2009 tour w/ Blink-182 & Taking Back Sunday 2011 Doheney Days Festival co-headlining with Ben Harper 2019 Coachella
Songs like "Peace," "The Damage in Your Heart," and "Pardon Me" are all very sincere, especially considering where Rivers was at mentally at the time. Pinkerton has plenty of goofy moments, doesn't make it insincere
Saw them in 2018(?) with The Pixies. Amazing show. Rivers put on a captain suit and rode a scooter around while singing "Island in the Sun." I didn't mind the covers at the time (this was pre-Teal Album), but I do wish they would play more new songs and deep cuts instead of the same greatest hits set over and over.
“Hold Me,” “My Best Friend,” etc. Even “Freak Me Out,” which is about a spider he didn’t want to kill in his bathroom, was inspired by his time meditating and realizing his connectedness to everyone and everything. It’s an incredibly personal, spiritual song on a record filled with them. Also, to answer the question about Beverly Hills: Rivers seems to be expressing a legitimate desire in that song. He was a weirdo growing up in a commune in Connecticut - being a rock star in LA was his dream that he never thought was possible, and by 2005, he’d sorta made it but didn’t feel like it. I’ve seen interviews about that song where he talks about it meaning a lot to him because it’s just so bluntly honest as to how he had always felt. Of course, all the usual ‘it’s Rivers and he often is just messing with everyone’ caveats apply. But still.
Also the Green solos follow the melodies cuz those melodies are amazing duh! Rivers Cuomo's story behind "Beverly Hills": "I was at the opening of the new Hollywood Bowland I flipped through the program and I saw a picture of Wilson Phillips. And for some reason I just thought how nice it would be to marry, like, an 'established' celebrity and live in Beverly Hills and be part of that world. And it was a totally sincere desire. And then I wrote that song, Beverly Hills. For some reason, by the time it came out—and the video came out—it got twisted around into something that seemed sarcastic. But originally it wasn't meant to be sarcastic at all."[3]
More than Beverly Hills tho, like people said, Damage In Your Heart, Peace, Pardon Me, Hold Me, This Is Such A Pity all have the hallmarks of the letting go of your identity that a lotta folks go through in their 30’s
As deep as my connection is to Blue and Pinkerton, these days I rarely listen to anything pre-Green I get way more out of the strange lyrics of recent years than “goddamn you half japanese girls”
Damn I was sure this leaked when I saw there were 6 new pages since yesterday lol I'm of the possibly bad opinion that Rivers is up there with the best hook writers ever for me. Even on the absolute worst Weezer albums there are some CATCHY ass choruses on the whole thing
I swore i got this really cheap and went and looked. Confirmed - bought my copy off amazon a few years ago (2018) for super cheap - $9.24 after taxes.
They are really good though at catering to their audience. Yeah when I most recently saw them at a sold out Madison Square Garden, it was basically a greatest hits set with a couple of covers thrown in (and out of left field was You Gave Your Love to Me Softly, which was a cool surprise). But when I've seen them at small club shows they dig a little deeper in their catalog. I think the last club show of theirs I saw was in 2016 and the set was basically a mix of EWBAITE and White.
A Pinkerton b-sides album would easily slide in alongside White as Weezer's third-best album. Waiting On You is among the very best Weezer tracks. I'd personally love if they actually recorded and polished some of the Album 5 Demos that they did a bunch of iterations of after Maladroit. There are a lot of goodies there: Prodigy Lover, Mansion of Cardboard, Acapulco. Hell, I think Private Message could be a huge hit right now.
Yeah I think all 4 of the Pinkerton bsides are better than a lot on the album, which given how great the album tracks are is about as high praise as is possible. Waiting On You is an all timer for sure. I like the early A5 stuff a good amount too. Maladroit rules, but the alternate universe where they didn't rush to follow up Green so fast and instead picked the 10 best songs in 2003...coulda been a way better record.
outside of arbitrarily rushing an album in the middle, post green through album 5 demos feels like the same batch of songs to me. if it were like the 5 or 6 best songs from the Maladroit sessions and the 5 or 6 best songs from the a5 demos? surely
2001-2002. Green album and Maladroit. That is my era of Weezer. My sister introduced me to the Blue album since that was her jam back in the day, but I didn't really get into them until I started High School and they had their comeback. So many good memories with those albums. They remind me of sunshine and flowers lol.
I guess I’m not as fond of Maladroit as others. Listened to it again yesterday and I really love those first 7 songs but I kinda hate Space Rock, Slave and Possibilities