Weezer -- Classic or Dud?

I was a couple of years' too late for the Blue Album to have any fascination for me; "Pinkerton" has its moments; I really dug "Hash Pipe."

I remember reading an interview where Cuomo said that Dylan has had (overall) a rather negative influence on popular music. This from the man who made Pinkerton! (Not a horrible album, but the music and lyrics it's influenced...yuck.)

Ok, maybe he's smarter than Mickey Mars,

I fucking doubt that.

i love weezer

http://dsf.pacounties.org/training/lib/training/muppets_and_weezer.jpg

Weird to me is how they went from being just another jokey-alt band to suddenly being a revered and 'influential' group with 'Pinkerton' hailed as an antecedent to Emo...(most of my research is just mostly general conversation with kids in bands, but still...) I nearly fell over when I saw a bio on the group: River's Edge: The Weezer Story (I couldn't make this shit up.) I opened to the intro just to see what the fuck and sure enough the author is unhinged. He recounts how he discovers the group by getting a free cassette and listening to it in his car on the ride home and how he's completely blown away because here was a band who were combining the aggression of punk with the pleasing harmonies and hooks of pop -- and this had never been done before!

Like the Ramones never happened. Never mind the other three hundred bands we could list. If I ever end up in jail I might read this book.

I remember back in the '90s they were pegged as "MTV's Pavement" and that was good enough for me. Trash.

i see all those muppets but where's the band amirite

weezer is so awesome

chaki otm

hating weezer is easy but loving them is SO MUCH EASIER

i don't hate em

creep

I love the Blue Album, not much beyond that but a few singles. But the Blue Album is high on the list of my favorite albums from the 90s, just for the first two songs and "Only In Dreams" alone, not to mention the singles.

only in dreams is fucking epic

i like that buddy holly tune

Driving back late to my hotel after a really important night for my work, I put on the University of Pittsburgh college radio station and "Only In Dreams" came on. At that moment it became the Greatest Song Ever, the Platonic Idea of Epic. The final build-up and climax is pretty autosexual, but that's part of its greatness: I mean it is only in dreams.

weezer were an amazing band who tragically died ten years ago.

I like the quiet moments on Only In Dreams. The loud dynamic stumbles.

'death and destruction' is an underrated tune. it's as close as they came to the greatness of the blue/pinkerton era imo

Honestly, aren't C/D threads like this skewed towards people who cared enough to actually listen to a bands albums and therefore liked them in the first place? I only heard the radio singles and concluded 'Dud' long, long ago but that probably doesn't make it a fair judgment. Nevertheless, I won't lose any sleep over it.

'death and destruction' is an underrated tune.

I-L-O-V-E-Y-O-U?

Isn't the new single a pretty great Weezer song?

chorus sounds great. hate the verse and the lyrics :(

Argh, I've been listening to / reading about Weezer after the weekend, and then this gets revived. Odd.

http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.spinner.com/media/2008/04/weezer-300.jpg
Produced by Rick Rubin.

The record is being described as "experimental", and according to Cuomo, includes longer and non-traditional songs, TR-808 drum machines, synthesizers, Southern rap, baroque counterpoint, and band members other than Cuomo writing, singing, and switching instruments.

out june 17th btw

longer and non-traditional songs, TR-808 drum machines, synthesizers, Southern rap, baroque counterpoint, and band members other than Cuomo writing, singing, and switching instruments

They have a fever.

cover so funny

brian looks like federline

The Greatest Man That Ever Lived

8-(_____________)

(that's a dropped jaw)

(it's both ridiculous and brilliant at the same time)

"Greatest Man", "Pork and Beans" and "Dreamin'" are the best Weezer songs in ages. The rest...predictably awful.

=(_)

I feel bad having to break out the haterade, but I think a flood of figurative vomit flew up into my mouth...but as someone who used to love weezer (we were all 15 once), I didn't know it could get worse than 'Beverly Hills.' I would take Rivers on the emo-est day of his life at his Pinkerton or The world has turned and left me here absolute pinnacle emo-est over this. Unless Rick Rubin put them up to some elaborate joke (including writing these ridiculous lyrics, I mean, Pork and Beans? really? especially the buddy holly guitars in that, in a way, to blue album fans, it almost begs to be heard as a fuck you from Rivers to people who like/used to like that song/Blue album....boo-urns.

.....and that last post was accidentally sent before I could make it coherent, anyway, point I was gonna bring up is, do those who like the new weezer prefer it to older weezer?

Doubtful. New Weezer doesn't have cheeky quotes of Stockhausen or Kurt Weill.

New Weezer lyrics don't weather long-term scrutiny, either. You listen to their first two albums and well-articulated expressions of the transgressions of youth against youth (youth against itself, which is probably a very aware reflection of Pet Sound's theme of the transgression of adulthood against youth) and the obstacles to fulfilling, long-term (romantic) love begin to come to the front of the listening experience.

New Weezer lyrics have a lot of caveman three syllable lines, much fewer idiosyncrasies and the songs are less autobiographical. (The perfect pop song you're trying to write again and again is allowed to have details and personality, Rivers - more than pure craft.) They're also no longer quoting Cheap Trick, Beach Boys, Hanoi Rocks or whomever Cuomo is secretly/not secretly inspired by: they're quoting themselves analogously, and their body of work isn't large or varied enough yet to deserve recursiveness.

That said, their post-Pinkerton stuff deserves some defense, even the demos leading up to Make Believe, although not the album itself.

Thinking and talking about the Cuomo story and myth is a fun pastime, and wondering how he could write two intelligent pop records and give it up to facelessness is a big part of that. My three stories relating are about two well-meaning stoners/users and one clueless teenage Morrissey fan, and maybe that explains it all, that Weezer's fans ask, if anything, for LCD dumbness and cannot, when given it, put their finger on exactly what's wrong.

(The first Rentals album is fucking rad and gets a lot of regular play on my stereo.)

Weezer "Internet Meme"-themed "Pork and Beans" video...
I kind of smiled a few times:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muP9eH2p2PI

Though there are a couple of them I don't know the origins of. I was kind of waiting for a 2 girls 1 cup gag.

they rock bitches

i remember hearing "buddy holly" when i was 13 and thinking that it must be some old tune from the 70s. the first album had a few nice tunes.

poppier side of 80s us punk + poppier side of 70s us metal = weezer

like, descendents + cheap trick, etc

weezer = liz phair for teens. I was going to say 'for boys' but I think Liz's fanbase was mostly horny dudes anyway.

Also, the internet meme thing was already done by South Park so... Kudos to them

http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/4281/tynan6in.gif

I think the Red Album (that's what people are calling it, right?) is pretty alright.

I feel a strong urge to buy it, and I haven't felt so since the Green Album (colors rock!!11)

I was not impressed by "Dreamin'" or "Greatest Man."

I wonder what Geir thinks of Weezer...

*whistles idly*