The Weird Accordion To Al is Officially Over (Yet Has Only Just Begun!) — It Turns Out the Naming Rights! Membership Option Was For Real and Someone Is Now Five Hundred Bucks Poorer Presents Nat

I have been waiting two and a half years to write this, but as of today the central project of The Weird Accordion to Al, namely writing about every single song on every single one of the fifteen albums included “Weird Al” Yankovic’s Grammy-winning, career-spanning fifteen disc box set Squeezebox: Complete Works of “Weird Al” Yankovic, is finished.

To quote the great George W. Bush, Mission Accomplished!

I did it! Or rather we did it, since I would not have made it to the end of a very long, involved and ambitious project without the support, encouragement and camaraderie of The Weird Accordion to Al readers, who make up in quality, knowledge and loyalty what they lack in numbers. I couldn’t have made it to the finish line without y’all. And of course Al. I did not want to fail or disappoint my childhood hero or his fans. I felt a sense of responsibility to them, and to myself, that got me through the tough times.

This project ended up taking much longer than anticipated. I started writing The Weird Accordion to Al entries when the Happy Place was just a Squarespace address and a desperate, idealistic dream. I’d hope to finish up in a year but the writing and research took way more time than I had anticipated. Also, life happened.

I am excited to finish perhaps the biggest project of my career but The Weird Accordion to Al is anything but over. There is so much more work left to do. I’m now going to edit and revise the Medium Rarities chapter of the book, then I’ll write up Al and Wendy Carlos’ Peter & The Wolf exclusively for the book, then I’ll go back and do another massive set of edits to the manuscript.

Even beyond that, I need to watch and write about every episode of The Weird Al Show and Al’s season of Comedy Bang Bang for a super-sized version of the book to be released in February of 2020 so I am not going to stop writing about Al any time soon.

Once the book is published on November 27th, I plan to spend the next EIGHT months promoting it by re-running the series in order every day on the website and encouraging readers (like you!) to join me in revisiting Al’s entire discography for a Kickstarter/Patreon/Facebook group I tentatively plan to call one of the following:

The Big Squeeze

Squeezebox Revisited

Weirding in the Years

Let’s All Talk Al

The Weird Accordion to Al: Reloaded

Give Us This Day Our Daily Al

Al Unboxed

The Weird Accordion to Al: Leftovers and Rerun Edition

My Year of Al

Now THAT’S What I Call The Career of “Weird Al” Yankovic

Let me know which name you like the best! Alternately, suggest your own! God willing, I will be spending a whole lot of the year ahead happily revisiting all of Al’s songs with y’all and your beautifully illustrated copies of the Weird Accordion to Al book. Book! It’s gonna be a real book after all! I am excited! You should be too!

God willing, I will also spend at least some of the year ahead promoting my book and talking Al at bookstores and on podcasts and for websites and what have you. So if you would like to talk to me in connection with the book, or have me come to your bookstore or hippie accordion commune please do feel free to email me at nathanrabinauthor@gmail.com

The Weird Accordion to Al has officially ended. Yet in so many ways The Weird Accordion to Al has only just begin.

It’s just going to get better from here and it’s already pretty freaking sweet.

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