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Change The World

Friday, November 21, 2008

Although we’ve discussed nearly all of them by this point, “Change The World” is another one of the stinkers from the Maladroit sessions (and, thankfully, one of the ones the band knew not to put on the record itself). In many ways it seems to be a kindred spirit of that album’s “Space Rock,” in that it is a mercifully brief (mercilessly dumb) rawk-out sesh that seems to be about the Weezer fans unhappy with the band’s recent digressions into simple-minded pop (The Green Album) and, worse yet, simple-minded “metal” (or Rivers Cuomo’s interpretation of it, at least).

“Change The World” seems to be another song birthed from the band’s late 2001 leg of the Extended Hyper Midget Tour, which was documented by the band in soundboard quality and partially released to the public via regular updates from official band archivist Karl Koch on weezer.com. Its first appearance there is dated October 24th, from the otherwise great HBO Reverb performance (which also gave us the definitive version of the underrated “We Go Together“). The song is forged upon a jeering riff that taunts its audience seemingly ad nauseum (impressive for a 90-second song), another empty-ass ‘Droit verse (“You want it / You got it / You flaunt it and get your feet on the ground / And love me right now”) similar to its peer “The Zep Song;” a one-line chorus that bridges the verse back to that obnoxious riff; and a surprisingly lengthy solo that might have worked fine in a better song.

The song didn’t change much when it reappeared a month later (11/27/01), but two weeks after that — 12/05 — Cuomo must have had audience members and listeners at home groaning alike when he announced, “This song is called ‘Change The World,’ with a new third verse.” From there, the band dialed the song in for a live-take Maladroit recording session on January 8th, 2002 (the Weezer of the early aughts moved quickly), which is mostly notable for its bizarre studio banter prelude (Cuomo adopts a strange voice to tell a “cowboy” to “shut yo’ face,” while Scott Shriner promises that something — presumably the song — “won’t sound like a flat tire”). It’s interesting that during the opening riff Cuomo and Shriner (perhaps the only two enjoying what’s going on) trade boorish gutturals, before Shriner provides a monotone, fill-in-the-blank echo for the lyric. Brian Bell struggles to keep up with the vocal harmonies, and Cuomo interestingly shadows the guitar solo with a falsetto scat. Stupid aesthetic decisions on their own, but fascinating ones relative to the flavorless live versions accrued from the prior live bootlegs.

“You like it / You hate it” seems to express Cuomo’s exasperation with trying to reconcile his fans’ sensibilities with his own (written during ’01, a time when Cuomo directly corresponded with his fans for feedback on various Weezer message boards), which finds corroboration in the following couplet: “You bought it / And glued your butt to the sound.” Cuomo, however lacking eloquence, appears to be lamenting the days of The Blue Album and Pinkerton, the “classic Weezer” records fans bought and wouldn’t forget while the band diverged into increasingly disposable material. The ineloquent composition and lyrics here ironically seem to prove the fans’ point. The worst offender may well be the sneering chorus: “You couldn’t change the world / To fit your little thing.” Cuomo was taking a break from his English major at Harvard, at the time.

Filed in Demos, The Very Worst | | Comments (22)

The Weight

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

“The Weight” was written and recorded by The Band in 1968. It served as a modest debut hit, peaking at #63 on the US charts, but saw incremental success when covered by other artists. Jackie DeShannon took it to #55 that same year, Diana Ross & The Supremes collaborated with The Temptations to hit #46 with the song the next year, and Aretha Franklin leveled the field with a #19 cover in 1969. (At the time, covers worked well as fast-lane commercial vehicles. Herman’s Hermits even charted a #3 hit with their version of The Kinks’ “Dandy” before the Kinks had released it themselves.)

While it was only a minor hit in its time, “The Weight” has recently enjoyed a renaissance, and it now stands as one of the most beloved and remembered tunes of the late ’60s pop era. It continues to proliferate in commercials, movie soundtracks, and in presumed perpetuity on Rolling Stone‘s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time lists. A recent spate of renditions by big names in modern music can be added to that list, including those by Hanson, O.A.R., Travis, the Black Crowes, and of course, Weezer, who released theirs as a bonus track on the UK edition of 2008’s The Red Album.

Weezer’s apparent reasons for doing a cover of this song are two-fold. As Brian Bell explained in a recent interview, one of the three locations Weezer recorded their third self-titled album was the very same where The Band recorded the original (forty years prior), and it seemed like an obvious thing to do. Moreover, the original is a very vocally arranged song, with plenty of harmonies and alternating lead vocals between drummer Levon Helm and bassist Rick Danko, and Weezer’s version comes from a period during which Rivers Cuomo was not only allowing his bandmates to write and sing lead occasionally, but, for the first time, also putting those songs on an album. It’s not uncommon for a band to cover a song whose merits they are attempting to emulate (as evidenced by Weezer’s two secret shows in the late ’90s under the Goat Punishment moniker, tributes to Nirvana and Oasis), and considering that “The Weight” truly is a classic, it seemed like a tasteful choice for this newly (if briefly) reconfigured band.

Although most of the covers from the Red era were great ideas pitifully botched (for example, the previously discussed “Life’s What You Make It”), “The Weight” turned out pretty nice — certainly the best of the lot. Perhaps that’s in large part because it’s the only one that was clearly worked on as a band and in a professional studio (does Scott or Pat laying down some tracks in a home studio for a quick-fix b-side really qualify as “Weezer?”), but in any case, it’s a crisp, faithful take on the original. Scott Shriner shines brightest with the greatest vocal performance of his career, providing the loose-lipped southern drawl the song all but begs. Bell channels his Tennessee roots in his backing vocals, and Cuomo’s penultimate verse — the only time somebody takes baton from Shriner — comes as a breathy and well-placed change of pace. The only real artistic license the band takes is to add some (exceedingly) predictable guitar crunch on the chorus, but it works well enough. A solid take on a great song.

Filed in Bonus Tracks, Covers, The Grand Playlist | | Comments (32)

Sacrifice

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Well, here’s one I never think about.

That’s usually a bad sign when it comes to Early Album 5 songs — if I don’t remember one of the countless full-band demos Weezer was spewing on a weekly basis during this time and the Maladroit sessions just before it, I’ve probably forgotten it for a reason.

On first revisitation for this post, I thought “Sacrifice” might pleasantly surprise me — the extended instrumental intro is airy and contemplative, with a nice climactic build. In that way, it reminds me a bit of “The Dawn,” another product from the ridiculously prolific (and largely garbage) period of 2001/2002. But much like “The Dawn,” it falls apart when the vocals enter.

The lyrics are the trite throwaway fare du jour (markedly of the Early Album 5 period, since we can begin to hear Rivers Cuomo making the transition from generic nonsense-nonsense to generic lovesong-nonsense), but the real problem is the vocal melody. Something about it just sounds so gratingly obvious and boring, like it simply has to be stolen from some classic rock staple or another. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but considering half of that year’s Maladroit was blatantly grifted from one classic source or another, it’s a safe enough bet.

That’s not the whole story here, though: something strange happens in the middle, and I guess we’ll call it a bridge. It’s so unexpected and apropos of nothing that it feels like another song altogether — Pat Wilson does a simple drum roll, and all of a sudden Scott Shriner is slicking his fingers up and down the bass neck like he’s doing live smooth-jazz Muzak inside a Macy’s, while Cuomo peeks into the falsetto register, seeing if he can find some kind of direction or purpose there. Five words later — “I believe / Now I see” — and it’s pretty clear he didn’t, so the band gives up and decides to indulge in yet another aimless Mala-style shredfest. (And then that bridge again!)

In any case, I’m surprised that at this point the band was still interested in rolling out unfinished sketches like this one to a die-hard audience searching for something salvageable (which, at the time, Cuomo estimated being at around 40,000 people — about 1000x as many as should have ever heard this recording, though knowing Cuomo’s megalomania at the time, the really figure was probably a lot closer to 40). On the track’s SongMeanings page, there are two comments: one that offers a brief analysis from what appears to be the song’s only fan, and the other a response that bitterly intones, “ya know u really shoutent post somthin if no 1 freakin cares.” He’s right.

Filed in Early Album 5, The Very Worst | | Comments (23)

We Are All On Drugs

Friday, October 24, 2008

During the mid-90s, Robert Pollard — frontman of the then-infallible Guided By Voices — turned out incredible pop songs at an unprecedented rate. He was as an elementary schoolteacher when considerable indie rock fame found him on the brink of his 40s, and, as he released scores and scores of songs per year, he had some interesting things to say about his creative method. Speaking of his impossibly prodigious (and, at least then, surprisingly consistent) output, he boasted, “I can write five songs while on the toilet — and three of them will be good.”

Part of his secret was to title songs before they were written. “If I write a whole page of great titles, I have to give them personalities and write songs for them – I just can’t stop,” he said in an interview circa 1995’s classic Alien Lanes. After all, he reasoned, how could songs with titles like “Gold Star for Robot Boy” and “14 Cheerleader Coldfront” be bad?

He wound up being right — and with a title like “We Are All On Drugs,” how could Weezer go wrong? At least that was the consensus among fans when tracklists of acoustic Make Believe demo sessions began trickling into weezer.com updates. Brian Bell’s commentary on the song, which was released in tandem with the album, seems to be of a similar – if a bit less coherent – rationale:

I remember the first time Rivers played it for me, and just felt this, like, ‘Can we do this?’ You know, I mean, this is a hit song, without a doubt. Just singing that chorus the first time, when we played these songs acoustically in the office, it was just a riot because it was just so much—it was like I felt like we were doing something illegal by [singing] that [titular line]. And there were thoughts like, how are parents going to like this? Or you know, are we going to be banned from kids, you know, listening, whatever, their album collections?

Reality proved a little less sensational. In the same conversation, someone mentions how the original version was much quieter and “all mellow” — perhaps there were different lyrics, or a different tone and feel – but Pitchfork‘s album review incisively summed up the final song as having “an anti-drug message stiffer than Nancy Reagan’s Diff’rent Strokes cameo.” Bell’s giddy fears for the release of the song — at least given the version of “Drugs” we have — seem a bit hysterical indeed.

To his credit, though, the guitar intro he contributed to the song is one of the song’s few redeeming factors. It’s a big rock sound — Pat Wilson apparently pushed the song in that direction — and Bell’s intro serves its purpose nicely. When Scott Shriner’s bass pans hard into the mix (as hard as one can pan into a mix this compressed, anyway), it’s a nice, elevating little moment. And then the verse drops.

It’s embarrassing enough that Cuomo namechecks Mercedes-Benz (in the first line), but it’s that much worse that he does it with all the conviction of a jealous high-schooler — and, very transparently, because he wanted an easy rhyme for, “When you’re out with your friends.” Hm. “In your new Mercedes-Benz,” perhaps? It practically writes itself!

Couple that with the melody and meter in which these words are sung and it’s nigh unbearable. As has been pointed out many times before, the verse blatantly nicks its grating tune from the old “Diarrhea Song” that proliferates through the minds of third-graders every school year: “When you’re drivin’ in a Chevy / And you feel something heavy,” et cetera. Which sadly suggests that even the Mercedes-Benz bit took inspiration from this age-old ode to shat pants — a quick Googling reveals that at least six verses of “The Official Diarrhea Song” include reference to driving, several of which explicitly name a car brand (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 — footnotes would be nice right about now). Just replace the “diarrhea, diarrhea” refrain with a double-tracked “ooooon druuuugs,” and there you have it — besting both “I Do” and “Dreamin'” (both far better songs, besides) as the most humiliating, cringeworthy rip-off in Weezer history.

Lyrically, the chorus is no better: “We are all on drugs, yeah / Never gettin’ enough / We are all on drugs, yeah / Give me some of that stuff.” Shriner’s backing echo — “Never get enough!” — is generic and obvious, as is the conclusive “Whoo!” with which the end of the chorus gleefully slams the listener’s head against the cold, hard curb that is the returning verse.

The bridge is something of a respite — the “ahhhh” backup vocals, the progression and lead melody’s driving force, and the welcome of return of the “Hash Pipe” signature “uhn!” — leading us into a scorching Cobainesque solo, a gratifying fill from Wilson, and a nice n’ noisy build back into the chorus. The lyrics here also involve an interesting story: on the album’s first pressing, Cuomo sings, “I want to confiscate your drugs / I don’t think I can get enough;” shortly after its release, spokesperson Karl Koch posted an update on .com saying that this bit was a mistake, and that future pressings would contain the “correct” bridge: “I want to reach a higher plane / Where nothing will ever be the same” (which, taken on its own, bears the obvious influence of Cuomo’s then-nascent Vispassana meditations).

That latter bridge is the one that was released on the “Drugs” radio single that, despite Bell’s confidence, failed to perform. Some have speculated that this embarrassing faceplant could be due to Geffen Records forcing Cuomo to re-cut the vocal and make an even more sanitized version of the song, the dispiriting nadir known as “We Are All In Love.” Click to witness an aural and visual abomination that stands as very nearly the worst song and worst video Weezer has ever released, with more than just a few shades of Spinal Tap. I realize I just praised the bridge/solo segment of this song, and there are certainly Weezer songs lacking even that much merit, but the places where this song embarrasses are otherwise so various and profound that it’s hard to give it a pass on bridge alone. (The same issue befalls an outtake from this same era, “I Don’t Want Your Lovin’.”)

Cuomo, mind-numbingly prolific himself, is in many ways not all that different from Pollard. It’s just that, while Pollard’s likely to write five songs in a sitting — three good, two bad — and release all of them, Cuomo’s likely to do the same and squirrel away all but maybe one of them. Whether it’s a good one or a bad one is a crapshoot — and “Drugs” is as good an indication as any that he and his bandmates have a hard time separating the wheat from the chaff.

Filed in A-Sides, Make Believe, The Very Worst | | Comments (67)

Nirvana covers

Monday, October 20, 2008

Rivers Cuomo loves Nirvana. He was in fact so inspired by their breakthrough hit “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (and the rest of Nevermind) that he wrote about the experience of first hearing it on 2008’s nostaglic Red Album cut “Heart Songs.” (Kurt Cobain also got a reference in the original version of the brilliant Blue b-side “Susanne,” but after his suicide Cuomo wisely decided to change it — to Cobain nemeses Guns ‘N Roses, ironically enough.) But few know that Weezer actually paid tribute to Nirvana as Goat Punishment, under which moniker the band played a small handful of secret shows in late ’90s and early aughts.

This particular show took place in winter of 1998, in Hollywood. It is remarkable because only Nirvana songs were played, and also because it was new bassist Mikey Welsh’s first live performance with all the members of Weezer (he had played in one of Rivers’ side projects in Boston the year before). Quoth Karl Koch, band webmaster and historian:

after a few months, the increasingly sporadic rehersals took a turn, when Goat Punishment was spontaineously formed, in order to play a whole show of early Nirvana material. It is still unclear as to why this happened, outside of perhaps a primal need to break up the monotony and get inspired. As far as I know, no rehearsals were taped…

Weezer themselves made a cassette bootleg, however, which was later shared with fans via the band’s official website. The quality is pretty poor, but the brief set is an interesting listen — the dirgy pop of Bleach cuts “Mr. Moustache,” “Swap Meet” and “Blew” are all performed, alongside Insecticide highlights “Aneurysm” and “Dive,” and Nevermind‘s “Breed.” It’s impressive that the band turns in a pretty authentic imitation — most surprising is how well Cuomo adapts Cobain’s growl – but the tape is more of a one-time curiosity than anything of lasting value.

The show took place during an interesting moment in the band’s timeline — one when Cuomo professed to being devoid of inspiration (the sole artifact fans have from the surprisingly-rather-prolific 1998 is “Crazy One,” actually a great little song), and probably around the time he started making his mythic “Encyclopedia of Pop” booklet, which contained theoretical deconstructions of what made some of history’s biggest and best pop rock hits successful (Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was certainly analyzed therein). It’s often telling when a well-established band resorts to an intense cycle of covers for inspiration.

Weezer’s also done a Nirvana cover in more recent, happier times — on the current Troublemaker 2008 tour. To open the second encore, the aforementioned Koch comes out and sets up a portable turntable, takes out a wax copy of Red, and plays “Heart Songs.” Cuomo then comes out — flanked only by bassist Scott Shriner and drummer Pat Wilson — kicks the turntable off the stage, and launches into a cover of “Sliver.” Funnily enough, Wilson leads the band in a cover of Oasis’ “Morning Glory” earlier in the evening — a pairing that makes a little nod and a wink to the ’98/’99 Goat Punishment shows (they quickly followed up the Nirvana show with an Oasis show, which was apparently only witnessed by around 40 people, none of whom recorded it).

Filed in Covers, Live Only | | Comments (19)

Chief Auto Parts Jingle

Friday, October 17, 2008

Not exactly sure what the deal with this “song” is, but it’s dated 1994 and is apparently from an interview. It is, as its “title” suggests, a jingle for a southwestern automechanics chain called Chief Auto Parts (which, according to its Wiki, merged with AutoZone in 1998). I would guess this song was an improvised joke, but the vocal harmonies are a little too dead-on for it to be spontaneous. If anyone knows where this song came from, what it is (a cover of a jingle? an original jingle the band wrote?), or why they’re playing it, please do sound off in the comments.

(Update 10/18/08: Evidently, this is a jingle that was nigh inescapable in the early ’90s. Still leaves the question of why Weezer was playing it…)

Filed in Covers, Misc. | | Comments (11)

Clarinet Waltz

Monday, October 13, 2008

“Clarinet Waltz” is a real anomaly in the Weezer canon. It stands in the COR as the 15th song Rivers Cuomo wrote in 1994, after a remarkable stretch that began with “Tired of Sex,” “Susanne,” “Waiting On You” and “Getchoo,” included the highly desired and as-yet-unreleased Cuomo cover of the Beach Boys’ classic “Surfer Girl,” and a long succession of other unsurfaced tracks with some of the most intriguing titles in the unheard demo collection: “I Can’t Break Your Heart Slow,” “Sonia, Sonia” and “Oh God I’m Hungry” to name a few.

That mysterious sequence is broken by “Clarinet Waltz,” which we have – but it’s still a bit of a head-scratcher. First of all, it’s the rare case of a Cuomo instrumental — and then the fact that it’s all clarinet and piano, two instruments rarely used in Weezer arrangements (the only other times that combo’s been used are “Longtime Sunshine” and “Across the Sea”). Close analysis reveals the song is being taped live (it sounds like there might even be a bit of applause at the end, suggesting a small crowd), so who’s playing the piano is beyond me. Cuomo’s on clarinet, if Wikipedia is to be believed — the entry also notes that this song was released via Weezer’s official site, though how and when (and with what explanation), I’m not sure.

Either way, I quite like it. It’s an understated little 120 seconds, but it’s got an honest and forlorn charm. It may very well be a part of the small progression of instrumentals Cuomo was cranking out back then, bookended by the late 1993 “Victory on the Hill,” and the early 1995 “Defeat on the Hill” — both unheard by fans, and both, as the Recording History notes, “all trumpet originals.” So (at least?) three instrumentals, dated 1993, 1994, and 1995 — at least two of which we know are thematically related, and all of which primarily feature instruments that have rarely (if ever) been heard before in Weezer recordings.

Either way, “Waltz” is just another strange and rewarding experiment in Cuomo’s most adventurous period of songwriting. Perhaps a reader can offer up some more extensive details about song’s origins.

Filed in Alone III, Demos, The Grand Playlist | | Comments (19)

The Good Life

Monday, October 6, 2008

Pinkerton is, for the most part, an album composed of bitter, incendiary rockers (“Tired Of Sex,” “Getchoo,” “Why Bother”) and sad, contemplative slowburns (near everything else, including perennial b-sides like “Waiting On You” and “Devotion”). To that general rule, two of the album’s ten tracks are exceptions: the upbeat “El Scorcho,” which celebrates the dizzying excitement of a fresh crush with practically joyous self-deprecation — and “The Good Life.”

Rather than representing any of these facets, “The Good Life” is a catchy little distillation of Pinkerton on the whole: it’s got both the sharp bitterness and the introspective dejection, as well as the hip-shaking, slang-slinging rollick of the “El Scorcho” radical. The seamy, slovenly riff at its core seems like it can barely lift itself out of bed — sort of like Rivers Cuomo himself, who, in this part of the album’s narrative, finds himself longing for the sex-addled lifestyle he disavowed at the start of the album, though he’s been out of the game for so long he hardly feels comfortable in his own skin anymore.

Admittedly, for a first listen, the lyrics are pretty simple; “It’s time I got back, it’s time I got back / And I don’t even know how I got off the track” is the song’s most immediately memorable refrain. But there’s surprising depth here, including one of my favorite bits of Cuomo wordplay —  “broken-beaten down” — and a considerable amount of personal detail. The line, “Without an old man cane, I fall and hit the ground,” is actually not just a metaphor, but also a reference to the support Cuomo sported at the time, then only in his early twenties. Because he had been born with one leg roughly two inches shorter than the other, he decided to undergo a correctional procedure shortly after the Blue Album tours, which involved the surgical breaking of his leg for the purpoise of extended regrowth (literally). The long recovery process was evidently quite painful — Cuomo compared it to “crucifying” his leg — and, coupled with the fact that he was an undergrad at Harvard at this time (one with braces, to boot), it’s easy to understand why Cuomo, in his mid-twenties, was feeling especially alien and hermetic. A cringe-inducing X-ray of Cuomo’s leg adorns the artwork for the “Good Life” single.

It’s great when he cuts loose on the chorus: “I don’t wanna be an old man anymore / It’s been a year or two since I was out on the floor / Shakin’ booty, making sweet love all the night / It’s time I got back to the good life.” Whereas the white-boy slang of “Buddy Holly” was clear self-parody, Pinkerton reveals that Cuomo had a genuine penchant for spicing up his vernacular. (See also the especially exclamatory start of the second verse: “Screw this crap, I’ve had it!”) There’s just something so conversational and honest about Weezer’s early lyric sheets, and Pinkerton is their high watermark.

Matt Sharp’s particularly mental sotto voce echo — I’ve had it! — adds even more color to the text, and highlights another of early Weezer’s greatest strengths: their vocal arrangements. Although there are few moments on this album that recall the Wilsonian harmonies of “Surf Wax America” or “Holiday,” Sharp’s interjected falsetto and Brian Bell’s consistent backing lead really help bring it all home on this record. And, unlike Blue, there are a lot of sing-speak Sharp moments like this one that lighten the mood (the greatest, of course, being How cool is that! on “El Scorcho”), a counterbalance for lines that might otherwise sound emotionally heavy-handed (“I should have no feeling / ‘Cause feeling is pain:” it’s not hard to tell why many blame Pinkerton for the young generation of emo bands that would invade FM dials and New Jersey in the early ’00s, despite innumerable stylistic differences). And then there’s one of my very favorite Weezer moments, wherein Cuomo delivers one of the album’s finest couplets — “Ain’t gonna hurt nobody, ain’t gonna cause a scene / Just need to admit that I want sugar in my tea” — and Bell provides the perfect parenthetical for its reiteration: “Hear me! (Hear me), I want sugar in my tea!” The neatest trick in these little moments is how they communicate the internal monologue of someone going stir-crazy, locked inside in their home and thoughts, the divergent qualities and registers of Bell and Sharp’s voices (both by nature and in the arrangement) sounding like different voices in Cuomo’s head – one of the more subtle examples of text painting (of a great many) in the Weezer discography.

Pat Wilson’s little drum fill at 1:32 has often been cited as his best ever (these folks are surely forgetting the climax of “Across the Sea,” or even that of “Getchoo”), and the instrumental breakdown that follows the scorching solo has to be one of the prettiest moments in rock’n’roll. Just after the band finishes getting dangerous, the tempo just sort of melts (as so perfectly articulated by Wilson’s graceful, tumbling tom roll), and all of a sudden, Cuomo’s doing this bleeding-heart slide guitar straight out of blue Hawaii, those pretty Pinkerton xylophone hits lighting up like reflected stars along the sea.

When the lead vocal reappears, it’s almost as though you can thread a clear narrative through the entire song: that lazy guitar at the beginning is Cuomo stumbling about his lonely house, slouched and unkempt, pondering where he went wrong; the dialectic of Cuomo’s lead and the backing vocal echoes represent the nigh-schizophrenic descent he’s made into self-imposed solitude; the frantic solo rock-out is the furious peak of Cuomo’s anxious ramble to himself, and the transition into that wonderful, starlit slide guitar is him growing tired from spinning his own wheels, drifting exhausted into a deep and peaceful sleep. Restored and ready, Cuomo now rouses himself from his dreams and despondency over a slow build of guitar — if the second one that comes alive at 3:09 doesn’t sound like an awakening, what does? — and now, Bell reenters in perfect accord with Cuomo, our protagonist’s inner voices now coming together to serve a sane, singular purpose.

“I wanna go back, yeahhhhh!” Wilson lighting into his cymbals, Sharp’s bass driving forward with melodic purpose, Cuomo and Bell swinging for the fences and straining for the fretboards…It all comes together just right, at the start of Side B (and after the end of Side A, “Across the Sea,” certainly Cuomo’s emotional and moral nadir), and you think to yourself that Cuomo might just get himself together sometime in the course of these last few songs. The plot thickens.

*

Regarding other versions, the remixed single version of this song is mostly unchaged; with a cursory listen, I can tell the drums (toms, specifically) have been raised in the mix, and the amp noise outro has been faded out to please the radio. Not that that did much to help, seeing how the only chart this song made, worldwide, was US Modern Rock, where it peaked at 32. The Australian “Good Life” EP came packaged with a live acoustic version from a lunchtime gig at some random high school (they won an MTV contest, see), which is a pretty great version despite Bell being thoroughly trashed and Cuomo forgetting the words for half a line. Sharp’s falsetto inflections and guttural asides are in top form (he even echoes the “I’m a pig, I’m a dog” line with a well-placed “woof woof!”), of course — perhaps because that was the only thing he was doing; no bass here (at the very least, Weezer lost in Sharp – and probably later Mikey Welsh – the acumen of somebody who knows acoustic bass sucks). And while the rock-out falters a bit without amps and pedals, the slide guitar section gets by with some pretty “ooh-ooh” falsettos in its stead. The high school kids sure seem to dig it, commercial bomb or not.

While that does it for the officially released versions, I have some more of the versions in circulation, including an acoustic radio performance for “99x FM” dated 1997 — featuring some twangy, cheapo electric guitar for good measure. There’s another acoustic good’un from the same year that the band did for Y100, and there’s also one from Tokyo, immediately pre-Green in April 2001, although you can sort of tell Cuomo’s already losing interest in this part of his discography. The song was last played in 2005 during the Make Believe tours.

Filed in A-Sides, Live B-Sides, Pinkerton, The Very Best | | Comments (109)

The Zep Song

Monday, September 29, 2008

Also known as “Zep Jamb,” or frequently mislabeled as “I’m Not In Love With You,” this little ditty is one of the very earliest Maladroit sketches on record. It was attempted at the DC Demos session in May of 2001, while Mikey Welsh was still playing with the band, and also performed many on their world tour that summer (Welsh’s last). By the following January, the band recorded it during the official Maladroit sessions with Scott Shriner now manning the low notes.

The only interesting thing I can say about this song is that its rather obvious titular reference to Led Zeppelin is reiterated in its lyrics, which repeatedly urges a probably female somebody to “lay money down” — a reference to the lyrics of both “Living Loving Maid” and “Heartbreaker” of Led Zeppelin II (“you better lay your money down” and “see how the fellas lay their money down,” respectively). These are practically the “Zep” lyrics in their entirety: other phrases in the song include “love me,” “hey baby,” “I’m not in love with you,” and “alright.” No wonder it was originally dubbed a “jamb.”

Between the two studio recordings and one live bootleg I have (at the hilarious June 2001 Dortmund show), I can find no redeeming quality to this song. On the live bootleg, Welsh’s falsetto backup on the “I’m not in love with you” bridge is pretty okay, I guess. Then there’s the DC version, which lacks even that detail, and the Shriner/Maladroit take that manages to be the worst of the lot.

This is Rivers Cuomo at the very nadir of his antagonist Maladroit phase, pretending to be any one of the stereotypical metal band heroes of his youth without making much worthwhile out of the mimicry.

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I Don’t Want Your Lovin’

Friday, September 26, 2008

You are cool, you are hot
And you know, what you’ve got
You can have anyone
When you call, they will come

But I won’t be a name upon your list
I have way too much pride to go for this

‘Cause I don’t want your lovin’
I don’t want your love
I don’t want your lovin’
I don’t want your love

Why don’t you tell me goodbye?

When I turn you away
You don’t know what to say
Because nobody ever turned you down
Well I guess you had better learn to frown

‘Cause I don’t want your lovin’
I don’t want your love
I don’t want your lovin’
I don’t want your love

Dated 2002. These are the thoughts of a 32-year-old man.

Recently, Rivers Cuomo has explained the schoolyard subject matter of songs like “Troublemaker” by citing his interest in playing with the myriad cliches of pop songwriting: adolescence, school, fame, anti-authority, being a misfit, etcetera. Some might criticize him on this point, as what he does with these cliches is hardly “playing” with them — songs like “Troublemaker” and “Beverly Hills” pretty much embody those cliches, and do precious little to update or subvert them.

“I Don’t Want Your Lovin'” is something else altogether. Everything about this recording screams “junior high songwriting,” from the inscrutably juvenile lyrics to the novice’s guitar line, from the predictable melody to the bedroom recording quality (actually, the one sign that this is the work of a grown man is Cuomo’s voice — which, in its isolated maturity, has a pretty creepy effect). And this isn’t just your average case of arrested development — this is coming from a man who, ten years prior, at the spritely age of 22, was penning songs that bespoke a rare musical depth and lyrical standard (“Purification of Water,” “My Name Is Jonas,” “Only In Dreams,” “Paperface,” “Surf Wax America,” “Say It Ain’t So,” “No One Else,” “Mykel & Carli”…). That was the Rivers Cuomo who aspired to leave rock behind at age 30 and become a classical composer. Here, the 32-year-old Cuomo of 2002 instead composed something you might tell your little brother “doesn’t sound too bad” in comparison to the rest of the stuff on his first home demo.

The song’s sole redemption comes at the bridge (“Why don’t you tell me goodbye?”). It’s the one moment that actually  surprises, a bit, and speaks to some notion of complexity, however aspirational. For the most part, “Lovin'” is a shallow, uncomplicated kiss-off to some pretty strumpet who had the misfortune of thinking Cuomo was kind of cute, a “revenge of the (6th grade) nerd” banality. But here Cuomo shows a hint of empathy — the girl won’t leave him alone, and in this minor-key moment that makes him actually feel something. With a little hum and six words, Cuomo manages to convey a relatively nuanced feeling with concision. It’s a respite musically, as well.

Sadly, there’s little else going on here. The number of voice cracks, tripped up tempos and flubbed notes alone make you wonder how a musician and one-time auteur of Cuomo’s caliber could possibly commit this to tape, let alone dry-heave it upon his audience. Thank heavens no form of this song was ever officially released (even though the Recording History lists roughly a dozen full-band, electric takes in 2003! what the fuck!?), but I find it strange that Cuomo himself went out of his way to leak this to fans online. Pretty much everything here, from songwriting to recording to performance, sinks this one near the very bottom of Weezer’s septic tank.

[An update: In 2010, Weezer indeed released one of those full-band electric versions on the updated outtake collection Death to False Metal. With thick beds of backing harmonies, a surprisingly distinct guitar solo segment, an impassioned performance from the band, and a groovy instrumental outro that sounds like a muscular Steely Dan, it’s about as good as a Weezer version of this song could be – but the mix is cramped, the edits are slapdash, and the song’s systemic shittiness limits its redemption to the leagues of mediocrity.]

Filed in Death to False Metal, Early Album 5, Outtakes, The Very Worst | | Comments (104)