"Weird Al" Yankovic played the OLG Stage at Fallsview Casino Resort in Niagara Falls on Jul. 5, and for two hours the whole building belonged to him. Puddles Pity Party opened first, the nearly seven-foot sad clown pulling laughs out of complete silence, no dialogue needed. By the time he wandered off stage, the crowd was primed for whatever came next.
What came next was "Tacky," and the video wall lit up before Yankovic ever set foot on stage. His face filled the screen, walking through the venue's back halls, catching Puddles with a pie along the way. Then the song built toward its final notes and there he was, live, grinning, arriving right on cue.
From there the band took over, and this is a group that deserves real attention rather than a passing mention. Jim "Kimo" West on guitar, Steve Jay on bass, Ruben Valtierra on keys and Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz on drums anchor the sound, backed by an expanded lineup adding horns, extra guitar and rich backing vocals. Every arrangement felt fuller than anything on the studio records.
Two small moments stood out among the bigger spectacle. During "Ode to a Superhero," the Billy Joel "Piano Man" parody, Al's road manager stepped in beside him and slid a harmonica into his mouth for the solo, completely deadpan, not a flicker of a smile. Later, the same guy handled the cape bit, a straight lift from James Brown's old routine, draping a cape over Yankovic's shoulders as he pretended to stagger off exhausted, only to fling it aside and roar back into the song. It's a 60-year-old gag and it still gets a laugh every time someone commits to it this hard.
Then the show shifted into its real engine, a stretch that ran less like a concert and more like one continuous music video brought to life. "Mission Statement" turned an entire song of corporate buzzwords into four-part harmony that somehow made the jargon sound gorgeous. "Polkamania!" ripped through a stack of pop hits reworked into breakneck polka, the screens flashing sped-up clips of the original videos synced dead-on to the tempo, so Al's version and the source material collapsed into the same joke at once. "Smells Like Nirvana" brought out the full grunge costume change, ratty wig included, with a cheerleader routine mimicking the "Teen Spirit" video down to the choreography.
He waddles, struts and moonwalks through the whole routine with total commitment, and the crowd screamed the second his silhouette hit the stage.
Then came the medley proper, 11 songs stitched together without a single pause: Party in the CIA, It's All About the Pentiums, Bedrock Anthem, My Bologna, Ricky, Ode to a Superhero, I Love Rocky Road, Eat It, Like a Surgeon, Word Crimes and Canadian Idiot. Costumes changed behind quick blackouts almost song to song, and the crowd sang every lyric back without missing a beat.
"Fat" needs describing if you've never seen it. This is Yankovic's answer to Michael Jackson's "Bad," and he comes out buried in a genuinely enormous fat suit, stuffed to absurd proportions, wrapped in the same black leather jacket, chains and buckles Jackson wore in the original video, topped off with sunglasses and a slicked-back wig. He waddles, struts and moonwalks through the whole routine with total commitment, and the crowd screamed the second his silhouette hit the stage.
The next stretch belonged to the youngest fans in the building. "It's My World (and We're All Living in It)" and "Captain Underpants Theme Song" had kids climbing over armrests to get closer to the stage, parents in tow. "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" arrived with total sincerity, played straight through with no punchline waiting at the end. "Skipper Dan" landed as the quietest, saddest moment of the night, a story about a wasted acting career tucked into an otherwise raucous show. "eBay," "Stop Forwarding That Crap to Me," "White & Nerdy" and "Amish Paradise" closed out the main set on a high.
Then the whole thing exploded into spectacle. The band returned in full costume for the encore, Jedi robes and Sith cloaks everywhere you looked, a pair of Stormtroopers marching out to flank the stage, and Darth Vader himself standing beside a full-size R2-D2 rolling across the platform. "The Saga Begins" told the entire plot of The Phantom Menace over the melody of "American Pie," and the crowd roared back every word. "Yoda" followed, Al's spin on "Lola," and by the final chord the whole cast stood together in costume for a bow that looked more like a convention floor than a curtain call.
Niagara Falls got a night built entirely around one guy's refusal to take any of it too seriously, and a band good enough to make every joke land exactly where it was aimed.
Weird Al Yankovic
Puddles Pity Party
