
After a modest start (including a disastrous gig opening for Missing Persons), Al and his band released his first album on Scotti Bros. Knack frontman Doug Fieger turned out to be a fan of "My Bologna", and got the song released as a single on Capitol Records under a short-term contract.Īl scored another minor hit in 1980 with "Another One Rides the Bus" (a parody of Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust") and decided to pursue a career in music, feeling architecture wasn't really his calling. Sometime before he was kicked off the station for refusing to follow various airplay rules, he went across the hall into the men's bathroom with his accordion and recorded a parody of The Knack's "My Sharona" entitled "My Bologna", which became one of the most popular songs on The Dr. When Al went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to earn an architecture degree, he began performing his songs at the campus coffeehouse and worked for the school's radio station as a disc jockey, where he picked up the nickname "Weird Al". D Superstar", a parody of "Jesus Christ Superstar" rewritten to be about Dr. Al's first songs included "Belvedere Cruising" (an original ode to his family's car, a 1964 Plymouth Belvedere) and "Dr. Al began recording his own humorous songs in his bedroom with his accordion and mailing them to the good Doctor, who played them on the air according to Al, Demento appreciated the novelty of a geeky teenager with an accordion thinking he was "cool". Demento, known for playing wacky novelty songs. As a teenager, he became a fan of Los Angeles-based radio host Dr.

Sometime in 1966, a door-to-door salesman stopped by the Yankovic household offering either guitar or accordion lessons according to Al, his parents figured that "the world needed one more accordion-playing Yankovic" (the first being polka legend Frankie Yankovic, to whom Al is not related) and young Alfred received his first lesson the day before his seventh birthday. The reigning king of Song Parody, Alfred Matthew Yankovic (born October 23, 1959), is an American musical humorist with a career spanning 40 years.
