Here I am writing about Weezer

Weezer released a surprise “covers” album this week, The Teal Album. My take from a Slack conversation yesterday:

I listened to the album twice this morning and my takeaway is that they covered everything just like you would want if you went to a bar that had a cover band

Nothing great about it, but they stay true to the originals so it’s easy to sing along.

That’s not the point though. Any time I talk about Weezer I’m reminded of the second time I saw them live. In fact, until tonight, I had completely forgotten about the first time I saw them live: at Q101’s Twisted Christmas 3 in Chicago, 1996. That just sparked a whole other train of memories!

But the second time! United Center, September 21, 2001, when they were touring for the Green Album.

I have this memory of disliking Weezer strongly after that show because I paid $40 for (likely) mediocre seats and they played for 45 minutes with a one song encore.

Now, my memory is probably off on quite a bit and some is hard to verify. It turns out that the ticket was $25 with a $6.40 service charge, so not quite 40. The setlist shows 17 songs and a 2 song encore. Weezer songs are short, so it’s entirely possible that’s why the set length seemed like nothing to me at the time. Memories are strange, so it’s entirely possible I chose to adjust details over time. 🙂

The other thing about that show is they had Cold as the opening band. Cold sounded nothing like Weezer and the crowd couldn’t stand it. It was the crowd’s booing that night in Chicago that resulted in Cold leaving the tour early. In trying to figure out why they were on tour with Weezer in the first place, I found that Rivers later worked with Cold on Stupid Girl, a song from their 2003 follow-up album. I can only assume he enjoyed something about their earlier work and asked them to join the tour.

So there you have it and now I’m done writing about Weezer.

P.S. If you haven’t seen this SNL sketch about Weezer, it’s one of the best.