At Austin's Fun Fun Fun Fest, Weird Al is his lovably strange self.
AUSTIN On its face, the idea of Weird Al Yankovic closing out the first night of a festival that prides itself on esoteric bands -- Woven Bones ain't exactly lighting up the airwaves, if you know what I mean -- would seem at cross-purposes. But listening to the few thousand gathered roar as Yankovic took the stage to whip through most of the Top 40, it made total sense: Yankovic was the original hipster (a point noted several times on Twitter Friday night), mocking the mainstream to its face well before it was fashionable.
It was all right there in Smells Like Nirvana, Yankovic's still-sharp send-up of the iconic grunge band's first hit, Smells Like Teen Spirit. The crowd ate it up, down to Yankovic's perfect recreation of Kurt Cobain's outfit. Twenty years after grunge swept through rock music and spawned sub-genres and inspired acts, some of whom are still kicking around today, the kids who grew up wearing out CDs of Nevermind are now tastemakers themselves, starting blogs and Tumblrs and Twitter feeds to rhapsodize about all manner of ephemera old and new. Yankovic's performance illustrated the notion that everything in pop culture is cyclical; those left-field video clips that punctuated his costume changes presaged the rise of the viral video. His snide-silly "AL TV" videos, with Yankovic goofing on people like Jessica Simpson and Eminem, wouldn't be out of place on a website like Funny or Die.
In short, Yankovic was well ahead of his time, despite his popularity as a musical parodist. Friday night, beneath a chilly Austin sky, he ricocheted around the stage, blending comedy and music (Frank's 2000-Inch TV, penned well before the HDTV boom, remains a glimmering piece of pop perfection) with skill. It was heartening to see him embraced by a crowd that often has a tough time with emotion; for a time, everyone dropped the poses and affectations, and just became a kid again.
