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Weird Al Yankovic: Biography
Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic, the son of Nick & Mary Yankovic, first started playing the accordion one day before his seventh birthday, mastering the instrument by age ten.
After hearing
Dr. Demento's radio show (a comedy radio program featuring humorous music), Al sent the Doctor a tape of a song entitled "Belvedere Cruising" in 1976. Al was a senior at Lynwood High School in Lynwood, California at the time, but that tape was the start of his eventual career.
Three years later, Al was an architecture student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and a disc jockey at the university's radio station (KCPR). Since "My Sharona" by The Knack was on the charts and The Knack was going to play at Cal Poly, Al took his accordion into the bathroom across from the listening booth and recorded a parody entitled "My Bologna", with a B-side called "School Cafeteria". The Knack thought it was funny, and arranged for the song to be released on their label, Capitol Records, which gave Al a six-month contract.
Dr. Demento's listeners put this track atop his "Funny Five" list.
In 1980, Al was working the mail room at Westwood One,
Dr. Demento's radio network at the time, when he announced he had another parody. Jon Schwartz was also there, and he was a percussionist, so he was recruited to bang on Al's accordion case. The resulting performance of "Another One Rides the Bus" was a parody of a Queen hit, "Another One Bites the Dust". The rare 1981 Placebo EP release of this song has as its B-Side the subtle track "Happy Birthday."
1981 brought Al on tour for the first time as part of
Dr. Demento's act. His performances were particularly interesting as few, if any, people at the time were doing parodies of rock and roll songs on accordion. His stage act caught the eye of manager Jay Levey, who loved it and became Al's manager. Jay insisted that the act would sound better if Al had a full band, so he held auditions. Steve Jay became Al's bass player, and Jim West the lead guitarist. With Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz on drums, the band was complete.
The
Dr. Demento Society, which issues yearly Christmas re-releases of material from
Dr. Demento's Basement Tapes, often includes among these unreleased tracks from Mr. Yankovic's vaults, such as "Pacman", "It's Still Billy Joel To Me", or the demos for "I Love Rocky Road". The live version of "School Cafeteria" is also to be found on
Dr. Demento's Basement Tapes.
In 1985, Al co-wrote and starred in a mockumentary of his own life entitled The Compleat Al that intertwined fact and fiction of his life up to that point. The movie was co-directed by Jay Levey, who would direct UHF (see below) three years later.
Al claims to have been inspired by Allan Sherman, whose portrait in miniature (with name) can be found by the observant on the cover of Al's first album.
Since the mid-1990s, Al has performed annually at the Minnesota State Fair.
In January 1998, Yankovic had LASIK eye surgery and shaved off his mustache, radically changing his trademark look.
On April 9, 2004, Al's parents, Nick Louis Yankovic, 86, and Mary, 81, were found dead in their Fallbrook, California home, apparently the victims of carbon monoxide poisoning. The night after their bodies were found, Al went on with his concert in Mankato, Minnesota, saying that since his music had helped many of his fans through tough times, maybe it would work for him as well.
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Al's songs >>
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Latest news on Weird Al Yankovic
LiteratureJudge Alex Kozinski's porn stash
Moe Zilla sez, Judge Alex Kozinski is a friend of free speech. Now bloggers have discovered his secret online porn stash -- and forgiven him for it. Yes, there's naked women painted like cows, a man fellating himself, and two women hiking their skirts under a "Bush for President" sign... But the L.A. Times' "neutral" editorial language made it all sound much more sinister than it really is. Looking at the photos, they're clearly standard-issue viral emails. (Apparently his music directory even included two Weird Al Yankovic mp3s and Monty Python's "Lumberjack Song.") The judge says he didn't know the directory was world-readable, and that many of the images belonged to his college-age son. The internet has not only changed politics, media, and freedom speech -- it also made it easier for the judge to get caught in an embarrassing situation. But I also wonder if all the MySpace/Digg/Fark users in the world will give the judge a knowing wink, and we can all finally stop being hypocrites? Link (Thanks, Moe!) Update: Some thoughtful commentary on this from Lessig: Here are the facts as I've been able to tell: For at least a month, a disgruntled litigant, angry at Judge Kozinski (and the Ninth Circuit) has been talking to the media to try to smear Kozinski. Kozinski had sent a link to a file (unrelated to the stuff being reported about) that was stored on a file server maintained by Kozinski's son, Yale. From that link (and a mistake in how the server was configured), it was possible to determine the directory structure for the server. From that directory structure, it was possible to see likely interesting places to peer. The disgruntled sort did that, and shopped some of what he found to the news sources that are now spreading it... His son set up a server to make it easy for friends and family to share stuff -- family pictures, documents he wanted to share, videos, etc. Nothing alleged to have been on this server violates any law. (There's some ridiculous claim about "bestiality." But the video is not bestiality. It lives today on YouTube -- a funny (to some) short of a man defecating in a field, and then being chased by a donkey. If there was malicious intent in this video, it was the donkey's. And in any case, nothing sexual is shown in that video at all.) No one can know who uploaded what, or for whom. The site was not "on the web" in the sense of a site open and inviting anyone to come in. It had a robots.txt file to indicate its contents were not to be indexed. That someone got in is testimony to the fact that security -- everywhere -- is imperfect. But this was a private file server, like a private room, hacked by a litigant with a vendetta. Decent people -- and publications -- should say shame on the person violating the privacy here, and not feed the violation by forcing a judge to defend his humor to a nosy world. When it comes to government invasions of our privacy, we are (and rightly) a privacy obsessed people. We need to extend some of that obsession to the increasingly common violations by private people against other private people. There is nothing for Chief Judge Kozinski to defend because he has violated no law, and we live in a free society (or so he thought when he immigrated from Romania). A free society should feed the right to be left alone, including the right not to have to defend publicly private choices and taste, by learning not to feed the privacy trolls....
Published: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 06:37:28 GMT - Source: Boingboing.Net - Read the articleNorth America$12114 CALIFORNIA move from s.f. bayarea to 1/3 acre in area near SAN DIEGO (s.f. bayarea)
dkljlmmtigqryqvrfybzinzbkbfbxhcizjxzgipgcudcggdrgqgxzxrwdkshulhfuvihhhlljyegizumjznrzmfnnmwlqxxaudaovohqkzzkmdzivhcnpnxhunxrqvgygmdacljaldvvxyzlwtiqchykevcibomikdzxjdyxtqytwqacsqjjrzqczpspdhxinitnvxhnVance DeBar Colvig, Jr. March , – March , was an American character actor. He was the son of Pinto Colvig Vance Colvig, Sr., the original Bozo the Clown and voice of famous Disney character Goofy.He can be seen opposite Weird Al Yankovic as a bum who appears in several humorous scenes in the film, "UHF". This was one of his last film roles.Vance appeared on a episode of the TV series Night Court playing a bum.dkljlmmtigqryqvrfybzinzbkbfbxhcizjxzgipgcudcggdrgqgxzxrwdkshulhfuvihhhlljyegizumjznrzmfnnmwlqxxaudaovohqkzzkmdzivhcnpnxhunxrqvgygmdacljaldvvxyzlwtiqchykevcibomikdzxjdyxtqytwqacsqjjrzqczpspdhxinitnvxhndkljlmmtigqryqvrfybzinzbkbfbxhcizjxzgipgcudcggdrgqgxzxrwdkshulhfuvihhhlljyegizumjznrzmfnnmwlqxxaudaovohqkzzkmdzivhcnpnxhunxrqvgygmdacljaldvvxyzlwtiqchykevcibomikdzxjdyxtqytwqacsqjjrzqczpspdhxinitnvxhndkljlmmtigqryqvrfybzinzbkbfbxhcizjxzgipgcudcggdrgqgxzxrwdkshulhfuvihhhlljyegizumjznrzmfnnmwlqxxaudaovohqkzzkmdzivhcnpnxhunxrqvgygmdacljaldvvxyzlwtiqchykevcibomikdzxjdyxtqytwqacsqjjrzqczpspdhxinitnvxhn 6/8/2008 Sunday 11:10 PMCome and see our Land!!!TRACT A - LOT 51 MSWGImperial Gables Road Imperial County 92243 (east of San Diego)More Property Information...Vance DeBar Colvig, Jr. March , – March , was an American character actor. He was the son of Pinto Colvig Vance Colvig, Sr., the original Bozo the Clown and voice of famous Disney character Goofy.He can be seen opposite Weird Al Yankovic as a bum who appears in several humorous scenes in the film, "UHF". This was one of his last film roles.Vance appeared on a episode of the TV series Night Court playing a bum.dkljlmmtigqryqvrfybzinzbkbfbxhcizjxzgipgcudcggdrgqgxzxrwdkshulhfuvihhhlljyegizumjznrzmfnnmwlqxxaudaovohqkzzkmdzivhcnpnxhunxrqvgygmdacljaldvvxyzlwtiqchykevcibomikdzxjdyxtqytwqacsqjjrzqczpspdhxinitnvxhndkljlmmtigqryqvrfybzinzbkbfbxhcizjxzgipgcudcggdrgqgxzxrwdkshulhfuvihhhlljyegizumjznrzmfnnmwlqxxaudaovohqkzzkmdzivhcnpnxhunxrqvgygmdacljaldvvxyzlwtiqchykevcibomikdzxjdyxtqytwqacsqjjrzqczpspdhxinitnvxhndkljlmmtigqryqvrfybzinzbkbfbxhcizjxzgipgcudcggdrgqgxzxrwdkshulhfuvihhhlljyegizumjznrzmfnnmwlqxxaudaovohqkzzkmdzivhcnpnxhunxrqvgygmdacljaldvvxyzlwtiqchykevcibomikdzxjdyxtqytwqacsqjjrzqczpspdhxinitnvxhnVance DeBar Colvig, Jr. March , – March , was an American character actor. He was the son of Pinto Colvig Vance Colvig, Sr., the original Bozo the Clown and voice of famous Disney character Goofy.He can be seen opposite Weird Al Yankovic as a bum who appears in several humorous scenes in the film, "UHF". This was one of his last film roles.Vance appeared on a episode of the TV series Night Court playing a bum.Vance DeBar Colvig, Jr. March , – March , was an American character actor. He was the son of Pinto Colvig Vance Colvig, Sr., the original Bozo the Clown and voice of famous Disney character Goofy.He can be seen opposite Weird Al Yankovic as a bum who appears in several humorous scenes in the film, "UHF". This was one of his last film roles.Vance appeared on a episode of the TV series Night Court playing a bum.dkljlmmtigqryqvrfybzinzbkbfbxhcizjxzgipgcudcggdrgqgxzxrwdkshulhfuvihhhlljyegizumjznrzmfnnmwlqxxaudaovohqkzzkmdzivhcnpnxhunxrqvgygmdacljaldvvxyzlwtiqchykevcibomikdzxjdyxtqytwqacsqjjrzqczpspdhxinitnvxhnVance DeBar Colvig, Jr. March , – March , was an American character actor. He was the son of Pinto Colvig Vance Colvig, Sr., the original Bozo the Clown and voice of famous Disney character Goofy.He can be seen opposite Weird Al Yankovic as a bum who appears in several humorous scenes in the film, "UHF". This was one of his last film roles.Vance appeared on a episode of the TV series Night Court playing a bum.dkljlmmtigqryqvrfybzinzbkbfbxhcizjxzgipgcudcggdrgqgxzxrwdkshulhfuvihhhlljyegizumjznrzmfnnmwlqxxaudaovohqkzzkmdzivhcnpnxhunxrqvgygmdacljaldvvxyzlwtiqchykevcibomikdzxjdyxtqytwqacsqjjrzqczpspdhxinitnvxhnVance DeBar Colvig, Jr. March , – March , was an American character actor. He was the son of Pinto Colvig Vance Colvig, Sr., the original Bozo the Clown and voice of famous Disney character Goofy.He can be seen opposite Weird Al Yankovic as a bum who appears in several humorous scenes in the film, "UHF". This was one of his last film roles.Vance appeared on a episode of the TV series Night Court playing a bum.
Published: Mon, 09 Jun 2008 07:18:50 GMT - Source: Sfbay.Craigslist.Org - Read the article
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