Holy Crap, The Weird Accordion to Al Book Is Available NOW!!! — It Turns Out the Naming Rights! Membership Option Was For Real and Someone Is Now Five Hundred Bucks Poorer Presents Nat

It is a beautiful and precious thing to be able to write and publish books. I’ve been lucky enough to have a small bookshelf of books that individually and collectively provide an X-ray of my perpetually suffering, joyful soul and my curious times.

I started out at the very top and have been working my way down over the last eleven years, from being published by the biggest and most prestigious publishers in existence to self-publishing in a bid to stay in a dirty, rigged game that seems to grow prohibitively more difficult by the day.

I published my first book, the tragicomic pop-culture memoir The Big Rewind back in 2009 on Scribner, the people who put out Stephen King and Don DeLillo and Ernest Hemingway and various other titans of literature.

I thought The Big Rewind would change my life, particularly after I got a glowing review in The New York Times and did a fuck-ton of press and radio, including lots of NPR, as well as a signing in New York where I was told I drew the biggest crowd since Hillary Clinton.

You could say that Hillary Clinton and I are both winners, but in a larger, more accurate sense we’re both losers as well. So even though The Big Rewind did not live up to expectations, nor did the book that followed, 2010’s My Year of Flops I still got to write more books.

In 2011 my childhood hero “Weird Al” Yankovic asked me to write his coffee table book after I had already signed on to write what I did not realize at the time would be my final book for Scribner, a sociological exploration of the seemingly antithetical fanbases of Phish and Insane Clown Posse called You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me that ended up being an achingly personal exploration of how I became a Juggalo and a Phish Phan and how music saved my life.

When I started writing the book that would become The Weird Accordion to Al I conceived of it as a follow-up to Weird Al: The Book. I love that book but it was unmistakably an assignment. Going through draft after draft of The Weird Accordion to Al book I realized that I had created a follow-up not to Weird Al: The Book so much as a follow-up to You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me.

The Weird Accordion to Al has the same subject matter as Weird Al: The Book but it’s also about music as transcendence and music as community and the joy and wonder of live performance.

When Al announced that he would be touring an entirely different manner in 2018 on his Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour in that he would be eschewing screens, costumes, stage-craft, extras and all of his hit parodies to deliver stripped-down versions of originals and obscurities I knew that was something I had to be a part of.

So I traveled the country in Greyhound buses going to seven shows over the course of a week and a half, beginning in my old hometown of Chicago and ending in my new hometown of Atlanta. Following Al the way I did Phish and Insane Clown Posse deepened my already profound connection to Al and his music. It made the book better, and more emotional and more whole since it wasn’t just about Al as a recording artist but also a magnetic and wildly popular live performer.

After You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me was published to good reviews (including a four star review in Rolling Stone) and solid sales in 2013 it took me seven years to get back to a place where I would be publish books you can hold in your hands and give to friends and keep in your bathroom to entertain you while doing your business.

Here’s the thing about The Weird Accordion to Al book: it turned out better than I could have possibly expected. It’s a real book that holds together beautifully and is not anywhere near as repetitive or self-indulgent as I had feared.

However, I don’t think it denigrates the Weird Accordion to Al book at all to say that it will be your bathroom’s best friend. I like to think that I’ve mounted a compelling, funny and very convincing argument for Al as an artist and a satirists while also writing something that begs to be read piece-meal, in drips and drabs. Hell, you don’t even need to know how to read to love my book. My five year old son Declan does not know how to read but he loves to leaf through the paperback proofs of the book and admire Felipe Sobreiro’s 52 original illustrations.

If you’ve followed The Weird Accordion to Al you might be wondering why on earth you should pay good money for a book whose contents are largely available online.

That is a good questions and I like to think I have a number of great answers. First off, the book and the column are two very different beasts. The column is sloppy and self-indulgent, published intermittently and never found a cohesive visual aesthetic. The book, in sharp contrast is shockingly tight, professional and god help me, even slick.

The Weird Accordion to Al would be worth buying for Felipe’s illustrations alone, which are hilarious and beautiful and so deeply immersed in the details of Al’s life’s work that even I didn’t get some of the references and jokes in it. Also, the formatting for the column and the book are very different: The Weird Accordion to Al book breaks everything down into albums; the column is formatted, poorly, according to songs.

Also, I’ve discovered that Al fans tend to be obsessives and collectors. I should know. I am a “Weird Al” Yankovic super-fan and I am also an obsessive and a collector, and the Weird Accordion to Al is a terrific collector’s item and something every “Weird Al” fan should own. I’ve spent four years studying Al and writing about Al and becoming an expert on all things Al.

Honestly, I think I did a B, B+ job on The Weird Accordion to Al as a column. I did a solid A on the book, as did Felipe, our amazing book designer Mariana and Al himself, who was so horrified by my grammar that he did a linguistic intervention and copy-edited my book for free.

I was hoping to publish the paperback version of the book on February 4th but in a turn of events at once fortunate and unfortunate, Amazon decided to make the book available for purchase immediately. That is great, in the sense that a book that I adore is available for buy and that if you buy The Weird Accordion to Al on Amazon it can be in your arms, or in your bathroom TOMORROW.

How fucking crazy is that? Honestly, there were times when I wondered if I would ever finish The Weird Accordion to Al. There wasn’t much of an audience for it for pretty much its entire duration, in part because it was published erratically and I was too self-conscious about its sloppiness to try to really push it in the “Weird Al” Yankovic fan community. But I kept on pursuing an ambitious, demanding vision in the face of seeming widespread apathy. I’m glad I did because now I have something I could not be prouder or more excited to share with y’all.

This is going to sound crazy, considering the role Al has played in my career, but Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place is about to get a whole lot more “Weird Al” Yankovic-focussed. Tomorrow I will begin re-running the entirety of The Weird Accordion to Al as The Big Squeeze, with all of the typos, spelling errors, mistakes, bad jokes and self-indulgent tangents lovingly preserved, albeit with a little “Author’s commentary” at the top looking back on the entry and song from the perspective of 2020.

AND we’ve introduced a bunch of awesome The Weird Accordion to Al merch you can only get by pledging to the site’s Patreon account. AND to encourage more Al fans to become patrons, I will be writing up individual episodes of The Weird Al Show and the fifth season of Comedy Bang Bang as patron-only exclusives in anticipation of putting out an even longer, even more obsessive edition of the book a little down the road.

So please do think about buying The Weird Accordion. I’ve been grinning like an idiot since I got my first copies. It might be the best thing I’ve ever done so if you do buy it, please consider reviewing it on Amazon, sharing it on social media or talking it up on your podcast.

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what some folks you may be familiar with had to say about it:

“A brilliant, heartfelt cry of obsession and love for an already beloved and obsessed-over artist. Share Nathan’s madness and be freed!”—Patton Oswalt

"This book is pop culture history, music dissertation, and comedic theory. Nathan has exemplified the qualities that make Weird Al an artist who is equal parts Frank Zappa, Mel Brooks, and Mark Twain.”—Jonah Ray

“You don’t have to be a fan of Weird Al to enjoy Rabin’s raucous deep-dive into the complete discography. But if you’re not a Weird Al fan there’s clearly something wrong with you”—Alex Winter

“Wonderfully captures the quirks and fun details that have made the Yank-oeuvre ooze with oddness for almost four decades. Nathan really shows you what makes Al's mind tick. Spoiler: It's the neurons. A must read for anyone unemployed, childless, or with ninety spare hours to kill.”—Scott Aukerman

“The Weird Accordion to Al is the definitive companion to the “Weird Al” catalogue. It’s chock full of fascinating insights that left my head spinning like a Frankie Yankovic record (no relation). Nobody covers the Al canon in better depth than Nathan Rabin. It’s a must-read for the weirdos in your life. I learned so much from this VERY SPECIFIC book.”—Thomas Lennon

"There is no keener observer of pop culture than Nathan Rabin. His wit, unassuming charm and amazing talent for empathy make him one of the most pleasurable authors to read in a field that far too often devolves into navel-gazing self reference. I will never die, but if I do, I hope Nathan Rabin writes the book about me.”—Justin McElroy

"Nathan Rabin is obsessive in the best sense of the word. He literally ALREADY wrote the book on Weird Al that Weird Al asked him to write. That wasn't enough for Nathan and that's why we are lucky to have this book. Al's contributions to pop culture deserve the kind of obsession that only Nathan Rabin can bring to the page and he brings it big time in this book. He dares to be very smart about "Dare To Be Stupid.’”—Jake Fogelnest