Sunday, June 8, 2008
 

With John and Noah on birthday duty, it looks like it’s up to me to keep the ramblings going this weekend.  Well, consider it done. I had promised something special today, but it looks like that something special won’t be coming until next week.  Stay tuned.  Instead, here’s a story about my once favorite rock band.

This past week, I went to Best Buy and bought the new Weezer CD for $5.99 plus tax.  I love record stores, but seriously, $5.99?  There aren’t a lot of full album I wouldn’t buy for $5.99 and some change.  Still, I swore I wouldn't buy this album; after betraying my goodwill for the past two album, I’d written off Weezer almost completely.  I don’t feel a "sentimental attachment" to most things from my childhood, but for some reason an incomplete Weezer catalog just seemed unacceptable.  So I bought it, against my better judgment.

And, actually, I was pleasantly surprised...with a couple songs.  Good enough to rid my mouth of the bad taste left by that Make Believe defecation?  We’ll see.

There are a couple of misconceptions about Weezer I want to clear up, the first of which being that Weezer used to write good music.  Largely that’s not true - they wrote "nerd rock" anthems about growing up and learning to deal with the world.  Rivers never wrote "poetic" lyrics like the kind I expect from "good" musicians, but he did have a knack for satirical goofiness.  Let’s watch a video:

This song and video, probably more than any other early Weezer, capture the bands goofiness.  Rivers practically whispers the lyrics that he should be screaming, while Matt makes odd interpretive dance measures through the chorus.  If I remember correctly, it was the band who changed the letters around to spell "Weerez."  No one plays their part, there’s as much dancing and Pat making chicken gestures as there is anything else, but that’s what made Weezer good - an ironic sense of what it was to be cool, and to be a rock band, that somehow we could all relate to.

The second misconception: new Weezer isn’t like old Weezer.  Actually, that’s part true.  A lot of the album is pretty bad.  I can’t say much for the songs that the other band members sing on, because I didn’t listen to most the whole way through.  As far as I know, the band member’s solo bands (The Special Goodness is Pat’s, and I believe Brian has something called The Relationship now?) are a way for true Weezer fans to be able to say they know a lot about the band, and to buy more shirts when they own all the Weezer ones.  I own a Special Goodness album.  It’s not very good.

But I don’t want to write an essay bashing Weezer, I’ve read enough of that online.  I want to talk about the few songs that I think finally get back to the true goofy Weezer spirit, specifically Troublemaker and Pork & Beans (which I’m sure you’ve all heard by now).

People have said of the new songs, "The music is good, but the lyrics are terrible."  Well sure, but have Weezer lyrics ever been good?  "Somebody’s Heine is downin’ my icebox, somebody’s cold one is giving me chills, guess I’ll just close my eyes"?  If those lyrics weren’t attached to such an epic song, one so ingrained in my mind as great, they’d hardly stand as "good" lyrics.  Their merit, and that of all good Weezer lyrics, is that they’re a funny-but-true look at a nerd’s way of dealing with growing up.  I’ve never heard something so universally relatable for my generation.

Now look at lyrics from the new album:

From Troublemaker...

"I'm gonna be a star and people will crane necks to get a glimpse of me and see if I am havin' sex/And studyin' my moves to try to understand why I am so unlike the singers in the other bands"

:Weezer - Troublemaker:

From Pork & Beans:

With its reference to pop music: "Timbaland knows the way to reach the top of the charts/Maybe if I work with him I can perfect the art"

And the chorus: “I'm finally dandy with the me inside/One look in the mirror and I'm tickled pink/I don't give a hoot about what you think”

:Weezer - Pork And Beans:

With words like "dandy" and "hoot" and topics like Timbaland’s production and dealing with being a celebrity, River’s is only doing what he’s always done well - take an ironic, goofy nerd’s perspective on what’s currently in his life, which at this point, is fame and stardom, and all its Hollywood tendencies.  That’s what made the first two albums legendary, that’s what was missing from the last three, and that’s what the saving grace is for at least part of the Red album.

- John Michael Cassetta -

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