Weezer
Blue Album [30th Super Deluxe Vinyl Box Set]
GEFFEN/UME
Thirty years ago when Weezer came out (there was no album color-coding at that point), I didn’t think much of Weezer—not Rivers Cuomo’s tears-in-your-home-brew brand of smart snark, nor his quartet’s metallic pet sounds, and definitely not Spike Jonze’s Happy Days video for “Buddy Holly.” Nope. Nope. Nope. Revved-up, wise-ass power-pop was the province of Cheap Trick, The Replacements, and XTC, and everybody else could blow raspberries.
It took me 20 years (and an interview with Ric Ocasek, the record’s producer) to fall in geek love with Cuomo’s big Blue world, a precious, way-over-the-top pop planetary sound expanded far beyond its slick origin story of 10 perfect songs in its new anniversary box set form with previously unreleased stuff like eight “Kitchen Tape” demos, 22 practice bits, six BBC radio recordings, and four tracks from their famed LMU sessions.
For the record, just because Ocasek’s sleek, hermetically sealed final productions of “Undone – The Sweater Song,” “Surf Wax America,” and “Say It Ain’t So” don’t grace the box set’s demos or garage moments doesn’t mean that Weezer was ever a primitive, rumbling quartet. Far from it. Not unlike Ocasek’s own ensemble The Cars before Queen’s producer Roy Thomas Baker took hold, garage-practice Weezer and kitchen-tape Weezer sounded nearly as raw-rich and full-blooded as the precious final product. Now that’s visionary.
Shifting lyrics, jumping tempos, and changing moods for wee early rarities such as the oft-discussed “Superman” (occasionally known as “The Road My Father Paved”) aren’t the stuff of tape hiss and noise reduction—this “Superman” was ready to leap tall record label buildings in a single bound. What is rough to the ear (and more handsome for it) is WB30’s raging live cuts from the 8121 Club (“Paperface”), Coconut Teaszer (“Conversationalist”), English Acid (“My Name Is Jonas”), Club Lingerie (“The World Has Turned and Left Me Here”), and much more. I think a box of early Weezer is the best thing I can own right now—that is, until the demos of Van Weezer are released.
