weezer - blue album

There was that period when Rivers went to Harvard and got his leg lengthened.

, as the actress said to the bishop

I actually interviewed him back when the Green Album came out. iirc he hadn't done many interviews, but for complicated reasons my interview never ran. This was my favorite exchange (ilx exclusive!!!):

O: You also had leg extension surgery. Now that your legs are the same length, does the world seem more crooked?

RC: (laughs) No, everything is much straighter now.

O: How long does the whole, painful process take?

RC: It took 13 months. It’s like this cage that’s all around your leg, screwed in to your bone. It’s basically like having ten arrows shot through your meat, into your bone, and then they stay there for 13 months.

O: But you were all doped up on painkillers.

RC: For the first couple of months I was. But then they try to get you off of them, which is a very sad experience.

O: Supposedly little people consider leg extension surgery tantamount to treason.

RC: Really? Well, actually I would recommend it to anyone whose leg or legs were too short. It’s not easy, but who wants to have a bum leg?

O: Did you ever consider making your legs significantly longer?

RC: You mean one longer than the other one?

O: No, making both of them a lot longer, so that you’d be better at basketball.

RC: No, that wouldn’t be worth it.

O: And this is when you were studying?

RC: It was actually … I think I started the procedure in May, and then started school in September.

O: Did people know who you were at Harvard?

RC: I don’t think so. At least, nobody said anything, not to my face. I had long hair and a beard.

O: So you had long hair, glasses, a beard, and a pinned-up leg, and you just appeared out of nowhere and then disappeared again?

RC: I was definitely the campus freak.

O: For all you know there are people at Harvard treating your absence from academia the same way people treated your absence from music. You know, “whatever happened to that guy?”

RC: (laughs) That’s funny!

O: What did you put on your application? Did you have to write an essay?

RC: Yeah, I wrote an essay, a very negative, depressing essay about how I didn’t like touring, and how I wanted to go back to school. I’m not proud of that essay at all. But they thought it was interesting. There’s a section where you have to list the awards you’ve gotten, right? I got to put, like, MTV’s Alternative Video of the Year, stuff like that. (laughs) Triple platinum award.

O: This must happen all the time.

RC: With another rock star?

O: I read an interview with Duff from Guns ‘N’ Roses, and he said that when it all winded down that he would go to Harvard Law School, because “they love people like me.”

RC: (laughs) Well the thing is, I didn’t go when it was all winding down. I went right at our peak, which was kind of stupid (laughs)

O: It all worked out in the end, but you left just a couple of months shy of graduation.

RC: Yeah.

O: Would you ever go back?

RC: No.

Island in the Sun had a lot to do with Weezer crossing over into being this band that, I guess, non-music nerds paid attention to. It didn't set the charts on fire, but I feel like it just stayed in the collective consciousness of music for a long time via radio and that cute Spike Jonze video.

O: Did you ever consider making your legs significantly longer?

RC: You mean one longer than the other one?

lmao

Great interview, Josh!

https://i.imgur.com/FVHW3bw.jpg
never forget

Thanks, there's a lot more! That was just a funny exchange.

This is the third Weezer album. Each album is also shorter than the album before it by six minutes. Do the math and you end up with a whole bunch of sixes and other numbers divisible by three, which can be fiddled with until you get the telltale 666. Did you make a deal with the Devil?

RC: (Laughs) A lot of people suggested that, because for several years I produced nothing and accomplished nothing, and then suddenly things just took off. So everyone’s wondering how I did it. And that’s one of the suggestions.

O: So that’s not a denial?

RC: (pauses) I didn’t consciously make a deal with the Devil. But I can’t offer any explanation as to why I did nothing for so long and then suddenly I’m doing a lot.

We all make our choices:

This #NoScrubs cover by @Weezer is AWESOME!!! but it would be even better if we sang it with ya'll!!! I see a TLC Weezer concert coming up..lol 🔥🔥🔥🔥 #tlc #weezer pic.twitter.com/9rzHNC58HD

— Chilli (@officialchilli) January 24, 2019

tbh would attend a tlc weezer concert

no one is exactly wrong about the total worthlessness of this band after the first (two) record(s) BUT

the white album was good, thanks

if 14 year old january 1999 me knew that in 20 years weezer would have a crappy cover of toto's africa on top 40 radio he would have been very confused (not least about his clairvoyance)

I can't believe they didn't cover "All Star."

its hard to believe this shitty band put out an album that was as good as white was only three years ago and then dived right back into being completely worthless

A+ takedown Alfred, feel like I’ve been waiting to read something like this for 20 years.

I was not a happy teenager but this band always struck me as minor and lolworthy. The Blue Album came and went in sixth grade, so when people started freaking out about their comeback in my senior year of high school I was utterly mystified, and have remained so ever since.

They hung in there and somehow got even more irritating over the years. But congrats I guess to Rivers and co. for carving out a space no one else knew existed - the Place Where Memes Go to Die - and a vast internet public to match. That Harvard degree had to be good for something.

If you read Josh’s interview above — he didn’t actually graduate!

He went back to Harvard years later and did

just looked and yeah, seems like he graduated in 2006.

He lied to you about his intentions :(

You should have asked him if he ever saw himself releasing a pointless covers album via digital formats only... really put him on the spot.

"Hi Rivers. So tell me - why do you do bad things"

I still like the first two albums, even if I think a fair amount of the lyrics on Pinkerton are indefensible. After that, I really like Everything Will Be Alright in the End, which I thought was surprisingly good, and I'm sure I could make a decent compilation of highlights from the rest ('Slob' from Maladroit would be an easy inclusion) ...

Ultimately though, the albums after Pinkerton have been mostly patchy and the songwriting at times had been so impersonal that it's hard not to agree with folks that say they've been crap since the second self-titled album.

Everything Will Be Alright In The End is great ... i think it's just a notch below the first two

and it is a mystifying aberration in the past, oh, 17 years of terrible Weezer music

(i didn't like the White album. seems like people either like that one or EWBAITE, but not often both)

Everything... and especially White are fantastic albums

It gets derided but there was some brilliance on Pacific Daydream - Weekend Woman, QB Blitz, Sweet Mary especially

Please make it stop

https://consequenceofsound.net/2019/02/calpurnia-weezer-a-ha-take-on-me-watch/

without watching it I assume it is *exactly* the same as the a-ha vid just with Weezer dudes

without thinking about it for a single second it's In the Garage. best tone. but most days it's No One Else.

haven't even really listened to Alone III much in a while, that's my favorite Weezer related release by far

I wish all of their songs were as good as 'The World Has Turned and Left Me Here' ... how they went from that to crap like 'Beverly Hills' and 'Pork and Beans' ...

that song has great chords. he's obv an underrated guitarist

Ric Ocasek's work is such a huge part of this record. for better or worse, he brought Weezer into the world and brought their best work out of them. RIP

for better. still love this album so much

yes

today's listen confirms yet again this is a perfect album

My 13 year old daughter just got into Weezer big time. I've come close to going to her bedroom and asking her to turn it down, but... nah. Rock on, little girl.

She plays Pinkerton a lot more though. "Across the Sea" is the song I hear the most.

Today she initiated a big discussion about Weezer vs. Fountains of Wayne. I felt so proud!

We both agreed that Fountains of Wayne has more good songs but Weezer has more great songs.

"Across the Sea" has been my favorite song from Pinkerton for however many years the album has been out.

My 13 year old daughter ... did *not* talk to me about Weezer and FoW today. :\

but did you ever wonder what happened beyond the frame

https://i.imgur.com/cd2jMGF.jpg

So I had this album shortly after it came out and I was like 13 and my best friend was over, and "Surf Wax America" was on.

After the chorus, my friend asked "how can you surf to work?", thinking the guy had a regular 9 to 5 or something...not getting that like surfing was like his job.

I was giggling, picturing the dude just like surfing in the ocean horizontally, taking a few shortcuts and then docking and walking to work, but my friend kept on, saying "Your surf board would be like an inch tall by the time you got there" and I realized he actually thought the main character was surfing in the street, completely whittling the board down to the size of a shiv.

God what a fucking idiot. Wonder if he's still this dumb.

lol

Also people for years on ILX kept talking about the creepiness of the lyrics of "No One Else" but it and "The World Has Turned and Left Me Here" are a pair, with the misogynist controlling asshole in NOE getting rightfully dumped in the next somg and moaning about how sad he is that he got dumped and still being too dumb to realize it was his own toxicity that was responsible

The Pat Finnerty Weezer video is a masterpiece.

Hearing No One Else for the first time in the 90s, never thought for a second he was doing anything other than obviously ramping up the unpleasantness to the the extent it could never be taken entirely seriously

After the chorus, my friend asked "how can you surf to work?

Literally what I thought the song was saying too until twenty seconds ago

Rivers said something along the lines of "No One Else" is about his own feelings, just ramped up a bit

@neanderthal

lol i'm probably as dumb as your friend because i also thought they were talking about surfing to work at first.

In fairness to me, I thought the "surfing to work" thing was another silly joke by the guys who made "The Sweater Song" and the Happy Days video. I didn't think it was something where I had to argue about its logic, I thought it was a gag.

I don't think anybody is dumb itt, I just like ripping on David cos he was an asshole lol

I actually love the idea of surfing in the street. Like how would the average person react if they were stuck behind Rivers