Weird Al tour on Maui March 26 | News, Sports, Jobs

"Weird Al" Yankovic's "The Unfortunate Return of the Ridiculously Self-Inulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour," arrives at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center on March 17 at 7:30 p.m.
Some fun facts about “Weird Al” Yankovic include, Madonna suggested he turn her song, “Like a Virgin” into “Like a Surgeon,” and Michael Jackson thought it was funny that Yankovic did a parody of his song, “Beat It” and instead named it “Eat It.”
The five time Grammy winner, known for hit parody songs also has a home in Hana.
“We bought our house in Maui in 2004,” Yankovic recalled. “Hana is just the most magical place on earth, and we are so fortunate that we have a place there. We live in Los Angeles as well, but our Maui home is very special to us and we hope to spend more time there soon.”
When he’s on Maui, he reports: “I love to go on hikes or just putter around the backyard, but I’m never happier than when I’m sitting underneath a waterfall.”
Yankovic best known for hit parody songs such as “Like a Surgeon,” “Amish Paradise,” “Eat It,” “My Bologna,” and “I Love Rocky Road,” Yankovic will perform at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center on March 26.
While he’s sung in the past at Shep Gordon’s New Year’s Eve shows in Wailea, the MACC show marks his Maui concert debut.
Heading to Hawaii following a U.K. tour, a Telegraph review noted: “Yankovic kicked off the UK leg of his world tour in Glasgow with charisma, affectionately mimicking everyone from Jim Morrison to Bob Dylan.”
Previously selling out shows at Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center and New York’s Carnegie Hall, “The Unfortunate Return of the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour” is a little different from past performances as he focuses on non-parody original material. “On this particular tour, we aren’t playing the parody hits most people know us for,” he explained. “So consider yourself duly warned.”
As we all know, Yankovic has loved playing the accordion from his childhood days. Asked when his passion developed, he joked: “Oh, about two months ago. Until then, I was pretty ambivalent about it. But right around the first of the year, I found myself thinking, hey this thing is pretty cool.”
These days he plays a special digital Roland FR-4x accordion, which “can sound like strings, or horns, or a pipe organ, or even an accordion,” he said. “We’re doing many different styles of music on this tour, so I wanted to use an instrument that would allow me to recreate a lot of different kinds of sounds.”
The biggest-selling comedy recording artist of all time, Yankovic had a major hit in late 2022 with the release of his hilarious feature film, “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story,” praised by The New York Times as “an uproarious sham biopic.”
Loosely based on his life, mixing fact and fantasy, it satirized music biopics. “Eric Appel, my co-writer, and I never wanted it to be a straight biopic,” he explained. “It’s meant to poke fun at all those other rock music biopics that play fast and loose with the facts. In our movie, we pretty much decided to just throw facts out the window.”
Tracing his life from childhood to stardom, it was a genius move to cast Daniel Radcliffe as the adult version of the singing accordion player. Yankovic said he was inspired to cast the former “Harry Potter” star because “Daniel’s an amazing actor. We wanted somebody who could pull off the comedy, but also really nail the dramatic scenes, since we play everything very straight in that movie. And I’m an especially big fan of all the odd roles he’s taken on since finishing the ‘Potter’ series. I figured if he can play a flatulent corpse, he can certainly play Weird Al.”
Initially having a hit with “My Bologna,” a parody of The Knack’s “My Sharona,” one wonders how he came up with the idea of parodying popular songs? “I certainly didn’t invent that concept. I think every kid in the universe makes fun of the songs they hear on the radio, and I was no different. I just never grew out of that phase.”
That he could create a successful career out of parody songs took him by surprise. “I’m still surprised by it,” he said. “It’s a small miracle when you can make a living doing the very specific thing that you love to do. To me, that’s the actual definition of true success. I never take that for granted. I feel extremely fortunate.”
Asked about career highlights, he said, “the one that still blows my mind is the fact that I had a No.1 album on the Billboard charts. I was the first person in history to debut at No. 1 on the chart with a comedy album. That literally just never happens, so I was understandably amazed when it did.”
Yankovic has long loved wearing Hawaiian shirts and so do his fans as The Times in the U.K. noted in a review in February, “Never before has Glasgow, a city without sunlight, witnessed such a gathering of Hawaiian shirts.”
“For some reason, I guess I always just liked loud, colorful shirts, so Hawaiian shirts kind of became my brand early on,” he said. “And then fans and concert promoters started giving me the shirts as gifts, so I accumulated quite a few. A couple decades ago, my wife went through my collection and thinned it out, giving the ones that didn’t make the cut to Goodwill. We donated several hundred shirts, but don’t worry, I still have a lot of them. I still love Hawaiian shirts, although I don’t often wear them in public quite so often nowadays if I’m trying to keep a low profile.”
“The Unfortunate Return of the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour,” arrives at the MACC on March 17 at 7:30 p.m. Comedian Emo Phillips will open. Tickets are $39, $49, $69, $79, and a limited number of $125 premium seats, plus applicable fees. Tickets are available at MauiArts.org.
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