My Poproks

To celebrate the current stream of Weezer’s new single “Pork and Beans,” off of their up-coming self titled ‘Red Album,’ I decided to kill a few minutes at work recalling the influence of Weezer in my life, which not surprisingly for a kid who came of age in the 90’s, was pretty damn big.

I remember the first time I heard “Buddy Holly” on the radio (when I was still morally complacent with listening to rock radio in New York). I immediately put a blank cassette tape in my brand new CD player/Tape deck/FM Radio that my mom had gotten me for my 12th birthday (that makes me….umm…), and I taped that sucker the very next time it came on.

I brought the tape into school the next day and everyone thought I was just the coolest for being the first one to have it (now-a-days, we can all just stream the thing on their website 2 seconds after it’s released). Despite the fact that the cassette sounded like distorted fuzz with vocals, it changed my whole perspective of pop music, the way “Smells Like Teen Spirit” had done for 12 year olds just a few years earlier. My mother, who also loved Weezer, got me the album as soon as it came out. Weezer became a sort of family obsession. ‘The Blue Album’ cassette played in the car on the way to school, on road trips to Disney World, and of course, treks to Weezer concerts across state lines.

I had gotten a promotional copy of Pinkerton from my mother’s friend, who has single-handedly kept Disco Rama on West 4th in the Village open for the past 20 years. I remember people saying that Weezer was already over (including an RS review that tried to rip it to shreds, and eventually got a 5 star re-write). However, it was pretty obvious that the record was in a class of it’s own. Two of my best friends wouldn’t even be in my life if I hadn’t heard one of them singing the first lines of “Tired of Sex” at softball practice. The words “I love Pinkerton” were the start of a life-long friendship. My kind of people.

We started a band at some point before ‘Green’ hit, and we collectively tried to revolve our entire musical universe around the Weeze. The first songs we ever did were covers of “Jamie” and “Only in Dreams” (and a failed attempt at “El Scorcho”), we managed to get a show opening up for Mikey Welsh’s band at The Chance in Poughkeepsie, and we spent one summer making all day extravaganzas out of Weezer concerts, belting out “The Good Life” from the roof of my 94 Eclipse in the parking lot of the then Continental Airlines sponsored arena in East Rutherford, NJ (What’s it, Izod now?).

Good times.

When Maladroit first came out, I remember really loving it, occasionally referring to it as “the best Weezer album.” This was mostly to rebel against the late praise of Pinkerton, which really just helped the popularity of the mediocre ‘Green album’ (who has Pinkterton to thank for almost every ticket sold for its tour). One of the first album reviews I ever wrote was for Maladroit. In fact, it might have been the first (I gave it a 9 out of 10? Damn, that’s even more fanboy then my 9.0 for Odd Couple).

After that, me and Weezer parted ways. 2005’s Make Believe still hasn’t even entered my album collection (formally known as my CD collection). Though I quite enjoyed “We Are All on Drugs,” I simply ignored the record as if it never happened. I think I’ll have to get back on track with ‘Red,’ and reminisce of an adolescence that would have been a lot less fun without Rivers & Co.

The End.