Caveat peremptor
Alfred Matthew Yankovic, man of personal integrity:
If you already have most or all of my albums, this collection [The Essential "Weird Al" Yankovic] will probably hold little interest for you, unless you’re a completist who just compulsively buys anything with my name on it (bless you, whoever you are). I should also point out that this collection doesn’t include any tracks from Internet Leaks — it didn’t seem right to include songs on a hits compilation before they had a chance to be on an actual studio album.
In my younger days, there were tracks released as singles that eventually showed up on compilation albums — Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street,” the Association’s “Six Man Band,” almost all the early British 45s by the Beatles — but as the album displaced the single as the primary vehicle for vending popular music, the single became the loss leader to move the album, and how are you going to sell a Greatest Hits set to someone who already has all the albums? Right. This has been a sore spot with Trini for several years.
So let us now praise Mr Yankovic for his approach to the compilation album. I would, of course, go out and buy his earlier stuff, except for the minor detail that I’ve already bought his earlier stuff. (And a friend gave me a copy of the Permanent Record/Al in the Box box set, so I have a lot of that stuff twice.)
fillyjonk »
17 November 2009 · 7:59 am
That makes me love Weird Al even more than I already do.