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I said some mean things about Rivers Cuomo in my other blog a few days ago, and I’m feeling guilty… or at least like my karma will drain 0.2% if I don’t amend. I can’t afford either penalty. Also, I don’t want to run the risk of him finding out and seeking me out for some sort of emoboy-v-animal-slap-fight. I know I Google myself daily, as Rivers does. The last time I Googled “Rivers Cuomo”, my sleight of his most recent work was around 1,217 entries down, at least 215 below where I’m sure he stops looking.

I never would have bought the first Weezer album as a not-starving-but-well-drunk -and-therefore-respected-college senior, despite the MTV glory of “Undone” and “Buddy Holly”[1]. I probably would have bought it for the pure-tone majesty of “Say It Ain’t So”, because that song rocks most excellent[0]. I would have missed out on the rest of the album, and probably all after, if my friend John hadn’t given me Blue or whatever it’s called on a visit, saying he bought it because Weezer sounded like “Ween” (a band we loved and still do) and he hoped the name-sound-translation would occur. It didn’t. I liked old blue a lot, and listened to it at high volume while suffering through something I hope to this day is a late-college dose of chicken pox as opposed to the syph, and have listened to if ever after. It mentions Kitty Pryde.

I sum up the power of that first album as: the premise is set up per-song, and then they hammer it in at the solo or 2nd/3rd chorus to awesome effect. Example in “The World Has Turned and Left Me Here” (solo), and “In the Garage” (chorus). Also, “Say It Ain’t So” is just a f**king great rock song. It drags and it soars. You can’t listen to it loud enough.

Second Weezer album, Pinkerton, is the rough yet perfect masterpiece. I don’t know if they tried to make a record that could stand next to Dark Side of the Moon on my best-of, but it happened. Meaning:

1. I used to snort ground-up Ritalin off the CD case while vaporizing Jim Beam and listening to the album, rarely feeling so alive before. I’d never say I haven’t felt so alive since… but Ritalin, Beam and the record can make a man feel alive
1. My wife, on our third date (three years ago), offhandedly mentioned that Pinkerton was the only Weezer album that mattered, and, also, was a great album, besides. Then we snorted some Ritalin and made the sweet love [I kid about the Ritalin]
1. My punk rock[2] friend Mark, a long-time Weezer-hater due to “Do You Want to Destroy My Sweater?”-first-impressions, recently re-discovered Pinkerton at our urging, and declared it profoundly awesome… at least on the order of “Electric Six and the Hold Steady” [sic]
1. Back in the day, I was supposed to see Pinkerton-era Weezer at the 930 club with a girl I knew, an in-town-ex-girlfriend of my out-of-town-college buddy’s[-1]. Then he came into town unexpectedly the weekend of the show, so I gave my ticket to another friend and hung out with out-of-town-college buddy and drank Jim Beam with him all weekend. Later on that year, I still had sex with that girl, despite having missed the show, which I figured was my prime opportunity. Say it ain’t so!
1. The album made numerous references to Japanese and half-Japanese girls (some underage) as objects of River’s affection. We all know the virtue of the SAB[4].
1. When you’re 23 and high on ritalin-snorting[3], how is one supposed to know what Pinkerton means? It’s mysterious! Thanks to HBO’s Deadwood, I know now: they’re detectives or something, actually I’m not sure what they are! But I was more confused then!

Overall, Pinkerton is a sexy proto-emo-punk rock album that represents my youth, which is why it’s totally awesome, much in the same way that kid in The Incredibles says “That’s was totally awsome!” at the end is totally awesome. And the fact that Rivers/Weezer made it makes him/them rock royalty to me.

When Weezer didn’t do anything for a fairly long time, I was sad, mostly because I wasn’t snorting ritalin anymore. Later, I realized I probably needed anti-depressants due to the snorting, but somehow was also content that the band went out high as angels.

I read that Rivers Cuomo went to Harvard to study, and I thought that was cool. Follow the dream! In my salad foolery, I would have figured that having a lot of unprotected sex with girls that were at least half-Japanese and the process (even if by accident) of founding “emo”-rock would have filled one man’s lifetime of yearning, but it only goes to show that I had much to learn. Or Rivers got tired of sex.

Matt Sharp did the rentals, whose first two (only two?) albums are awesome and featured Maya Rudolph of later Saturday Night Live fame, and is also hot. It’s the Prince Show! Then Matt found heroin or perhaps an unlimited supply of ground-up ritalin and made like twelve albums and imploded. I hope he comes back.

Then there was nothing, I graduated from college, and listened to a lot of Radiohead and worked hard to avoid the self-hatred it taught me in my mid-20s.

Some age passed.

Then Weezer did a third album, Green or Weezer or something, and it had a lot of short, sweet songs. It was like Blue or the FIrst album, Weezer!, except with more punk punch, and I liked it.

Will Farrell appeared with Weezer on SNL doing “Island in the Sun”. and I liked that.

I liked it when I was single and dating on the internet, and drove on the Beltway at rush hour to meet, on a whim[6] some inter-girrrl for dinner in Alexandria, and listened to it twice on the way, getting pumped up. It gave me hope for finding a girlfriend, and maybe a life-mate… hopes quickly dashed upon the meeting and said dinner, where grrrl jumped me and offered instant sex. The only problem was that she was very, very ugly and I didn’t want sex with her, which was… I have to say a first: I had never turned sex down before. I listened to Green on the way home, and it was then I knew I was an adult, for turning down sex. Then I immediately went to the store and rented Blake Edwards’ Skin Deep, and enjoyed it.

Many of the songs on Greenish were just a good-sounding compliment to the anti-depressants I had settled on, and this phase of my late adolescence.

Fourth album Maladroit was also good, but I think a little rushed out. Good for Rivers for working the juices, but, if you’re reading, realize “Across the Sea” plus “Say It Ain’t So” is your “Stairway to Heaven”. A little too much noise, but “Take Control” is totally solid. But too much like a rock song. Perhaps listening to too much Kiss.

By then I’d met my wife, so I was past all this sh*te, which is to say: Weezer’s music is truly for adolescents, no matter the age or relative level of chemical imbalance. That is good, generally speaking. It’s good to feel like a teen when you’re 20, 30… I hope 40 and 50 (which is as far as I expect to go), and re-activate hormones and go with the flow.

So, back to my mean comment on the other blog, Make Believe, which came out about 18 months ago, is not just sub-standard Weezer, it’s just bad, boring rock music. “Beverly Hills” hints at original greatness. Everything else is static.

why are you so far away from me?

The central thesis is: Is it possible for Weezer ne Rivers Cuomo to match the greatness of Pinkerton?

Hard to say. I’m sure that record was done under some difficult emotional circumstances, as all great art is.

I hope so, because I’d pay a minimum of $10 and a maximum of unknown for a fifth real and truthful adolesence.

I will continue to listen to all Weezer music reverently… except Make Believe. Maybe in time. I would prefer for it to be a black hole in uninterrupted extended teenhood.

rds

[-1] Ultimate bad idea for long-term friendship preservation.
[0] The son is drowning in the flooooooooooooooooooood! Yeah! YEAAAAH!
[1] Despite the fact the song appears on the bootleg album Kelley and I made as party favors at our wedding. Sorry, RC!

[2] He works a full time job excellent-well at an aggregate clock-in of probably 30 hours a week, goes to shows four-seven nights a week, owns a dwelling and looks good without a shirt on.

[3] which is awesome
[4] Sexy Asian [woman].
[6] Normally it would take me approximately ten weeks and 135 emails to build up the nerve to see an inter-girrrl. This one took only two weeks and 20 emails.