About This Site
| “There are several great Weird Al web pages with photos, sound bytes, and other cool stuff. I thought it would be interesting and informative to offer some additional facts and photos that only an insider would have access to. Hence, The Bermuda Files. Since 1980, I have carefully documented my experience as Al’s drummer, and I’m pleased to present details from that archive.” |  |
 1995
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That was my greeting on August 21, 1995, when “The Bermuda Files” was first uploaded to my 100k of allotted web space at Earthlink. Just a few days earlier, on a flight to an Al concert in Oregon, I was studying a web page book so I could join the ranks of Marty Lick, “Happy” Steve Chai, Dave “Elvis” Rossi and Jeff Morris by making my own page dedicated to Al. I figured that some of my photos and info might appeal to the fans. Might was hardly the word!
The site grew rapidly, and I moved it to the loop.com address that web surfers had been familiar with around the time of the Bad Hair Day album. On October 23, 1997, Al’s own domain – weirdal.com – was born. One year later on October 23, 1998, I added six more categories of information (much of it from Al’s personal archive!) and with the 1999 release of Running With Scissors, an online Merchandise page was unveiled. In 2003, Poodle Hat was released and another make-over was in order, courtesy of the design team at Zomba Records (Al’s parent label at the time.) A few more albums – and years – went by, and the lack of updates had become an issue, especially with the proliferation of mobile devices. With the success of 2014’s Mandatory Fun, The Uprising Creative was sourced to create an optimized site with a new graphic and navigation direction, and the site you see today debuted in January, 2015. It may have a more corporate look, but both Al and I continue to maintain all of the content! I began logging Al events the day I met him. I can’t imagine what I thought would become of such minutiae, but I was excited to eventually learn that it had a place on the Internet. In addition to lists of names, dates & places, my personal archive consists of tour merchandise, posters, audio/video tapes of TV performances and more than 300 concerts, promotional items, magazine and newspaper articles, more than 80,000 photos of Al and career-related people, and over 1,400 unique retail and promotional audio & video items from around the world! It has always been my goal to provide unique and exclusive info and photos, and I am proud to have been the webmaster for the official news on the man himself, “Weird Al” Yankovic. Enjoy! Jon “Bermuda” Schwartz
Thanks to everybody who has contributed photos and art, especially Denise “Fred” Olderr, Kristine Slipson, Amanda Deer, Greg & Carol Botz, Sharon Rumberger, Jackie Arns, Cinnamonroe, and Maria Overmyer.
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