Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Reverse parody going full circle

In May 2000, I went to the Elk Grove Village Holiday Inn for a Weird Al fan convention as it was only a few miles from where I lived. There I met a whole bunch of people whose music interests were similar to mine and for the first time in my life, I had people who can call friends as opposed to coworkers, teammates, club mates, or opponents.

The most memorable musical moment performed by other people who did comedy music who were there involved what to me was an original rap song about Star Trek in which each verse covered a different incarnation of the show along with a verse involving the character Q who appeared in different versions done while wearing the appropriate shirt during each verse and rapidly changing outfits during the chorus.

What I did not realize about the Luke Ski song "What's Up Spock" is that it is a parody of a song by a group called the Fu-Schnickens called What's up Doc (can we rock) which is a song I still have never heard.

Once I started listening to the rest of his work and then helping him at conventions I discovered that even though he was born only 8+ years after me (the day after the Miami Dolphins led by MVP Larry Csonka won Super Bowl 8 and haven't won a title since) his taste in music is completely different from mine and it shows in the parodies he has done.

Then I started to hear songs played by others on radio that sounded a lot like songs done by Luke as well as other artists like Devo Spice (and later Insane Ian, Dino Mike, and Weird Al) in which I know the parody but not the version I was hearing. I coined the phrase "reverse parody" to explain the point of view of someone hearing the original song after hearing a parody version first.

Inspired by a person who was not familiar with the Madonna song Vogue upon hearing Luke's most recent song Rogue (about the female characters in Star Wars), I went to https://lukeski.bandcamp.com/ and went through all his parodies discovering that if multiple parodies of the same song are discounted, that there are 100 parody tracks which made this chart easier to make.


On June 18th, I will see Luke perform at FuMPFeST at the same hotel I saw him perform when my now 17 year old daughter was an infant. I am not going to count the total number of times I saw him perform but I would guess at is at least 150. With him now storyboarding cartoons for audiences in the thousands (instead of a somewhat disinterested group on Sunday afternoon at a con) and me deciding to focus my time, energy, and money on doing something I can while dealing with physical pain as opposed to watching others do what I can't while I sit uncomfortably in physical pain, it could be the last one.

1 comment:

madman on the loose said...

Breakdown by Album:
Psycho Potpurri (combination of his first two albums) 10 known - 10 unknown
Carpe Dementia 11 known - 8 unknown
Uber Geek - 8 known - 3 unknown - 1 medley
Worst Album Ever - 3 known - 4 unknown - 1 medley
Unconventional 2 known - 4 unknown
Baconspiricy 1 known - 2 unknown - 1 medley
Target Audience 5 known - 1 unknown
Too Much Stuff 2 known 2 unknown
Be Amused By Me 4 known - 8 unknown - 1 medley
4th Grade Talent Show 0 known - 2 unknown - 1 medley
Individual tracks since 4 known - 1 unknown