"Weird Al" Yankovic - Poodle Hat LP - From Squeeze Box Accordion Box Set

Pledge Music (2017)

Over the next several weeks, we're going to celebrate Weird Al Wednesday as I go through each of the 15 albums in the Squeeze Box accordion box set. There are many albums in this set that were hugely influential to me as a young kid and there are no shortage of incredible songs throughout. Weird Al and The Blues Brothers are definitely the building blocks for my earliest appreciation of music.

Poodle Hat came out after I was out of college and was working in music doing radio promotion.  It had been a really long time since there had been a Weird Al record and it just sort of snuck up on me one day.  It was also some time after this record came out that I finally saw Al's live show.  A friend of mine got me tickets and we went out to somewhere in Long Island or Staten Island or some Island to see him play.  It was a blast.

This record specifically is a mid range Weird Al record for me, there are some incredible songs (all originals) like "Why Does This Always Happen To Me," "Genius in France" and "Bob."  There's also one of Al's absolute masterpieces in "Hardware Store."  This one goes a million miles an hour and is crammed full of insane hardware lyrics and truly ludicrous shopping list style breakdown that I just can't do justice to.

I don't really know the parodies that well to be honest, other than I really hate the Billy Joel song "Piano Man," so I don't think I've made it all the way through "Ode To A Superhero" when I had listed to this on CD.  There's an Eminem one "Couch Potato" which I've at least heard the original one of.  There's also a Nelly one and a Avril Lavigne one, but I had to look those up on Wikipedia to figure that out.  It's a mixed bag of an album, as the years go by I know less and less about the parodies, but the Al originals are always a treat and Poodle Hat is no exception.

"Weird Al" Yankovic - "Hardware Store":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw7lqXHMLYA

"Weird Al" Yankovic - "Why Does This Always Happen To Me":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QqD1_g2E4I