenburg Grote Zaal, Utrecht on February 20, 2023 | setlist.fm
and comparing that to earlier Weird Al Yankovic concerts it's clear he took a
different route in this tour. Mostly own work, some of the 'in the style of'
songs. He did the extended extended version of Albuquerque with lots of types
of Donuts and he 'restarted' the song to make the sauerkraut joke again.
The previous Weird Al Yankovic concert I saw was in Amsterdam was more the
style with the parodies and the costumes.
Setlist of that concert: “Weird Al” Yankovic Concert Setlist at Melkweg The Max, Amsterdam on September 30, 2015 | setlist.fm.
This was a concert with standing room and I turned out to be in the splash zone
for the end of 'smells like nirvana'. A group of fans had their own aluminium
foil hats for 'Foil' so Al was really enthusiastic about their response and the
whole audience had lots of fun.
To give space for the costume change there was also use of video. And when
there was a bit of video with Al reacting to Eminem with 'Say what??' a number
of times I expected Word Crimes and indeed that happened.
Anyway I enjoy the music of Weird Al Yankovic. I started with the parodies and
I sometimes remark 'this is a strange version of a Weird Al Yankovic song' when
I hear for example Gangsta Paradise or Like a virgin. The
polka versions are always fun to me. I didn't really like the personal songs
the first time but after hearing them a few times and discovering the layers
including the jokes I start to appreciate them too.
And recently Rob o'Hara did an episode
of his podcast You Don't Know Flack about Weird Al. Rob is also a big fan of Weird Al
Yankovic and has seen him perform in the US multiple times. And listening to
this podcast episode made me write down 'my' Weird Al story.
Rob also went on a pilgrimage of the sites in Tulsa, Oklahoma where the
outside shots of the UHF movie were filmed: UHF - My 15 Year Pilgrimage. Now that is a Weird Al Yankovic fan!
The picture in this newsitem is from the same tour, just a few days earlier.
I tried taking some phone pictures but there was nothing good and I found
this picture with a nice license which captures the tour really great.
