Weird Al

[Thad]

Blog post with further thoughts on the show I saw. Plus, he's got recordings of the entire tour up on Stitcher Premium. It is not difficult to sign up for a free trial, cancel auto-renewal, and then download all 77 MP3s (they total about 10.6GB). Plus you can use the rest of the month to grab whatever else you want on Stitcher; they've got the ad-free versions of a bunch of my favorite podcasts, and I hear good things about Wolverine: The Long Night.

I listened to the Poughkeepsie show last night. It's going to be fun listening to the tour from the beginning, because the difference between the first show and the one I saw (the 53rd) is pretty significant. The Poughkeepsie show is a little rough; there are a couple of flubbed lyrics and false starts (and not always on songs you'd expect; they have to restart One More Minute, which, as Al notes, used to be a regular part of their set list; I'd seen them perform it live at least twice before this tour). After Jackson Park Express, he says something like, "That's going to sound a lot better by the end of the tour," and he's right, it did sound a lot better 52 shows later.

As polished as Al's shows always are, it was fascinating listening to one that was a little rough. Still great, it should go without saying, but I know it gets better as they go, and it's going to be interesting following along as they find their groove.

I'm sure some enterprising soul will eventually split these things up into individual tracks. I look forward to that; it'd be cool to be able to put together a playlist of the full versions of the 77 covers in that video.

[Thad]

If you want an object lesson in the importance of a good audio mix, look no farther than the difference in sound quality between the first and second show. Second show sounds a lot better.

It's not quite perfect -- backup vocals are too quiet on Don't Download This Song, and then lead vocals are too quiet on Traffic Jam and My Own Eyes -- but it's a huge improvement over the first show. The first show sounded fine, but the second really pops.

[Grath]

If anyone's interested, I have a link to where someone went through the shows and cut out the first playing of each original and each cover, in case anyone wants an approximation of probably the longest single-tour live show album ever made.