Weird Al Yankovic consists of "weird Al" (lead vocals), Jim West (guitar, background vocals), Jon "bermuda" (drums), Ruben Valtierra (keyboards), Steve Jay (bass guitar, background vocals).
Alfred Matthew "Weird Al" Yankovic (born October 23, 1959) is an American musician best known for his parodies of contemporary radio hits. His lyrics depend largely on the satirizing of popular culture including television, movies, food, music, and news stories.
Though parodies earned him his fame, Yankovic has recorded a greater number of humorous songs with original tunes. Some of these pieces are pastiches (or style parodies), where he chooses a band's entire body of work to emulate rather than any single hit. Most of his albums include a medley which juxtaposes the choruses of various songs in a polka style to accordion music.
Yankovic, the only child of Nikolas Louis Yankovic (a Serb- American) and Mary Elizabeth Vivalda (of Italian descent), was born in Downey, California, but raised in the nearby town of Lynwood. He first started playing the accordion one day before his seventh birthday, mastering the instrument by age ten.
After hearing Dr. Demento's radio show (a comedy radio program featuring humorous music), Yankovic sent the Doctor a tape of a song entitled "Belvedere Cruising" in 1976. He was a senior at Lynwood High School in Lynwood, California at the time, but that tape was the start of his eventual career.
Three years later, Yankovic was an architecture student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and a disc jockey at the university's radio station (KCPR). His air name was Weird Al, and he has used it since. Since " My Sharona" by The Knack was on the charts and The Knack was scheduled to play at Cal Poly, he took his accordion into the bathroom across the hall from the radio station and recorded a parody entitled " My Bologna", with a B-side called "School Cafeteria". The Knack thought it was funny, and arranged for the song to be released on their label, Capitol Records, which gave Yankovic a six-month contract. Dr. Demento's listeners put this track atop his "Funny Five" list.