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Category Archives: Alone II

Harvard Blues

Friday, May 14, 2010

It’s interesting that Rivers Cuomo notes in the sleeve for the Alone II demos compendium that by the time this little piece was composed — spring of 1997 — his ambitions to quit rock and become a classical composer by age 30 had already begun to wither. Even at the late date of 2008, when […]

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I Want To Take You Home Tonight

Saturday, February 27, 2010

It’s true that the dedicated Weezer addict (worse for your health than weed, but probably better than meth) will perk his or her ears at the chance to hear any new scrap of music from the band — the older the vintage, the greater the excitement — but this here demo sparked a much more […]

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Paperface

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Looking at the original lyric sheet for the pre-Blue Album song “Paperface” is a pretty rare (and funny) treat. There is an aborted attempt at a verse that begins, “I played the game / I was all right / For a while / I didn’t fight,” which Rivers Cuomo scribbled over with an emphatic “CRAP” (made […]

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I Was Scared

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

When “I Was Scared” first leaked with the rest of Rivers Cuomo’s Alone II home demo volume in 2008, there was a fair amount of speculation revolving around how this song — an apology set to lyrics — might have been written for Mikey Welsh. Welsh was a bassist who, to paraphrase a 2005 Alternative Press […]

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Oh Jonas

Monday, November 23, 2009

Yet another interstitial piece from Rivers Cuomo’s unfinished space rock opera Songs From The Black Hole, this scrappy, 26-second demo was officially released on 2008’s Alone II solo home recording compendium. Written and recorded in 1995, before Cuomo’s first term at Harvard (and the shift from operatic concept album about interstellar travel to opera-inspired concept […]

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Don’t Worry Baby

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 […]

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