My bouts with Weezer

If you’ve been 16 at any point in the last fifteen years, you’ve undoubtedly had a favorite Weezer album (or at least a favorite single). As a result, Weezer is both one of my most hated and most loved bands. They were exactly what I needed when I was 16, and they’re exactly what 16 year olds are looking for today. It’s not that the demographic hasn’t changed at all (look at awkward geeky fans of the early career and the teenie-bopper fans of their later career), but they’re still playing music for the youth. They’re no longer playing music for me. In fact, they stopped a long time ago. However, I’m just now coming to terms with this.

I’d like to take you through a musical journey here: album-by-album, stage-by-stage.

The early years: Blue & Pinkerton

I’ll be honest–during this period of time I was still going through my ska/punk phase so I didn’t give Weezer much more than a glance–it’s only once I started highschool that I realized exactly how incredible these albums were. This is the stage of Weezer’s career that we all like to believe they still embody: the geeky high school kids playing dungeons & dragons, then taking a break to write awkwardly catchy power-pop songs about goofing off, vulnerability, girls, and pop culture. They had a sound that was incredibly tight musically yet it had a rough feel to it as if the guys had just picked up their instruments and immediately were bestowed the talent with which to play them–they merely had to write the songs. They can match pitch (sometimes), the rhythms have a simplistic yet unconventional 4/4 chugging feel and the solos often sound a little chaotic (as if they were just messing around and said “hey, that sounds pretty cool… do that again”). It sounded like Pixies mixed with Green Day (and a little bit of Violent Femmes thrown in for good measure).

Once Pinkerton was recorded, the band had adopted a more mature sound (well, they were sounding 18 instead of 16) and the songs had a much more conceptual feel to them. Oh, it was still awkwardly catchy power-pop, don’t get me wrong, but there seemed to be more purpose and truth in the songs than in Blue’s feel-good aesthetic. It seemed like there was much more emotional investment in this record. It bombed. Today it’s considered their masterpiece.

The second coming: Green, Maladroit, & Make Believe

Weezer took 5 years before releasing another album after Matt Sharp left to pursue The Rentals full-time. When Green was finally released, it had so much hype behind it that it was immediately picked up by mainstream culture. Not only that, but Weezer had learned how to harmonize. Their instrumentals were tighter and there seemed to be more method to their songs (verse-chorus-verse, solos that echo the verse structure). Basically, they didn’t sound like Weezer anymore. Fans lauded it as a more accessible (although Weezer was always accessible IMO), less awkward, and even more catchy pop record. Critics and former-fans claimed it sounded like it was shat out of a factory that churned out mediocre pop records with mass appeal. Where was the geeky awkwardness and the rough-around-the-edges sound that they had adored so much when they were 16?!

Maladroit was then released with a bit more sensitivity to the old Weezer fans and was as close as they’ve come to their old-style since the release of Green. It had longer solos that didn’t merely sound like the verse on guitar and it had hooks that had less of a mass-produced sound to them. However, it had almost completely foregone its pop-punk roots and had matured incredibly in its musical style (more complex rhythms that no longer focused on power chords). Unfortunately, this is not what the old fans were looking for either.

Make Believe was just garbage. It was eaten up by 2005’s MTV demographic. It sounded like they had given up on integrity.

“We’re Weezer, what do you want?!”: The Red Album

After the amazing sales of Make Believe yet the loss of whatever dignity their music had left, Weezer was left with one option: to say “Fuck it. Let’s write some pop songs.” The Red Album was released in 2008. All that needs to be said can be said in their near-six-minute anthem, ‘The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn).’ It’s obvious that Weezer doesn’t want to be the Weezer that we loved when we were 16, they want to be Weezer for the 16 year-olds in today’s world… and they don’t give a shit what you think.

Same as it Ever Was

Well, I’ve received some gripes that my blog posts aren’t “personal” enough. I’m not sure that I ever wanted this to be a blog about myself in a self-report kind of way, but I don’t see how any blog is impersonal as it reflects the interests and style of the writer.

In order to appease the masses of readers that visit my blog daily (how much is a mass? 16? Let’s say 16), I’ve decided to go ahead and include part of a short story that I’ve been writing… haltingly… and hopefully hear some comments as to what works and what doesn’t. For example, if you start to get bored with it, tell me exactly what makes you feel that way. I don’ t have much of a community of writers over here, so hopefully this will work as some sort of a proxy.

I don’t want to say too much, because I don’t want to influence any first impressions, but I’ll make a few more comments afterwards. I’m not sure how to get the formatting quite right on the blog here, so please forgive that. Anyways, the tentative title is “Same as it Ever Was” (and clever readers will recognize that allusion).

Water flowing underground.

Christian’s hazel eyes rose from the black jacket of his spiral-bound day planner to strafe the empty seats surrounding him. Their blue and red knit lining hinted at padding, but the coarse, scratchy fabric underneath Christian’s pants told him otherwise. As he let his head fall backwards and rest against the translucent window behind him, he was comforted knowing that onlookers would never see past the ten foot tall ‘Clearasil’ ad that was chugging along at 35 MPH; they would never see his grayish-blond hair pressed flat against the opposite side and think to themselves, “Well, there goes Monday.”

“Dude. You, uh… you… okay?”

In his cursory glance, Christian had failed to notice the single other passenger on board. As a result, he was startled at the sound of another voice. Sitting up and bringing his head forward once more, Christian appraised his new companion: He was large. Large doesn’t really begin to describe it, however. This man was large in a way that poor dieting doesn’t sufficiently account for—he was large in a medical kind of way. He had long, dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and he spoke with unintentional pauses that might seem thoughtful for some, but in this case indicated a possibility of heavy drug use—but Christian was not one to judge.

“Dude?” the man reiterated.

Christian collected himself, breathed in heavily through his nose, met the man’s gaze and responded with a very casual, “What’s up?”

“You… uh… you just looked kind of… out of it?” The man had a way of making statements sound like questions by raising his voice at the end of his sentences. “…and you’re like… kind of… sweating a lot? Like, a whole lot.”

Christian hadn’t noticed before, but now that he was sitting up he could feel his once-white button down shirt stick to his back. As Christian searched his pants’ pocket for a handkerchief, the man continued speaking.

“’Cause… I mean… I’m like… a big dude, y’know? I sweat a lot… but man, I was just worried that maybe you were… like… y’know… sick or something?”

“Well, thanks for your concern, but I’m really alright. I just…” Christian stopped for a moment to think about what he was saying before he continued: “I think… I think I missed my stop.”

The man nodded and leaned back, stretching his arms back behind the adjacent seats. After a few moments, he looked over at Christian and said, “Uh… aren’t you gonna, y’know, get off? ‘Cause, I mean—”

“No, I um… I know what you mean. I just… I think I’m going to stay on the bus for a while.”

The perplexed look on the man’s face was not surprising for Christian, he wasn’t sure he knew what he was saying either.

“Are you lost?”

“I don’t know… I just feel like getting off would be a bad idea.”

“Um… okay… I uh… I’m just gonna… sit over here for a while, dude. Um, maybe you should ask the driver to… uh… turn up the AC… or something?”

“I’ll be okay, thanks though.”

“Okay… well… nice, uh… nice talking to you.”

Christian gave what he felt was a confident smile and his gaze once more fell upon his day-planner.

So, that’s the first section. Actually, I’m not sure if that’s going to be first, but it’s the first part that I wrote. I’m not completely happy with it yet. In fact, I’m pretty far from happy with it. So please, any criticism you can give would be helpful. Basically, it revolves around the central character (Christian) as a passive “protagonist” and his encounters with people on the bus–the bus being a metaphor for life taking him along its course without him actively trying to change it.

I’ve already tried many times to have a passive central character in my stories (as much as I’ve been advised otherwise), so I’ll see if I can pull it off more successfully with this endeavor.

Public Enemy stands the test of time

Every now and then you’re listening to music (on your phonograph, obviously) and you hear a song that you haven’t heard in ages. The nostalgia forces you put the whole album on, and, every now and then, you end up listening to this album on repeat for the next week. I present to you…

…Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.

Now, I’ll admit I never got into PE until my late highschool/early college years, and I was still just in elementary school (or… god… kindergarten) when the group was in its golden years, but this is easily one of my favorite early rap artists. It’s kind of funny, because artists like PE and NWA were always considered too “topical” (or the dreaded “hardcore” label) for little white suburban kids when I was young. Now if you ask most white hipsters what their favorite rap artists are–chances are they’ll name both groups (and they’ll go on to sing Straight Outta Compton without a pause). My guess is it’s because (comparatively) old-school rap has become “safe” for white kids to like now and these names hold an incredible amount of legitimacy for their influence.

Anyways, to get on with the post, I wanted to mention how incredible it is that ITaNoMtHUB (mmmm… acronyms) is still absolutely relevant today. Not lyrically or topically, necessarily, but in its quality as a musical endeavor. Take a look at Bring the Noise. Despite Flav’s antics (which are now even more silly considering his television debut) that thumping bass at the beginning of the song and especially at the beginning of the second verse is WAY ahead of its time (brings to mind the bassline that comes in at the end of the first chorus in Lil Wayne’s aptly named Fuck You from his 2002 album, 500 Degreez or the intro to Clipse’s 2002 club anthem, When the Last Time). My point is that it was quite some time before bass that deep and that aggressive became popular again.

The last two weeks or so, I’ve been listening to ITaNoMtHUB pretty close to non-stop while I’ve been at work marking (oh yeah, I get some pretty funny looks from my Singaporean colleagues when they see me in my cubicle bobbing my head and throwin’ up my hand every time Chuck D shouts “Bass!”).

For more audio/video pleasure, here are two videos of PE putting on a more recent show at the House of Blues: Rebel Without a Pause and Bring the Noise. Some of the best showmanship I’ve seen in a rap group. However, I wish they wouldn’t play the vocals from the audio track behind the live vocals. It cheapens the effect (and they obviously don’t need it).

Garfield sans Garfield

I actually stumbled across this site/blog some months ago, but it came to my attention again recently and I felt like I should share it with my wide fan-base (ahem).

I’ve always been a pretty big fan of the Garfield comic strip (and the old cartoon, for that matter) but I definitely know some people who don’t feel much of a connection to it. I think this concept pleases both audiences, as it really does create a whole new strip–but at the same time lingers with the knowledge that something is missing. The neuroses of Jon Arbuckle really come through when he’s the main character in a way that they never did when Garfield got all the attention.

Here are a few more that I think are pretty good:

There are plenty more on the blog, so give it a look-see.

Marquee Moon & Protopunk etc.

Friction came on my iPod today while I was at lunch, eating a big plate of Chinese food (sometimes when you skip breakfast you have to have a super-big lunch in order to compensate–Chinese food always hits the spot for size and cheapness) and it occurred to me that this might be a good place to start my first blog post: at the beginning of one of my favorite musical genres.

While I wouldn’t call Television a protopunk band, it definitely existed within a similar time-frame as such protopunk notables as MC5 and The Stooges. Now, these other two bands were actually disbanding close to when Television was forming, and they’re credited with having some of the most immediate influence on the first punk rock bands (see Kick Out the Jams and Raw Power) because of their stripped-down sound, but Television shared this sentiment while retaining the fairly lengthy songs and jams that were distinctive of the late 60s sound. As a result, they don’t quite sound like a jam band, and they have the rough, untrained yet seemingly talented manner that so closely resembles the early pioneers of punk rock. Furthermore, you can hear some inklings of the Glam/Prog rock that was beginning to form in the late 60s and 70s (I included their song, Venus on my mix for our “Gods & Goddesses” party recently–nothing reeks of prog rock like songs about greek or roman mythology). Richard Hell (the lead singer and most notable personality of the group) would later go on to form Richard Hell & the Voidoids–a very important band in the initial punk rock movement with its song Blank Generation.

Give this band a chance, for sure. The album, Marquee Moon, is one of the most important to come out of the 70s and remains an incredible listen to this day.

Stay a while and listen.

Well, I suppose I should use this post to introduce my blog here. If you’ve found yourself on my couch, chances are you were directed there by me. If you’re here on accident (happy or otherwise), drop a comment and let me know who you are and what you think about anything/everything.

My plan is to use this blog as a means to discuss my thoughts. They’re important, so pay attention!

But in all seriousness, my most common forms of posting will likely be music reviews, things that amuse me, and thoughts that I’ve been meaning to get down. Perhaps I’ll post snippets of a short story I’m working on.

The title of the blog–A Missing Chromosome–is stolen from a song by The Mars Volta which was released on several B-Side albums and demos and called “A Plague Upon Your Hissing.” Furthermore, the title refers to a chromosomal disorder known as Turner Syndrome which is marked by developmental impairment and hormonal deficiencies. It only occurs in women and, among other more obvious symptoms, leads to very late (if any) onset of puberty. I take liberal interpretation of this to apply it to my blog in the sense that I am very late to the blogging scene and it is quite up in the air as to how or when it will mature into something more concrete.

As to my own background–chances are you already know me. If you don’t, here’s a little summary:

I grew up in Kentucky (although only 15 minutes from downtown Cincinnati, Ohio) and went to school at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. There I studied Psychology and Creative Writing. Currently I’m teaching psychology at a polytechnic in Singapore (and am quite happy to be out of the midwest I grew up in).

That’s the scaffolding, at least. I’m sure you’ll learn much more about me if you browse around.

Anyways, I’ll spend the rest of the evening trying to decide what to make of my first “actual” post. So “stay a while and listen” (Cain, 1997).