Waffle King

[Yankomaniac]

Definitely closer to the bottom of the list as far as originals go but it is pretty funny. Makes me want waffles all the time when I hear it and I am more of a pancake guy. Love the bass line too, it's a fun track, just not as good as most of the originals. I think I like it about as much as I like Talk Soup.

[eleventhirtyfour]

Here's something that bothers me about this, in regards to its lack of inclusion on Off The Deep End:

First off, let's completely ignore the hidden track "Bite Me" for two reasons. 1. It isn't on MOST copies of Off The Deep End and B. Nirvana's "Nevermind" had 12 tracks AND a hidden track, not 11 tracks AND a hidden track.

So, NOT including "Bite Me", Off The Deep End has eleven tracks. 5 parodies, 1 polka medley, and 5 originals. The formula for almost all Weird Al albums is 5 parodies, 1 polka medley, and 6 originals.

From what I've heard, the reason "Waffle King" was not included on the album and instead was a b-side for "Smells Like Nirvana" was that it was down to choosing between two originals: "Waffle King" and "I Was Only Kidding" and that the reason he chose "I Was Only Kidding" was that he was worried that the Wayne's World reference "...NOT!" would be dated if he waited to put "I Was Only Kidding" out later.

Now this is a perfectly fine excuse IF the album had the standard twelve tracks already. It didn't. AND the track that it doesn't have, according to Al's formula, is an ORIGINAL track. Hmmm. So let's add the track to Off The Deep End right between where it could go (in between a parody and the polka medley) and see how that looks...

1. Smells Like Nirvana
2. Trigger Happy
3. I Can't Watch This
4. Waffle King
5. Polka Your Eyes Out
6. I Was Only Kidding
7. The White Stuff
8. When I Was Your Age
9. Taco Grande
10. Airline Amy
11. The Plumbing Song
12. You Don't Love Me Anymore

...ok why couldn't that have worked? I mean, even the artwork of the album was supposed to be an almost exact parody of Nirvana's "Nevermind" so making it 12 tracks instead of 11 would have made the text line up side-by-side better. I just don't get it. Maybe Bermuda has some insight as to how that makes sense?

[Killingsworth]

Well, you do have to take into account here that "The Plumbing Song" is actually a parody of TWO Milli Vanilli songs ("Blame It On The Rain" AND "Baby Don't Forget My Number") so I think that might have something to do with it. He must have had to leave off one original for budgetary reasons since he and his label knew they already had the royalty rates figured out for 12 songs. I know Straight Outta Lynnwood almost suffered a similar fate but R. Kelly was gracious enough to not charge Al double the royalty rate for "Trapped In The Drive Thru" despite it being the length of two songs but only parodying one. If not for that, SOL would've had to have been another 11 track album. Someone else can probably explain that concept better than me but I thought I would bring it up since you apparently did not.

(I also now realize Alapalooza had the same issue w/Bedrock Anthem parodying both "Under The Bridge" and "Give It Away" but I think either the very short length of "Harvey The Wonder Hamster" or "Bohemian Polka" technically counting more as a cover than a parody may have allowed that to be a 12 track album)

[TMBJon]

R. Kelly was gracious enough to not charge Al double the royalty rate for "Trapped In The Drive Thru"

Yes, what a gracious man that R. Kelly is!

[Killingsworth]

Yes, what a gracious man that R. Kelly is!

Well, he always was a horrible person so I obviously wasn't referring to his social graces. Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves here...

[eleventhirtyfour]

Yeah, I never considered royalties and money stuff. It almost makes even less sense though, when you think about it. I'm pretty sure his originals are 100% royalty-free meaning 100% profit so therefore the album overall would have been more profitable when divided up? I don't know. I mean, he already recorded it, so it's not like he would have had to pay studio time to do another song. He already did it. I don't know. I'm confused.