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 Keep It Simple
Van Morrison
Roger McGuinn @ the Huntington IMAC, Long Island, NY - April 4, 2008
Emily Saxe @ the Allen Room/Jazz at Lincoln Center - April 5, 2008
Another Country
Tift Merritt
Be Your Own Pet
Get Awkward
Paul McCartney – The McCartney Years (DVD)
Juno – Music from the Motion Picture
Various Artists
Yes - Their Definitive Story
Day and Night Driving
Seven Mary Three
InterMedia Arts Center 2/2/08
Huntington, NY
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Weezer
I wonder how far rock/pop music has come since 1979. Sometimes, it seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Weezer is a good case in point, since they seem to be gaining steadily in popularity, while utilizing tools that were in full use back in the post-punk late-‘70s era. Other than the rip-off-your-head guitar production featured on virtually every track, this album would have fit in quite nicely with the developing ‘new wave’. Weezer might have been competition for the Cars, or headliners for the Vapors, the Violent Femmes, or any number of proto-new-wavers.
Maladroit opens with a drumbeat that is exactly identical to XTC’s "Making Plans for Nigel", before it launches off on its own syncopated path. Cheap Trick seems to be hidden around the corner on almost any of these tracks, but never to the point where you can deny the original talents of Weezer’s chief singer/songwriter Rivers Cuomo. Like anybody, he has influences, but odds are that these arrangements were not at all designed to concoct visions of a two-decades old ‘golden age’. Instead, they sound positively contemporary, which is exactly why I pose my opening question. Have we come full circle, only with a new generation inserted in the youth slot? Weezer has a way of making me feel old, and yet their sound is so familiar to me. It’s only likely to think that the kids at their shows are appreciating them for much the same reasons that I once enjoyed, say, the Talking Heads, but while my tastes have, umm, moved on, a new generation has taken my place, and changed the relevant label to "Emo".
You can call it whatever you want, but to me, this is simply good rock and roll, in the classic sense of the term. There are riffs galore, each song has its own identity, and the melodies stick. Lyrically, Cuomo combines ridiculous non-sequitors with emotionally stiff zingers. "Cheese smells so good on a burnt piece of lamb. Fag of the year who could beat up your man" is just one example of this dichotomy, and it makes for interesting listening. What’s serious? What’s tossed off? Does it matter? Maybe in another twenty years, when these guys are as old as Rik Ocasek and Robin Zander, we’ll have figured it out, but it’ll be another group of kids listening to other groups by then anyway. All that is left is to appreciate Weezer as this generation’s version of classic contemporary pop, and hope that by 2020 it will still have legs to stand on. I’m betting that it will.
Grade: 
 
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