{"id":804312,"date":"2020-02-18T12:18:15","date_gmt":"2020-02-18T19:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=954333"},"modified":"2020-02-18T12:18:15","modified_gmt":"2020-02-18T19:18:15","slug":"flashback-weird-al-yankovic-reimagines-gandhi-as-an-eighties-action-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/flashback-weird-al-yankovic-reimagines-gandhi-as-an-eighties-action-star\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashback: \u2018Weird Al\u2019 Yankovic Reimagines Gandhi as an Eighties Action Star"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Former AV Club<\/em> head writer Nathan Rabin released his new book The Weird Accordion to Al<\/em><\/a> a few weeks back. It\u2019s a monumental work that breaks down every single song Yankovic has released across his 40-year career, encompassing everything from big hits like \u201cEat It\u201d and \u201cSmells Like Nirvana\u201d down to rarities like the \u201cextra gory version\u201d of \u201cThe Night Santa Went Crazy\u201d and spoof songs he made for TV shows like \u201cHomer and Marge\u201d and \u201c30 Rock Theme Parody.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rabin previously teamed up with Yankovic in 2012 when he penned his official memoir Weird Al: The Book<\/em>. In recent years, the author has gone song-by-song through Yankovic\u2019s catalog on his website Nathan Rabin\u2019s Happy Place<\/a>. Yankovic was so flattered by this level of exhaustive analysis that he agreed not only to write the intro to The Weird Accordion to Al,<\/em> but also to personally copy-edit it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI honestly found The Weird Accordion to Al<\/em> very enlightening,\u201d Yankovic writes. \u201cI honestly had absolutely no idea how incredibly awesome I was until I read this book. And I\u2019m sure you\u2019ll enjoy it too, particularly if you like words like \u2018ineffable\u2019 (used 5 times) and \u2018oeuvre\u2019 (used 23 times).\u201d<\/p>\n

The book even delves into each track on the soundtrack to Yankovic\u2019s 1989 cult classic UHF.<\/em> That includes the Gandhi II<\/em> skit where Al\u2019s manager, Jay Levey, portrays Mahatma Gandhi very much against type as a gun-toting, steak-eating hothead straight out of an action movie. \u201cJust as Al previously invented hardcore, postmodernism, MTV, the Internet, Nerdcore and mashups,\u201d Rabin writes, \u201cI\u2019m going to lazily assume he also invented the idea of including snippets of dialogue on a soundtrack, and that Quentin Tarantino stole the idea for Pulp Fiction<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

There hasn\u2019t been a new Weird Al album since Mandatory Fun<\/em><\/a> six years ago. He has since worked as the bandleader on Comedy Bang! Bang!<\/em> and launched three separate tours. He\u2019s been quiet since the end of his Strings Attached<\/em> orchestral tour in September, so here\u2019s hoping he\u2019s somewhere right now plugging away at new material. \u201cOld Town Road\u201d is screaming for a parody and he\u2019s the guy to make it happen. It\u2019ll also gave Rabin material for a bonus chapter in his book somewhere down the line.<\/p>\n

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Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former AV Club head writer Nathan Rabin released his new book The Weird Accordion to Al a few weeks back. It\u2019s a monumental work that breaks down every single song Yankovic has released across his 40-year career, encompassing everything from big hits like \u201cEat It\u201d and \u201cSmells Like Nirvana\u201d down to rarities like the \u201cextra […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-804312","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-22 09:30:54","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}