You Can Call Him Al

I don’t remember the first “Weird Al” song I ever heard -- probably “Eat It,” but possibly “I Lost on Jeopardy” -- but I do know that for about a year and a half, when both “Weird Al” Yankovic in 3-D and Dare To Be Stupid were in heavy rotation in the cassette player my brother and I shared, “Weird Al” pretty much logged equal time with the other luminaries in our collection:  Prince, the Police, Billy Idol and Huey Lewis & the News.

We hadn’t, at that time, been taught to make musical distinctions -- nor, at nine and thirteen years old, were we yet savvy enough to understand what the hell Prince or Billy Idol or Sting were really singing about -- so our “Weird Al” tapes seemed no different from all the others, except that we got his jokes.

In late 1985, two things happened to change my outlook on music, and on life:  I started high school, and I started reading Rolling Stone.  I never bought another “Weird Al” tape.  I never even tried to convince my brother to go halfsies with me on one.

Occasionally I would hear about “Weird Al”; I’d be flipping past MTV when they would accidentally be playing videos, or he’d parody something hugely popular -- Nirvana, or Coolio -- and get a blip of attention, or he’d turn up briefly at the bottom of the top-selling CD rack at Best Buy.  Whatever it was, I paid it no mind.  With each passing year, my “Weird Al” fandom came to seem more like just another passing mid-80s fad.

Evidently, this was not everyone’s experience.  While I wasn’t looking, “Weird Al” went out and sold 12 million albums and won three Grammys -- and earned a Wikipedia entry longer than Nirvana or Coolio (though that may speak more about the nature of Wikipedia than the nature of Nirvana or Coolio).

Indeed, it’s the “Weird Al” devotees eagerly anticipating the release of his 12th studio album, Straight Outta Lynwood (available next Tuesday, September 26), who’ve clogged the trivia section of his Wikipedia page so full that the master Wikipedians have declared of it, “This article’s trivia section is too large.”

And yet, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have even been aware of Al’s new album if my brother hadn’t sent me an email last week with the subject line “so good” and the simple message of “new weird al songs” with a link to Weird Al’s MySpace page.

I obediently clicked, and expected to hear the songs and roll my eyes.  Instead, I got “White and Nerdy” (a parody of Chamillionaire’s “Ridin’”) stuck in my head for two days.  (Caveat clickor:  you might, too.)

What amazed me about Weird Al’s MySpace page was not that he had a MySpace page, or that he’s friends with They Might Be Giants, but that he had more than 60,000 friends.  It’s not quite Chamillionaire’s posse (416,588 friends and counting), but it’s 60,000 more than I have.

I had arrogantly figured the rest of the world’s music tastes had grown more sophisticated with mine, forgetting that while I may now be 20 years past my “Weird Al” prime, there is a never-ending supply of awkward teenagers in the pipeline.  As long as there are suburbs, “Weird Al” will have an audience.

But upon further investigation, it’s clear that some of Al’s white and nerdy acolytes just never let go, even though they’re now pushing middle age alongside Al himself.

It’s these fans who, at All Things Yankovic, are counting down the seconds until the new album drops.

It’s these fans who have created a Weird Al Wiki, with 845 pages (so far) “about Weird Al, his songs, his albums, or people he knows.”

It’s these fans who have raised $15,000 for the Weird Al Star Fund, and are pushing to get Weird Al his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

It’s these fans who have started a grassroots campaign to “Make the Rock Hall ‘Weird’” -- i.e., get “Weird Al” into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Which, of course, begs the question:  what is it about this accordion-toting song mocker that inspires such devotion among the nerd set?

I don’t mean this as a knock on the man, but I don’t think it’s that his songs are all that funny.

Rather, I think it’s that Al is a “rock star” for people who know they will never be rock stars, a musical outsider who’s not only never tried to be cool or tough, he’s never asked his audience to be cool or tough, either.

Put another way, some people see rock stars and think, “Man, those guys are so cool.  I hope I can be like them someday,” then try to do so and fail.  Others look at rock stars and think, “Man, I am never, ever going to get laid.”  These people hear Weird Al’s music, and feel understood.

And yet despite his aggressive nerdiness -- despite his giant, ever-present glasses (now absent, actually, after his 1998 LASIK surgery), his Hawaiian shirts, and his questionable facial hair -- Weird Al still managed to land a recording contract and make it on MTV.  If a guy as weird as “Weird Al” can make it, can’t anybody?  He is a beacon of hope.

Or, as Adam Finley (whose email address, I must note, is pumpkinpants@excite.com), wrote in Flak Magazine, perhaps it’s that Al “is a kind of pop-cultural barometer.  He’s the flower to music’s E.T., thriving or wilting depending on the vitality of the current musical landscape.”

Maybe he’s all these things and more.  But at this rate, it doesn’t look like he’s getting into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  The nominating committee will consider adding a performer to its annual ballot if a petition is delivered with at least 10,000 supporting signatures.

Right now, Al’s petition has 58.