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

Disc 2