With Green Day, Weezer are truly the granddads of modern emo. So, like I did with those Berkeley punkers, let’s take a look at the progenitors of geek rock.
Weezer – Blue Album – 1994 (iTunes – Amazon)
I’m not sure I will ever get used to the feeling I get when I fire up Blue Album by Weezer. The opening track, a ¾ time epic about turn of the century union workers called “My Name is Jonas” is an modern alternative classic. But it’s really more than that. It’s a salvo. For a band that named itself after an asthmatic Little Rascal (I’m not sure they did it on purpose but, hell, it’s true), one would expect exactly what they present on the cover: Nerd Rock. But these nerds are different than all the offspring they spawned like Bowling for Soup and Nerf Herder. Rivers Cuomo wants to be cool. It isn’t just with irony that he laces his songs with the occasional hip hop reference. One gets the sense that he loves that stuff. So, it’s earnest. As is his longing. And what is the best rock, really, but desperate and longing? He isn’t shy about his desire to be obsessed. He wants a girlfriend that is just as desperate for him. And it’s sort of creepy (No One Else) but it’s so honest that you can’t help but get caught up in his need. The songs are also so damned poppy that how could they not be a hit? Would they have been so without the videos crafted by Spike Jonze? Yeah, I think so. Because Cuomo and Weezer are the other side of the Nirvana coin. They touched an important nerve and in doing so, almost single handedly created the entire sub-genre of Emo.
I’ve been asked so many times what “Emo” is. I get asked the same question about “Power Pop”. Strangely enough, Weezer is the epitome of both. Emo, as I take it, is emotional music. Dudes who wear their hearts on their sleeves and their needs as close to stalker as you can get without a warrant. But the music has tremendous melody and the teeth are in the content not in the sound. Although, it almost goes without saying that Rivers wants to have those teeth. He wishes he was in Van Halen, because the sound embraces the stadium anthem rock made great by those cock-of-the-walk rockers of yore.
But, his references, “I’m Buddy Holly and ooh-ooh, you’re Mary Tyler Moore”? Gen X all the way.
Dungeon Master’s Guide, 12 sided die, Kitty Pryde and Nightcrawler from X-Men. Ace Frehley and Peter Criss and posters of Kiss. (Which I think is telling inasmuch as Cuomo doesn’t name check Paul Stanley or Gene Simmons. Why should he? He doesn’t relate to those guys. Simmons could never write “Beth” and Stanley is nowhere near the guitarist Frehley ever was).
This is the quintessential slacker album wrapped in the energy of forward motion. It’s positively brilliant.
Grade A
A Side: Buddy Holly, In The Garage, My Name is Jonas,
BlindSide: No One Else, Undone (The Sweater Song), Say it Ain’t So
DownSide: Only in Dreams
