Archive for April, 2009

So here we are again with the second batch of Weezer songs. It’s been kind of a slow week here on the blog. Partly because I’m fighting some kind of bug or cold which has resulted in stuffed ears, and partly because nothing has really inspired me this week. That said, this week we’ll be back into the swing of things properly, starting off with more Weezer songs that if you’re a fan you probably have and if you’re not, you probably don’t care about. Oh well.

Throwaway nonsense just about redeemed by some rather impressive guitar work.

Wow, Rivers with an inferiority complex. Now that’s certainly a novel theme for a song. Joking aside though, it’s probably what Rivers does best when it comes to his songwriting, so unsurprisingly this is a pretty solid song. It’s another of the aborted album five recordings, meaning it never really got developed all that far, but what is here is pretty damn good.

Rivers loves football. Apparently Domingo is a footballer. That’s about all I have on this one.

One of the better songs that never amounted to anything, How Long? seemingly charts that last phase of a relationship. That part where you both know that it’s falling apart yet ignore that and carry on regardless. Musically it’s pretty simplistic stuff, but it could have turned into something very good.

Lyrically it’s pretty non-sensical, but the most interesting part about Little Songs is how Rivers seems able to rebuild a song from the ground up. I may have my timeline confused a little here, but the instrumentation on this song was originally used in another Weezer song entitled We Go Together that the band played live a lot back in 2001. This version of the song is completely different from the original, yet the core of it still remains intact, which is something of an impressive feat.

More piano goodness to be found on this one. Another one of the album 5 demo recordings than never made it any further. Which is quite a shame as it’s a really nice song.

A rare case of Rivers singing in the third person here. Seemingly a story about a homeless man who is actually quite happy with his lot in life (”He’s on his own / He likes it that way”). A world full of homeless people huddling under bridges is hardly massively original imagery, but it’s different enough to warrant a little attention. If only to prove Rivers can come up with something that isn’t misery or drugs.

An absolutely insane song, with guitar work that sounds like it just stumbled in from the big rock era of the 80s. Trying to keep up with the lyrics is pretty much a lost cause, so it’s not hard to see why the song was abandoned, but I still find it to be a lot of fun.

The first song where Rivers seemed to get vocally pissed at the press (and the fans?) for their constant negativity about recent Weezer material. It isn’t exactly the greatest of comebacks (”Now to my challengers / Still think with little words / You’re so upset you’re pissing on yourself”), but the sound of the song makes it unique enough for me to post it here. I think this may have been Rivers’ first dabble in the rap-rock genre, but I’m not too sure. There’s also a story floating about that this was written for Axl Rose to sing, but he dropped out so Rivers did it himself. I’ve no idea how much truth there is that, but it makes it all the more curious.

One of the few “lost songs” that is regarded almost as a band staple despite never having been released. If you were a Weezer fan back around the time of The Green Album, you knew Modern Dukes. The band played it live at just about every gig for a few years. Various recordings of it floated around the internet. It was even recorded in demo form for two different albums, but never made it to either. Which is a shame as it’s really bloody good.

That’s the halfway mark. Come back over the next two Sundays for the rest. Assuming swine flu hasn’t killed us all.

It’s been three years since I last posted up the Great Lost Weezer Songs collection. To this day, it remains the content that I’m asked most often to re-post. I’ve shied away from doing so for most of the intervening period, but listening to some of these again recently has changed my mind once more. As such, the 2009 edition of Great Lost Weezer Songs will contain more recordings than any previous version, clocking in at almost 40 tracks. Some of the songs posted in 2006 are no included as they have become commercially available as part of the Rivers Cuomo Alone releases. A handful of these are alternative versions of songs that eventually appeared on albums. The vast majority are original songs that never really got beyond the demo stage. Some are great. Others not so much. However, if you’re a fan of the band, they will most certainly be interesting.

This is the first collection of tracks. The rest will be posted on Sundays over the next month. Part 2 will be available on April 25. Part 3 will be available on May 2. The final part will be available on May 9. Depending on how much bandwidth this uses (previously it was a lot) I may have the remove the songs of the previous week before posting any new ones. With that in mind, you might want to grab them while you can.

A more mellow song that one comes to expect from Weezer. It was originally recorded with the intention of being a part of ‘Maladroit’, but like a ton of these songs, was eventually scrapped for no obvious reason. It covers pretty standard Rivers territory lyrically (guy finds perfect girl, perfect girl leaves), but it’s simplicity and brevity makes the song come across as far lighter fare.

This is the song that closest matches the style of “current” Weezer, meaning it’s weaker than most of the ones here, but as current Weezer goes, it’s actually pretty good. The lyrics are pretty dumb and simplistic, but it’s short and manages to rock pretty well in the meantime.

Booby Trap is from the period where Rivers wrote pretty simplistic songs, but it’s one of the better ones to fall into this category. And there’s something oddly enjoyable about Rivers asking “am I just going mental?” over and over.

Sadly not a song about the John Travolta / Christian Slater smackdown of the same name. Instead, it’s a Rivers standard about lamenting a relationship that has either ended or is ending. Not one of their greatest in all fairness, but it still remains rather catchy.

Burndt Jamb obviously ended up on Maladroit in entirely different forms. It started off as an impressive little instrumental song. It then had rather good lyrics added to it. These lyrics were then replaced with non-sensical drivel. Guess which version ended up making the album. Yeah. Anyway, this instrumental is actually rather good in that it is far more elaborate in it’s construction than the finished album version.

Another Weezer song where the fans are seemingly taken to task over how fickle they were following the Pinkerton to Green debacle. This seems to be a theme in a bunch of the songs from one particular time, something that manifested itself properly on certain Maladroit songs.

The strangest song here, and unfortunately I can’t remember any story behind it. I remember it being posted to the website out of the blue with a couple of other “unique” sounding songs, but nothing more ever seemed to come of any of them. I’m inclined to think it was a joke more than anything else, but it’s certainly amusing. I really don’t have the words to describe it, but if I didn’t know it was Weezer, I probably wouldn’t believe it if someone told me that was the case. It’s just downright bizarre, although any rock band who can feature whistling in their songs gets a thumbs up from me.

I’m not really a fan of instrumentals but this one manages to work for me. Probably because it wasn’t intended to be one. Working from pure speculation, I’m going to assume that this was intended to be a full song with lyrics and all, but it just never got any further along than this stage. Which is quite a shame as there’s a lot of potential in it.

Like Burndt Jamb, Death and Destruction started off as an instrumental that had silly lyrics added to it by the time it made an album. This version is enjoyable if only for how wonderfully melancholy it all sounds even without words and the little flourishes that appear every now and then.

This concludes the first collection. Remember that the rest will be posted over the next three Sundays.