World of Weird Al Yankovic

Well, actually, that 'eight disc collection' has a number of early demos, but is mostly little fragments and live-only tracks from Al's entire career.

Not to mention, my set has clean versions of the songs that a fan vandalized, AND a few songs that AREN'T on "The Ultimate Collection."

Al is right: there's a good reason most of those early songs were never released. I think there is about one disc's worth of quality material that I'd love to see released sometime but does anyone outside of the hardcore fanbase really need to hear Cheerios Apple Jacks Cheerios or five alternate versions of Stop Draggin My Car Around?

I agree, I broke it down to a disc and a half worth of stuff that was good.

"The Beverly Hillbillies Miss You" is actually pretty decent.

TMBJon wrote:Al is right: there's a good reason most of those early songs were never released. I think there is about one disc's worth of quality material that I'd love to see released sometime but does anyone outside of the hardcore fanbase really need to hear Cheerios Apple Jacks Cheerios or five alternate versions of Stop Draggin My Car Around?

I agree for the most part, although I must confess I am actually partial to the demos of "Stop Draggin My Car Around" and "I Love Rocky Road" to the album versions.

Yeah, it's interesting to hear the development of "Stop Draggin'" - especially since the second demo resembles the Nicks/Petty original more than the album version did.

As for "Cheerios".... I'll admit that I've had that song stuck in my head a LOT over the years, and I have a friend who loves it as well.

I'm hardly saying I don't have a true fondness for each of those songs. But I sympathize with Al when he says he's reluctant to release a lot of that stuff. I don't think he has anything to be bashful about with Belvedere Cruisin', Take Me Down, School Cafeteria, Pac-Man, It's Still Billy Joel To Me, Nobody Here But Us Frogs, American Slob, and a few others.

I can see why he's embarrassed of Hit Me with a Rock...

I know it's a bit past the "early songs" era that we're discussing, but a lot of his concert-only medley material was so good that I'd love to have copies of the medleys from 1983,'85, etc. I'm not asking for them, it would just be cool to have. They had some great material. As far as his early stuff (pre-album 1)... yeah, I understand that there are only a handful of songs that non-rabid fans would want and it can be embarrassing to know that old stuff like that is still being searched for.

weirdojace wrote:I can see why he's embarrassed of Hit Me with a Rock...

That's one I'm not fond of.

I'm pretty split with those songs. Glad to hear em. But on some of them, you can see why he wouldn't want them released officially.