1984 In Comedy Music

“Weird Al” Yankovic – In 3D

You might have noticed that any time a Weird Al album was released in a year I cover, I try to listen to it. This is both for the fun of it and because his albums tend to be time capsules of whatever was going on musically and culturally at the time. Non-musical trends of the mid-80s that are skewered here include late-night infomercials (“Mr. Popeil”), Rocky sequels (“Theme From Rocky XIII (The Rye or the Kaiser”), supermarket tabloids (“The Midnight Star”) and violent slasher horror films (“Nature Trail To Hell”). Neither the best nor the worst Weird Al I’ve heard, this is mainly notable for having his first mainstream hit (“Eat It”), and establishing a formula for future Weird Al albums: Parodies that closely follow the arrangements of the original songs, one polka medley (“Polkas On 45”), and one epic-length song to end the album (At about 6 minutes, closing track “Nature Trail To Hell” was the longest song he’d ever released at the time). There's even one of the first cases of the "Weird Al Effect", where a parody ends up being better-known than its target: "I Lost On Jeopardy" isn't even one of Al's most popular singles, but it's still apparently better-remembered than The Greg Kihn Band's "Jeopardy".

Spinal Tap – This Is Spinal Tap

Whenever I listen to this album, I inevitably want to watch the movie too, but that doesn’t mean the album isn’t funny and entertaining on its own. Written and (mostly) performed by the movie’s main actors, these songs frequently feature catchy riffs and lyrics that achieve their humor by being just a couple notches “dumber” than whatever subgenre of rock or metal they’re parodying with a particular song. The album would admittedly feel a bit samey if it just parodied heavy metal music: Thankfully, the band’s fictional discography also includes brief flings with psychedelic pop (“Listen To The Flower People”), McCartney-eseque cutesy music hall (“Cups And Cakes”), and Stones-esque blues-rock (“Gimme Some Money”), so there’s some variety to be found. 

Neil – Neil’s Heavy Concept Album

Though a lot of fun, this has a bit more of an insular appeal than the above two albums: Near the end of English comedy series The Young Ones, Nigel Planer recorded a full album in the persona of his character, Neil. While the Spinal Tap album was also based on fictional characters, you didn’t necessarily have to watch the movie to get the jokes; here, a lot of the humor is based on Neil’s terminally put-upon sad sack hippie persona, so you’d probably get more out of it if you’re already a fan of the series, especially when it comes to the frequent between-song skits. This isn't to say it's totally inaccessible otherwise, and spoken intro track "Hello Vegetables" does a fair job at introducing Neil to listeners who haven't seen the show. In contrast to Spinal Tap, the majority of the music consists of covers, mainly of English psychedelic rock artists like Traffic and Pink Floyd; This is by no means a bad thing, since the songs are well-chosen, both in terms of being suited to Neil’s character and in terms of being very “of their time” lyrically and musically while still being enjoyably catchy. In addition, I appreciate how the cover songs usually aren’t just reproductions of the originals sung in a silly voice; frequently the arrangement is changed from the original and jokes are added, whether it’s subtle tweaking of the original lyrics, fourth-wall breaking asides, or an entire shift in the original song’s content: I’m not familiar with “Golf Girl” by Caravan, but I very much doubt the original ended with the main character being arrested for public nudity after being snitched on by a fairy.

Side notes:

If I do more than one "1984 In _" entry,  I'd consider "1984 In Heavy Metal" (Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Metallica all had albums out) or "1984 In SST Records"  (Meat Puppets II and Zen Arcade, plus Saint Vitus' debut and relatively lesser-known but still notable releases from Black Flag and Minutemen). Also, despite being done with 1979, I may still finish my piece comparing and contrasting Pink Floyd's The Wall and Frank Zappa's Joe's Garage.