“Weird Al” Yankovic w/ Emo Phillips – Strathmore, 3/20/2018

“Weird Al” kicked off the local stop of his “ridiculously self-indulgent, ill-advised vanity tour” with a booming “Hello, North Bethesda”. As promised, it featured almost all originals, with no videos or costume changes. Very different from when we saw him at Wolf Trap, but quite enjoyable nonetheless, particularly with the great musicianship of Al and his four bandmates, who rocked the house throughout. “Good Old Days” got things off to a great start, and “I’ll Sue Ya” almost outrocked Rage Against The Machine (its inspiration). “The Night Santa Went Crazy” was a decidedly non-PC take on Christmas, and the guys stretched out on “Jackson Park Express” (which reminded me for some reason of Harry Chapin) and “Albuquerque”. They closed the main set with a medley of some of Al’s best-known parodies, and came back with a great straight-ahead cover of Tom Petty’s “Refugee”, ending the show with “The Saga Begins”, telling much of the Star Wars story to the tune of “American Pie”.

 

Thanks to the courtesy of Strathmore and the person who got us our tickets, we were also treated to a post-show meet-and-greet with Al himself, including a photo, autograph, and a very nice copy of the show’s setlist. It was a perfect, if late, end to a great evening.

 

Highlights:

Hits medley

I’ll Sue Ya

Good Old Days

Refugee

The Saga Begins

You Don’t Love Me Anymore

 

Setlist

 

According to Wikipedia, Emo Phillips’ comedy routines heavily feature “paraprosdokians spoken in a wandering falsetto tone of voice.” While I’ve always had some trouble dealing with the voice, our group agreed that he did come up with some good lines during the course of his half-hour opening set, as he riffed on Ish (“the God of approximation”), his love for geography in school (“Where would we be without it?”), how he was divorced (“but would rather be a widower”), and how he once wanted to play chess with old men in the park but couldn’t find 32 of them.

 

He also added some local touches, wondering why the Washington Monument looked nothing like its honoree and saying his take on Washington is where high school hall monitors go when they grow up. Our favorite story came at the beginning, when Emo talked about how, many years ago, he asked Weird Al whether the two of them might ever go on tour together. According to Emo, Al told him that they could tour together “when Donald Trump is President of the United States.”