It’s convenient that we go from one Maladroit outtake to another — especially when this is one of the best from the era. Also known as “Big Chip,” “Don’t Pick On Me” first appeared in September of 2001, during the Sage and Sound (SnS) demos — one of current bassist Scott Shriner’s earliest sessions with […]
When I wrote about Red Album deluxe track/outtake “Miss Sweeney” I spoke of the euphoria of hearing a classic Weezer track so deep into the new millennium, and the band’s new arena rock/radio pop M.O. But “Sweeney” is far from the first post-Y2K sign of life. Perhaps the brightest beacon in memory came April 9, […]
Monday, February 23, 2009
Somewhere down the line, the Summer Songs 2000 inadvertently start to blur together for the listener. For me, that happens somewhere around “Preacher’s Son.” Trying to imagine the song’s different sections without first playing it, I imagine “Preacher’s Son” beginning with the guitar intro from “Modern Dukes” — and even though I get through the […]
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
We could stay up all night counting the Beach Boys references in Rivers Cuomo’s work. And depending on how things go, we might even conclude that Weezer’s Blue debut can be interpreted as, at least in one sense, a sort of alt-rock/Gen X homage to the golden California boys who, by the time Cuomo discovered […]
Friday, February 13, 2009
It’s a nice coincience that we get to discuss this track just around the time that MS posts his new interview with Weezer friend, webmaster and historian Karl Koch, because in truth, this kickstarter for the band’s quasi-official, live-recorded Summer Songs 2000 album is more the work of Koch than anyone actually in Weezer per […]
Thursday, February 5, 2009
If you haven’t noticed, I’ve put off writing this one for quite a while now. When it came up in the song randomizer, I knew there would be trouble. “Longtime Sunshine” is just one of those songs that is a real pain to do justice (ahem). In fact, I’m not quite sure it can be […]
One of the hundreds of tunes that Rivers Cuomo wrote in 2000, “The Sister Song” is one of the few from the era to have been placed on the semi-official live document, Summer Songs 2000, a document of the touring period named in the album’s title. It finds itself an interesting intersect of the many […]
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Good to finally get another song to discuss from Rivers Cuomo’s 1997 sideproject, Homie. Like “Hot Tub,” Cuomo demoed the song years before resuscitating it for his “goofball country” outlet — in fact, this one was written as early as 1991, the same year Cuomo wrote wildly different songs like “The Answer Man” and “The […]
Thursday, November 27, 2008
“Crazy One” was perhaps the pleasantest surprise of Rivers Cuomo’s first-ever home demos compendium, Alone. Dated 1998, smack in the middle of that mysterious period of Weezer inactivity between Pinkerton‘s implosion (1997) and the band’s triumphant “reunion tour” (2000), “Crazy One” was tough to predict. 1997 was the year of Cuomo’s alt-country side-project Homie and experimental solo band […]
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 […]