The Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Edition of The Weird Accordion to Al Is Officially On Sale Today!
A while back I was telling my online therapist that I was worried about disappointing the people who had pre-ordered The Weird Accordion to Al through various crowd-funding campaigns. I was humbled and more than a little surprised by just how many people believed in the book and my vision enough to shell out cold hard cash for it months, even years before it was even finished, let alone published, signed, personalized and shipped to their doorsteps.
I was particularly shocked and overwhelmed considering that the column never attracted much of a following online on this website. During the two and half years it was an ongoing column it was historically the least-read ongoing feature. Yet it was was a big success via multiple crowd-funding platforms. That was incredibly validating but it also put enormous pressure on me to create something that lived up to the expectations of my readers.
My therapist asked me what my goal was for the book and I said I didn’t really have one beyond not disappointing everyone and she suggested that my goal for The Weird Accordion to Al should be for it to be the best book I have ever written.
Al in Space!
I laughed reflexively at her counsel and said that while I believed in The Weird Accordion to Al and thought I could do a fine job with it there were limits as to how good, personal and emotional a book about the complete discography of “Weird Al” Yankovic could possibly be. I assumed it couldn’t possibly be as personal or emotional as The Big Rewind or You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me, memoirs that deal extensively with my ongoing battle with mental illness as filtered through my stormy love affair with pop culture.
I have seldom, if ever, been happier to be proven wrong. It turns out that there is not, in fact, a limit as to how emotional, personal and good a book about the complete discography of “Weird Al” Yankovic can be. That goes double for an even geekier, even more exhaustive and obsessive epic tome about Al’s complete discography as well as his career as a film, TV and live performer.
I was thrilled to discover that while I am very bad at writing dry, detached, unemotional books about music and performers I am VERY good at writing emotional, deeply personal books about the tremendous spiritual connection we feel towards our favorite music and favorite performers, even if that music is fundamentally very silly.
Fred Huggins with some enemies
The arc of The Weird Accordion to Al changed dramatically and for the better when I went on the seven stops of the 2018 originals-intensive tour whose title gives the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Edition of The Weird Accordion to Al its name. Going out on the road by myself for seven concerts in Chicago, Milwaukee, Wabash, Indiana and Augusta, Georgia and finally my home town of Atlanta gave me an even deeper connection to Al and his music.
But going out on the road also tilted the focus of the book so that it became, on some level, about fandom and community and the transcendence of live music as well as Al’s albums.
It took me three and a half years of research and travel and obsession and close listening and watching to write the extended version of The Weird Accordion to Al but it took me nineteen years as a full-time pop culture writer and forty years of living to get to that point.
When it comes to choosing the original or Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Edition of the Weird Accordion to Al, you can have whatever you like!
When I got in the first copies of The Weird Accordion to Al, I spent a lot of time just leafing through the book, gazing adoringly at my illustrator Felipe Sobreiro’s amazing art and my designer Mariana’s elegant work with the same sense of pride I felt looking worshipfully at my newborn sons for the first time.
Though it’s not quite as intense or transformative, there’s still a sense of awe that I was somehow partially responsible for the creation of something so wonderful and blessed. I felt the exact same sense of pride wonder and elation browsing the extended version of the book only it is even more pronounced, because there are something like 27 new illustrations, 10 more for the songs and 17 for the new material.
I should also point out that while almost everything in the original version of the Weird Accordion to Al had already been published on this website in some form, with the exception of Al’s album with Wendy Carlos, the extended version is full of new material that has not been shared with the public, with the exception of a chapter on the tour that previously ran in MEL Magazine in a much shorter version and the excerpt on The Compleat Al that is running today.
I worried that the extended version of The Weird Accordion to Al wouldn’t hang together as well as the original edition, that it wouldn’t be as tight or cohesive or focused. I was wrong.
Al is such a visual performer that I feel like I accidentally did him a grave disservice by writing a 382 page book about him that focused exclusively on the sonic elements of his career. Loving appreciations of The Compleat Al, UHF, The Weird Al Show, Comedy Bang! Bang! and the 2018 tour didn’t ultimately just prove to be inspired, natural additions: they proved damn near essential.
I didn’t realize it until the very end but the extended version of The Weird Accordion to Al is in no small part about being a son and then being a dad and the wonderful and heartbreaking and deeply meaningful way music brings us together. But it’s also about comedy and nostalgia and the 1980s and consumerism and food and TV and the rise of the geek as a dominant cultural figure and damn near everything else that makes our nation so crazy-making and irresistible.
In my 500 page analysis of an important and trenchant American satirist’s life’s work I sometimes engage in social commentary. So if the idea of an analytical book about “Weird Al” Yankovic that’s not 100 percent apolitical enrages you to the point where you feel the need to write an angry Amazon review decrying it as the work of a bomb-throwing Bolshevik, as a disconcerting number of folks have, I am warning you upfront this is not the book for you.
I like to think that the extended version of the Weird Accordion to Al is the best book that I have ever written, in part because I have grown tremendously as a writer and a human being since the publication of my last proper book.
So I encourage you to buy a signed copy of The Weird Accordion to Al directly from me for 23 dollars, shipping and taxes included, domestic orders only. It took me a LONG time to write a VERY long and VERY good and VERY personal book and I need to send out the 450 copies that were pre-ordered so if the posting schedule for this website isn’t quite as consistent as it has been in the past it’s because sending out all those books will take a lot of time and energy and money but it will all be worth it.
It took me a long time to get here. I am so happy and so proud and so excited to share my journey with you. I want to savor this wonderful, wonderful feeling before I move onto the hard, joyful work of sending out my book to patrons and supporters whose faith in me empowered me to create something far better than it has any right being.
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Buy the RIDICULOUSLY SELF-INDULGENT, ILL-ADVISED VANITY EDITION of THE WEIRD ACCORDION TO AL with dozens more illustrations and a new cover as well as over a hundred pages of new material covering every facet of Al’s career, including The Complete Al, UHF, The Weird Al Show, the fifth season of Comedy Bang! Bang! and the 2018 Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour for just $23.00, signed copy . tax + USA domestic shipping included here or buy it directly from Amazon here