Kim and I went with Jessica and Adam to the Weird Al Yankovic concert this evening at Hoyt Sherman Place - a historic old mansion/theatre in Des Moines. None of us had been to a Weird Al concert before, so we were pretty excited. Adam was on the ball purchasing tickets as soon as they went on sale, so we had great seats - second row, left of center a bit. One of the great things about Hoyt Sherman is that there is virtually no space between the seats and the stage, putting us within 20 feet of so of Al at most times.

Photo from Flickr user crimsonmare07 - I brought my camera, but they were really cracking down on photos at our performance despite the rules only being "no flash photography" and I wasn't using a Flash.

The concert was fantastic - super entertaining. At 2 hours 20 minutes long, he did several of his original songs interspersed within his newer and classic parodies. Between sets of key songs, they'd play Al TV clips - clips where he took interviews celebrities had done and remixed them with his own questions making them look quite...odd. In a newer Al TV segment, he really slammed K-Fed (Britney Spears' ex), saying that in light of 9-11 and Katrina, hadn't the country been through enough already without him going on tour to add to their problems? During these clips, Al and his band would do costume changes in whatever was appropriate for the piece being played, such as donning Jedi garb for "The Saga Begins" about Obi Wan and Anakin Skywalker while stormtroopers and Darth Vader danced in the background.

Photo by Flickr user Emily D Elliott - this time with Al performing White & Nerdy

For his song "Wanna B Ur Lovr", the song where he plays a leisure suited would-be-romeo singing many, many pick-up lines, he walked off the stage, straight over to Jessica. He got right in her face, inches away, singing a line to her before moving on to the next woman nearby, eventually going up and down both aisles "serenading." It was quite surreal to see him mere feet away singing to my friend!

Al during "Wanna B Ur Lover" - this is about as close as he was to me and right on top of Jessica. Photo from Flickr user verybigjen.

Another thing that stood out to me about the show's format that worked well was that he did a long "medley" made of key parts of several of his famous songs. His body of work is huge, but this allowed for at least part of many of his popular ones to be played live on stage. It worked really well.

I'd recommend a Weird Al concert to nearly anyone. Kim had never heard most of his songs before, and she really had a good time, so you need not be a big fan to have a good time!