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Friday, June 29, 2007
Yo! It’s a very funny Weird Al at the Fraze.
KETTERING — So, Friday night in and around Dayton, your myriad live-music choices included the Cityfolk Festival, where you could enjoy the Afro-Latin beats of Ricardo Lemvo and Makina Loca … or you might’ve been down in Kettering, getting your parody on with the loopy sounds and lyrics of (drum roll!) Weird Al Yankovic.
And while it may seem as though we’re making an aesthetic judgment with that statement, you’d be mistaken. We’re really just sayin’. Turns out Weird Al provided just as much food for thought as his excitable fans at the Fraze Pavilion expected he would. Not to mention laughter.
Yep, Yankovic’s dead-on pop parodies of tunes from “Beat It” and “Piano Man” and artists from Snoop Dogg to Avril Lavigne, and about 100 others, drew a rull range of chuckledom from the fans at the Fraze — a group that was fairly young, mostly white and presumably nerdy, and who just couldn’t wait to see their wacky hero riding that Segway during his latest hit, in which he skewers Chamillionaire’s “Ridin.’”
And that wasn’t all he skewered. Yankovic must keep a small army of copyright lawyers happily and gainfully employed, as he runs through one singer after another by hoisting them upon their own lyrical stupidities and turns their very personas against them — to wicked comic effect.
One minute, he was interviewing Eminem or Michael Stipe on his imaginary “Al TV” network, broadcast on big screens over the stage, and the next he was onto yet another costume change, slamming through so many songs you’d have to be a voracious consumer of pop culture to keep up with them all. Apparently, most of the crowd was keeping up, too.
The guy is definitely smart, and brave enough to make fun of his loyal audience, as well. If he’d given away a nickel for every joke he made about middle-aged geeks still living in Mom’s basement, it would’ve been a free show.
And who knows? Yankovic is so full of surprises, the next time he’s in town he might just try something that, um, weird. Anything for a laugh.
Time for the Cityfolk Festival!
Tonight is the night for the opening of the Cityfolk Festival, the coolest event that hits downtown Dayton every year.
You’ll find it along Riverscape under a variety of tents where folks will be listening and dancing to the sounds made by dozens of artists who represent a broad cross-section of the music that defines and connects cultures from around the world. This isn’t pop stuff … this is the music of the world that people had before pop as we think of it today took over everything else.
Like what? Well, how about the Balkan music known as tamburitza? You’ll hear it from Jerry Grcevich, who brings the music from Croatia.
How about Celtic and Irish music? The David Munnelly Band will have it.
American gospel/R&B/blues? Try the great Holmes Brothers, who sound like time itself.
Bluegrass, New Orleans jazz, Cajun, Latin dance music, soul and more… These aren’t household names in town this weekend … but that is the point.
The festival runs tonite from 6, and tomw and Sunday starting at 1 p.m. See you there!
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