Weird Al takes on Jim Morrison and Craig Newmark in his latest video spoof, working out as the Lizard King to a mashup of Doors classics.
“The Craigslist” single and video were released today, and spread like light-my-wildfire.
The psychedelic band’s original keyboardist, Ray Manzarek, contributed the keyboards for the video, directed by Liam Lynch (“Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny”). The song starts as “When the Music’s Over” and wanders through “Soul Kitchen,” “20th Century Fox” and other Doors hits.
Lynch and “Weird Al” Yankovic made the ersatz psychedelic music video in the director’ garage.
“Lower your expectations,” Yankovic warned on his MySpace page.
“(The last video) ‘White & Nerdy,’ had a huge budget, and ‘Craigslist’ had a miniscule one.
“The low-budget vibe happens to dovetail well with the concept of the video, so don’t worry, it all works out fine,” the parodist says.
The “Craigslist” video brings in some iconic Morrison imagery, such as the golden lights of L.A. and the Indian car crash the singer witnessed as a boy. The video includes a somber Morrison-style spoken interlude, riffing on some jerk with a cell phone holding up the line at the Coffee Bean. What does this have to do with anything? — In fact, what does Morrison have to do with Craigslist?
“I thought it would be anachronistically weird to have me as Jim Morrison screaming about Craigslist,” Yankovic told Spinner. “That just seemed so completely wrong that I thought I had to do it.”
Morrison had to dump some pounds to fit into the Lizard King’s leather pants (although late-period Morrison certainly would have worked for the “Fat” video).
“Craiglist” is the first of several songs to be released this summer from Yankovic’s upcoming digital EP, “Internet Leaks.”
Weird Al’s last video came three years ago, with the rap parody “White & Nerdy.”
“Craigslist” is his first video foray into psychedelia.