October 5, 1993 - Alapalooza

Two weeks after my last release and a long 8 years since his last appearance in my library, Weird Al Yankovic released his eighth album "Alapalooza" on October 5, 1993 and I have two songs off of it: one parody and one cover! The parody is of an old Jimmy Webb song called "MacArthur Park", but this version's lyrics are all about the new hit movie "Jurassic Park" and that is also the name of the song. Although I don't know the original, the music sounds very old time-y with some light piano and some trumpet as well, but we're here for the lyrics as Al makes some funny jokes in this song. "A huge tyrannosaurus ate our lawyer, I guess that proves that they're really not all bad". I especially like "I'm afraid those things'll harm me, 'cause they sure don't act like Barney, and they think that i'm dinner, not their friend" and Al delivers it great. After the second chorus there's a solid little instrumental break and Al has added some people screaming for their lives in the background to a nice comedic effect. The piano is actually pretty good and it builds nicely into a final epic chorus to close things out. The other song I have is called "Bohemian Polka" and it's a cover of "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen, but played in a polka style! It's much faster paced and more upbeat and I think the fact that it still sounds alright in polka form is a testament to how great a song it really is. Weird Al does a decent job of covering the awesome middle section and whoever is yelling the high "Galileo!" does it in a hilarious voice. He adds other funny sound effects in the background as well that correlate to the lyrics. He uses a multitude of different instruments as they segue into the closing verse and the usually quiet finish is very loud and ends with a loud "Hey!" instead of the epic gong. I thought it was a funny and actually half decent cover!

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