Wednesday, October 03, 2007 10:12 PM
Last Sunday night we went to the first big concert we've ever been to as a family. We've been to a number of classical, jazz, world, and other shows in the past few years, but never to a big-name concert in a larger venue. My boys love this particular artist, and listen to his music all the time. They don't listen to a whole lot of bands yet, so this is a large part of their personal musical exposure at this point. Any idea who this is?
I hope that you recognize him as "Weird Al" Yankovic! My wife and I have listened to him since we were kids, and when we heard that he was coming to Davenport, we had to buy tickets! We left it until a few days before the day to tell the boys so it was a big surprise.
His show was great fun. He played nearly non-stop for over two hours! His only breaks were to change his outfits between some of the songs. They'd play clips from him over the years doing his mock interviews, or several of his videos on big screens while he was off-stage. He had so much energy, and really belted it out with just as much talent as he shows on his albums. Too many artists fall flat live, but he was really great.
My only complaint is that he didn't really interact with the audience very much. For one or two songs he actually got down on his knees to reach out to people in the audience and in another he walked through the lower level going up to people. That was really cool, though he didn't make it up to the upper level where we were! So it's not that he didn't interact at all, but he didn't do the banter between songs that many of them do. I'll forgive him since his music and stage work were so awesome, but I was a little bit disappointed by that.
After the show, as we were driving away, we saw their bus pulled up to the back and we stopped to watch him and the band come out. Though I got pictures of Steve Jay (guitarist) and Jim West, I only got a split-second glance at Weird Al himself as he quickly got into the bus. There were about 20 of us out there braving the rain. The events girl said that he wouldn't be signing autographs, but a few more seconds couldn't have killed him!
All in all, it was a great show, we all really enjoyed it, and I highly recommend seeing him live if you have the chance.
[Sunday, September 30, Adler Theater, Davenport, Iowa]