At a hotel ballroom outside Chicago, the legacy of Dr. Demento and Weird Al lives on.
The crowd at FuMPFest
I freaking loved Weird Al as a kid. My friend Laryssa's older brother introduced us to him in elementary school, and at the time I was certain that "Eat It" (Al's legendary parody of Michael Jackson's "Beat It") was the pinnacle of wit and humor. Laryssa and I watched the Weird Al feature film UHF probably 20 times on VHS. Like a lot of kids, I was the perfect target for his brand of oversize silliness. He looked ridiculous and his humor was easy to get. He was subversive yet PG-rated.
Though most people in my generation think of Weird Al as a phenomenon of the '80s and '90s, his biggest hit actually came in 2006, with "White and Nerdy" (a play on Chamillionaire's ubiquitous "Ridin'"). At the time it came out, I was on a long car trip with friends. I had seen the video for the song, and tried to tell them how good it was. Though they loved him as kids, they were skeptical that Weird Al could still be funny to adults. We pulled off the highway to buy the CD, and I slid it anxiously into the dashboard. I was delighted that Al and I were vindicated: Everyone agreed it was hilarious.
While Al's relevance has faded some, his cultural footprint is weirdly huge. One common thread I've noticed among adults I've met who are creative or funny is that, as kids, they were obsessed with Weird Al. Like me though, most Weird Al devotees tend to grow up, get busy, and forget all about funny music.
But there is another group of people who aren't just nostalgic for Weird Al; they live his gospel. These are people who never set aside the wackiness, the zaniness, the never-ending slide-whistle call of funny music. And I want to find out what makes them tick. That's why I've decided to go to the first ever FuMPFest (Funny Music Project): to meet the acts and the fans who are still out there making and loving funny music.
I'm not sure what to expect, except that I will be laughing very hard.
An impromptu conga line breaks out during a performance.
It's about 11:30 p.m. on Saturday night in the smaller ballroom of the Westin Hotel in Wheeling, Ill., about an hour outside of Chicago. On stage, a man who goes by the name Seamonkey strips down to his boxer briefs and a tie-dyed shirt. He begins to gyrate. His iPod is playing a karaoke track of the song "Like a G6" by Far East Movement, but as Seamonkey sings, he has changed the chorus: "For the gay sex / for the gay sex / now I'm hitting on guys for the gay sex." He finishes to great applause.
"I'm following these guys to the bathroom," he says, pointing at a group of men in the audience who have only recently wandered in. Among them is the actor Anthony Anderson, star of Law & Order. Anderson and his friends explode in laughter. They have been loudly cheering and guffawing through Seamonkey's set, seemingly enjoying it more than anyone else in the crowd.
In his next song, which is about using his wife's dildo while she's out of town and is sung to the tune of "Love in an Elevator" by Aerosmith, Seamonkey brings out an inflatable penis with two cans of silly string taped to the testicles, and starts to spray the crowd. Anderson and his friends howl with delight.
Anderson happened to be staying in the hotel while filming a Food Network show; his two friends work on the show with him. They had seen signs for FuMPFest in the hotel lobby and came to see what was going on. It's both profoundly bizarre and delightful that Anderson is here, but then again, pretty much everything about FuMPFest is profoundly bizarre and delightful.
This first ever FuMPFest is the brainchild of Tom Rockwell (stage name: Devo Spice), who wanted to have a convention for artists and fans of the website TheFuMP.com. The FuMP is a hub for music comedy, a nebulous genre that includes original songs as well as parodies, like the ones Seamonkey performs and the ones that made Weird Al famous. Performers and fans came in from all over the country for the three-day festival of concerts and panels.
A core group of comedy musicians from The FuMP have been performing at geeky conventions for a while, eventually getting their own section at MARSCon, a Minnesota sci-fi convention at which the legendary radio host and funny music curator Dr. Demento was a guest of honor in 2004. Demento himself, sort of the Dick Clark of the funny music scene, is the headliner at FuMPFest, which at times feels more like a comic convention than a music festival. Several of the artists, including Devo Spice, have written songs specifically about geeky topics (video games, Star Trek, etc.), and there is a dealer's room with comic books and collectibles for sale. There are name tags for the guests.
The crowd is overwhelmingly nerdy, a term that seems to be embraced, at least judging from the eruption of cheers when Demento plays Weird Al's "White and Nerdy." Yankovic is still by far the most popular and influential comedy musician of the genre. When I asked various artists and attendees who their favorite all-time funny musician was, more than half of them named Weird Al.