Poodle Hat is a great album, and I highly recommend you go pick it up. It's got some good parodies of Eminem and Nelly. The Avril Lavigne, Backstreet Boys and Billy Joel songs are excellent. The polka medley is comprised of just about every Alt-rock band on the charts last year and this year, and the originals are great too. Track 2, "Hardware Store" is among my favorite Weird Al songs of all time already. There are also some style parodies of both Prince and Bob Dylan. I think this album will please both the casual and die hard Weird Al fans out there, and is definitely worth your 15 bucks.
By the way...if you BUY it, instead of downloading it....you'll get 8 alternate tracks which are remixes, instrumentals and vocal mixes of the original tracks on the album. VERY fun for Karoake. Plus you get some Home movies of Al's childhood, which he changes around with his narration.
And Matt...I am SO jealous. That's AWESOME. I've been to dozens of concerts, but never scored the elusive backstage passes. I did manage to meet him a few times outside the shows and get autographs, but it's always been in a crowd of autograph and picture seekers.
So...don't forget to ask his people for tickets for me at the Seattle leg of the tour too.....Hehehe. (Yeah Right).
Either way, I've got my tickets and I'm headed there in September. So far, his only date anywhere near Seattle is a fair 60 miles south of here. The grandstand tickets are free with fair admission, or you can buy the closer ones (which of course I did). Weird Al concerts are definitely my favorite concerts out of any artist I go see. I'd go so far as to trade Weird Al tickets for Pearl Jam (or any other lesser artist) tickets in a heartbeat.
One year, we followed his band around on tour like they were the Dead (I think I saw them 9 times that year).
So, in summary....while my opinion may be biased, I highly recommend Poodle Hat to all of you.
GO BUY IT!