Exploiting the Archives: Set Lists with Weird, Violent, Kinky and Loudon

When I am researching The Weird Accordion to Al entries, it is not at all unusual for me to go to Wikipedia and see that some pertinent factoid or bit of trivia is footnoted to a book authored by “Rabin & Yankovic.” That’s not a vaudeville duo or low rent law-firm. No, it’s the authors credit for Weird Al: The Book. 

Yes, the scruffy independent Nathan Rabin of 2018 has much to learn, or at least re-learn from the hotshot Nathan Rabin of 2011, who was the head writer of The A.V Club on top of writing books for prestigious publishing houses like Scribner and Abrams Image. But I also Al and my name popping up a lot in my Weird Accordion to Al research on a specific article I wrote for The A.V Club while I was working on what would become Weird Al: The Book. 

I figured I would maximize my time and access by talking to Al for a feature at the A.V Club that was kind of like a musical version of Random Roles called Set List. The idea was to go through a veteran artist’s work track by track in a free form, loose, conversational chat. 

It was, as you might imagine, an honor and a pleasure to lead Al on a stroll down memory lane covering a meaty cross section of his hits, deep cuts and oddities, but I wish that I had conducted it later in my research. I think I would have gotten more out of it, though it is casually surreal to be researching Al’s work and see my name attached to information I don’t remember, let alone remember being the source of, either by myself or with Al. 

I similarly wish that I had interviewed Violent J for the feature later in my research and my journey as well. When we talked I had not yet made a full transition into being a Juggalo and my knowledge of the duo’s music lagged behind my understanding and interest in Juggalos as a subculture and ICP as a misunderstood culture so I mainly chose songs that were novel, crazy and outrageous as opposed to being culturally significant or having personal interest and meaning for me. 

Some moments from the interview stand out, however, like when J, always a paragon of casual extreme modesty admitted that he probably should have worked a little harder on the chorus of “Juggalo Island”, which goes “We can have fun, let our nuts hang by the water.”

Those were not the only two Set Lists I conducted. I also talked to fellow titans of funny music Kinky Friedman and Loudon Wainwright III, whose name I mispronounced right off the bat, something I sensed did not endear me to him.

So give these Set Lists a look. Heaven knows they’re not just entertaining. They’re also educational and extremely useful, I have discovered, for research purposes if you are intensely pursuing a very narrow but deep field of “Weird Al” Yankovic studies. I may be cannibalizing myself occasionally but I don’t think the dude I sometimes rips off particularly minds. He knows how hard it is out there in this business. Why it’s enough to start making you writing about yourself in the third person! 

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