The Big Squeeze Day Fifty-Nine: "Hot Rocks Polka" from UHF
The Big Squeeze is a chronological trip back through the music of “Weird Al” Yankovic. The column was conceived with two big objectives in mind. First and foremost, I wanted to inspire conversation and appreciation of a true American hero. Even more importantly, I wanted to promote the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity edition of the Weird Accordion to Al book, which is like this column but way, way, better and this column is pretty damn good, because it has illustrations and copy-editing and over 27 new illustrations from Felipe Sobreiro and over 120 new pages covering The Compleat Al, UHF, The Weird Al Show, the fifth season of Comedy Bang! Bang! and the 2018 tour that gave the extended version of the book its name.
Author’s Commentary: When I was working on my first book proposal many, many years ago, my very canny, no-nonsense agent told me to make sure my books passed the “give a fuck” test. That is to say, “If someone does not give a fuck about you, your writing style or your story, will they still care about your book?”
With The Weird Accordion to Al, I set out to write a book that would appeal to “Weird Al” Yankovic fans who, despite my fairly long, distinguished history with Al as the co-author of his coffee table book, have no idea who I am and similarly have no familiarity with my writing style or my story.
That involved paring these articles down to the bone, editing out an endless series of self-indulgent rants, riffs and oddball pop culture references designed primarily to amuse myself.
I thought I succeeded but the fact of the matter is that some folks are just never going to like you. That’s something else I learned from my agent. I vividly remember him telling me of the editors who looked at the unpublished manuscript that would lead very directly to The Big Rewind, “Some of the editors like you and your voice but just don’t think the subject matter is right for them. Some of them like you but not the manuscript and some people just don’t like you.”
Thirteen years later the number of people who just plain don’t like me seems to have increased considerably, despite having written six books at this point, all of which found audiences of various sizes and intensity.
All of which is to say that I got another one-star review on Amazon today complaining, once again, that I besmirched the holy name of Donald Trump, and in doing so rendered a 500 page book I spent three years writing completely worthless.
I’m so exhausted with this criticism that I actually went back and removed every reference to Trump from the book. Going forward, The Weird Accordion to Al will not have a single reference to the current inhabitant of the White House.
Granted, this will not keep people who just plain don’t like me from also disliking my book. But it’s something and if making my book less partisan makes it more palatable to a broad swath of potential readers, then that is a compromise and a concession that I am willing to make.
Original Weird Accordion article:
“Weird Al” Yankovic gets some of the artists he honors with parodies or pastiches so right that his legacy is forever intertwined with theirs and vice versa. I know that I personally can’t listen to iconic artists like Michael Jackson, Madonna, Devo and Nirvana without thinking about the songs Yankovic created out of their art and their essence. And when I’m bumping the latest Chamilionaire mix-tape or Coolio freestyle, you better believe I’m reminded of “White and Nerdy” and “Amish Paradise” and wondering why on Earth I’m listening to new material from either of these artists at this stage in my life.
Al obviously loves The Beatles because everyone loves the Beatles or should. As far as I’m considered they're right up there with Al in the all-time pantheon of great artists, but Al never quite cracked the code with the Fab Four. Paul McCartney turned down Al’s request to parody “Live and Let Die”, first as “Chicken Pot Pie” and then as “The Holocaust Didn’t Happen (The Big Jew Lie).” He turned down the first parody idea because McCartney, like Al, is a vegetarian, and the second one because he didn’t want to be linked to Al’s weird Holocaust denial phase. To be honest, I’m glad McCartney acted the way he did.
True, Al will eventually get to officially release a Beatles parody when his “Tax Man” parody “Pac-Man” is included in the albums of obscurities and rarities coming out later this year that this project is theoretically tied to. Technology is cyclical and I suspect that once that rarities album comes out we’ll be in the throes of a little cultural contamination known as “Pac-Man Fever” all over again! And who stands to benefit most? Why “Pac-Man Fever” hit-makers Buckner & Garcia of course. And then Atari but also Al at some point.
Al similarly never quite cracked the Rolling Stones. Parodying a solo Mick Jagger soundtrack cut led to one of the worst, and most misconceived parodies of Al’s career in “Toothless People.” He’s had more success on polka medleys, where the stakes are much lower. Al has included the compositions of Jagger and Richards in polka medleys before but on UHF’s “Hot Rocks Polka” he devotes an entire polka medley to a single artist for the first time in his career.
This single-artist twist brings the series back to its initial inspiration, the soul-sucking but extremely lucrative “Stars on 45” series of hit medleys for the undiscriminating. “Stars on 45” frequently devoted discs to a single artist, so if you really wanted to hear a bunch of Beatles songs on one 45 and it didn’t matter how bland and forgettable the versions might be, they had you covered, no pun intended.
“Hot Rocks Polka” is named after one of several million Rolling Stones greatest hits compilation, so it’s essentially “Rolling Stones on 45” with the sleazy, salacious swagger and sexuality of snake-hipped, girlfriend-stealing Mick Jagger replaced by the mindless cheerfulness of Alpine Al at his oompah-band sassiest.
Costumes are important to Al’s aesthetic, both literally and figuratively. Al’s concerts give his wardrobe as much of a workout as his body and vocal chords but he frequently tries on musical costumes as well. Al doesn’t just study the artists he honors with parodies and pastiches. No, he gets inside their minds and inside their skins to parody them from the inside out.
So the humor in “Hot Rocks Polka” comes in part from the comic incongruity of the musical costume Al and his band have chosen for this polka medley. Mick Jagger exudes raw, overpowering sexuality and sneering attitude. So does Al, in private. But Al’s public persona is white and nerdy so there’s a bit of a transgressive thrill in hearing “Wholesome Al” Yankovic once again sing the kind of lyrics that would be unimaginable in his own work.
This is most glaring during the medley’s snippet of “Brown Sugar”, a song that is either about heroin addiction, the sexuality of black women or the deliciousness of Pepsi. Pretty much everything Al sings in the segment of the medley devoted to “Brown Sugar” (that would be “Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields/Sold in a market down in New Orleans/Scarred old slaver knows he's doin' all right/Hear they whip the women just around midnight/Brown sugar/How come you taste so good/Brown sugar/Just like a young girl should”) is intensely sexually suggestive in a racially charged kind of way.
Needless to say, when Al was not channeling Mick Jagger, he did not devote too much of his oeuvre to delineating how good a young girl should taste. And that, of course, is the less racially problematic version of the song. Jagger is a bad boy, and an icon of androgyny and sexuality but the reasons we’re talking about him now is because he wrote a lot of great pop songs.
“Hot Rocks Polka” is a tribute to the impeccable song craft and irresistible melodies of Jagger and Richards, but it also highlights how their big, sing-along choruses are a whole lot more memorable and iconic than than the verses. The novelty of “Hot Rocks Polka” comes from the contrast between the geek goofily crooning and the stud whose words he’s giving manic, impish life, but it’s really one great pop artist/songwriter’s tribute to another.
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