Weezer — a blast from the past

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This article was published 01/04/2017 (3346 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you were a music-loving young adult in the 1990s, chances are Weezer provided the soundtrack for many pivotal life events.

In 1994, when the L.A. four-piece group dropped their self-titled debut (otherwise known as the Blue Album), bedrooms and basements everywhere were filled with the sounds of Buddy Holly, Undone — The Sweater Song and Say It Ain’t So, the fuzzy guitars and unmistakable vocals of Rivers Cuomo becoming an iconic part of the decade’s music landscape.

The trifecta of hits — paired with music videos that reached classic status almost immediately after they were released — provided the groundwork for a career that has spanned more than 20 years and 10 full-length albums (with another expected to be released later this year).

Somehow, after all those years and all those albums, Sunday marks the band’s first show in Winnipeg.

To get prepped for the event, we asked some Free Press staffers who have long been awaiting Weezer’s inaugural visit to choose a favourite song and write a few words about it:

Only in Dreams (1994)

Weezer’s self-titled debut, the so-called Blue Album, came out in 1994, when I was the editor of the University of Winnipeg’s music magazine, Stylus. Using our marginal editorial clout (and counting on the fact that Geffen was flogging the album mercilessly to college radio), assistant editor Barb Stewart and I snagged an interview at the band’s First Avenue show in Minneapolis.

Not only were we given free tickets and photo passes — I still have the adhesive blue fabric pass, emblazoned with the W logo — but we interviewed guitarist Brian Bell and then-bassist Matt Sharp on the band’s tour bus. (Singer Rivers Cuomo, already with a reputation for being shy, bordering on curmudgeonly, sidled past us silently, face shielded by a comically enormous hood, a la South Park’s Kenny.)

So I have enduring affection for the Blue Album. It’s jam-packed with power-pop hits, but my favourite remains the disc-ending Only in Dreams, an eight-minute opus. My classical-music-loving father pointed out that it’s technically a passacaglia, a composition in triple time with variations over a bass ostinato. Whatever. It’s also a sweetly nerdy love song that’s equal parts dreamy melody and aggressive guitars. Classic Weezer, in other words.

— Jill Wilson

 

In the Garage (1994)

The first Weezer song I ever heard was Buddy Holly from 1994’s Blue Album. I was nine, I was in my cousin’s basement and I was instantly hooked.

While that whole record is an emo masterpiece, I have a soft spot for In the Garage, in which Rivers Cuomo sings about a safe space where he can let his geek flag fly and no one will laugh at him.

When you’re a lonely, alienated kid, it’s amazing how much music can feel like a friend.

— Jen Zoratti

 

Buddy Holly (1994)

My first exposure to Weezer was on MuchMusic. Their clever video for Buddy Holly off the self-titled Blue Album featured footage from Happy Days, one of my favourite childhood television shows. Besides being a catchy blast of buoyant pop-rock, for the first time in my life I felt the pangs of nostalgia and I was only 21!

The four-minute Spike Jonze-directed clip featured the band playing at Arnold’s drive-in to a room-full of dancers and footage of the original cast (and some obvious body doubles) appearing to watch Weezer and reacting to cues from band members on stage.

Unfortunately, as good songs often do, Buddy Holly got overplayed and I eventually tired of it. These days when I play the Blue Album, which still comes out at least once a year and doesn’t have a dud track on it, I usually skip Buddy Holly and go from The World Has Turned and Left Me Here to Undone — The Sweater Song. I would never skip an episode of Happy Days, though.

— Rob Williams

 

Jamie (1994)

I was 18 when Weezer released their perfect piece of pop rock, and for me and my friends, the Blue Album was the soundtrack of our post-graduation summer. The songs were as full of the same angst and self-deprecating humour as our own passage from geeky teens to geeky adults.

Blue and Pinkerton are classic albums, but I’ll always have a soft spot for Jamie, which was originally released on the DGC Rarities Vol. 1 compilation.

It’s Weezer at their most heartfelt, without the sheen of Blue’s production values.

— Adam Treusch

 

You Gave Your Love to Me Softly (1996)

First appearing on the soundtrack to the 1995 coming-of-age film Angus (which I never saw — did anyone?), this two-minute piece of power-pop perfection was also a B-side to the 1996 El Scorcho single from their near-perfect sophomore album Pinkerton.

It’s classic Weezer: a catchy melody (mirrored by a simple guitar solo), thick guitar riffage and Rivers Cuomo waxing poetic about a girl (and her perfume). And it gives me a swift, broken-hearted hoof in the feels every damn time.

— Ben MacPhee-Sigurdson

 

Hash Pipe (2001)

I’m a smidge younger than the other Weezer lovers on staff, so my introduction to the band didn’t happen until 2001, with their second self-titled album (Green Album).

The song was Hash Pipe, I was 11 years old and in elementary school and had no idea what a hash pipe even was — “It must be something to do with hashbrown potatoes,” I remember thinking.

Lucky for me, the edited version of the song had altered the lyrics and title to the inoffensive “half pipe,” something I was more familiar with given the recent boom in popularity of skateboarding among the pre-teen crowd.

Regardless of the content, it was Rivers Cuomo’s weird falsetto vocals atop a charging guitar line that drew me in and made me feel cool for listening to it, which, when you’re 11, is what music is all about.

— Erin Lebar

erin.lebar@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @NireRabel