"Extra Gory", but not quite extra-ordinary

Chances are, by now, you already own `Weird Al' Yankovic's classic album Bad Hair Day. But if you saw this single and noticed a different version of "The Night Santa Went Crazy" on the back cover, you might be intrigued. Rest assured, if you are a `Weird Al' fanatic, you will love this CD-single. The two songs you cannot find anywhere else--"The Night Santa Went Crazy (Extra Gory Version)" and "Dare To Be Stupid (Instrumental)"--make this single better than your average one. But even with those two rarities, the "Amish Paradise" single is not perfect; it doesn't quite compare to Al's "Gump" single, which featured seven songs; five of which are unavailable anywhere else. Still, this is a must-have for the diehard Yankovic fans out there.

We all know about "Amish Paradise" and "Everything You Know Is Wrong", so I won't go into detail about them. If you own Bad Hair Day, you already know about them. The final two tracks here are what make this single so enjoyable. Particularly the hilarious remix of "The Night Santa Went Crazy". For the first 2.5 minutes or so, the song sounds exactly the same as the original version. But when you get to the part when Al sings about Santa going to jail for 700 years, brace yourself. The altered verse may not be that extra gory, but it's certainly extra funny! That one verse is worth the price of this CD alone (check eBay every now and then; it occasionally pops up). The second worthwhile b-side is the instrumental version of "Dare To Be Stupid". To find the original version of it you have to go all the way back to 1985, when the Dare To Be Stupid album was released. So to see this remote b-side appear here is a bit of a shock. It's a rare find; I'll leave it at that.

You know how much you love `Weird Al' Yankovic (or how much you don`t). And if you love him enough to go out of your way to find ALL his rare songs, I'd highly recommend this. The "Extra Gory" version of track 3 takes a song that was already hilarious and makes it ten times funnier. And the instrumental edition of track 4 easily acts as a great way to sing along to the original. It's basically a karaoke version that just features the background music. Get this if you worship Al. However, if you only somewhat like him, stick with Bad Hair Day.