Category: The Rock & Other Listening Material

It’s kind of hard to believe, but DGC records released Weezer’s first album 17 years ago today.

Although I didn’t hear it till about seven months after it’s release, it’s easily the one record/tape/CD I’ve listened to more than any other. And while Weezer has released a ton of great (and yes, a few not-so-great) songs since, the Blue Album has always been my favorite because of a combination of the songs, the way the album sounds and some other factors.

I’m not sure where I heard it, but I’ve heard musicians say that the music of their youth is the most important music to them personally (Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo even wrote one of those not-so-great songs about the music he grew up listening to and what those songs mean to him).  And I can see why.  I first heard Blue near the beginning of my senior year of high school and it’s been in my CD player (even though I don’t use that particular device on a daily basis) ever since.

Sure I know every word, but the songs still sound as fresh as the first time I heard them.  To me, Blue still rocks and is fun to listen to.  What more can you ask for out of an album?

One of the things that catapulted Weezer to music fame was their use of music videos for Undone and Buddy Holly.  Weezer has had some great official videos.  But they’ve also had some really creative fan-made videos, like this one for the most underrated song on Blue, No One Else:

May 10 is an important day for Weezer for reasons other than Blue’s release.  Their fifth album, Make Believe (which I also greatly enjoy) was released on this day in 2005. And on May 10, 2126, the crew of Betsy II will Blast Off for Nomis to save the planet from being swallowed by its sun.

Early this morning, I got a surprising e-mail from the Weezer camp.

The band is inviting registered members of its Website to take a survey ranking a number of Weezer songs.  There are two lists, one of standard album tracks and another of rarities and live-only covers.  Pretty much the whole band’s catalogue is included.  There are some weird omissions (no Love Explosion), but a number of songs I’m surprised to see make it (Rosemary, Baby, Sheila Can Do It, and other songs from Rivers Cuomo’s solo shows in Boston during the fall of 1997).

I’d offer to share the link, but each survey is tied directly to an individual e-mail address.  Usually, I think that test marketing tends to ruin things, but I’m glad Weezer is looking for opinions from the fans.  I can think of three reasons why they’re doing this:

1. The band is looking for input on setlists.  They have a bunch of shows coming up this spring/summer. (However, these shows start this weekend.  And they tried something similar back in 2000, but Buddy Holly didn’t make the fan’s cut.  The band played Buddy Holly anyway.)
2. They’re putting together some kind of greatest hits/boxset and want ideas on what to include. (If that was the case, they’d probably just take their singles and throw them on something. Besides, they’re between two labels and there may be legal difficulties in putting such a compilation together.)
3. Rivers/the band are developing new material and are looking to see what worked in the past and what the fans want to hear. (Probably wishful thinking on my part.)

This weekend will tell if they’re using this to develop setlists.  Last week, Rivers tweeted the band was learning Radiohead’s Paranoid Android (although I really wish he would remember his 2002 pronouncement that “Radiohead sucks, except for Creep), and the cover could make its way into a setlist or two (hopefully replacing the Kids/Pokerface mashup).  I do have to admit that while my voting was based around my feelings of the band’s songs, I ranked a song or two higher or lower than I otherwise would to offset any other crazy fans out there.  And most of the Boston material I gave high marks, because I do think gems like Baby and Rosemary need to be revisited.

The one thing that could have made the survey better (aside from the inclusion of some missing tunes) was the opportunity to comment on rankings, or at least specify what version of each song was being ranked.  For example, the Green Album version of Don’t Let Go is an 8.  But the live AOL Sessions version is an easy 10.  The Maladroit version of Take Control is maybe a 4.  But the Take Control DC Demo is an 8.

Now I’m just getting nitpicky.

I just hope they use this for something productive.  And that no one went crazy and ranked their cover of Unbreak My Heart higher than a 2.

And with no real transition, the band finally released a video for Hang On, the second single off Hurley.  I’m sure it’s going to win the award at the VMAs for best use of bluescreen.

 

A few years back, I went to a Rentals concert here in Columbus. The highlight of the show was easily the band (which included Rachel Haden) covering the Weezer B-side I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams, which featured Haden on lead vocals.  While the song was the highlight of the show and enjoyable, it wasn’t what I would call a great rendition.  But back then, the Rentals were the only band performing the song at all.

Weezer’s current tour, the Memories Tour, features them performing The Blue Album and Pinkerton on back-to-back nights (and of course, they’re not stopping in Columbus).  In addition to playing the complete album with some other hits, the band is also throwing in some seldom-played B-sides, like last month, when they played Jamie.

Over the weekend, in Vegas, they performed another rarely-played (if ever) B-side, I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams, featuring, you guessed it-Rachel Haden.  Thanks to the magic of YouTube, video of that performance is online.  And yes, it’s better than when the Rentals played the song:

Columbus is one of a handful of lucky cities to have hosted two Weezer concerts this year.  I went to both, a show at the State Fair and another free concert at a local college.  Both shows were good.  Unfortunately, the other cities with two concerts were stops on the Memories Tour, a two-night event where the band will play a setlist containing the complete Blue Album with a second setlist containing Pinkerton on back-to-back nights.

And if that’s not enough, Saturday night, in New York, they busted out this gem:

This was the first time Weezer played Jamie voluntarily since the mid-90s (a few years back, at an event where the band was accompanied by their audience, the audience started the song, pretty much forcing the band to finish it).

Did I mention that one of the Columbus shows was free?

I did?

Congratulations, New York, you win.

Thanks to allthingsweezer for the video.

One of the most striking endings to a film is that of 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, where, after seeing Indiana Jones’ heroic rescue of the Ark of the Covenant, the government boxes the artifact up and stores it in an immense warehouse with an untold number of other mythic artifacts.

Weezer fans imagine the band’s “vault” of unreleased material to be similar to the warehouse. Over the past 18 years, the band and its members have recorded an untold number of songs, most of which have gone unreleased on the band’s eight official albums (or the two solo efforts from frontman Rivers Cuomo).

To go back to the Raiders analogy, for Weezer fans, today is the day Indiana Jones stormed the warehouse and made it out alive with two boxes of precious artifacts.

A day short of a year after the release of 2009’s Raditude (and less than two months after the release of Hurley), Weezer has released two more albums. These aren’t albums of new songs; rather they are comprised of material that has been boxed up in the warehouse for years.

Death to False Metal contains ten tracks from different recording sessions dating back to the lost summer of 1998. Pinkerton Deluxe is a reissue of the band’s seminal 1996 album, along with all of it’s b-sides, a number of live tracks, studio outtakes and some songs that have never before been heard. Both feature some recent updates from the band, but are, for the most part, as they were originally recorded.

For a Weezer fan, it’s all too easy to fixate on what isn’t part of these albums rather than what is. For example, of the numerous songs the band has recorded and not released (yet talked up throughout the years), it’s easy to complain about what didn’t make the ten-song cut. And for Pinkerton Deluxe, the band recorded a number of songs for the album (part of the attempt at realizing Songs From the Black Hole) that have not been included. Yet those takes were either lost to time or lost in a shipment that never reached its final destination.

Still, for what they are, these two albums are enjoyable listens – whether you’re a Weezer fan or not.

Pinkerton Deluxe, which fans have clamored for since 2004’s reissue of The Blue Album receives the same deluxe treatment. The original album has undergone a remastering (or some other type of sonic updating). Following the ten Pinkerton tracks, are the album’s b-sides which are nice to have in one place and radio remixes of The Good Life and Pink Triangle. Then there are a slew of live tracks- some from an acoustic show in Philadelphia from the summer of ’97 (the same show that was responsible for this slice of awesomeness) and some from an English festival from the previous summer. The acoustic tunes are nice (and from a different source than the version of the show that’s out there). On the other hand, the festival songs just seem superflous. There are also some early versions of Tired of Sex, Getchoo and Butterfly, which have more raw energy than their album counterparts.

But the true standouts of Pinkerton Deluxe are the three songs most fans are buying this collection for: Getting Up and Leaving, a full band Longtime Sunshine demo with a coda and Tragic Girl. Getting Up and Leaving was an unreleased b-side for Pink Triangle that fans have awaited for 13 or so years. The full band Longtime Sunshine is a nice (if not rough) attempt at a song many fans feel reached perfection on Rivers’ first Alone disc. Here, the band adds drums and bass and (when Weezer’s second album was still part of the Songs from the Black Hole concept) a vocal coda at the end recalling some earlier Pinkerton tracks. The coda is far from perfect (some voices sounding off-key, others too loud), but it’s still great to hear how Weezer’s second album was originally supposed to end. The album closes with the lost (and subsequently found) Tragic Girl, a song attempted during the final Pinkerton sessions. The song contains the same energy as the rest of the Pinkerton tracks, an untraditional structure and a great performance by the band. There are some lyrical and tonal references to the rest of Pinkerton, and as great as it is to have the other tracks we’ve waited for on this collection, Tragic Girl is an amazing listen.

The other treat for Weezer fans today is Death to False Metal, a collection of ten previously unreleased songs that were recorded for one album or another. Rivers is calling it the band’s ninth album, and considering Weezer hasn’t had a thematically linked album since Pinkerton, it’s hard to argue with him. The songs span the band’s redording efforts from 1998 through 2009. However (and a small complaint about the collection), half the album focuses on the sessions for Weezer’s fifth album, which eventually became 2005’s Make Believe.

That’s not to say the songs aren’t good. For the most part, they’re nice additions to Weezer’s catalog.  Standouts from the Make Believe sessions include Blowin’ My Stack (even if the riff does sound a little like Heard It Through The Grapevine) and I’m a Robot, which is more down-home than rock.  More recent songs include Turn It Up (the results of Rivers’ Let’s Write a Sawng process), The Odd Couple and Autopilot, which has one of the best bridges of any Weezer song (possibly due to my nostalgia for BASIC).

Possibly my favorite song on ‘Metal is 1998’s Trampoline, a simple pop rocker that would have fit in great late 90’s pre-nu-metal alternative rock radio (which is kind of ironic, since Rivers spent the years after Pinkerton trying to develop a chart-topper and here is a song he had all along which would have fit right in).  Trampoline and Everyone are the first original Weezer songs we’ve heard from the mystery year of 1998, where they demoed and recorded a bunch of songs and then promptly threw them in a box in the vast government warehouse.  But unlike Trampoline, Everyone is harsher and more riff-oriented, an homage to Nirvana that doesn’t get interesting to the solo.

The only song on Death to False Metal that’s a letdown to me is the closer, a cover of Unbreak My Heart.  It could be my aversion to 90 percent of things R&B, but this song does nothing for me and the fact that Weezer is performing it doesn’t change that.

Death to False Metal is supposed to be released with a plethora of bonus tracks, but to date, we’ve only been told of three – a version of Mykel and Carli attempted during the Blue Album Sessions in 1993, and Yellow Camaro and Outta Here, both from the early Album Five sessions.  I’m hoping for more bonus tracks, and hoping they come from some other time than the period between Maladroit and Make Believe.

As I mentioned earlier, the one drawback to Death to False Metal is they’re trying to squeeze a large number of songs into ten slots.  There’s way more under lock-and-key that the band claims isn’t the best quality, but I’m sure the fans would rather be the judges of that.

By the way, Weezer isn’t done.  Rivers has already announced plans to record Album Ten.  And releasing material from the band’s vault will continue as well- the band has announced a third edition of Rivers’ Alone series should be in stores before the end of the year, this one focusing on the Pinkerton years.

Two weeks ago, I posted news of possible track lists for Weezer’s upcoming November 2 albums, the Pinkerton Deluxe reissue and Death to False Metal, a collection of unreleased Weezer tracks.

Today, in separate venues, the label has published official tracklists for both albums, confirming most of what we already knew.

First, from the official Pinkerton Deluxe press release, here’s that album’s tracklist:

DISC ONE
Original Album:
Tired Of Sex
Getchoo
No Other One
Why Bother?
Across The Sea
The Good Life
El Scorcho
Pink Triangle
Falling For You
Butterfly

B-Sides and More:
You Gave Your Love To Me Softly
Devotion
The Good Life (Radio Remix)
Waiting On You
I Just Threw Out The Love Of My Dreams
The Good Life (Live and Acoustic)
Pink Triangle (Radio Remix)
I Swear It’s True*
Pink Triangle (Live and Acoustic)

DISC TWO
You Won’t Get With Me Tonight*
The Good Life (Live at Y100 Sonic Session)*
El Scorcho (Live at Y100 Sonic Session)*
Pink Triangle (Live at Y100 Sonic Session)*
Why Bother? (Live at Reading Festival 1996)*
El Scorcho (Live at Reading Festival 1996)*
Pink Triangle (Live at Reading Festival 1996)*
The Good Life (Live at X96)
El Scorcho (Live and Acoustic)*
Across The Sea Piano Noodles*
Butterfly (Alternate Take)*
Long Time Sunshine*
Getting Up And Leaving*
Tired Of Sex (Tracking Rough)*
Getchoo (Tracking Rough)*
Tragic Girl*

*Previously unreleased

Looks like we’re not getting as many alternative versions as the preliminary Japanese tracklist, but this is still some great material.  And that Japanese tracklist also had the tracks that were going to make up Alone III: The Pinkerton Years, which will be released at some mysterious future date.

Also today, some quick Googling confirmed what another Japanese site posted as the tracklist for Death To False Metal, from Universal Music Canada’s Web site:

It’s likely that the two additional songs contained in the Japanese tracklist were the Japan-specific bonus songs.  We’ve been told to expect a lot of extra songs along with the album.

November 2 can’t get here fast enough.