The Ashcan

Weezer to further alienate fans by giving them exactly what they want

Posted on 22. Aug, 2010 by Simon in Music

Weezer fans can't even make this stuff up

Sigh. Break ups can be so confusing.

You know, I told myself I would never post about Weezer ever again after my last rant.

Writing about them meant I cared; and I was done complaining about Rivers Cuomo and his merry band of solipsistic slackers. I wasn’t going to let them get to me.

When presented with their latest affront to art, I simply turned the other cheek (which was hard, because it’s bad. I mean, it’s really, really bad. It wasn’t slap in the cheek bad, it was a Bruce Lee kick to the face bad.) instead of giving a damn.

I had moved on. Or so I thought.

Weezer release their new album Hurley on September 14th, but lost in the shuffle has been the announcement the band is reissuing its cult success sophomore cd Pinkerton, a month later on October 5th. Even crazier are the reports leaking out that to accompany that reissue, the band will be touring not to play songs from Hurley — but a full Pinkerton/Blue album tour where they will perform every track from Weezer’s first two (read: non-horrible) albums.

To more casual Weezer observers, who can’t quite understand the plight of the band’s old fans but must hear incessantly of our whining, this must seem like no-brainer incredibly good news.

“This is what you always wanted!” you might say to us with appropriate amounts of encouraging optimism.

But, of course, excitement is not my initial reaction. So jaded, so cynical, so engrained in lowered expectation have I become about Weezer that my default, instinctive thought upon hearing this information was extremely cautious skepticism.

I mean, first of all, one questions whether or not the tour will actually happen. But, and this is the truly pertinent question I had:

Why? Why now, after openly fleeing those albums for so many years? and HOW ARE YOU GOING TO RUIN THIS FOR US?

The cynic in me believes this is a cash grab. Weezer knows reissuing Pinkerton will sell at least another several hundred thousand copies, which means for doing exactly zero work they can supplement the income of the (most likely poor) sales Hurley will produce.

Moreover, the band can go on tour and perform songs they know like the back of their hands — and make just as much if not more money in the process, despite having just released an album of new songs that apparently they finally realize aren’t as good as the songs they wrote over a decade ago.

And to some Weezer fans, this really is good news. A lot of folks never wanted any more from Weezer than what they were in the early 90′s.

For more deeply pathetic Weezer fans like myself however, we never were angry about the band because they weren’t making music like their first two albums. We were angry because we thought the first two albums showed so much potential. I believed Cuomo and his bandmates had the talent to create truly great popular rock music — that Pinkerton was the beginning, not the end, of a ride we felt we were lucky to catch the infancy of.

Despite all these protestations however, my abused wife syndrome can’t help but theorize about the glimmer of silver lining in this all-too domestic abuse parallelable scenario.

First off, Weezer left Geffen records recently for indie label Epitaph. Raditude, the band’s last album, did horribly. Hurley, if the first single “Memories” is any indication, will be equally awful.

At least their shirts are getting better

Is it possible Weezer finished this album, looked back at the body of work they produced over the last 8 years, and finally realized — god, this is just awful? Is Weezer finally becoming self-aware of their role as artists of public consumption? Has Rivers Cuomo finally matured out of, what Sady Doyle so aptly described as, “an exceptionally prolonged adolescence”? Is it possible “Memories” is really about Rivers remembering when he didn’t completely and utterly suck?

What’s most confusing however, is that, hypothetically assuming the answers to all the above questions is “yes” … does that make it ok?

Would I be able to live with any shred of dignity if I were to forgive this band for coming to the rationale conclusions everyone in the world but their lead singer seemed to have implicitly understood for the past 15 years? For being so flippantly content with mediocrity?

In my mind that would be like getting back together with an abusive spouse just because they finally successfully quit drinking, or at the age of 30 finally understood that the best way to avoid venereal disease is to avoid being a whore.

I hope Weezer learns to embrace their cult status amongst a very devoted base of niche fans. I hope they learn not to shirk their musical potential and write songs that sound more intelligent than a middle-school battle of the bands contest entry. I wish Weezer well, I really do, and I’d be glad if they really are finally maturing like normal people.

But, and trust me, it will be difficult, and it pains me to say: I will not be attending another Weezer concert ever, no matter how many old favourites they trot out.

Some relationships are just toxic, no matter how much things change, or in this case, how much they might try to stay the same. Sometimes, no matter how right old feelings may feel, you simply have to trust your head.

Like I said — break ups can be so confusing.

Tags: Blue Album, Epitaph, Hurley, Pinkerton, Rivers Cuomo, Sady Doyle, thoughts in parenthesis, Weezer, why I still hate weezer