When to say enough is enough? (Or how I finally gave up on Rivers Cuomo)

I'm only a casual Weezer fan, and Greatest Man In The World, Troublemaker, and Pig are all I needed to hear to know that they're still pretty great.

Or maybe they haven't changed at all, and you can just never appreciate a band as an adult on the primal emotional level that you can when you're a teenager.

As someone who was well into adulthood when they hit the scene, I'm really not hearing the big difference. I do prefer their earlier work, but I'm not seeing the stark contrast that you're making it out to be. I went through the same thing with bands from my youth. Being a teenager is a state of raw, unfiltered emotion, and music hits us very differently when we're in that state. As an experienced, semi-mature adult, it's extremely rare that music hits me on the basic level that it did in my teens.

So yeah, I think the basic truth here is that you've changed, not them.

No, no, Weezer has changed immensely. Listen to the Blue album and then the Red album and its hard to even tell they're the same band. I can barely sit through a single song on the Red album. I wanted it to be good, even though Make Believe was forgettable, but I really can't stand it.

On the other hand, the Blue album? Nearly every song is gold.

I think that undying loyalty to bands is primarily a teenage thing. Weezer have seriously lost the plot, and I think the best we'll get from them nowadays is the occasional good single.

I quite enjoyed Rivers' "Alone" demos album, though. I'd rather listen to that than any of their post Pinkerton albums.

For me Pinkerton gives them a lifelong pass on everything, whether great (Blue Album) average (Green album, Red album) or even meh or kinda bad (Maladroit, Make Believe). Pinkerton is still that great.

Let me help you here -- I have met WEEZER on several occasions and they are all horrible, horrible douchebags. Complete assholes to the core. Rivers is a sadistic pervert with a penchant for abusing Asian women, and Brian Bell is a hostile bitter prick. Their sweet n' loveable nerd act is just that, a complete fabrication. They are total dicks.

EDIT: The drummer was OK and I haven't met the current bass player. But Matt Sharp was such a prick they others couldn't even tolerate him and the second guy was an asshole nutcase.

I have met lots of famous people and usually find them to be cooler than I expected. But Weezer ranks with the worst of the worst. Like Faye fucking Dunaway bad. I would rather hang out with Brett Ratner any day of the week than Rivers or Brian Bell.

And trust me, I'm a "judge the art, not the artist" type of guy. But because I don't think their art is very good anymore, I say fuck those guys.

Brett Ratner's a pretty cool dude.

He actually offered to help my store out financially if we got into trouble.

He offered me and Dave Davis hookers.

Even better. I bet he has good taste in hookers.

Here's an Amazon preview of the new single.

I like the chorus...

Another clip.

Sounds okay.

There's no question that the band changed. So much of their output in this decade has been bland, predictable corporate rock with almost no distinguishing features whatsoever; it's almost painful when they pull out new material that suggests how great they could still be if they tried (Greatest Man Who Ever Lived, the Blue Album-worthy Pork and Beans)

To me, Weezer is like a girl you dated a long time ago but the relationship ended too soon. After which you romanticize the relationship and build it up in your mind. Then you get back together and realize the relationship wasn't that great in the first place.

I can still listen to Blue and Pinkerton any day of the week, they're just great albums but I have been sour on Weezer's output ever since the Green album, which at the time felt like the musical equivalent of The Phantom Menace. And it's actually gone downhill from there.

That hasn't stopped me buying all of their albums, because I'm always left hoping that next time they'll change. If I ever date a woman with a bad temper and fists like granite, I'm in real trouble.

I didn't know about the bands reputation for being assholes, though, I had heard they were kinda antisocial but I didn't know it was "sadistic pervert" bad. I won't ask for examples because this isn't the gossip forum. Their asshole reputation isn't really too big a surprise, though, having seeing them live a few times. They've got this really insincere quality when they're on stage.

EDIT: And, after reading this thread, Brett Ratner has raised in my estimation.

Wow, now I feel even worse for being mistaken for Rivers Cuomo once.

I agree that their first two albums are rock and roll masterpieces and I think they've just got progressively worse with every album since. I don't really mind, though. The way I see it, they're just not an 'album' band anymore. Like Green Day. Here are two bands who you used to be able to count on to always be able to deliver an entire consistent album of good to great songs.

Now they put out albums that are mostly filler or really bad crap and you just have to pick and choose the good stuff. I was pleasantly surprised that the last album had three songs on it that I liked more than anything they'd done on their previous two albums ("Pork and Beans", "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived", and "The Angel and the One"). I'm sure they'll never put out another classic album like the first two, but a couple of decent tracks per album a'int too shabby. And Rivers Cuomo's solo stuff was pretty good. Especially the second volume.

I've often gone on about how disappointed I am that Weezer squandered the potential they showed on their first two albums and I wonder how much that had to do with losing one of their founding members before the third one. Supposedly more knowledgeable fans of the group deny Matt Sharp was that influential over the band's music, but I have trouble believing that. You listen to his band The Rentals (at least their early stuff) and you can see there's definitely a great quirky vibe he brought to the band with his falsetto vocals and bass that's missing from their output since he left.

I really thought after those first two albums they could be the next Nirvana - not in terms of the sonic power of their music, but in terms of stature, because the lyrics were so impressively odd and original, yet empathetic and deep emotionally. The third and fourth albums made me kinda wish they'd died in a plane crash after Pinkerton. Then they definitely would have been the new Nirvana.

I don't think this is true. I was a young adult when the blue album came out, but I never really sat down and listened to it and Pinkerton until a few years into their hiatus, when I was already in my late 20s. They're superb albums, particularly Pinkerton, and that's not a matter of nostalgia for me.

On a superficial level, did the sound change on subsequent albums? Maybe not. The instrumentation didn't change much, Cuomo was still writing fuzzy pop rock songs.

But the lyrics ceased to be funny where they used to be funny, they stopped sounding heartfelt where they used to be embarassingly personal (on Pinkerton, especially, but even the blue album had moments of vulnerability that came off as genuine), and they started sounding like afterthoughts, in general. That wonderful looseness in performance that they cultivated on Blue and perfected on Pinkerton was totally gone.

The green album is one of the least auspicious comeback albums of all time. It takes no risks and sounds not like a band reinvigorated, but a band in a holding pattern (for comparison's sake, consider Portishead who reinvented themselves during their hiatus or Mission of Burma, who didn't at all, but were still pushing themselves as they did in their first run). Maladroit, if similarly shallow in the songwriting department, at least gets by on energy and a little more variety. I find it hard to believe that anyone can defend what followed on the basis of anything other than brand loyalty and even harder to believe that anyone would put the almost impossibly stupid songs from the red album up against anything on the first two. "Pork and Beans" has decent music that only works if you ignore every single word of the lyrics.

Is there another band named Green Day? There must be, 'cause the one I'm thinking of doesn't fit your description.

I think it's a description of Bizarro Green Day, the one that hasn't released better albums but less infectious singles as the years have passed. They're kind of under the radar.

hahahaha Green Day

It's cute how they're all political now

Especially considering the first album I heard from them was named after poop, their name refers to weed, and their first hit single was about jerking off. Watch out Bob Dylan.

Seriously, they're like protest rock for people that think bumper stickers are a valid form of expression.

Yeah, that's the Green Day I was thinking about. The one with the poop record.

Don't get me wrong, I liked Dookie, especially when I was 16 and it came out. I just find it hard to take a band politically seriously when their first platinum album featured cartoon dogs throwing shit at each other on the cover, and contains at least two songs about masturbation.

I'm not saying a band isn't allowed to mature, I'm just saying I'm allowed to reject the maturation. Also, I'm pretty sure this Weezer thread has been sufficiently Green Day derailed.

Didn't plan to derail by mentioning Green Day, but I guess one way I can explain how they're relevant to discussion of Weezer's deterioration is that with both bands, some people seem to forget they were a good band in the first place due to how much of a farce they've become. Are some of you not even aware that they had two albums before "Dookie"?

Those first two albums were no "Blue" or "Pinkerton", but they had some endearingly sweet and heartfelt love songs with simple, but eloquent and straightforward lyrics on them and they were actually pretty low-key garage rock-style works. They were solid. Fun, unpretentious, and much of the time catchy as hell. Really the polar opposite of most of the junk they're putting out these days.

Yeah, and Dookie was a really great album, actually. I just think it's funny that people over 15 think Green Day is still edgy and relevant.

Ben Kweller has recorded more good Weezer songs post-Pinkerton than Weezer has.

I'm pretty sure that these are people who find out about hot new music from MTV.

It's hip! It's now! It's something your parents will buy for you!

You know, Maladroit is really not that bad. Compared to Make Believe it's really good, but that's not saying much at all. Give it another listen. It's actually better than the Green Album in some ways. On the Green Album it wasn't really personal and just felt like safe, calculated, pop songs.

Maladroit, while still feeling less personal, has some decent guitar work and solos, and sounds more experimental.

I don't think there's any doubt that Matt Sharp was highly influential on the first two albums - especially Pinkerton. Anyone who's listened to The Rentals and Weezer post Pinkerton can determine who was the creative force behind the band. Rivers Cuomo might have wrote the vocals and created the basic structure of their songs on the Blue album, but I think both Ric Ocasek and Matt Sharp heavily contributed to the sound of the album. Then Pinkerton sounds like a step in between "The Return of the Rentals" and "Seven More Minutes" by The Rentals - with Rivers on lead vocals.

For anyone interested in Matt Sharp, his recent EP's with the reformed Rentals have been really solid. Even the couple mundane songs on their last 3 EPs puts most post-Pinkerton Weezer songs to shame.
Also, while Sharp seems like a pretty big hipster, he's pretty down to earth in real life. The couple of times I saw his solo shows in Omaha he was pretty funny and humble. River's sounds like a douche sandwich, but I think Matt Sharp just might be a little quirky/artsy.

After hearing the first single in its entirety, I actually really like it. A pleasant surprise. Nothing revolutionary, but it's a less "typical Weezer" single than Pork N' Beans was.

http://supjustin.com/index.php?optio...ers-new-single

As for Weezer's decline, I'm one of the few that actually likes Maladroit and finds moments of true Weezer greatness on The Red Album... So while I think they've gone downhill, the situation could be much, much worse. The song "Pig" from TRA might be the best thing Rivers Cuomo's ever done.

That said, Make Believe was still flat out terrible.

I like Maladroit, but I like all their albums.

I really like the new single, but have to balance that against the fact that Girl Got Hot is...ok, I'm Your Daddy is embarrassing and Can't Stop Partying has been butchered by the full band treatment, as fans feared it might.

I'm glad to see others that are on board with "Maladroit." I've always appreciated the energy, vitality, weirdness, and rock-the-fuck-out vibe that runs through that album.

It's far more fun than either of the albums that surround it, in my estimation.

The album is called "Raditude".

I eagerly anticipate the cover art.

Frankly, I think a lot of the problem here is that some of you seriously overvalue the first couple of albums. They're good, but fucking please. Masterpieces? If Weezer's first album is a masterpiece, we'd better come up with a new term for what Sgt Pepper was, because they're not in the same league.

At their best, Weezer was a good pop band. Anything more than that is teen angst talking.

I want to hear more about this sadistic pervert stuff, so I can tell my coworker that still likes them.

To be honest, I want to hear about it too. I was just trying to pretend I was taking the high road on this stuff.

Good pop is what I like, though.

And, actually, I don't rate the blue album as high as some, but I put Pinkerton up there with the great, messy, unhinged personal pop statement albums like Big Star Third and In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.

Plus, Sgt. Pepper's barely in the same genre. It's a brilliantly illustrated, meticulously arranged children's book, and Pinkerton's a funny, crazy memoir that's the very opposite of neat and orderly. Plastic Ono Band is probably the better analogy.

I must confess I am a fan of the self-titled album with a different background color schtick. I'm assuming we'll see The Purple Album after Raditude.

If Pinkerton doesn't even get consideration for a slot in someone's 'Top Ten of the 90's' list I'm not sure I want to know that person.

"Top ten of the nineties" is one thing. But "Masterpiece" is a very strong word.

And Dave, I wasn't really concerned with genres or styles. Both albums are, in the end, pop/rock records, and as such, I don't think are apples and oranges.