When I was a kid, my Dad decided to subscribe to Columbia House music. That was the mail order system where when you joined you got like 10 cassettes (yeah, that’s right, I said cassettes…..this was like 1984!) for a dollar each and then you were enrolled in the club and they sent you music every month and if you liked it, you bought it. If you didn’t, you sent it back. Canceling your subscription was a very difficult process that usually involved dark magic and the slaughter/sacrifice of several small animals.
It was the second track on Side-B that I loved the most…but I’m starting to get ahead of myself…..so let’s take it back to the first album and do this up all chronologically ‘n’ stuff. See, Weird Al is known for being a zany, totally out there comedy guy. What you find when you really look into his lyrics is that he’s also incredibly smart and has his finger on the pulse of what’s going on in the world. You’ll also find that he has an incredibly dark side and here I shall submit songs from each album for you to ponder over. Some entries are rather obvious….such as Nature Trail to Hell and Slime Creatures From Outer Space. Others you have to pay a bit more attention to what your listening to because it’s all in the lyrics….such as The Good Ol’ Days and You Don’t Love Me Anymore. So let’s take a look album by album at some of Al’s darker stuff…..
“Weird Al” Yankovic – 1983
Happy Birthday – You wouldn’t think it by the title, but this one deals with some dark stuff, including world poverty, World War III and the destruction of the inner solar system! Happy Birthday indeed!
We’ll all be crispy critters after World War III
There’s nowhere you can run to, nowhere you can hide
When they drop the big one, we all get fried
But that’s no reason why we shouldn’t have a little fun
So if you think it’s scary, if it’s more than you can take
Just blow out the candles and have a piece of cake
He’s never a chump or a tease
He never tells me lies, and best of all
He never disagrees
Mr. Frump’s dying day
And now I bring to you the very last thing
That Mr. Frump had to say….[deep breathing, that fades and dies off]
Amen
Midnight Star – Another of Al’s original tunes. This one is about the crazy headlines that you used to see on tabloids such as Weekly World News.
It said the ghost of Elvis is living in my den
You can learn to cope with stress
You can beat the IRS
And the incredible frog boy is on the loose again
Hear the story of the man born without a head
And top psychics all agree
That the telephone company
Will have a brand new service that lets you talk to the dead
The most horrifying film that hit the screen.
There’s a homicidal maniac who finds a cub-scout troop
and he hacks up two or three in every scene.
Please don’t reveal the secret ending to your friends
Don’t spoil the big surprise
You won’t believe your eyes when you see
See that bloody hatchet coming right at you.
No, you’ll never see hideous effects like these again
Until we bring nature trail to hell part 2
So bring the kids along it’s good clean family fun.
What have you got to lose
If you like the 6 O’Clock news then you’ll love.
Nature trail to hell
Nature trail to hell in 3-D
Nature trail to hell in 3-D
Nature trail to hell in 3-D
Nature Trail to hell in 3-D
Like A Surgeon – I pretty much added this one because it’s all about gore and surgery gone wrong. Not really a dark track per se.
Here we go – time to operate
I’ll pull his indsides out, pull his insides out
And see what he ate
Than watch you going out with other men
I’d rather slam my fingers in a door (yah)
Again and again and again and again and again
Or stick my nostrils together with crazy glue
I’d rather dive into a swimming pool filled with double-edged razor blades
Than spend one more minute with you
And they just won’t go away
Now they’re reproducing in the sewers
They got eyes like some kinda bug
I sure hope they don’t come in here
I just shampooed the rug
Just One of Those Days – Great song in which Al talks about mundane annoyances in the same light that he talks about horrible happens….apparently losing a sock in the dryer is just as annoying as having freaks burning crosses out on your front lawn!
And there’s nothin’ but tater tots for dinner again
It’s just one of those days
Never mind, it’s just one of those days
And I cut myself shaving and they’re dropping the bomb
It’s just one of those days
That’s all, it’s just one of those days
There’s panic in the crowd
We can dodge debris while we trim the tree
Underneath the mushroom cloud
And if the radiation level’s okay
I’ll go out with you and see all the new
Mutations on new year’s day
Melanie – This is pretty much a song sung from the perspective of a psycho stalker. He spends the song pining for the title character before the “big reveal” about his current condition and how psychotic he really is.
Why won’t you return my phone calls
Are you still mad I gave a Mohawk to your cat
If you’d just say the word
I’m certain that our love would last forever and ever
Or are you too dumb to realize that
You wouldn’t listen when I promised to be true
I couldn’t stand it so I jumped out from the sixteenth story window
Right above you
Now I may be dead but I still love you
Who ran the corner grocery store
Oh, he’d strolled down the aisle with a big friendly smile
And he’d say “Howdy” when you walked in the door
Always treated me nice, gave me kindly advice
I don’t know why I set fire to his place
Oh I’ll never forget the day I bashed in his head
Well you should’ve seen the look on his face
She was my high school romance
She was fun to talk to and nice to smell
So I took her to the homecoming dance
Then I tied her to a chair and I shaved off all her hair
And I left her in the desert all alone
Well sometimes in my dreams
I can still hear the screams
Oh I wonder if she ever made it home
Attack of the Radioactive Hamsters From A Planet Near Mars – This one really is pretty lighthearted but it’s got a similar theme to Slime Creatures…..only with mutated giant hamsters…..
They’re back and they’re lookin’ for a snack
And they’re not that fond of Burger Kings or salad bars
I hope they’re not plannin’ to stay
Who invited them here anayway
Attack of the radioactive hamsters from a planet near Mars
And there’s one the size of central park
They’re using telephone pole to pick their teeth
They’re evil and nasty and they glow in the dark
Oh, don’t waste any more of your bullets, boys
You know it just makes ’em mad when you shoot
They’re gonna stomp us into jelly and conquer the world
But you gotta admit, they’re really kinda cute, now
Trigger Happy – A 50”s Beach Boys style ode to firearms, sung from the view point of the paranoid, inept and clumsy gun enthusiast. NRA be proud…..
I mistook him in the dark for a drug-crazed Nazi again
Now why’d you have to get so mad?
It was just a lousy flesh wound, Dad
You know, I’m trigger happy, trigger happy every day
Little Fluffy took a round, better take him to the vet
I filled that kitty cat so full of lead
We’ll have to use him for a pencil instead
Well, I’m so trigger happy, trigger happy every day
You put those piranhas in my bathtub again
You’re still the light of my life
Oh darling, I’m beggin’, won’t you put down that knife?
You poison my coffee just a little each day
I still remember the way that you laughed
When you pushed me down that elevator shaft
‘Cause getting disemboweled always makes me kinda mad
A huge tyrannosaurus ate our lawer
Well, I suppose that proves… they’re really not all bad
All the dinosaurs are running wild
Someone let T. Rex out of his pen
I’m afraid those things’ll harm me
‘Cause they sure don’t act like Barney
And they think that I’m their dinner, not their friend
Oh no…..
Stripper born without a chin
And I’m only comfortable talking about it
When the whole wide world is listening in
Porno star, as you may have guessed
And I’m really gonna feel a whole lot better
If you let me get this thing off my chest
Everything You Know Is Wrong – This is a pretty far out there song, which I love. Again, not really dark per se…..but it’s got tons of bizarreness in it. The song is another style parody….in this case of They Might Be Giants. One of my all time favorites!
Finally I recognize the face of my hibachi dealer
Who takes off his prosthetic lips and tells me
Everything you know is wrong
Black is white, up is down and short is long
And everything you thought was just so
Important doesn’t matter
When I accidentally stepped into an alternate dimension
And soon I was abducted by some aliens from space
Who kinda looked like Jamie Farr
They sucked out my internal organs
And they took some polaroids
And said I was a darn good sport
And as a way of saying thank you
They offered to transport me back to
Any point in history that I would care to go
Well, he always was the neighborhood clown
Like the time he took my pants off and he took those color pictures
And posted copies all over town
Or the time that he dumped toxic waste on my lawn
Or those wacky prank phone calls from midnight ’till dawn
What a crazy kid Larry was, always foolin’ around
Late at night and tied his mouth with a rag
Then I dragged him by his ankles to the middle of the forest
And stuffed him in a big plastic bag
If the cops ever find him, who knows what they’d say
But I’m sure if ol’ Lar’ were still with us today
He would have to agree with me it was a pretty good gag
For the good Gentile girls and the good Gentile boys
When the boss busted in, nearly scared ’em half to death
Had a rifle in his hands and cheap whiskey on his breath
From his beard to his boots he was covered with ammo
Like a big fat drunk disgruntled Yuletide Rambo
And he smiled as he said with a twinkle in his eye,
“Merry Christmas to all – now you’re all gonna die!”
Everywhere you’ll find pieces of Cupid and Comet
And he tied up his helpers and he held the elves hostage
And he ground up poor Rudolph into reindeer sausage
He got Dancer and Prancer with an old German Luger
And he slashed up Dasher just like Freddy Krueger
And he picked up a flamethrower and he barbequed Blitzen
And he took a big bite and said, “It tastes just like chicken!”
Your Horoscope For Today – Another song that I think has a bit of a relation to Midnight Star. Mainly because I’m pretty convinced that these are the horoscopes printed in the latest addition of the fictitious tabloid. Some humorously grisly stuff……
Your birthday party will be ruined once again by your explosive flatulence
Your love life will run into trouble when your fiance hurls a javelin through your chest
All Virgos are extremely friendly and intelligent – except for you
Expect a big surprise today when you wind up with your head impaled upon a stick
And I turned on the SpectraVision
And I’m just about to eat that little chocolate mint on my pillow
That I love so very, very much when suddenly, there’s a knock on the door
Well now, who could that be?
I say “Who is it?”
No answer
“Who is it?”
There’s no answer
“WHO IS IT?”
They’re not sayin’ anything
So, finally I go over and I open the door and just as I suspected
It’s some big fat hermaphrodite with a Flock-Of-Seagulls haircut and only one nostril
Oh man, I hate it when I’m right
So anyway, he bursts into my room and he grabs my lucky snorkel
And I’m like “Hey, you can’t have that”
“That snorkel’s been just like a snorkel to me”
And he’s like “Tough”
And I’m like “Give it”
And he’s like “Make me”
And I’m like “‘Kay”
So I grabbed his leg and he grabbed my esophagus
And I bit off his ear and he chewed off my eyebrows
And I took out his appendix and he gave me a colonic irrigation
Yes indeed, you better believe it
And somehow in the middle of it all, the phone got knocked off the hook
And twenty seconds later, I heard a familiar voice
And you know what it said?
I’ll tell you what it said
Party at the Leper Colony – Another fine example of Al’s sick and twisted sense of humor. Obviously the jokes involve various body parts falling off of people.
It won’t cost you an arm and a leg
Dance all night to a rotten band
Come on, people, let’s give ’em a hand
She was quite a little talker ’till the cat got her tongue
She oozed up beside me, I turned on my charm
Well, pretty soon she was completely disarmed
There was a twelve-car pile-up, everybody dead
And I saw brains and guts and vital organs splattered everywhere
As well as my friend Robert’s disembodied head
And I thought – Poor Rob, I just had lunch with him
Hey, wait a minute, he still owes me money – what a jerk
Well, there’s five bucks that I’m never gonna see again
Plus now, on top of everything else, it looks like I’m gonna be late to work
Do I Creep You Out? – Another stalker ballad…..a parody of the song Do I Make You Proud?
The warm spot on your chair
Sometimes I drool
And usually I stare
My precious one
I saved that gum
That you threw in the garbage
You’re the one I dream about
But the only question with me now
Is “Do I creep you out?”
Everytime I shake your hand now
Wanna stick your fingers in my mouth
Do I creep you out?
Love that wonderful crunching noise
You’ll know what this day’s about
When you stomp a weasel’s guts right out
So, come along and have a laugh
Snap their weasely spines in half
Grap your boots and stomp your cares away
Hip hip hooray, it’s Weasel Stomping Day
Midnight Cinephile 