Rubaiyat (Elektra's 40th Anniversary)

	Rubaiyat (Elektra's 40th Anniversary) Compilation by Various Artists
	First released	September 24, 1990	Tracks	39
	Label	Elektra <9 60940-2>	Length	148:19 (2-disc)

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See Discography Abbreviations for definition of various terms.

Rubaiyat was Elektra's 40th anniversary album, featuring Elektra artists covering other Elektra artists. A rare four-disc version of the compilation was also released, with the extra two discs containing the song recordings by the original artists.

Description

They Might Be Giants recorded a cover of "One More Parade" by Phil Ochs, who was previously namechecked in "The Day", for Rubaiyat.

Originally, Elektra requested that TMBG cover Queen's "We Will Rock You" for the compilation, but Metallica ultimately ended up covering a Queen song for the compilation instead (which later made it onto Metallica's 1999 compilation Garage Inc.). It's been stated that They Might Be Giants had the "We Will Rock You" cover ready to go, but had to change course due to the Metallica conflict.^[1] TMBG's alleged 1990 recording of "We Will Rock You" may have been bound for the later canceled Superfueled Freaksicle compilation at one point, as well.^[2] Flansburgh elaborated in a 2020 Tumblr post:

They wanted us to do “We Will Rock You.” I don’t think they were trying to be insulting, but it felt to me like it would be hard not to see their intentions as having the faint taint of novelty thinking (“oh these guys are funny and small and don’t really rock—how clever it would be to give them that arena-oriented rock song”). I mean the TELL is that we have so little in common with Queen. In almost every other case it was like with like—a bluesy act covered a bluesy song, a folkie did a folk song, etc. Also a lot of the material covered was quite obscure with tons of room for interpretation.

Unless we could cook up an original fresh take to it, what would you do that wasn’t just a shitty tag along? But because it was also a suicide mission, being the original is so famous, so definitive and so great, it wasn’t hard to beg off.

Track listing

Disc 1

#	Title	Artist	Length
1	Hello I Love You	The Cure	3:27
2	House Of The Rising Sun	Tracy Chapman	2:03
3	Seven & Seven Is	Billy Bragg	2:15
4	I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing	Jevetta Steele	4:13
5	Hotel California	Gipsy Kings	5:47
6	Werewolves Of London	The Black Velvet Band	3:40
7	Motorcycle Mama	The Sugarcubes	3:44
8	One Meatball	Shinehead	4:38
9	Bottle Of Wine	The Havalinas	3:27
10	Born In Chicago	Pixies	2:11
11	You're So Vain	Faster Pussycat	4:11
12	Marquee Moon	Kronos Quartet	4:13
13	Get Ourselves Together	Phoebe Snow	4:17
14	Tokoloshe Man	Happy Mondays	4:18
15	Let's Go	Ernie Isley	4:41
16	Going Down	Lynch Mob	3:35
17	A Little Bit Of Rain	Ambitious Lovers	3:15
18	You Belong To Me	Anita Baker	4:42
19	Road To Cairo	Howard Jones	5:34

Disc 2

#	Title	Artist	Length
1	Kick Out The Jams	The Big F	4:03
2	Almost Saturday Night / Rockin' All Over The World	The Georgia Satellites	4:04
3	Hello, I Am Your Heart	Sara Hickman	2:44
4	Make It With You	Teddy Pendergrass	5:32
5	The Blacksmith	Linda Ronstadt	2:41
6	Going Going Gone	Bill Frisell	5:58
7	First Girl I Loved	Jackson Browne	4:44
8	These Days	10,000 Maniacs	3:27
9	Stone Cold Crazy	Metallica	2:17
10	Apricot Brandy	Danny Gatton	3:11
11	Union Man	Shaking Family	3:55
12	One More Parade	They Might Be Giants	2:22
13	I Can't Tell You Why	Howard Hewett	3:52
14	Mt. Airy Groove	Leaders Of The New School	4:37
15	You Brought The Sunshine	Shirley Murdock	4:17
16	Inbetween Days	John Eddie	3:59
17	Love Wars	The Beautiful South	4:36
18	Both Sides Now	Michael Feinstein	5:14
19	T.V. Eye	John Zorn	2:25
20	Hello I Love You (Slight Return)	The Cure	0:10