Elvis Costello called Goodbye Cruel World his “worst album” in one reissue, but in a future release he amended that sentiment to call it “the worst record that I could have made of a decent bunch of songs.”

The argument for that perspective is made by the inclusion of demo and alternate versions of almost all of the Goodbye Cruel World tracks in vastly different arrangements, and indeed the album that could have been is far better than the album that eventually was.

Case in point is ‘The Comedians,’ which shows up in sped-up form on Goodbye Cruel World, a bastardization of the song’s original tempo. I first heard the slower version of ‘The Comedians’ on a disc of other artists covering Costello’s songs, in a majestic performance by Roy Orbison.

Costello rewrote the whole lyric for that version as well, spinning a very straight-forward yarn about a man left stranded at the top of a ferris wheel by a carnival worker who has stolen the poor sap’s girlfriend.

It’s amazing how much better that song is than this one… considering it’s the same song. And Costello’s own recording of the Orbison version is pretty great, too. But today I’ll serve up the original album version and promise to return to the others in time.