You still have Top 40 radio now, but it's 40 different stations. There aren't many hits that everybody knows, and there aren't many real superstars.
What kind of morons do you have working at newspapers in Austin that would base an entire review of an artist's performance on whether or not they had a good seat?
There are a lot of songs that would ostensibly be a good candidate for parody, yet I can't think of a clever enough idea.
I suppose I had my rock star fantasies while I was singing into my hairbrush in the bathroom mirror, but I never really consciously said, 'OK, this is what I'm going to do for a living and I'm going to be Weird Al.'
I have a long-standing history of respecting artists' wishes.
A lot of rap songs don't usually have a lot of melody per se.
I've done a movie and a TV series, and someday I'd like to do a successful movie and a successful TV series. That would be nice.
People never ask people doing serious music, 'Do you ever think about doing funny music?'
When I go to my live shows it's often a multigenerational audience, a family bonding experience.
One of my pet peeves is that sometimes the talents of my band get overlooked because, and it was the same problem that Frank Zappa had, with a lot of groups that use humor, people don't realize there's a lot of craft behind the comedy.
I don't think there are any new media I'd like to cover.
I make charts of songs that are good candidates, good targets, so to speak. Then I try to come up with ideas for parodies. And 99% of those ideas are horrible.
As much as people are griping about the Internet taking sales away from artists, it's been a huge promotional tool for me.
I like the guitar-driven music of Nirvana at its peak. At that point, I thought there was a lot of really exciting music coming out.
People that were a little nerdy in high school would look up to me and know it gets better.
Probably 90 percent of my albums have polka medleys.
So I'm one of the few celebrities that got to do a repeat performance on 'The Simpsons,' which I'm very flattered by.
The irony is of course that my career has lasted a whole lot longer than some of the people I've parodied over the years.
I'm watching the charts every week and hoping something will pop into my head.
I'm obviously not a rapper, and I don't have any claims to be one, really.
