{"id":340,"date":"2026-06-14T14:20:39","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T19:20:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/?p=340"},"modified":"2026-06-14T14:20:39","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T19:20:39","slug":"soundtrack-stories-its-time-for-us-to-join-in-the-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/?p=340","title":{"rendered":"Soundtrack Stories: It’s Time for Us to Join in the Fight"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I was a Catholic schoolboy when I got my first CD, \u201cWeird Al\u201d Yankovic\u2019s Greatest Hits<\/em>. My mom bought it for me and my brother James from Bert\u2019s Tapes and Compact Discs on Concord Pike. Bert was a friend of my mom from her days as a bartender at The Buggy Tavern. Whenever Bert walked in the door, the staff would yell \u201cBert Alert.\u201d He was a weird cat, but whenever I stopped by his store, he\u2019d give me a selection of promo discs. The store closed down some point after I left home for college. Last time I was home, I saw a tax prep business in its place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I became a big fan of Weird Al, getting most of his back catalogue as I grew into myself. And when Al came to my hometown to perform at the Grand Opera House, my mom took me and James to see him, and bought me my first concert t-shirt. This event so profoundly affected me that I chose to write about it for an autobiography assignment in eighth grade. I still have the posterboard with the paper and photo; I even got Al\u2019s bass player to sign it in 2015. But I\u2019m getting ahead of myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in 2000, I was a seventh-grade student in Mrs. Carey<\/a>\u2018s class at St. Helena\u2019s, and we rarely had the chance to express individuality given that we were in uniforms almost every day. However, there were the occasional Tag Days that allowed us to exchange a dollar for permission to dress down \u2013 to wear our human clothes. On one Tag Day, I wore my Weird Al shirt. I was told by Mrs. Carey that shirts featuring musical artists were not permitted and therefore I would have to take myself to the bathroom where I would turn my t-shirt inside out for the remainder of the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remember this day as one of my earliest acts of rebellion. During lunch, I crouched down behind a bunch of my friends and removed my shirt. I put it right-side out and lived a true life for the remainder of the period. Then we lined up to go back to class. Mrs. Carey spotted Al and demanded that I go into the bathroom and change again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Catholic school wouldn\u2019t always be so limiting. I went to high school, fell in love again, and discovered a plethora of musical artists. On the day I performed \u201cAtlantic City\u201d for the Christmas talent show, I wore a They Might Be Giants shirt. Nobody made me turn it inside out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of the artists I explored in high school had some connection to Al. They were contemporaries in the alternative genre; had been parodied in some way. There\u2019s an ambitious case to be made that Al Yankovic is one of the most important songwriters of the late 20th<\/sup> and early 21st<\/sup> centuries. If I were to attempt such a thesis, I\u2019d probably start by discussing his style parodies. These songs didn\u2019t adapt a specific song, but captured the overall feel of an artist\u2019s or band\u2019s repertoire. There are two on his Greatest Hits<\/em>. Track 7, \u201cDare to Be Stupid,\u201d is a pastiche of new wave band Devo, featuring directions contrary to cliched advice: \u201cYou better put all your eggs in one basket; you better count your chickens before they hatch.\u201d The final track is an Elvis Presley doo-wop style song called \u201cOne More Minute\u201d in which the singer lists the many painful, disgusting or simply unpleasant things he\u2019d prefer over spending time with his ex-girlfriend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These two songs do a great job of illuminating Al\u2019s artistic view of the world: it\u2019s absurd, and shouldn\u2019t be taken too seriously. Love, especially, is a target for Al. All of his albums have at least one song, if not more, about love. Sometimes they\u2019re full of self-harm imagery \u2013 right at home in any of my pop-punk records I listened to in high school. Sometimes they\u2019re beautiful \u2013 earnest and confused attempts at making a connection. They\u2019re always weird.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Love is something they touch on in Al\u2019s Behind the Music episode. Friends mention Al\u2019s status as a bachelor (at the time), so it makes sense that his music wouldn\u2019t put love on a pedestal. There were insinuations that Al was gay, which I still bristle at. Ultimately, so what if he is? That\u2019s not what makes him weird. What makes him weird is his refusal to conform to social norms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the cover of his Greatest Hits<\/em>, Weird Al is reclining, but with his legs scrunched up. His right knee is pressed against his cheek; his left foot contorted to fit inside the frame. Al doesn\u2019t look uncomfortable, but he doesn\u2019t seem happy to be in this position. He looks bemused, seeming to acknowledge the absurdity of his predicament. After all, this is a compilation album; they\u2019re not usually spaces for grand artistic statements. Al seems to communicate: here it is, if you want it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now here I am, trapped in a box, attempting to tell you who I am with a limited amount of time. It\u2019s a fool\u2019s errand\u2026but I am willing to be a fool before you. I trust you will laugh in the right way: with me, not at me. But that\u2019s the trick, isn\u2019t it? I can never be sure that others will receive my expressions with grace. I am putting myself in your hands, and it\u2019s your choice of how you will respond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I got into this box because I thought other people wanted me there, because I thought it safer to be inside a small space, to be a smaller target. But I am no child \u2013 I am a man, and thus have a responsibility to stand tall, walk hard, and take the slings and arrows of the petulant creatures who would rather we all be miserable than be ourselves. There is a weirder and more absurd world that we could have. In the life of this world to come, we shall be free to be and to love in the way we want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So here we are: I\u2019m a guy with an accordion and a song to sing. That song? I am bisexual and polyamorous. These are facts that may not have a lot of effect on the relationship I have with some of the people in my life, but it feels important that all people know it. It\u2019s adopting the moniker that others would hurl at me as an insult, like Al did all those years ago with \u201cweird.\u201d In the life of the world to come, people will not have to define themselves so blatantly. They can just be. But for now, it\u2019s like Al said: \u201cYou gotta buy one if you wanna get one free.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was a Catholic schoolboy when I got my first CD, \u201cWeird Al\u201d Yankovic\u2019s Greatest Hits. My mom bought it for me and my brother James from Bert\u2019s Tapes and Compact Discs on Concord Pike. Bert was a friend of my mom from her days as a bartender at The Buggy Tavern. Whenever Bert walked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[19,5,30,29],"class_list":["post-340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paul","tag-music","tag-paul","tag-soundtrack-stories","tag-weird-al-yankovic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=340"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":342,"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions\/342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}