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"Weird Al" Yankovic, Diamond Records, and Snare Drums with Bermuda Schwartz

Metadata

title
"Weird Al" Yankovic, Diamond Records, and Snare Drums with Bermuda Schwartz
description
Jon "Bemuda" Schwartz has been the drummer and right-hand man of Weird Al for the better part of four decades. He's toured the world, been on the Simpsons, played on certified diamond records, and made his mark across genre and culture. He joins the pod to share his love of music and regale us with tales of the absurd journey. In 2020 Jon became a published author with BLACK & WHITE & WEIRD ALL OVER, a coffee-table book featuring more than 200 of his unreleased black-and-white photographs of Weird Al from the early '80s. LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACCORDION! followed in 2022, with more than 300 color photos of Al and the band.
status
complete
date
2024-02-20
kind
guest
guestSlugs
  • bermuda-schwartz
listenUrl
https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovemusicmore/episodes/Weird-Al-Yankovic--Diamond-Records--and-Snare-Drums-with-Bermuda-Schwartz-e2fvg8u
lmwUrl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU0ADI7UKtg
appleUrl
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/weird-al-yankovic-diamond-records-and-snare-drums/id1567355195?i=1000645980278&uo=4
spotifyUrl
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5XJARJhVIOf3oBLMc6Ik0m
youtubeUrl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAZwzeYUov8
topicsDiscussed
  • Drums
  • Classical and orchestral music
  • Genre
  • Music production
  • Satire and absurdism
  • Touring
  • Meeting Weird Al: Dr. Demento live show, right place/right time
  • Snare archaeology, documenting samples (Word Crimes, Radioactive parody)
  • Tour craft, different setlists nightly, no repeats on back-to-back nights
  • Orchestral tours, unplugged pivots, and keeping decades-long shows fresh
  • 1985 Dare to Be Stupid era: videos, book, early tour infrastructure
hostNote
Bermuda Schwartz ("Jon Bermuda") is the **drum platform** under four decades of Weird Al parodies, a diamond-selling comedy catalog that still requires serious production detective work. His job is to **decode whatever the source hit did** (Michael Jackson to Imagine Dragons) and build a pocket Al's accordion can sit on top of. We trace how he met Al at a Dr. Demento live show in LA (pure luck, unrepeatable), why accordion lessons preceded drum lessons, and the obsessive habit of **writing down exact snare samples** so years-later revisits stay faithful. Tour stories go deep too: ~40 songs in rotation, 16–18 per night, **zero repeats** on consecutive nights in the same city, plus orchestral runs and unplugged pivots to keep a lifelong show from going stale.
selectedMoments
  • label
    Diamond record parody artist
    startSec
    21
    note
    Decode drums across every genre so Al can play accordion on top; 40 years of it.
  • label
    Accordion lessons before drums
    startSec
    267
    note
    Palmer-Hughes method at eight or nine; inherited brother's kit in Phoenix.
  • label
    Meeting Weird Al: Dr. Demento live
    startSec
    392
    note
    Right place, right time in LA; couldn't have engineered the introduction.
  • label
    Drum sounds from anything but drums
    startSec
    1831
    note
    Reverse-engineering producers when the source isn't a machine you recognize.
  • label
    Snare samples written down
    startSec
    2531
    note
    Word Crimes / inactive parody, document samples because memory won't hold.
  • label
    Different set every night
    startSec
    3056
    note
    ~40 songs in rotation; back-to-back nights in one city = no repeats.
  • label
    1985 Dare to Be Stupid tour
    startSec
    1442
    note
    Video era, Showtime special funding, companion book The Authorized Al.
  • label
    Orchestral tour, conductor in every city
    startSec
    3089
    note
    2019/2022 pivots, local orchestra, dedicated conductor, fresh arrangements.
excerptQuotes
  • text
    As a parody artist over 40 years they've done everything in popular music — Imagine Dragons to Michael Jackson — and I've had to decode and figure out the drums to create a platform for Weird Al to sit on top of and play accordion.
    startSec
    192
    reviewed
    true
  • text
    Meeting Weird Al was completely right place, right time. You can't create that — I didn't know he was going to be where I met him.
    startSec
    384
    reviewed
    true
  • text
    They're making drum sounds with anything but drums. I got to a point where I couldn't determine what they had done — my goal was to listen until I could recreate it.
    startSec
    1833
    reviewed
    true
  • text
    I've got all of this written down — exactly the samples I used. I don't remember it, but I wrote it all down so I could go back.
    startSec
    2525
    reviewed
    true
  • text
    Every night was a different set — about 40 songs in rotation, 16 to 18 a night. Two nights in the same city? We made sure the next night had no repeats.
    startSec
    3054
    reviewed
    true
faq
  • question
    How long has Bermuda Schwartz played with Weird Al?
    answer
    Since 1980, drums, producing, and touring across Weird Al's full career. On Love Music More he discusses decoding source-track drum language for decades of genre-spanning parodies.
  • question
    What does Bermuda Schwartz say about snare drums on this episode?
    answer
    He describes obsessively reverse-engineering snare and drum sounds from parody targets, including documenting exact samples used on tracks like Word Crimes, because parody production requires faithful recreation of wildly different source records.
transcriptPublished
false
draft
false

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