Weird Paul’s first album in six years is ‘ Lit AF’
Pittsburgh’s own Weird Paul, who can be every bit as funny as the more famous Weird guy, has a knack for making the most everyday things rock.
Over his 30- plus years as a lo- fi rock folk hero, the Bethel Park native has served us such gems as “Peanut Butter Recall,” “Hot Water Heater,” “Wine Coolers,” “The Sink Stinks” and, of course, “I Got Drunk at Chuck E. Cheese.”
On his latest album, “Lit AF,” he goes where no other rocker has gone before, tackling the subject of ... coupons.
“I don’t know any other songs about coupons,” he says.
But there was a truly compelling reason to write “Stupid Coupon.”
“I used to survive by using coupons,” he says. “I’d take them out of people’s recycling so I could go to the store and get like 10 boxes of cereal for a quarter each. I was not even paying for a bunch of stuff. But they don’t make the coupons like they used to. It will say, ‘ If you buy a box of cereal, you’ll get a pack of gum for free.’ Why would I want that? Why would I buy a box of cereal to get a pack of stinking gum?”
It’s one of the more lighthearted songs on an album that finds the 48- year- old Weird Paul Petroskey emerging from his half- decade plunge into YouTube. Since releasing “Still Going Strong” in 2013, Petroskey says, “I put all my time into YouTube.”
He was getting tens of thousands of views for videos of everything from old product labels to thrift- store finds to an update of his now 35- year review of McDonald’s breakfast. He was posting up to five videos a week, including his series “My 100 Favorite Songs of the 1980s.”
But then YouTube’s changing algorithm made it harder to profit from videos and “things just weren’t expanding,” he says. “I was working at the same level and after 2018, I realized this is not happening. I shouldn’t have put all my time into this. I
should have been working on my true calling, which is making music.”
So, he hit the reset button and began working with the ideas and song fragments he’d put on tape and scraps of paper. From there, he turned to GarageBand to record the latest in a long string of lo- fi post- punk/ new wave/ hip- hop albums that checks in on the state of the world and the state of his mind.
A few of the standouts are tech- themed, including an Americana- ish ballad, “Hippie in the Woods with an iPhone.”
“My girlfriend, she loves the woods, she loves nature,” he says. “I’m not as into that kind of stuff. I like to stay home, I like to work on projects. She tends to go out and do these things without me. She had a friend, he generally stayed in the woods all the time, but he was always putting pictures of the woods on the internet. She said, ‘ He’s a hippie in the woods with an iPhone’ or something to that effect, and I just immediately started singing that. Even people out in the woods, they still want to be connected and say, ‘ Look at this beautiful tree.’ ”
That song is directly related to “Dopamine Drop,” a boom- bap track about the chemical reaction in the brain resulting from social media mood swings.
“One day I was at work,” says Petroskey, who works at a mall novelty store, “and my best friend, who’s also my boss, says, ‘ Did you hear about this dopamine drop? If someone likes your post, you get this dopamine drop.’ ”
He started singing that right away too, but in more of a hip- hop vein, and then wrote the verses, realizing his friend didn’t have the drop part exactly accurate. ( Dopamine drops when you don’t get the reward.)
“At first, it was more about me personally,” he says, “but I shaped it so that anybody could be like ‘ Same. That’s how I feel too.’ But what I’m saying is, people say it’s a bad thing and I’m like, ‘ Why is it bad? I feel great!’ When I do a post that gets 500 likes, man, I’m floatin’ on air.”
On the flipside, “Tell Me What You Think,” the lead track, is about YouTube trolls, who tend to slag Weird Paul for his Johnny Ramone bowl cut. “I’m Getting Old,” he says, deals with the nagging question of “What pain am I going to feel today? Which one is going to take over my nervous system?”
And then there’s “Alive in the Body Bag.” The title suggests sci- fi/ horror, but really, it’s a synth- rock anthem of survival and selfrenewal.
“It’s a good metaphor for coming out of bad situations and being ready to get back into what you’re doing. Or bad relationships,” he says. “I took it from all my personal strife, to say, ‘ Here I am, I’m back.’ I let all this time go by and I’m ready to do it again. It’s not over.”