Weird Al Yankovic – In 3-D
My first-ever exposure to Weird Al – actually the same goes for quite a few close, personal friends of Al – was sparked by my interest in “Eat It”, the spot-on parody of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”. But time, while it hasn’t mellowed me one darn bit, has shown me that there are far, far finer spoofs of pop greatness to be found on Yankovic’s In 3-D.
The great thing about Weird Al’s earliest work was that he had the entire pantheon of rock ‘n’ roll to pick and choose from. Nothing was off-limits – nothing too new or too old. Polkas On 45 is a good example. I’m a sucker for Al’s polka-fied medleys of richly-deserving songs-of-the-moment, but to me, Polkas On 45 is the standard by which all other Weird Al polka medleys must be judged. (I know that’s a rather rarified genre, but stick with me here.) What makes Polkas On 45 all the funnier is that it plucks gems from many years before Al’s rise to the top – everything is fair game: Foreigner (“Hot Blooded”), Talking Heads (“Burning Down The House”), the Beatles Hey Jude, the Doors (“L.A. Woman”), Iron Butterfly (“In A Gadda Da Vida”), and even Deep Purple (“Smoke On The Water”). Some of these songs are well-loved anthems of rock ‘n’ roll, not disposible Spice Girls singles. To put it bluntly, it took some balls to line up some of the greats only to hurl musical meringue pies at them. This one track is worth the price of the whole album.
But aside from wacko Jacko’s finest, Yankovic also helped himself to full-length parodies of Survivor (turning “Eye Of The Tiger” into “The Theme From Rocky XIII” with a chorus of “It’s the rye or the kaiser…”), the Police (“King Of Pain” into “King Of Suede”), and “style parodies” spoofing an artist’s sound but no one specific song: the reggae satire “Gonna Buy Me A Condo” has always made me laugh, especially now that I am old enough to dream of paying rent on a better rental property. Long-time fans will also find the Greg Kihn 
Band spoof “I Lost On Jeopardy” here, as well as a non-artist-specific new wave howler, “Mr. Popeil”. Man, to think that there was a time when I wondered who that song was about, back before late-night infomercials. I miss my youth.
But thanks to Weird Al Yankovic’s In 3-D, I can at least temporarily reclaim it.
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- Eat It (3:19)
- Midnight Star (4:33)
- The Brady Bunch (2:39)
- Buy Me A Condo (3:52)
- I Lost On Jeopardy (3:26)
- Polkas On 45 (4:19)
- Mr. Popeil (4:41)
- King Of Suede (4:12)
- That Boy Could Dance (3:28)
- Theme From Rocky XIII (3:37)
- Nature Trail To Hell (5:49)
Released by: Scotti Bros.
Release date: 1984
Total running time: 43:50
Kicking off with a lovely ballad which shares the album’s title, the first effort by John Lennon’s eldest son is almost eerie to listen to today, and it affected Julian’s career forever. Was he deliberately trying to sound like his father? Could he have avoided it even if he had tried? In the end, the questions are moot. “Valotte” – the song, not the entire album – sounds more like a lost John Lennon opus than either of the “new” Beatles songs created when the elder Lennon’s former bandmates “finished” incomplete songs in 1995. Julian’s vocals are spot-on perfect for the song and its subject matter, and it’s written and arranged in a way that echoes John’s songwriting and performance eerily. “Lonely”, a bluesy ballad which didn’t make it to single status, is another example of the haunting similarities. But there is another side to the album – several relentlessly ’80s pop songs (“Jesse” is especially guilty of dating itself). But overall, the good 
outweighs the bad – and one wishes that perhaps the critics had kept their mouths shut when Valotte was released. After all, Julian Lennon has spent years trying to get away from the trying-to-sound-like-Dad criticisms that were leveled at his solo debut. Now, how do we convince him that sounding eerily like his father was never necessarily a bad thing?
Lindsey Buckingham’s second solo effort has evidently never hit me in the right place or at the right time. There are songs on here that I dearly love – “Go Insane” and “I Want You” – but there are also songs that I cannot stand (the far-too-long “Play In The Rain” being a prime example). One would think that the greater abundance of electronic instruments and tools available to Buckingham in 1984 would’ve given him a broad new palette to use well…but it quickly becomes painfully obvious that this man would do well to stick with guitar rock. Samplers and drum machines do not a good song make without some inkling of how to distribute them throughout the arrangement.
one experiment that really doesn’t hold up.
I’ll admit that I’m not the biggest Kansas fan in the world. Oh, I like a lot of their singles, but most of the time I find their ramblingly long album tracks to be a little bit pretentious (oh boy, I know someone’s gonna shoot that comment right back in my face about ELO…incidentally, I tend to feel the same about Yes, so how’s that for pissing off the entire progressive rock fan world?), and all that organ …whew. I really have to be in a distinctly Kansas mood. But enough of that. This is a good one for those of us who don’t have the aural fortitude to handle a bunch of Kansas album tracks. It includes, naturally, “Dust In The Wind”, quite possibly the most atypical Kansas single of them all. Most people will remember “Point Of Know Return” 
This, to me, is the definitive Depeche Mode album. It also marked the beginning of many listeners’ fascination with the self-proclaimed all-electronic group. The famous (but tiringly repetitive) “People Are People” emerged from this album, but there are other songs I much prefer. “Somebody” is one of the first, if not the first, really good Depeche Mode ballads in the band’s catalog, which is an aspect of Depeche Mode’s sound that I think they made a big mistake in not pursuing. There’s also “Blasphemous Rumours”, a brutally harsh song that’s probably been burned or banned somewhere in the Bible Belt, though its lyrics seem to be aimed at a teen/young adult audience and one has to