The Weird Al Yankovic concert started exactly the way I expected it to—bizarrely.
Weird Al walked on stage in his trademark Hawaiian button-down, armed with his accordion, and kicked off the show with a painfully long pop mashup that included Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball,” Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know,” and Psy’s “Gangnam Style,” while colourful videos played in the background.
His set seemed to be designed around gimmicks and costume changes. For the first half, Weird Al would leave the stage to change into ridiculous outfits (one of the first was an octopus costume with an ice cream cone for a hat) and during his absence the screens played joke interviews between Weird Al and various celebrities (including Eminem and Celine Dion) or clips of Weird Al being mentioned in TV shows and movies.
After the first ten minutes, I turned to my boyfriend and said, “I don’t know if I can put up with an hour and a half of this.”
Weird Al has never really been a favourite of mine, but the first half of his set was especially obnoxious. I felt that he was trying too hard to make the concert gimmicky and it all felt a little too over the top.
Later, when he stopped the constant costume changes and started to play some of the songs that made him famous and a few of my own personal favourites (“Eat It,” “Amish Paradise,” and “White & Nerdy”) I started to enjoy myself a little more. I sang along to the few verses I knew, and decided to appreciate the concert for what it was.
At the end of Weird Al’s set, we left Lebreton Flats and decided to come back in an hour to see comedian Bill Burr take the stage.
We were walking towards the gate when I heard him describing the proper way to eat McDonalds (shovelling the fries into your mouth while you drive, and eating the cheeseburger in one bite “like a pelican”) and I was already laughing by the time we found a good spot in the crowd.
Burr put on a very entertaining show. I was in tears laughing at points, and I really enjoyed his observational humour.
It was a strange feeling to leave Bluesfest on the last day. Last year I’d felt so excited after the Collective Soul concert, and so sad that the whole experience was over.
This year, it was kind of nice to end the festival with a few laughs.
