Boston's Alternative Source!
Feedback

[Live & On Record]

Weezer:
SWEATER WEATHER

It’s impossible not to like Weezer fans. Young, cute, scruffily dressed in a tidy sort of way, bright, fun, innocent. Not that they haven’t smoked the occasional joint or perhaps suffered a few awkward post-coital meltdowns — not that they haven’t, that is, been subjected to toil and to tragedy. But their spirits have not been dulled by their woes, and conversely, their wits have been sharpened. New and sweatered, they arrived at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium last Sunday fresh and ready and willing. The building, with its formal gilded-ribbon inlays and grand archway, was small enough to suggest something introspectively self-contained, an open secret. And it was big enough that you were likely to run into a bunch of people from your school and maybe even your friends’ friends from their school in the next town over. All of you have been united for these past five years, for you have been Weezer fans without a Weezer, and now — again, finally, jeez — they’re back. The band that wrote Pinkerton!

The back-to-school vibe — a recurrent visual theme, going back to the band’s Happy Days–quoting video — endured in a stage decked out in prom-night chic: wooden bleachers, basketball backboards, crepe paper in the rafters, the awkward extroverted gestures of natural introverts under the spell of rash romantic trauma and timeless, raucous pop tunes. To repeat: Weezer fans, impossible to dislike. Singing along and flashing devil-horn/Wu-Tang hand signs (oh, right, W for Weezer, I get it) with as much enthusiasm for Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” blasting from the PA — which kicks up right after the Get Up Kids and their flailing, miraculous, we-just-discovered-the-’70s emo-pop anthems — as for their iconic geek-rock idol Rivers Cuomo crooning “Jonas.” Because, like, “The workers are going home” is not necessarily a natural sing-along chorus; but it’s a tribute to the hook-writing savvy of the author and the gameness of his following that those words could erupt with such good feeling and feverish, melancholic optimism.

Deep album tracks like “Jonas” (and “You Gave Your Love” and “Tired of Sex” and the encore, “Surfwax America”) were the prized tunes in the set list, which, after all, was drawn mostly from a catalogue numbering all of two albums (both legendary despite the commercial flop of the second). During the new tunes — “Island in the Sun,” “Don’t Let Go,” and a harder-rocking “Hash Pipe,” all from a comeback album expected in the next month or so — the kids stood scary still. Hard to tell: nonplussed? Unlikely. Committing every note to memory? Probably. Pressing the “REC” button on their micro-mini-MP3-uploader-thingies? Possibly. And then it was, as Cuomo announced, “back to the oldies,” and all of a sudden, all in a row: “Say It Ain’t So,” “Buddy Holly,” and “Undone (The Sweater Song).” Pandemonium erupts. Someone is crowd surfing. A piece of female undergarment hits the stage, and then another. Some punk dives off the balcony, ensuring that henceforth he will be known to casual acquaintances as “that crazy motherfucker who jumped off the balcony at Weezer — during the chorus of the Sweater Song!” And there you have it: another night of footnoted rock-and-roll history, done and undone.

BY CARLY CARIOLI

Issue Date: March 8 - 15, 2001