#and a bass guitarist in the human version

[kedreeva]

Whats your thoughts about the Hellfire Club scene with Eddie and Erica? I love it so much, and I love how he celebrates her for dragging his ass even tho she does it in front of all his friends. Would have loved to see more of their dynamic, we were robbed 😆😍

I do love it from his POV but PLEASE also consider hers: Dustin (DUSTIN) comes over to the middle school from the high school to request her presence (and it SURELY had to be a request, they were desperate) and help (again) and she turns up wearing an american flag, DND books held like a shield, head held high, and the boys flank her into the dungeon. She sees the king upon his throne, potentially scary knights to either side of him, and you know what goes through her head when he says no?

What's a king to a bard?

But like, here's the thing. She walks in knowing he needs her for this campaign. They either run the campaign with her, or they fail the campaign, or they don't run the campaign. He's not going to cancel. And his players aren't going to fail. She knows, going in, that he's going to let her play.

And like.... not for nothing but this is the kid that bargained for infinite free ice cream as payment for helping the Scoop's troop infiltrate a top secret underground Russian government facility performing interdimensional science shenanigans.

But HE doesn't know, when she walks in, who she is or what she's been through. He can't.

But... she says her name, and what's his reaction?

"So this is Sinclair's infamous sister."

Like. He might have said no to someone else (though her response to him saying no was points in her favor no matter what), but he's heard of her. There's only two ways that could have occurred: either the boys have talked about her, or other people have, gossip that travels all the way to the high school. I'm betting the former, and... well, the boys know what she's done. Regardless of "little sister" status, they all know she's a badass- Dustin especially. Dustin, with whom Eddie seems to be closest. Dustin, who thinks all of his friends are badasses (because they are).

So of COURSE Eddie has heard the name Erica Sinclair.

And he teases her, pushes to see how she'll push back, and she pushes back hard. Hard enough he can see Dustin was right. Hard enough to hang with the girls.

Even if her character IS named after a my little pony. Maybe because of it.

I think they will get along fantastically when the dust clears and Eddie gets out of the hospital. She'll make a great addition to Hellfire Club nights.

[the-stars-in-your-eyes-if]

☀︎NO DEMO YET☀︎ PLAYLIST ☀︎

☀︎SYNOPSIS☀︎

Your childhood friend has always dreamed of the big scene, of the crowd singing your lyrics, of a world tour. Max always wanted for your bands to succeed together. Until...

Well, it is was all a big stupid joke.

The real world caught up to you: you are no longer the naive child you once were. Writing a Grammy worthy album isn’t as easy as it seems and the big scene is nowhere to be seen. You navigate through life as you can, you party with your friends every Saturday and write music all week. You enjoy each one of your gigs – big and small. Your burning love for music doesn’t seem to fade. Your band brought together a solid community that crosses borders. You have fun with your band and it’s all that matter.

But you can’t help but fantasize that, someday, you’ll be at the top of the world…

Big stupid joke, right?

✮BATTLE OF THE BANDS IS BACK!✮

You thought 2020 was the end of us, uh?

You couldn’t be more wrong!

The worldwide known music contest is finally back!

We carefully chose the mentors of our beloved participants. This year will be all pink…

Make way for Pink Riot!!!

Application open to foreigners (check our website)

RATED +18

TW: explicit language, (occasional) violence, transphobia (one character is misgendered but just in one scene), use of alcohol and drugs, (soft) sexual content, parental abuse (flashback), depression, self-harm (warning will be in the "next" button), mention of suicide (same as self-harm)

☀︎FEATURES☀︎

– Customize your MC’s appearance and personality. You decide of their public image and persona.

– Your choices will define your band’s public image and popularity. Are they loved? Do they make underground or mainstream music? Are they the parents’ worst nightmare? The reference of rebellious kids?

– Decide your band’s aesthetic. Do they have one to begin with? Or do they each dress in their own style?

– Write your own lyrics!

– Engage in romantic affairs…

– ...or don’t, your choice!

– Are you going to help the people that cross your path or do you only care about yourself?

☀︎A BIT OF CONTEXT☀︎

Of course, this story is set on Earth.

But.

Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, antisemitism and fatphobia will get you in court.

You are not very well seen if you do one of those things and, if you’re a celebrity/politician/public figure, it can (and will) ruin your career.

I know that this isn’t realistic at all but I need to believe that, one day, this will be real. My characters have and will go through enough trauma and bad moments, I want to give them some peace.

And it feels really good to make a world where those things will ruin the oppressor and not the oppressed.

☀︎ROs☀︎

THE HERMIT — Diesel Di Angelo (they/them)

Diesel is the soul of the band, they bring a sort of osmosis. Their calm energy somehow has a place on stage and is liked by everyone.

Diesel took their first steps in the music world with Max and MC. It was just the three of them before the band grew bigger. Diesel is a talented guitarist, they worked hard to get where they are and they don’t stop improving. They are quite reserved and don’t talk about their feelings… Who knows what lies beneath their shell?

THE MISCHIEVOUS DRUMMER — Roman Lupin (he/him)

If MC is the backbone of the band, Roman is its beating heart. He has no problem to make the public jump from the back of the stage. He’s a spark that will light a bonfire.

Roman learned to play drum from his mother. He went to the conservatory but he didn’t stuck with it. Since a young age, Roman wants to have a band and to perform all around the world. Roman is full of life and he’s the human version of a sunshine. Is there something behind that smile or is he genuinely happy?

THE LITTLE MERMAID — Isra Wafa (she/they)

Isra brings magic to the band. Her mermaid low voice is unique and enchants the public. If you think you’ve heard good bass players, just wait until you see Isra on stage.

When Isra was a child, their parents let them chose an instrument to learn and to their surprise, she chose the bass. They fell in love with this low instrument. They navigated from band to band before settling for this band her boyfriend was part of. Isra keeps ignoring their responsibilities toward her family. For how long can they pretend it doesn’t exist?

THE REBEL ANGEL — Archibald “Archie” de Beaumont (they/he)

Even with a classical training, Archie managed to switch to their band’s genre without too much troubles. All the members affirm it: Archie is a gift from the universe.

Archie popped out of nowhere to audition to be the band’s keyboardist. He was the most talented person they saw all day and the chemistry was very much here. The band doesn’t know much about Archie, but it doesn’t matter. They are a good person and a dear friend. It wouldn’t change anything to learn about their life before the band. Right?

THE MANAGER — Cal Bremont (he/him)

Cal works in the shadow to make the band shines under the spotlight of the biggest stages. The band claims it, he is the best manager you could hope for.

Cal takes his job very seriously, he has a perfect work ethic. Maybe he is a bit too close to his clients and they may not just be clients… But, well, no one is complaining. Cal is very secretive about his personal life, he never mentioned his family or anything else. Can he maintain his relationship with his friends and still keep his life a mystery?

THE RISING STAR — Max Larash (she/her or they/them)

Max moved their band to the other side of the world and they managed to impose themselves on the west coast scene. We’ll keep an eye on them as they’ll compete against their former friends…

Because of artistic divergences, Max decided to leave the band when Isra and Roman joined them and they created their own band with high school friends. Max had big dreams for Sleep Walking and their friends in MC’s band, but it didn’t turn out as Max has hoped. Sleep Walking left the country for the USA without their friends and they intentionally lost all contacts with them…

THE MUSE — Olivia “Ollie” Madden (she/her)

You may have never see her face but, as a comics fan, Ollie Madden is a name far from unknown. None other than the comics artist and writer of the most followed comics, Ollie is still a mystery to her fans.

Olivia works for Blue Pegasus, a major comics book publisher, since years. She was the comics artist on a lot of books, it took her a lot of hard work to finally publish her own series. Olivia isn’t only a famous artist, she also is a single mother. She’s taking care of a lot by herself and it often leads to forget about herself. There is nobody to remind her she’s human and not a superhero…

THE PRINCESS — Katharina "Kat" Deluca (she/her)

We don’t need to present Katharina Deluca anymore. Success and awards seem to follow every movies our Lady K touched. She confessed that her break from the cameras and greens screens was to be present for her best friend… Athena Pierce.

Also known as the Princess, Katharina is one of the biggest actresses of her generation. Between two roles worthy of an Oscar, she is also a model and the face of the infamous designer brand: Beaumont-Griffin. She is in the industry since she was 12. But, behind closed doors, Kat doesn’t seem to have a joyful life… What is she hiding from the world?

GODDESS OF MUSIC — Athena Pierce (she/her)

Athena is a legend in the industry. Everybody wants to work with her and Pink Riot. Her voice will shatter your world, there is a before and an after Athena Pierce.

Athena is the lead singer and front woman of Pink Riot. She was a star child and charmed America with her angelic voice. But, with the creation of Pink Riot, Athena is no longer the little angel of the USA. She’s now known as a freaking rebel and she is quite provocative. She flirts with the limits all the time. Her persona is loved all around the world, but who is the real Athena?

☀︎CANON EVENTS☀︎

You can customize a lot of things regarding your MC and your band. But there are a few things that are canon.

— MC is born and lives in France. Where exactly is up to you. The only place MC can’t have grow up in is Paris. (I headcanon them growing up in Perpignan or Montpellier)

— The names of MC parents can’t be choose. I tried to make them as common as possible so you can choose their origins. MC is French but their parents can be from wherever you want!

— MC's age can’t be choose.

— MC is friends with Max and Diesel since they are 6. They were in school together.

— MC’s first band is with Max and Diesel.

— During high school, MC met Roman and Isra. They joined MC’s band but Max didn’t like the kind of music their band was into so they formed their own band with other high school friends (Sleep Walking).

— The OG band (MC-Max-Diesel) exist until the fateful break up.

— MC’s band and Sleep Walking always were there for each other and gave mutual support. They also create songs and musics together, some are only instrumental and other are with vocal.

— MC speaks French and English. Feel free to add a third and even a fourth language.

— MC lives with Isra and Roman since they finished high school.

[riley-reference-mark]

Weezer is an American rock band formed in Los Angeles, California, in 1992. Since 2001, the band has consisted of Rivers Cuomo (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Patrick Wilson (drums, backing vocals), Scott Shriner (bass guitar, keyboards, backing vocals), and Brian Bell (guitar, keyboards, backing vocals). They have sold 10 million albums in the US and more than 35 million worldwide.[1]

After signing to Geffen Records in 1993, Weezer released their critically acclaimed self-titled debut album, also known as the Blue Album, in May 1994. Backed by music videos for the singles "Buddy Holly", "Undone – The Sweater Song", and "Say It Ain't So", the Blue Album became a multiplatinum success. Weezer's second album, Pinkerton (1996), featuring a darker, more abrasive sound, was a commercial failure and initially received mixed reviews, but achieved cult status and critical acclaim years later. Both the Blue Album and Pinkerton are now frequently cited among the best albums of the 1990s. Following the tour for Pinkerton, the founding bassist, Matt Sharp, left and Weezer went on hiatus.

In 2001, Weezer returned with the Green Album with their new bassist, Mikey Welsh. With a more pop sound, and promoted by singles "Hash Pipe" and "Island in the Sun", it was a commercial success and received mostly positive reviews. After the Green Album tour, Welsh left for health reasons and was replaced by Shriner. Weezer's fourth album, Maladroit (2002), incorporated a hard-rock sound and achieved mostly positive reviews, but weaker sales. Make Believe (2005) received mixed reviews, but its single "Beverly Hills" became Weezer's first single to top the US Modern Rock Tracks chart and their first to reach the top ten on the Billboard Hot 100.

In 2008, Weezer released the Red Album; its lead single, "Pork and Beans", became the third Weezer song to top the Modern Rock Tracks chart, backed by a Grammy-winning music video. Raditude (2009) and Hurley (2010) featuring more "modern pop production"[2] and songs co-written with other artists, achieved further mixed reviews and moderate sales. Everything Will Be Alright in the End (2014) and the White Album (2016) returned to a rock style that was reminiscent of their 90s sound mixed with modern alternative production and achieved more positive reviews; Pacific Daydream (2017) once again featured a more mainstream pop sound.[3] In 2019, Weezer released an album of covers, the Teal Album, followed by the inspired Black Album.[4] In 2021, they released OK Human, which featured an orchestral pop sound and was met with critical acclaim, followed by the hard rock-inspired Van Weezer. In 2022, they released a series of EPs based around the four seasons. History Formation and first years (1986–1994)

Vocalist and guitarist Rivers Cuomo moved to Los Angeles from Connecticut in 1989 with his high school metal band, Avant Garde, later renamed Zoom. After the group disbanded, Cuomo met drummer Patrick Wilson, and moved in with him and Wilson's friend Matt Sharp. Wilson and Cuomo formed a band, Fuzz, and enlisted Scottie Chapman on bass. Chapman quit after a few early shows; the band reformed as Sixty Wrong Sausages, with Cuomo's friend Pat Finn on bass and Jason Cropper on guitar, but soon disbanded.[5] Cuomo moved to Santa Monica, California, and recorded dozens of demos, including the future Weezer songs "The World Has Turned and Left Me Here" and "Undone – The Sweater Song". Sharp was enthusiastic about the demos, and became the group's bassist and de facto manager.[5]

Cuomo, Wilson, Sharp and Cropper formed Weezer on February 14, 1992. Their first show was on March 19, 1992, closing for Keanu Reeves' band Dogstar.[5] They took their name from a nickname Cuomo's father gave him.[5] Cuomo gave Sharp one year to get the band a record deal before Cuomo accepted a scholarship at the University of California, Berkeley.[5] In November, Weezer recorded a demo, The Kitchen Tape, including a version of the future Weezer single "Say It Ain't So".[5] The demo was heard by Todd Sullivan, an A&R man at Geffen Records, who signed Weezer in June 1993.[5] The "Blue Album" (1994) Main article: Weezer (Blue Album) Current guitarist Brian Bell (pictured in 2013) replaced Cropper while recording the Blue Album.

Weezer recorded their debut album with producer Ric Ocasek at Electric Lady Studios in New York City.[6] Cropper was fired during recording, as Cuomo and Sharp felt he was threatening the band chemistry. He was replaced by Brian Bell.[5] Weezer's self-titled debut album, also known as the "Blue Album", was released in May 1994.[7] Described by Pitchfork as integrating "geeky humor, dense cultural references, and positively gargantuan hooks",[8] it combined alternative rock, power pop, polished production and what AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine called an "'70s trash-rock predilection … resulting in something quite distinctive".[9]

Weezer's first single, "Undone – The Sweater Song", was backed by a music video directed by Spike Jonze;[10] filmed in an unbroken take, it featured Weezer performing on a sound stage with little action, barring a pack of dogs swarming the set.[11] The video became an instant hit on MTV.[12] The song reached No. 57 on the Billboard Hot 100.[13] Jonze also directed Weezer's second video, "Buddy Holly",[10] splicing the band into footage from the 1970s television sitcom Happy Days.[14] The video achieved heavy rotation on MTV[15] and won four MTV Video Music Awards, including Breakthrough Video and Best Alternative Music Video, and two Billboard Music Video Awards.[16] "Buddy Holly" peaked at No. 18 on the Hot 100 Airplay and No. 2 on the Billboard Modern Rock chart.[13] The song is included on Rolling Stone's 500 Best Songs Of All Time.[17] A third single, "Say It Ain't So", followed. It was met with critical acclaim and later Pitchfork ranked it #10 on the top 200 tracks of the 90s list.[18] The song reached No. 51 on the Hot 100 Airplay chart and No. 7 on the Billboard Modern Rock chart.[13] Additionally, the track was included in Rolling Stone's list of "The Top 100 Guitar Songs of All Time".[19]

Their debut album gained critical and commercial success. In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked it number 294 on The 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time.[20] Weezer is certified quadruple platinum in the United States as well as Canada, making it Weezer's best-selling album.[21][22] Pinkerton (1995–1997) Main article: Pinkerton (album) Cuomo in 1997 Matt Sharp (pictured with the Rentals in 2007), co-founder of Weezer, left in 1998 after the Pinkerton tour.[23][24]

In 1994, Weezer took a break from touring for the Christmas holidays.[25] Cuomo traveled to his home state of Connecticut and began recording demos for Weezer's next album. His original concept was a space-themed rock opera, Songs from the Black Hole, that would express his mixed feelings about success." The album featured a story in which each member of the band played a character. Other characters were played by Rachel Haden (The Rentals and That Dog), Joan Wasser (The Dambuilders), and Karl Koch. The story was set in 2126, with the spaceship Betsy II embarking on a galaxy-wide mission.[26][27] Cuomo conceived the story as a metaphor for his conflicted feelings about touring in a successful rock band.[27] The ship's name Betsy II is taken from Weezer's first tour bus, nicknamed Betsy; M1 represents Weezer's management and record label; Wuan and Dondó represent the part of Cuomo that was excited about success; Jonas represents his doubts and longing; Laurel and Maria represent his relationships with women.[27][28] Weezer developed the concept through intermittent recording sessions through 1995.[29] At the end of the year, Cuomo enrolled at Harvard University, where his songwriting became "darker, more visceral and exposed, less playful", and he abandoned Songs from the Black Hole.[30]

While attending Harvard, Cuomo experienced loneliness and frustration while also undergoing an extensive surgery for his left leg. These experiences influenced his songwriting for the next record.[31] The other members of Weezer decided to embark on their own side projects during this time. Sharp started The Rentals who released their debut album, Return of the Rentals, in October 1995. The album also featured Patrick Wilson on drums. Wilson also formed his band, The Special Goodness, during this time.[32][page needed] Bell decided to work on his band, Space Twins.[32][page needed]

Weezer's second album, Pinkerton, was released on September 24, 1996.[33][34] Pinkerton is named after the character BF Pinkerton from Madama Butterfly, who marries and then abandons a Japanese woman named Butterfly. Calling him an "asshole American sailor similar to a touring rock star", Cuomo felt the character was "the perfect symbol for the part of myself that I am trying to come to terms with on this album".[35] It produced three singles: "El Scorcho", "The Good Life", and "Pink Triangle".[36]

With a darker, more abrasive sound,[33] Pinkerton sold poorly compared to the Blue Album[37] and received mixed reviews; it was voted "one of the worst albums of 1996" in a Rolling Stone reader poll.[38] However, the album eventually gained a cult following and came to be considered among Weezer's best work;[33][39] in 2002, Rolling Stone readers voted Pinkerton the 16th greatest album of all time,[40] and it has been listed in several critics' "best albums of all time" lists.[41] In 2004, Rolling Stone gave the album a new review, awarding it five out of five stars and adding it to the "Rolling Stone Hall of Fame".[42] Pinkerton was later certified platinum in 2016.[43]

The album became an emo masterpiece and some credit it to "rewriting the emo blueprint" as it became quite influential for a number of bands and the genre itself in the 2000s.[44][45][46]

In July 1997, sisters Mykel, Carli, and Trysta Allan died in a car accident while driving home from a Weezer show in Denver, Colorado.[47] Mykel and Carli ran Weezer's fan club and helped manage publicity for several other Los Angeles bands, and had inspired the "Sweater Song" B-side "Mykel and Carli". Weezer canceled a show to attend their funeral.[48] In August, Weezer and other bands held a benefit concert for the family in Los Angeles.[49] A compilation album, Hear You Me! A Tribute to Mykel and Carli, was dedicated to their memory. The album included "Mykel and Carli", as well as songs by Ozma, That Dog, and Kara's Flowers.[50] In 2001, Jimmy Eat World released "Hear You Me" which was dedicated to Mykel and Carli.[51] Hiatus (1997–2000) Mikey Welsh (pictured in 2010) played bass with Weezer from 1998 until 2001.

Weezer completed the Pinkerton tour in mid-1997 and went on hiatus.[52][53] Wilson returned to his home in Portland, Oregon to work on his side project, the Special Goodness, and Bell worked on his band Space Twins.[54][55] In 1998, Sharp left Weezer due to differences with the band members.[24] He said of his departure: "I certainly have my view of it, as I'm sure everybody else has their sort of foggy things. When you have a group that doesn't communicate, you're going to have a whole lot of different stories."[56]

Cuomo returned to Harvard but took a break to focus on songwriting.[53] He formed a new band composed of a changing lineup of Boston musicians, and performed new material.[52] The songs were abandoned, but bootlegs of the Boston shows are traded on the internet.[57] Wilson eventually flew to Boston to join Homie, another Cuomo side project.[citation needed] The members of the band were composed of Greg Brown (Cake and Deathray), Matt Sharp, Yuval Gabay (Soul Coughing and Sulfur), Adam Orth (Shufflepuck), and future Weezer bassist Mikey Welsh.[32][page needed] Although a Homie album was being recorded, they ended up only releasing one song called "American Girls" for the 1998 film Meet The Deedles.[58]

In February 1998, Cuomo, Bell and Wilson reunited in Los Angeles to start work on the next Weezer album. Rumors suggest Sharp did not rejoin the band and left the group in April 1998, which Sharp denies.[24][59] The group hired Mikey Welsh, who had played with Cuomo in Boston, as their new bassist.[60] Welsh was also previously a bassist for Juliana Hatfield. Weezer continued rehearsing and recording demos until late 1998. Frustration and creative disagreements led to a decline in rehearsals, and in late 1998, Wilson left for his home in Portland pending renewed productivity from Cuomo. In November 1998, the band played two club shows with a substitute drummer in California under the name Goat Punishment, consisting entirely of covers of Nirvana and Oasis songs. In the months following, Cuomo entered a period of depression, unplugging his phone, painting the walls of his home black, and putting fiberglass insulation over his windows to prevent light from entering.[61] Eventually during this time, Cuomo started experimenting with his music and ended up writing 121 songs by 1999.[32][page needed] In the meantime, Wilson continued to work with The Special Goodness while Bell again worked with Space Twins. Welsh continued to tour with Juliana Hatfield.[32][page needed] Comeback and the "Green Album" (2000–2001) Main article: Weezer (Green Album) Scott Shriner (pictured in 2019) has been Weezer's bassist since 2001.

Weezer reunited in April 2000, when they accepted a lucrative offer to perform at the Fuji Rock Festival.[62] The festival served as a catalyst for Weezer's productivity, and from April to May 2000, they rehearsed and demoed new songs in Los Angeles. They returned to live shows in June 2000, playing small unpromoted concerts once again under the name Goat Punishment.[63] In June 2000, the band joined the American Warped Tour for nine dates.[64][65]

In the summer of 2000, Weezer went on tour, including dates on the Vans Warped Tour.[66] Eventually, the band went back into the studio to produce a third album, the "Green Album". Due to the mixed reception of Pinkerton, Cuomo wrote less personal lyrics for the Green Album.[67] The band hired Ric Ocasek who had also produced the band's debut album.[68] Shortly after the release, Weezer went on another American tour.[63] The album was supported by the singles "Hash Pipe",[69] "Island in the Sun",[70] and "Photograph".[71] Executives suggested that "Don't Let Go" should be chosen as the first single.[72] However, Cuomo continued to fight and "Hash Pipe" eventually became the album's first single.[72] "Hash Pipe" peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Modern Rock chart and No. 6 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart.[13] "Island In the Sun" was released as the second single and became a radio hit as well as one of their biggest overseas hits.[13] The song peaked at No. 11 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart. The song has gained increasing popularity over the years as it later joined the digital song sales in 2008, only to peak at No. 18 in 2022.[73]

The label tried to postpone the release date of Weezer further until June, but they ended up sticking to the album's original release date of May 15 release date.[74] The album debuted at number 4 on the Billboard 200 and has since been certified platinum.[13]

After suffering a breakdown from the stress of touring, undiagnosed bipolar disorder, and drug abuse, Welsh attempted suicide and left Weezer in 2001.[75][76] He later joined The Kickovers for a short stint before retiring from music. He was replaced by Scott Shriner.[77] During this time, Spike Jonze returned to film a music video for "Island In the Sun".[78] Matt Sharp was originally intended to appear in the video, but it did not end up happening.[32][page needed] Maladroit (2002) Main article: Maladroit

Weezer took an experimental approach to the recording process of its fourth album by allowing fans to download in-progress mixes of new songs from its official website in return for feedback.[79] After the release of the album, the band said that this process was something of a failure, as the fans did not supply the group with coherent, constructive advice. Cuomo eventually delegated song selection for the album to the band's original A&R rep, Todd Sullivan, saying that Weezer fans chose the "wackest songs". Only the song "Slob" was included on the album due to general fan advice.[80]

The recording was also done without input from Weezer's record label, Interscope. Cuomo had what he then described as a "massive falling out" with the label. In early 2002, well before the official release of the album, the label sent out a letter to radio stations requesting the song be pulled until an official, sanctioned single was released. Interscope also briefly shut down Weezer's audio/video download webpage, removing all the MP3 demos.

In April 2002, former bassist Matt Sharp sued the band, alleging, among several accusations, that he was owed money for cowriting several Weezer songs. The suit was later settled out of court.[53]

The fourth album, Maladroit, was released on May 14, 2002, only one year after its predecessor.[81] The album served as a harder-edged version of the band's trademark catchy pop-influenced music, and was replete with busy 1980s-style guitar solos. Although met with generally positive critical reviews, its sales were not as strong as those for the Green Album. Two singles were released from the album. The music video for "Dope Nose" featured an obscure Japanese motorcycle gang, and was put into regular rotation. The song reached No. 8 on the Billboard Modern Rock chart.[13] The music video for "Keep Fishin'" combined Weezer with the Muppets, and had heavy rotation on MTV. Both videos were directed by Marcos Siega.

Spin reviewed it as the 6th best album of 2002.[82] A Rolling Stone reader's poll also from that year voted it the 90th greatest album of all time.[83]

Weezer released its much-delayed first DVD on March 23, 2004. The Video Capture Device DVD chronicles the band from its beginnings through Maladroit's Enlightenment Tour. Compiled by Karl Koch, the DVD features home video footage, music videos, commercials, rehearsals, concert performances, television performances, and band commentary. The DVD was certified "gold" on November 8, 2004. Make Believe (2003–2006) Main article: Make Believe (Weezer album)

Before working on new material, Cuomo discovered vipassana meditation which became a large influence to his songwriting.[84] He decided to take a more personal approach to his writing once again. One song during this process, "The Other Way", was written for Cuomo's ex-girlfriend Jennifer Chiba after her then-boyfriend, singer-songwriter Elliott Smith, died by suicide. Cuomo said, "I wanted to console her, but I was confused and skeptical about my own motives for wanting to do so, so I wrote that song about that."[85] Before recording material for their 4th album, Brian Bell and Patrick Wilson worked on their own projects. Bell's Space Twins released The End of Imagining which Rolling Stone critic, John D. Lueressen named the 7th best album of 2003.[86] Meanwhile, Wilson's The Special Goodness released Land Air Sea. Weezer performing in 2005

From December 2003 to the fall of 2004, Weezer recorded a large amount of material intended for a new album to be released in the spring of 2005 with producer Rick Rubin.[87] The band's early recording efforts became available to the public through the band's website. The demos were a big hit, but none of the songs recorded at this time were included on the finished album. That album, titled Make Believe, was released on May 10, 2005.[88] The album debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200.[13] Despite commercial success, Make Believe got a mixed reception from critics, receiving an average score of 52 on the review collator Metacritic.[89] Although some reviews, such as AMG's, compared it favorably to Pinkerton,[88] others, among them Pitchfork, panned the album as predictable and lyrically poor.[90]

The album's first single, "Beverly Hills",[91] became a hit in the U.S. and worldwide, staying on the charts for several months after its release. It became the first Weezer song to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Modern Rock chart and No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100.[92] "Beverly Hills" was nominated for Best Rock Song at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards, the first ever Grammy nomination for the band.[93] The video was also nominated for Best Rock Video at the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards.[94] The second single released from Make Believe was "We Are All on Drugs" which peaked at No. 10 on the Alternative Airplay chart.[95][96] MTV refused to play the song, so Weezer re-recorded the lyrics by replacing "on drugs" with "in love" and renaming the song "We Are All in Love".[97] In early 2006, it was announced that Make Believe was certified platinum, and "Beverly Hills" was the second most popular song download on iTunes for 2005, finishing just behind "Hollaback Girl" by Gwen Stefani.[98] Make Believe's third single, "Perfect Situation",[99] reached No. 1 U.S. Billboard Modern Rock chart and No. 51 on the Billboard Hot 100.[92] "This Is Such a Pity" was the band's fourth single from the album, but no music video was made for its release.[100] The Make Believe tour also found the band using additional instruments onstage, adding piano, synthesizers, pseudophones, and guitarist Bobby Schneck. The "Red Album" (2006–2008) Main article: Weezer (Red Album)

After the success of Make Believe, the band decided to take a break. Cuomo returned to Harvard where he ended up graduating cum laude and as a Phi Beta Kappa in 2006.[101] Cuomo also married Kyoko Ito on June 18, 2006, a woman he had known since March 1997. The wedding was attended by the current members of the band as well as Matt Sharp and Jason Cropper. During this break, Patrick Wilson and Brian Bell appeared in the 2006 film Factory Girl playing John Cale and Lou Reed respectively and contributing a cover of the Velvet Underground song "Heroin" for the film.[102] Also during this time, Bell started a new project, The Relationship. Weezer performing in Arizona in October 2008

Weezer (also known as the Red Album) was released in June 2008. Rick Rubin produced the album[103] and Rich Costey mixed it. The record was described as "experimental", and according to Cuomo, who claimed it at the time to be Weezer's "boldest and bravest and showiest album",[104] included longer and non-traditional songs, TR-808 drum machines, synthesizers, Southern rap, baroque counterpoint, and band members other than Cuomo writing, singing, and switching instruments.[105] Pat Wilson said the album cost about a million dollars to make, contrasting it with the $150,000 budget of the Blue Album.[106] The album was produced by Rick Rubin and Jacknife Lee.[107] The album debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 while receiving generally positive reviews.[13]

Its lead single, "Pork and Beans",[108] topped the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks charts for 11 weeks while also peaking at No. 64 on the Billboard Hot 100.[109][13] Its music video won a Grammy for Best Short Form Music Video.[93] The second single, "Troublemaker", debuted at No. 39 on the Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart and peaked at No. 2. In October 2008, the group announced that the third single would be "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations on a Shaker Hymn)" which was met with critical praise.

On May 30, 2008, the Toledo Free Press revealed in an interview with Shriner that Weezer would be unveiling the "Hootenanny Tour", in which fans would be invited to bring their own instruments to play along with the band. Said Shriner: "They can bring whatever they want… oboes, keyboards, drums, violins, and play the songs with us as opposed to us performing for them."[110]

The band performed five dates in Japan at the beginning of September and then embarked on what was dubbed the "Troublemaker" tour, consisting of 21 dates around North America, including two in Canada. Angels and Airwaves and Tokyo Police Club joined the band as support at each show, and Brian Bell's other band The Relationship also performed at a handful of dates. Shortly before the encore at each show, the band would bring on fans with various instruments and perform "Island in the Sun" and "Beverly Hills" with the band. At a show in Austin, after Tokyo Police Club had played its set, Cuomo was wheeled out in a box and mimed to a recording of rare Weezer demo, "My Brain", dressed in pajamas and with puppets on his hands, before being wheeled off again. This bizarre event later surfaced as the climax to a promo video for Cuomo's second demo album, Alone 2. Raditude and Hurley (2009–2013) Main articles: Raditude and Hurley (album)

Weezer toured with Blink-182 in 2009, including an August 30 stop at the Virgin Festival at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland. Drummer Josh Freese joined Weezer on a temporary basis to play drums on the tour, while Pat Wilson switched to guitar. Wilson said in an interview for Yahoo! Music that Cuomo wanted "to be active and more free on stage and him having guitar on was an impediment." Freese stated he was a Weezer fan and did not want to pass up the opportunity to play with the band.[111]

On August 18, 2009 Weezer released the first single for their upcoming album, "If You're Wondering If I Want You To". The song peaked at No. 81 on the Billboard Hot 100.[13] The title of the album was called Raditude which was a suggestion from actor Rainn Wilson.[112]

Raditude's album artwork was revealed on September 11, featuring a National Geographic contest-winning photograph of a jumping dog named Sidney.[113] The record's release was pushed to November 3, 2009, where it debuted as the seventh best-selling album of the week on the Billboard 200 chart. The band scheduled tour dates in December 2009 extending into early 2010 to coincide with the new album's release. On December 6, 2009, Cuomo was injured when his tour bus crashed in Glen, New York due to black ice. Cuomo suffered three broken ribs and internal bleeding, and his assistant broke two ribs. His wife, baby daughter, and their nanny were also on the bus, but they escaped injury. Weezer cancelled the remaining 2009 tour dates the following day.[114][115] The band resumed touring on January 20, 2010.[116]

In December 2009, it was revealed that the band was no longer with Geffen Records. The band stated that new material would still be released, but the band members were unsure of the means, whether it be self-released, released online, or getting signed by another label.[117] Eventually, the band was signed to the independent label Epitaph.[118] Cuomo performing in 2010

Weezer co-headlined The Bamboozle in May 2010,[119] and performed at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee in June.[120] In August, 2010, Weezer performed at the Reading and Leeds Festival,[121] and performed at the Voodoo Experience festival in New Orleans, LA in October 2010.[122]

The album Hurley was released in September 2010 through Epitaph Records. The name comes from the character Hugo "Hurley" Reyes from the television show Lost. Jorge Garcia, the actor who portrayed Hurley, stated that being featured on the album cover is "one of the biggest honors of [his] career."[118][123] The first single, "Memories" was chosen as part of the Jackass 3D soundtrack with the music video featuring members of the cast contributing backing vocals.[124]

Weezer used internet streaming service YouTube as a way to promote the album. Weezer loaned itself to 15 amateur online video producers, "going along with whatever plans the creator could execute in about 30 minutes." The band was promoted through popular channels such as Barely Political, Ray William Johnson and Fred Figglehorn. The Gregory Brothers solicited musical and vocal contributions from the band on one of its compositions built around speeches by Rep. Charles Rangel and President Barack Obama. Weezer called the promotion "The YouTube Invasion".[125]

In November 2010, Weezer released a compilation album composed of re-recorded versions of unused recordings spanning from 1993 to 2010, Death to False Metal.[126][127] The title track, "Turning Up The Radio" was a collaborative effort with many fans on Youtube. On the same day a deluxe version of Pinkerton, which includes "25 demos, outtakes and live tracks" was also released.[128] A third volume of Cuomo's solo Alone series, titled Alone III: The Pinkerton Years, consisting of demos and outtakes from the Pinkerton sessions, was released on December 12, 2011.[129] The band also contributed a cover of the Cars' "You Might Think" for the Disney-Pixar film Cars 2 as well as a cover of The [DATA EXPUNGED]s' "I'm a Believer" for Shrek Forever After.[130]

Weezer began working on their ninth studio album in September 2010 with the intent of a 2011 release,[131] but the year ended without seeing a release. On October 8, 2011, former Weezer bassist Mikey Welsh was found dead from a suspected heroin overdose in a Chicago hotel room.[132] Weezer performed in Chicago the next day and dedicated the concert to Welsh, who was expected to have attended.[133] Welsh had previously joined Weezer on stage for a few performances between 2010 and 2011.

The band headlined a four-day rock-themed Carnival Cruise from Miami to Cozumel that set sail on January 19, 2012.[134][135][136] In July, Weezer headlined the inaugural Bunbury Music Festival in Cincinnati, Ohio.[137] In early 2013 the band brought its Memories Tour to Australia—the band's first Australian tour since 1996. The band played its first two albums in full at several venues. The band also headlined the Punkspring 2013 tour in Japan and later in the year toured Canada and USA. They played multiple nights in cities around the U.S. The first night shows were dedicated to playing their hits, then the Blue album in full, front to back. The second night, they played Pinkerton in the same fashion. Koch did a "Memories" slide show at the Gibson amphitheater in Los Angeles (And most likely many other venues around the U.S.) The slide show consisted of photos of gigs over the years and highlighted the loss of their fanclub team members Mykel and Carli Allan in 1997.[138] Everything Will Be Alright in the End and the "White Album" (2013–2016) Main articles: Everything Will Be Alright in the End and Weezer (White Album)

Over 200 tracks were considered for their next album, but they were able to narrow it down to 13.[139] According to the album's official press release, the album is organized thematically around three groups of songs: "Belladonna", "The Panopticon Artist" and "Patriarchia". "Belladonna" includes the songs "Ain't Got Nobody", "Lonely Girl", "Da Vinci", "Go Away", "Cleopatra" and "Return to Ithaka", all of which deal with Cuomo's relationships with women. Tracks under "The Panopticon Artist" include "Back to the Shack", "I've Had It Up To Here" and "The Waste Land" all deal with Cuomo's relationships with fans. The final group of songs, "Patriarchia", are "Eulogy for a Rock Band", "The British Are Coming", "Foolish Father" and "Anonymous", which deal with relationships with father figures, "with a new spin".[139]

In January 2014, Weezer began recording with producer Ric Ocasek, who had produced the "Blue Album" and the "Green Album".[140] A clip of a new song was posted on the band's official YouTube account on March 19, 2014, which confirmed previous rumors of the band being in the studio.[141] On June 12, 2014, it was revealed that the album title would be Everything Will Be Alright in the End. It was released on October 7, 2014[142] to generally favorable reviews, becoming the band's best-reviewed release since Pinkerton.[143] The first single, "Back to the Shack", reached No. 5 on the Alternative Airplay chart.[13] Weezer performing at the City of Trees Musical Festival 2016

On October 26, 2015, the band released a new single, "Thank God for Girls", through Apple Music and to radio the same day. The following week, the band released a second single, "Do You Wanna Get High?". Cuomo claimed in an interview with Zane Lowe, that the band was not working on a new album.[144] Later, on January 14, 2016, Weezer released a third single, "King of the World", and announced the "White Album", which continued the critical success of the band's previous release.[145]

While writing the album, Cuomo joined Tinder to meet with people to get inspired for new songs.[146] He also started to explore other songwriting techniques including a cut-up technique, stream-of-consciousness, and writing melodies with a piano instead of guitar.[147]

Weezer was officially released on April 1, 2016 and peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard 200.[148][149] The album is considered a concept album exploring the themes of gender dynamics, modern dating experiences and references to religious iconography.[150] Musically, the album serves as a throwback to the band's first two albums, Weezer (1994) and Pinkerton (1996), while also serving as a tribute to the Beach Boys.

The album received a grammy nomination for Best Rock Album for the 59th Annual Grammy Awards.[151]

In support of the album, the band performed on the Weezer & Panic! at the Disco Summer Tour 2016 with Panic! at the Disco in 2016.[152] The band later signed to Atlantic Records as part of a joint venture between Warner Music Group and Crush Management.[153] Pacific Daydream (2017–2018) Main article: Pacific Daydream

Soon after the release of the White Album, Cuomo discussed plans for Weezer's next album, provisionally titled the "Black Album'. Cuomo said the album would tackle "more mature topics" and be "less summer day and more winter night", and suggested the band could return to the recording studio as soon as October 2016.[154] Weezer delayed recording after Cuomo felt his new material was more "like reveries from a beach at the end of the world [… as if] the Beach Boys and the Clash fell in love by the ocean and had one hell of an amazing baby".[155]

To write the album, Cuomo utilized various musical and lyrical fragments he had collected over time. He kept an archive of song ideas and hired programmers to organize a spreadsheet of lyric snippets by beats per minute, syllable, and key to call from whenever stuck. "Instead of trying to force myself to feel inspired, I can just go into the spreadsheet and search […] I just try them out to see which ones work magically."[156]

On March 16, 2017, Weezer released a new song, "Feels Like Summer", the lead single of the upcoming album.[157] The song drew a mixed reaction from fans but became their biggest hit on Alternative radio in a decade (peaking at number 2 on the Alternative Airplay chart ).[158] On August 16, Weezer announced Pacific Daydream, released on October 27.[159] On August 17, the promotional single from the album, "Mexican Fender", was released.[160][161][162] The following month, "Beach Boys" was released, and the month after, they released "Weekend Woman" to positive reception.[163][164] "Happy Hour" was chosen as the second official single of the album, peaking at No. 9 on the Alternative Airplay chart.

The album received a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Album at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards.[165] The "Teal Album" and the "Black Album" (2018–2019) Main articles: Africa (Toto song), Weezer (Teal Album), and Weezer (Black Album)

Following a persistent Twitter campaign by a fan, Weezer released a cover of Toto's song "Africa" on May 29, 2018.[166][167] Prior to this, the band released a cover of "Rosanna" to "troll" their fans.[168][169] "Africa" reached number one on the Billboard Alternative Songs chart in August 2018, becoming the band's first number-one single since "Pork and Beans" in 2008. Two days later, on August 10, Toto responded by releasing a cover of Weezer's single "Hash Pipe".[170] "Africa" eventually peaked at No. 51 on the Billboard Hot 100.[13] The success of the "Africa" cover led Weezer to record an album of covers, the Teal Album, a surprise album released on January 24, 2019.[171][172] The album was a commercial success as it peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard 200. In addition, all tracks charted on the Hot Rock and Alternative Songs chart.[149]

On September 20, 2018, Weezer released "California Snow" as a single for the 2018 film Spell.[173] It was chosen as the closing track for the "Black Album". On October 11, 2018, Weezer released "Can't Knock the Hustle", the lead single from their upcoming album.[174][175][176] On November 21, they released the second single, "Zombie Bastards",[177][178] and announced the "Black Album", produced by Dave Sitek and scheduled for March 1, 2019. An arena tour of the U.S. with the Pixies and supporting and international tour dates were also announced.[177][178][179] On February 21, they released "High as a Kite" and "Living in LA" as the next singles.[180] They would later play them on NPR Music to promote the album for their series of Tiny Desk Concerts.[181]

During a Beats 1 interview by Zane Lowe on Apple Music on January 24, 2019, Cuomo announced that Weezer had already recorded the "basic tracks" to the follow-up album to the "Black Album". The album is being produced by Jake Sinclair, who produced the "White Album". Cuomo said the songwriting for the album is piano-based, and that some songs have string parts already recorded at Abbey Road Studios. For the recording process, Weezer departed from the modern "grid music" style (music recorded via modern software using grids to organize and manipulate the individual elements of recorded music) and did not perform to a "click" (i.e., metronome) for a more natural style.[182] Cuomo said the album is tentatively titled "OK Human" and that the inspiration for the album is the 1970 album Nilsson Sings Newman. Furthermore, Cuomo said he is currently working on an album with the working title "Van Weezer" that harkens back to their heavier rock sound after noticing how crowds go nuts for big guitar solos at Weezer shows.[183][184] OK Human and Van Weezer (2019–2021) Weezer plays Musikfest in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, August 2019 Main articles: OK Human and Van Weezer

On September 10, 2019, the band announced the Hella Mega Tour with Green Day and Fall Out Boy as headliners alongside themselves, with the Interrupters as an opening act. They also released the opening single, "The End of the Game", off their upcoming fifteenth studio album, Van Weezer.[185] The song reached No. 2 on the Alternative Airplay chart.[13] Cuomo said that the band would return "back to big guitars". He remarked that when the band would perform "Beverly Hills" live in concert, he would perform a guitar solo that was not present on the recorded version of the song. "We noticed that, recently, the crowd just goes crazy when I do that. So it feels like maybe the audience is ready for some shredding again."[186]

The band recorded a version of "Lost in the Woods" for the 2019 film Frozen II, which was included on the soundtrack album.[187] A music video was shot for the song, featuring the band and Frozen voice actress Kristen Bell.[188]

On May 6, 2020, the band released the single and music video, "Hero", a tribute to essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Simultaneously, they announced the delay of Van Weezer for a time to be determined.[189] The song reached No. 1 on the Alternative Airplay chart.[13] On May 10, Weezer guest-starred on an episode of The Simpsons, "The Hateful Eight-Year Olds", where a snippet of their song "Blue Dream" from Van Weezer was played.[190] On August 14, 2020, the band announced that the album had been delayed to May 2021 in order to coincide with the rescheduled Hella Mega Tour. That same day, the third single, "Beginning of the End", was released as a part of the soundtrack for Bill & Ted Face the Music.[191]

On October 6, 2020, after Eddie Van Halen died, the album was dedicated to him.[192] In addition to Van Halen, the album is also dedicated to Ric Ocasek, who produced the band's debut, The Blue Album, The Green Album, and Everything Will Be Alright in the End, as Ocasek had died in September 2019.[193]

On January 18, 2021, the band announced their fourteenth studio album, OK Human (a play on Radiohead's OK Computer).[194], following cryptic promotional floppy discs and links sent to some members of the Weezer Fan Club a few days prior. The announcement came with a release date of January 29.[195][196] The single "All My Favorite Songs" was released on January 21.[195] The song reached No.1 on the Alternative Airplay chart and was later nominated for Best Rock Song in the 64th Annual Grammy Awards.[13][197]

The album was planned to be released following Van Weezer, but when the album suffered a year-long delay following the COVID-19 pandemic,[198] the band decided to shift their focus to completing OK Human first.[199] Work on OK Human began as early as 2017, when the band decided to make an album that combined rock instrumentation with an orchestra.[200] The band hired a 38-piece-orchestra and recorded the album entirely with analog equipment to achieve their desired baroque sound. The album was additionally inspired by The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and Harry Nilsson's Nilsson Sings Newman (1970).[200]

The fourth single, "I Need Some of That" was released on April 21, 2021.[201] Van Weezer was released on May 7, 2021 along with an animated music video for "All the Good Ones".[196] The album has been compared to their fourth studio album Maladroit (2002), and is inspired by 1970s and 1980s hard rock and heavy metal bands such as Kiss, Black Sabbath, Metallica and Van Halen (the last of whom inspired the album's title).[202] SZNZ (2021–present)

After delays due to the pandemic, the American leg of the Hella Mega Tour finally kicked off on July 24, 2021, in Arlington, Texas.[203] The European leg saw Weezer, Green Day and Fall Out Boy performing in Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, England, Ireland, Scotland and, finally, France.

While doing an interview with NPR about the OK Human and Van Weezer albums, Cuomo hinted that the band were working on a four-album box-set called SZNZ (pronounced as "seasons"). Cuomo also described the potential musical styles of Spring and Fall, saying: "Spring can be a very breezy, carefree acoustic-type album, whereas Fall is going to be dance rock." He later stated that the albums, titled Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter respectively, are planned for release in 2022 on the first astronomical day of each relevant season.[204] Each season is linked to their own emotion. "Spring is optimism, Summer is anger, Autumn is anxiety, and Winter is sadness."[205]

On March 11, 2022, Weezer officially announced the project, now titled SZNZ, would consist of four extended plays, with Fall renamed to Autumn. The first, SZNZ: Spring, was released on March 20, and the lead single "A Little Bit of Love" was released on March 16.[206] The song reached No. 1 on the Alternative Airplay chart.[13]

On June 20, 2022, Weezer appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, debuting "Records", the lead single from SZNZ: Summer. The song reached No. 1 on the Alternative Airplay chart.[207] The EP released at midnight on June 21, along with news of a Broadway Theater residency planned for September 2022.[208] In August 2022, the residency was cancelled due to high expenses and poor ticket sales.[209]

On September 19, 2022, the band performed once again under the name Goat Punishment at Troubadour (West Hollywood), where they played SZNZ: Winter for the first time. They also debuted the single "What Happens After You?" from SZNZ: Autumn, which was released on September 22, 2022. "What Happens After You?" was later performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live!.[210] A music video for the single was released on November 29, 2022.

On December 9, 2022 Weezer released "I Want a Dog", the lead single from the last EP in the SZNZ series, SZNZ: Winter.[211] SZNZ: Winter was released on December 21, 2022, alongside a music video for "Dark Enough To See The Stars". Musical style and influences

Weezer has been described as alternative rock,[212][213][214][215] power pop,[214][216][217][218] pop rock,[212][219][220][221] pop-punk,[222][223][224] geek rock,[212][225][226][227] emo,[218][228][229] indie rock,[212][230] emo pop,[231] melodic metal,[232] and pop.[233] The members of Weezer have listed influences such Kiss (with direct references in the song "In the Garage"), Nirvana, the Pixies, the Cars (whose member Ric Ocasek produced several Weezer records), Cheap Trick, Pavement, Oasis, the Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day and Wax.[234][235] Cuomo credited the Beach Boys as a major influence, specifically Pet Sounds; Bell described Weezer's sound as "Beach Boys with Marshall stacks".[236] Operas and musicals such as Madama Butterfly (1904) and Jesus Christ Superstar (1970) influenced Pinkerton and Songs from the Black Hole.[237] The band members' worship for hard rock and heavy metal music was the source of inspiration behind Van Weezer, including 1970s and 1980s bands like Kiss, Black Sabbath, Metallica, Slayer, Rush, and Van Halen (the last of whom inspired the album's title).[238][239][240]

Artists such as Paramore, [241] Fun.,[242] Pete Wentz,[243] Fall Out Boy,[244] Panic! at the Disco,[245] Blink-182,[246] Steve Lacy,[247] Taylor Swift,[248] Charli XCX,[249] Real Estate,[250] Dinosaur Pile-Up,[251] Cymbals Eat Guitars,[252] DNCE,[253] Ozma,[254] Wavves,[255] Joyce Manor,[256] Origami Angel,[257] and the Fall of Troy[258] cite Weezer as an influence. Solo work and side projects

Patrick Wilson started his side-project the Special Goodness in 1996, for which he sings and plays guitar and bass.[259] In May 2012, he released his fourth record with the Special Goodness, entitled Natural.[260]

Brian Bell started the Space Twins in 1994 releasing an album, The End of Imagining, in 2003.[261][262] In 2006, Bell started a new band called the Relationship, and did not contribute any songs for Weezer's Raditude in order to save material for the Relationship.[263] The Relationship's self-titled debut was released in 2010, with a follow-up, Clara Obscura, released in 2017.[264]

Former bassist Matt Sharp started the Rentals in 1994.[265] After releasing Return of the Rentals in 1995, Sharp went on to quit Weezer in 1998 to focus more on the Rentals.[265][23] Sharp has also released work under his own name.[266] Mikey Welsh toured with Juliana Hatfield[267] and played bass for the Kickovers.[268] Scott Shriner played bass for Anthony Green's debut studio album Avalon.[269]

On December 18, 2007, Cuomo released Alone - The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo, a compilation of his demos recorded from 1992 to 2007, including some demos from the unfinished Songs from the Black Hole album.[270] A second compilation, Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo, was released on November 25, 2008, and a third, Alone III: The Pinkerton Years, on December 12, 2011.[271] The album was sold exclusively with a book, The Pinkerton Diaries, which collects Cuomo's writings from the Pinkerton era.[272]

On March 20, 2013, Cuomo and Scott Murphy of the band Allister released Scott & Rivers, a Japanese-language album.[273] They released their second album in April 2017.[274] In November 2020, Cuomo released thousands of unreleased songs and demos from throughout Weezer's career on his personal website for purchase and download.[275][276] Musical contributions

In 1994, Weezer contributed the song "Jamie" to DGC Rarities Vol. 1, which is a compilation of demos, B-sides, and covers recorded by bands on the label.[277][278] It was the first appearance of the song until it was released as a B-side for the single of "Buddy Holly" and again on the Blue Album Deluxe Edition.[279][280]

In 1999, Weezer contributed a cover of the song "Velouria" by The Pixies to the tribute album Where Is My Mind? A Tribute To The Pixies.[281]

On July 22, 2003, Weezer contributed an acoustic cover of Green Day's "Worry Rock" to the compilation album A Different Shade of Green: A Tribute to Green Day.[282]

On December 4, 2008, iOS developer Tapulous released the game Christmas with Weezer, featuring gameplay similar to Tap Tap Revenge and six Christmas carols performed by the band. A digital EP featuring the songs, titled Christmas with Weezer, was also released on December 16, 2008.[283]

On March 9, 2010, Weezer appeared on an episode of the children's daytime television show Yo Gabba Gabba! and performed the song "All My Friends Are Insects". The song appeared on a compilation soundtrack album for the show, Yo Gabba Gabba! Music Is…Awesome! Volume 2, as well as a bonus track for the Weezer album Hurley.[284]

On June 11, 2010, the band released a new single, "Represent", as an "unofficial" anthem for the US Men's soccer team to coincide with the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Although technically unofficial, the song was embraced by the team, and on June 23, 2010, US Soccer released a music video on their official YouTube channel featuring dramatic footage of the US team spliced with footage of Weezer performing.[285]

In 2010, the band recorded a cover of "I'm a Believer" for the movie Shrek Forever After.[286] Previously, Weezer had planned to include an early version of "My Best Friend" from Make Believe in Shrek 2, but it was rejected due to the song sounding "too much like it was written for Shrek".[287]

In 2011, the band covered "You Might Think" by The Cars for the Pixar movie Cars 2. The song appears on the movie's official soundtrack.[288]

In 2011, Weezer recorded a cover of "Rainbow Connection" with Hayley Williams for Muppets: The Green Album, a cover album of Muppets songs which also included OK Go, The Fray, Alkaline Trio, and others.[289]

On September 20, 2018, Weezer released "California Snow" for the film Spell, which Cuomo also provided voicework for.[290] The song later appeared on the Black Album.[291]

In 2019, Weezer recorded a cover of "Lost In the Woods" for the Frozen II soundtrack.[292]

In 2020–2021, Weezer released "It's Always Summer in Bikini Bottom" for The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run's film soundtrack.[293]

In June 2021, Weezer contributed the song "Tell Me What You Want" to the video game Wave Break. The song is featured in a special level of the game called "Weezy Mode".[294]

In August 2021, Weezer contributed a cover of Metallica's "Enter Sandman" to The Metallica Blacklist, a compilation of Metallica song covers by various artists, with each song getting several covers by different artists.[295] Band members

Current membersRivers Cuomo – lead vocals, lead and rhythm guitar, keyboards (1992–present) Patrick Wilson – drums, percussion (1992–present), backing vocals (2007–present); lead guitar, keyboards (2007–2012) Brian Bell – rhythm and lead guitar, backing vocals (1993–present), keyboards (2000–present) Scott Shriner – bass, backing vocals (2001–present), keyboards (2007–present)

Former membersJason Cropper – rhythm and lead guitar, backing vocals (1992–1993) Matt Sharp – bass, backing vocals (1992–1998)[23][24] Mikey Welsh – bass, backing vocals (1998–2001; died 2011)

Former touring musiciansBobby Schneck – keyboards, rhythm guitar, bass (2000–2005) Josh Freese – drums, percussion (2009–2012) Daniel Brummel – keyboards, rhythm guitar (2012–2014) Dave Elitch – drums, percussion (2022; substitute for Patrick Wilson)

Timeline Awards and nominations

Grammy Awards

The Grammy Award is an award presented by the Recording Academy to recognize achievement in the mainly English-language music industry.[296] Weezer has received one award from five nominations. Year Nominee / work Award Result 2006 "Beverly Hills" Best Rock Song[93] Nominated 2009 "Pork and Beans" Best Music Video[93] (Director: Mathew Cullen) Won 2017 Weezer Best Rock Album[297] Nominated 2019 Pacific Daydream Best Rock Album[298] Nominated 2022 "All My Favorite Songs" Best Rock Song[299] Nominated

iHeartRadio Music Awards

The iHeartRadio Music Award was founded by iHeartRadio in 2014. From 2014 to 2018 the event was broadcast live on NBC,[300] and in 2019 the event was broadcast on FOX.[301] Year Nominee / work Award Result 2019 "Africa" Alternative Rock Song of the Year[302] Nominated Best Cover Song[302] Nominated

Kerrang! Awards Year Nominee / work Award Result 2008 "Pork and Beans" Best Video[303] Nominated

MTV Europe Music Awards

The MTV Europe Music Award is an award presented by Viacom International Media Networks Europe to honour artists and music in popular culture. Year Nominee / work Award Result 1995 Weezer Best New Act[304] Nominated "Buddy Holly" Best Video[304][305] (Director: Spike Jonze) Nominated 2008 "Pork and Beans" Best Video[306] (Director: Mathew Cullen) Nominated

MTV Video Music Awards

The MTV Video Music Award is an award presented by the cable channel MTV to honor the best in the music video medium. Weezer has received five awards from eight nominations. Year Nominee / work Award Result 1995 "Buddy Holly" Video of the Year[307] Nominated Best Alternative Video[307] Won Breakthrough Video[307] Won Best Direction (Director: Spike Jonze)[307] Won Best Editing (Editor: Eric Zumbrunnen)[307] Won 2001 "Hash Pipe" Best Rock Video[308] Nominated 2005 "Beverly Hills" Best Rock Video[94] Nominated 2008 "Pork and Beans" Best Editing (Editor: Jeff Consiglio and Colin Woods)[309] Won

Teen Choice Awards

The Teen Choice Awards were established in 1999 to honor the year's biggest achievements in music, movies, sports and television, being voted by young people aged between 13 and 19.[310] Year Nominee / work Award Result 2005 "Beverly Hills" Choice Music: Rock Song[311] Nominated Discography Main articles: Weezer discography and List of songs recorded by WeezerWeezer (Blue Album) (1994) Pinkerton (1996) Weezer (Green Album) (2001) Maladroit (2002) Make Believe (2005) Weezer (Red Album) (2008) Raditude (2009) Hurley (2010) Everything Will Be Alright in the End (2014) Weezer (White Album) (2016) Pacific Daydream (2017) Weezer (Teal Album) (2019) Weezer (Black Album) (2019) OK Human (2021) Van Weezer (2021)

{That's blueengland, alright}

[queermediastudies]

Mercury in Gatorade?! 

On November 2nd of, 2018, directors Bryan Singer and Dexter Fletcher created the film Bohemian Rhapsody. This movie tells the story of Freddie Mercury and his band, Queen. Throughout this 2-hour and 14-minute film, the audience can humanize some of the most popular and well-loved artists that many people have had the pleasure of listening to. The movie illustrates the relationship between band members Brian May, the lead guitarist; John Deacon, the bass guitar; their drummer Roger Taylor; and, of course, the lead singer and pianist Freddie Mercury. The development of the song “Bohemian Rhapsody” is a strong focus for the movie's storyline. Much time is spent creating the song and performing to live audiences worldwide. At the same time, no film can truly capture the everyday events of who they are representing. Singer and Fletcher had to choose the most influential moments within these artist's lives, which made for a great story. My goal for this blog post is to speak on how this movie portrayed Freddie Mercury's sexuality and queerness and his AIDS diagnosis.

I was over the moon when I saw this movie. Being nonbinary and Indian, I never really get the chance to see myself on television. That being said, Bohemian Rhapsody shares glimpses of Freddie's home life. His parents, rather strict, maintain a traditional Indian household. Bomi, his father, works all day while his mother, Jer, stays home and takes care of the house and their daughter. Freddie does not share his well-known flamboyant upbeat side at home. This is mainly due to the relationship with his father, as Bomi does not support homosexuals and constantly forces Freddie to conform to the stereotypical male lifestyle. However, Freddie is a rebel, a beautiful display of being true to yourself. He is not easily persuaded to conform to the heteronormative modes of behavior. His appearance means a great deal to him, and it’s most apparent when he’s on stage. Bomi eventually accepts Freddie for who he is, and inturn supports him throughout his career. This is a turning point for many LGBTQ+ movies that you do not get the chance to see.

Since Freddie lives in London, a predominantly white country, he endures discrimination and racism from his peers. Having multiple identities to juggle and display in the movie, racial slurs such as “packi” and “indi boy” occur when Freddie first comes on stage to join the band (Singer & Fletcher, 2018). There are many moments throughout the movie when Freddie is uncomfortable with his racial identity. He changes his name from Farrokh Bulsara to Freddie Mercury as a way to create a new version of himself. A version that he loves. There are multiple theories about why he changed his name, but I believe it was a way to individualize his experience and separate himself from his family’s ideology. In regards to the film, I assume the audience was mainly heterosexual but to have representation of a queer Indian man struggling with his identity is a seldom category shown in media. Doty illustrates this point best, “Clearly we need more popular and academic mass culture work that carefully considers feminine gay and othergendered queer reception practices, as well as those of even less-analyzed queer readership positions formed around the nexus of race and sexuality, or class and sexuality, or ethnicity and sexuality…” (Doty, 1993, p. 7).

I appreciate the multiple focal points in this movie; the relationship between Freddie and his father is strained. However, there are moments when the audience can see the love Bomi has for Freddie, even though he believes his son will be a better man if he gets a job and stays within the lines of tradition. While I do not blame his father for having this view, Freddie and his band know that their performances reach an audience that no other band has. “We’re four misfits who don’t belong together playing to the other misfits, the outcasts right at the back of the room whom I’m pretty sure don’t belong either. We belong to them” (Singer & Fletcher, 2018).

Similar to many artists who juggle with their sexuality. Freddie gets engaged to Mary Austin, a lovely woman who helps Freddie flourish within his gender identity and performance.

As Judith Butler puts it, “our gender is our expression and behaviors (rather than those expressions and behaviors being the result of some underlying gender identity). Like sexuality, gender is what you do, not who you are”(Barker & Scheele, 2016, p. 79). As Freddie becomes more comfortable with himself and his gender performance, he is able to explore more sides of himself unbeknownst to others. His behavior which can be seen as queer, and his interest in men can have one believe that he is, in fact, doing gender. Freddie was not worried about the perceptions of others because he no longer felt imprisoned by his identity, and by doing so he accepted himself as a bisexual man. One element that could have changed the impact of this movie was if the directors had spent more time exploring Freddie's sexuality, as he is a member of the LGBTQ+ community. They only capture his sexual experimentation during party scenes which implies that his behavior is reduced to environments that allow for it.

Only at the end of the movie do we see Freddie with his lover, Jim Hutton. While there were not many scenes of Freddie and Jim, the film, as mentioned above, records the process of writing and crafting the song “Bohemian Rhapsody”. This was Freddie’s song, a pleasant way of accepting who he is and his sexual journey. Mercury’s empowering lyrics, “Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth”.

When Freddie embraced his homosexuality, he wrote the song I Want To Break Free to compliment his flamboyant side. In the movie, Queen is shown dressing up in drag for the music video and pretending to be housewives from a popular British opera. Once the video was released, much of the public did not approve of this characterization, so much so that it was banned from MTV. "…they decided they didn't think that men in drag was 'rock' enough…" (Aquilina, 2021). "And they would say, no, we can't play this. We can't possibly play this. You know, it looks homosexual…” (Aquilina, 2021). The song was intended for female audiences, women that do not feel safe in the relationship that they are in, to break free from it. While Freddie did not write the song, the perspective regarding his character had changed; tabloids would say, “crazy cross-dressing Freddie, Freddie the freak" (Singer & Fletcher, 2018). The response from the media and public showed Queen what America would not accept and that Freddie has to live within the box heterosexual audiences provide. “Finally, and perhaps most crucially for a commercial medium like television, representations of gay or lesbian, sex or even desire, are absent” (Dow, 2001, p. 131 ).

When Freddie found out he had AIDS, there were several gaps that had the potential of representing this disease in a much better light. He finds out about his diagnosis after he notices changes in his voice and body. After coughing up blood, he visits his doctor, who confirms his AIDS diagnosis. In my opinion, audiences wanted to see how Freddie came to peace with his diagnosis. He was one of the few artists that struggled with this disease, and with a film honoring Queen, the directors had the opportunity to share that side of his life. While In the movie, Freddie says that he does not want to be the AIDS poster boy and carry on with his dream of being a star, it still would have given many people the opportunity to change their perspective on AIDS victims and the stereotype this disease gives homosexuals. On the other hand, the movie can be seen as a way to punish homosexual acts; while AIDS does affect a large portion of the LGBTQ+ community, the way in which Freddie catches AIDS is only after he sleeps with men. This speaks to the historical view that AIDS is a consequence of being gay. However, Paula A. Treichler, who states in her How to Have Theory in an Epidemic, points out that AIDS poses just as much of a threat to the heterosexual community as it does to the homosexual community. Both directors, Singer and Fletcher, had multiple chances to cast a different narrative. One that speaks on the reality of AIDS and how it is not a gay disease. As the movie was intended to cover the story of Queen and the band's popularity over the years, Freddie had more screen time than any other character in the movie. It is hard to believe that they did not focus on an extremely significant part of this artist's life.

Personally, I love Bohemian Rhapsody. This movie was well casted and has a concise storyline. The representation of both race and sexuality was greatly appreciated throughout the film. Seeing Freddie dress up in what some call feminine presenting clothes made me feel more comfortable with my gender performance. Queen was one of the first bands to break the gender binary and modes of heteronormativity. While this movie is one of my favorites, some skeptics question whether this movie was accurate or a good enough biopic of Queen. But as we’ve seen throughout the film, "everyone's a critic" (Singer & Fletcher).

References

Aquilina, T. (2021, September 3). Queen's Roger Taylor on MTV's 'narrow-minded' response to drag in 'I want to break free' video. EW.com. Retrieved November 6, 2022, from https://ew.com/music/queen-i-want-to-break-free-music-video-mtv/

Barker, & Scheele, J. (2016). Queer : a graphic history / Meg-John Barker, Julia Scheele. Icon Books Ltd.

Bonnie Dow (2001) Ellen, Television, and the Politics of Gay and Lesbian Visibility, Critical Studies in Media Communication, 18:2, 123-140, DOI: 10.1080/07393180128077

Singer, B., & Fletcher, D. (Directors). (2018). Bohemian Rhapsody [Motion picture on Movie]. Milano: Twentieth Century Fox Regency Enterprises GK.

Doty, A. (1993). Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture (NED-New edition). University of Minnesota Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.cttttcmx

Treichler, P. A. (1987). AIDS, Homophobia, and Biomedical Discourse: An Epidemic of Signification. October, 43, 31–70. https://doi.org/10.2307/3397564

[z34l0t]

The Unbearable Heaviness of Being

Source

Feeling Doom-Drone Classic Earth 2's Tremors 20 Years On

Dave Segal

Possibly more influential than Nirvana. Dave Harwell (left), Dylan Carlson (right).

Can you feel it? That massive, mind-blotting buzz from the planet's core? That's Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version. Sub Pop released this record by Seattle duo Earth in early 1993. Its truculent tremors still ripple through the heavy-music underground. Nobody's made a big deal about 2013 being the landmark album's 20th anniversary. We need to redress this oversight. Admittedly, Earth 2 is no Nevermind in terms of sales (understatement, ahoy!), but its impact on subterranean metal may be just as historical as Nirvana's breakout LP has been in mainstream circles.

On Earth 2, guitarist Dylan Carlson—with help from bassist Dave Harwell—invented ambient metal, a devouring swarm of down-tuned guitar and bass dirges that coalesced into a threnody for forward motion... and possibly the human race. Never has sonic stasis been so domineering and exhaustive. It is Metal Machine Music as interpreted by a La Monte Young acolyte. Its infernal growl makes the Stooges' "We Will Fall" seem like sheerest New Age and Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" sound like bubblegum pop. Perhaps only Melvins' Lysol rivals it for sheer mass. Unlike most metal, Earth 2 insinuates doom. It needs no lyrics to convey the dread aura at its molten center. Earth 2 pulverized metal's cartoonishness and took the genre to the ashram.

To commemorate this vastly influential recording, The Stranger interviewed some of the key figures in the making of Earth 2, as well as a musician inspired by it. (Sub Pop boss Jonathan Poneman was unavailable for comment. Harwell did not respond to an interview request.)

BRUCE PAVITT

Sub Pop cofounder

What were your first thoughts when you heard Earth 2? The first time I heard the Earth tapes, I was struck by the conceptual nature of the tracks. Ambient metal. I was fascinated by the extreme nature and artistic vision of the band.

Did you and Jonathan Poneman have any arguments about whether Sub Pop should release the album? Jon and I both recognized that we needed some "sub" to go along with the "pop." It was important for the label to find a balance between the commercial and the adventurous.

Did Earth 2 present any particularly difficult marketing problems? Do you know how many copies it's sold? As for selling it, we felt that people would either get it or not. We didn't have high expectations. By allowing for elaborate packaging (double album, clear vinyl), we hoped that it would attract the interest of collectors and those who appreciated high-concept projects. At the time of release, we only pressed 2,000 copies of the record, which we knew would sell out. We did manage to sell some additional CDs... most likely another 2,000.

Do you view Earth 2 as Sub Pop's most extreme release? I do think that [Earth 2] is the most extreme recording ever put out by Sub Pop.

Where do you think Earth 2 fits in the grand scheme of rock music? I've always felt very proud of Earth 2. In the grand scheme of rock music, I think it stands next to Metal Machine Music by Lou Reed. Conceptual, ambient, challenging. My favorite Earth memory is when they opened up for the Ultra Lame Fest show at the Paramount in '92. Although they opened for more popular bands like Mudhoney, it was amazing to see them perform for a sold-out crowd at such a prestigious venue.

DYLAN CARLSON

Earth mastermind

What was your state of mind when you went into the studio to record Earth 2? There were a couple of ideas. We'd already done long songs. So we wanted to do one album-length piece. Unfortunately, this was before Pro Tools; you only get 30 minutes max per reel of tape, running at 15 ips [inches per second]. That's why there are three parts to [Earth 2]. At the time we were doing that, the CD was like 75 minutes long, and we wanted to fill the entire CD. Those were two of the parameters we were working with. The first stuff we had done at a little eight-track studio. This was our first time using two-inch tape, so we wanted to use every track. The idea was to try to make it as big as the live thing that we did. It's funny, because when I was working with Stuart [Hallerman of Avast! Recording Company] again on Angels of Darkness, we were talking about how if we had to do that album now, how differently we would have gone about it. We loaded all our gear in there that we used in the live show, then turned everything up and did a bunch of stuff that is technically incorrect [laughs]. We mic'd all the speakers individually and ran them to separate tracks. It turns out there's a bunch of fade cancellation and stuff like that that we didn't take into account. And then realizing later on that if you crank up a small amp in the studio and record it, it'll sound bigger than cranking up a big amp in the studio. So we basically set up and played live with that crazy mic'ing going on. Any tracks that weren't filled later, we went back and did some overdubs.

What was the rationale behind using drums very sparingly? We didn't have a drummer at the time, and I got tired of programming the drum machine. The first two tracks, when we played 'em live, had a drum machine, but I didn't really want to record with the drum machine. And I figured it would take tracks away from guitar.

The idea was to come up with overwhelming waves of guitar and bass? Yeah. On ["Like Gold and Faceted"], we tried to have some drums, but it didn't work out well, so we ended up using cymbal washes, but that was it for percussion.

Did you conceive of this album as having a functional value, as the text on the back of the record suggests? That kind of came after we did it, when I was coming up with the cover. I had worked at a record store at the time [Peaches, then Beehive], over there on 45th. I grabbed a bunch of stuff when I worked there, and a series of meditational cassettes Atlantic Records did in the '70s caught my eye. It seemed to fit the mood. There was one that was sea sounds, one that was nature sounds. It went along with a series of Medical records that I had. Stuart mentioned that our songs seemed to be part of something else; they fade up and fade out, but sound like they keep going. I like that idea. It would be like this was a record that was part of a series. But I don't know where the series is; this is the only one that survived. It's funny when I listen to Earth 2—not that I listen to it that often or anything—we were trying to make this really huge record, but in a weird way it has this claustrophobic feel to me. Because of the way we did it, it has this weird murkiness. If I had to do it now, it would sound a lot more expansive.

Do you ever perform those songs live anymore? No. We haven't played those in many a moon.

Is it because you don't want to wallow in nostalgia or is it because you're so far out of that mind-set? Some people had mentioned the idea of us doing that this year. Since Earth is still a going concern, I don't really want to do that. I'm not really into that idea. It would be one thing if Earth had stopped at a certain point and we were coming back. But the fact that we're still going, revisiting stuff... I mean, we revisit stuff in the live set, but when we do 'em, they're updated and altered for the situation. With Earth 2, those would be really hard to do that with because they're just one thing. I don't feel the need to repeat it. I'd like to be the one band that's not playing an album from 20 years ago. [Laughs] It makes sense to me if you're a band that has a hit or hits back then and you're playing the hits for the fans. [Earth 2] is not like that. It's funny how so many people now are like, "Earth 2, Earth 2," but at the time, not many people got it.

It's acquired this [reputation] rather than starting out thinking it was this. People may view it as a seminal work, and that's great. I'm glad people like it, but I still feel there are better Earth records and more to come. So maybe if Earth in the future are doing a last tour, maybe then we'd break it out. But until then, I really don't want to do that.

What about the photograph in the inner part of the CD with you and Dave Harwell aiming the guns at the camera? It seems at odds with everything else on the cover. We were both firearms enthusiasts. It was a jarring bit of aggression in what was otherwise a fairly soporific album cover. [Laughs]

Whose work is that on the front cover? I had originally picked out some other photos from a book, but trying to get the licensing from the photographer was proving difficult. So I went through a book of stock photography with Art Aubrey. They weren't free, but there was just a flat fee. I tried to find photos that were close to the ones originally wanted, which were from this travel book about India. There was a picture of this castle in Rajasthan that has all these little mini towers hanging off the wall. The pill bottles had the same effect. Obviously at the time I had narcotic interests. [Laughs] The front photo is a picture of Mongolia.

Do you view Earth 2 as the band's ultimate statement? Maybe the first iteration of the band, but even then I'm not sure, because Pentastar I really like a lot. But I don't think it's Earth's ultimate statement. That's another thing about redoing stuff like that—a record is a snapshot of a certain time and mental state and environment. You can't re-create that. There was some talk of doing Earth 2 stuff again this year. The only idea that sounded cool to me, I had been talking with Lori [Goldston] about doing an arrangement of it for strings and an orchestra. Something like that would be appealing to me more than a "here we are cranking out the hits on tour" kind of thing.

If an avant-garde classical ensemble could do Metal Machine Music, it seems like you could get Earth 2 into some slightly different context and it would sound just as good. There was talk with ATP about doing that. It's okay to mention now because it never happened. It looked like it wasn't going to work out. They could sense I wasn't super-psyched about it. The logistics were proving to be difficult.

What did your musician friends—particularly Kurt Cobain—think of Earth 2 when it came out? Kurt was kind of in the midst of exploding. [Laughs] Nirvana were not in town very much at that time. You never really know when you play stuff for your friends: They say they like it, but who knows? I can like people and not like their band, but a lot of people you can't do that with. They think that if you like them as friends and you say you don't like their band, they get all huffy or get in a snit about it. I've always been like, I can like you as a friend, but I don't have to dig what you do musically.

Whatever happened to Dave Harwell? I tried to contact him, but he never responded. I see him every now and then—not as buds, but around town. This one time I saw him a couple of years ago, I said, "What's up?" and he acted like I didn't exist. [Laughs] For some reason, he and Joe Preston have some ax to grind. I've never quite figured out why. Back then, there were people I actually fucked over, and I get along with them fine now. Slim Moon, too... I don't know what I did that made them so angry at me. I've never had any ill will toward any of them. I don't know what's up.

Do you think that this album has received its proper due from critics? It's not for me to say what its proper due is. People seem to revere it and mention it quite highly. A lot of people say they were influenced by it. I can't complain. I'm glad people dig it. It took a while, but it's always nice when your work is appreciated.

Do you think Earth 2 was the hardest one to accomplish of all your albums, or the easiest? Hallerman said you guys would join him in the control room while the guitar and bass were going. He was kind of surprised. Earth 2 went pretty easily. (A) The budget was small; (B) we didn't have a ton of studio time. The first two tracks we'd played live, so we had 'em pretty down. The hardest part was playing the first two without any rhythms, since we had a rhythm track to play it live. That was the most difficult aspect of it. And then trying to figure out the weird ways to get as many tracks as possible without... Nowadays, obviously, I would book studio time and do a lot of overdubbing, whereas back then we didn't have that luxury, so we have to get all these at once—especially trying to overdub on a 15- or 20-minute track. It's not like you can do a lot of punch-ins and stuff. It would get pretty messy and mind-warping. But it did go pretty smoothly. The fact that we were young and Stuart was young and willing to try crazy stuff that we'd probably know better about now helped. We were excited to be in the studio with someone paying for our record to be made rather than us paying for it.

Do you remember how Sub Pop reacted when they first heard the record? My relationship with Sub Pop had always sort of been with Bruce, who was the more adventurous, experimental guy. Jonathan's strengths were knowing what would sell—he definitely had an ear for pop and hard rock. They seemed into it, especially Bruce. Bruce asked us to be on the label. They put a lot of effort into it. They did the nice vinyl version and made some nice shirts for it. It didn't get a lot of reviews at the time, other than British press. I remember being excited because the header said, "Slow Death, Immense Decay." Any reference to a Slayer song in a review of something I did I was pretty happy about.

STUART HALLERMAN

Earth 2 engineer, owner of Avast! Recording Company

Can you discuss the recording sessions for Earth 2? Did things go smoothly? What was the mood like in the studio when the tracks were being laid down? It went quite smoothly. They had a plan laid out. It was mostly the two of them—Dave and Dylan. Some things took me by surprise. After tuning up their guitars and getting a good roar going, it was time to get the first bass and guitar tracks; I walked back to the control room, and they followed me there and sat down and said it was time to roll tape [laughs]. The guitars were being played by EBows out there. Okay, interesting. I hit "record," and that was the bed of the first piece of music. Then they went back to retune their guitars and got the EBows going again and again followed me back into the control room. They said, "All right, that'll be our second track." I thought, "What have I gotten myself into here? This is going to be the most boring week on earth." It was already an interesting mood there, but as soon as the layers of the two instruments two times were there, the magic tapestry began to appear. So while filling reels of tape with sounds that way, it was a very relaxed vibe. I wish more days went by like that.

Were there overdubs or was it all just done in real time? Did you go back later and do some editing? They did the background tapestry of the layers of drones and EBow tracks and they did multitrack layers of riffs and parts over that that they played. It was done to tape—two-inch 16-track back in those days. No editing, really.

Did this music present any special challenges to you? It seemed pretty unprecedented up to that point. Patience. One of the stated things of Earth at the time was to out-Melvin the Melvins. I'm appreciative of both the fast Melvins and later the slow Melvins, but that was a noble experiment.

Did you feel like something momentous was happening during the recording of Earth 2? Did it stand out among the sessions you'd done? Not in the way the question would necessarily be wanting me to say, "Yeah." To me, it just seemed like this really cool drone record that I personally liked when it was done. I'd put it on in my living room for roommates or friends or visitors at appropriate moments—maybe late at night or just at a certain place in the evening—put this on and people would say, "What's this?" They'd pay attention to it and then give me this weird look, like, "Why are you doing this to us?" Four minutes later, they'd say, "This is cool." They'd relax into it.

To me, it was almost a parlor trick or experimental music, lovely in its own little porcupine way. It faded into obscurity, and then [in 2003 Autofact Records] reissued it and the label wanted me to write liner notes for it. I had a story or two—the preproduction meeting and first day of the session and whatnot, a few anecdotes, a short remembrance of the making of. Then, while checking the spelling of the members, I learned that unbeknownst to me, in the intervening years, around the world, people were doing doom-drone rock. I was pretty unaware of that. I knew about Sunn O))) and Boris and stuff like that, but didn't really get that there was this whole genre of this stuff. It might've even been before Sunn O))) and Boris. The momentous thing was there, but I was certainly taken by surprise that anyone had noticed or had spawned a genre.

Has anything you've worked on since then surpassed Earth 2 in sheer intensity and heaviness? Sunn O))) and Boris, the planets that orbit around Earth. There's some bombastic stuff that attempts to out-Melvins Earth. There was a Sunn O)))/Boris split record and one of the joking ideas was to release it instead of in a 5.1 surround sound, in 1.5 mono plus five subwoofers. For a moment we thought, "Why wouldn't we do that?" There was a mocking one-tenth-serious proposal to do that with the Sunn O)))/Boris split.

STEPHEN O'MALLEY

Guitarist for Earth-influenced band Sunn O)))

What thoughts were going through your mind the first time you heard Earth 2? What sort of associations did this music trigger in your head? I was living in a house in the U-District. A friend of mine, Curtis Pitts, worked at Sub Pop. He'd come over and hang out. I lived with six people at one of these terrible college houses. He brought over a promo of Earth 2. He wanted to give it to me because Dylan was wearing a Morbid Angel T-shirt on the promo photo. I was really into death metal. He thought I would respond to it. I did, but in a quite different way. I think I was 19 or something. It was my first year at the University of Washington. I was totally getting into LSD and black metal, as a graduation from death metal. Earth 2 was very different from anything I'd heard before. It kind of fit into that frame somehow. I didn't have any real experience with experimental music, so probably like a lot of people who got into that, we were coming from metal. It's kind of a gateway into minimalist music and experimental music—something that now over the years I've been educated on. But at the time, hearing purely instrumental guitar music was rare, especially in this format that I know now is referencing La Monte Young and raga music and various other types of meditational music. To a 19-year-old death-metal kid, it sounded like slow Slayer. Melvins had done some stuff like that, right around the same period, actually, but Melvins were always clearly a rock band. Earth 2 was the most non-rock album that they did. It's the most abstract album they did. Although some of the rock stuff they did on Pentastar is pretty abstract.

I actually saw the Earth duo of Dylan and Dave Harwell play at that time at the Sub Pop Ultra Lame Fest. I think they played right before Mudhoney and right after Seaweed. Earth played some riffs that I recognized from Earth 2, but the audience was not into it. It was at the Paramount Theatre, and after a stage-diving Seaweed set, it was like, "What the fuck is this?" [Laughs]

Did Earth 2 sound to you like an ultimate statement, a kind of ground zero for heavy music? No, it never did. I think people give it more credit than it deserves. I think it's a great experimental record. I don't know if Dylan was trying to make an ultimate statement about music. I think he was trying to follow his ideas and interests into another area. Which is how he still does music. He follows his own path. People worship the past—especially art and music and literature and film. Various works are worshipped as being these pinnacles, and in some cases they were meant to be by the creators, but generally they pick up that reputation or presence after the creative process is done.

I love [Earth 2]; I was very educated by it as a guitar player and a musician, but I don't know if the album itself is really that important in that way. It affected some people. That band was put out on Sub Pop [because Carlson was Kurt Cobain's buddy]. Poneman and Pavitt wanted to please Kurt, so they put it out. Sub Pop didn't know what the fuck they were doing. Now, of course, they've re-pressed all these old records. When they actually came out, it was like, "Whatever," you know? "Bleach sold another 50,000 copies; sure, we'll put out another Earth record. Whatever."

It may be one of the most interesting records the label put out, as far as minimalist music. There's not much minimalist music on that label. It's a great doorway, for someone coming from metal. It introduced New York minimalist music like Tony Conrad, Glenn Branca, guitar orchestra music, La Monte Young, the Western take on raga music. It still sounded heavy, like slowed-down Slayer, as it always was described, but it was drone music played with guitars, extremely long songs.

What do you think about Earth 2 today, 20 years after its release? Do you think the album has gotten its due from the press and the public? I think it's a historical album, and what more could you ask? It's 20 years later, and people still consider it to be a very important record. Every time Sunn O))) puts out a record, [Earth 2] gets mentioned—which is a compliment for us. It's a tower in the musical world. I don't know if it's due anything. Earth got its due when Dylan re-formed the band and turned it into a real band, who produced a lot more music that's more important than that album, actually. That Earth has continued to make interesting, compelling music on their own terms, that's more important. It's nice to have Earth 2 in the background.

[jayhawksofficial]

Random Archival Dig 10 (3-2-23)

More from The Jayhawks Archive HERE

Compilation Special Edition - part 1

Jayhawks music has appeared on a number of compilations over the years dating all the way back to 1986 (see below). These releases have included many radio station live session collections, promo samplers, some totally random concoctions and even a few film soundtracks.

Here's an interesting one from 2006, a benefit CD released in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster - For New Orleans: A Benefit For The Musicians' Village Habitat For Humanity, featuring Dan Wilson, Marshall Crenshaw, Indigo Girls, Jeff Buckley and several Twin Cities artists, including a rare, exclusive Paul Westerberg track under the guise of "PW & The Honky Heartattax." The Jayhawks, who were on hiatus at the time, contributed "Caught With a Smile on My Face," an early 2000s demo recorded at Flowers Studio in Minneapolis that originally appeared on the More Rain bonus disc of the 2003 deluxe edition of Rainy Day Music. Gary Louris also contributed a brief essay to the booklet. The Jayhawks didn't have an official website at the time so the old Jayhawks Fanpage (RIP) was listed instead.

"Caught With a Smile on My Face" made a handful of live appearances in 2003, a one off in 2016 and has also been performed by Gary Louris on some of his livestreams in recent years.

The Jayhawks first compilation appearance was in 1986 on Big Hits of Mid-America, Volume IV, released on LP by Twin/Tone, the legendary Minneapolis indie label. The Big Hits compilation series started in the mid 60s with two volumes on the Soma label, featuring many classic Minnesota bands of the era (The Castaways, The Underbeats, The Gestures, et al). Twin/Tone revived the series in 1979 with a 2LP set that collected many of the best local acts at a time when the punk and new wave scenes were exploding. Big Hits 3 very much helped to (re)establish the Twin Cities as one of the key music scenes in the country, a reputation that it still holds to this day.

The 4th Big Hits volume came out at a time when Twin/Tone was in a transitional period. They had already lost their 2 biggest artists, The Replacements & The Suburbs, to the majors, with Soul Asylum soon to follow (although The Replacements rhythm section does appear here on one track).

Big Hits 4 is of special interest to Jayhawks fans:

It features an early track unique to this compilation, "Jesus in the Driver's Seat," which was a popular song in the band's live act at the time.

Interestingly, all of Louris' former band mates in Safety Last appear here in a couple of places: backing about-to-be Replacement Bob "Slim" Dunlap on one of his songs and on a song by Twa Corbies (Lianne Smith and Jim Tollefsrud), which also features guitarist Dan Gardner, who would briefly play with The Jayhawks in 1988 after Louris took time off after a serious car accident.

Finally, the late Caleb Palmiter, who had formed a short-lived, early version of The Jayhawks with Mark Olson in 1984, is here with The Magnolias playing bass on a song he co-wrote.

Jayhawks tracks would also appear on Twin/Tone promo samplers in 1989 and 1992. A few years after Big Hits 4, The Jayhawks signed to Twin/Tone who would release Blue Earth in 1989, which directly led to the band signing a major label deal. The rest, as they say, is history.

Big Hits 4 has never been physically reissued and is mostly missing from the streaming platforms, but it is available on Apple Music HERE with song previews.

The Jayhawks artist page at Twin/Tone HERE

Twin/Tone compilation page with song previews HERE

1989 Twin/Tone Jayhawks bio

[dustedmagazine]

Michiko Ogawa — Junkan (2020) (Marginal Frequency)

Junkan (2020) by Michiko Ogawa

Junkan (2020) is the second album by Michiko Ogawa, a clarinetist, composer and researcher who is currently based in Berlin. She moved to Berlin following significant activity in Japan, where she played with Taku Sigimoto; the USA, where she earned a doctorate at University of California-San Diego; and Australia, where she presented work derived from her research into the life and music of Teiji Ito. 

It was in Berlin that Junkan (2020) took shape. When the city went on lockdown at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, she found herself with a plenty of opportunity to listen to her environment. Two pitches, A# and B, emerged from the sounds of her apartment block. Over time, she imagined harmonies that could work with or against them, and the composition was born. Near the year’s end, just as Omicron showed up to ruin everyone’s holidays, bass clarinetist Sam Dunscombe recorded two versions of the piece, each lasting a bit over half an hour. Both were performed by an octet comprising a who’s who of microtonally aware musicians from Berlin. Dunscombe, Ogawa, guitarist Fredrik Rasten, flautist Rebecca Lane, and string players Sarah Saviet, Catherine Lamb, Lucy Railton and Jonathan Helbron played on both editions, and then the two clarinetists overdubbed eight additional passes over the second.

Despite being inspired by the aural ambience of city living, this music brings to mind human-free, vistas. As its long tones coalesce and diverge, overtones ripple like a canopy of leafy foliage seen from above as it bends and shakes under the influence of gusting breezes. Just as one might look for patterns in the leaves, Junkan (2020) invites the listener to find whatever order or disorder they seek in the crosshatching and convergence of slowly bowed strings and patiently blown woodwinds. Attend to both performances back-to-back and the thickening textures induced by the second edition’s extra clarinets will conspire with your pattern-seeking brain layers of perception that disappear into each other like the infinite reflections of two mirrors facing each other in a dimly lit room. 

Bill Meyer

[sinceileftyoublog]

Laetitia Sadier & Radio Outernational Live Show Review: 3/12, Empty Bottle, Chicago

Laetitia Sadier

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Laetitia Sadier's set Tuesday night at Empty Bottle was a mix of idealism, determination, and empathy. Such a combination exemplifies the connotation of the very title of her first solo album in 7 years, Rooting For Love (Drag City). Like her work with Stereolab, Rooting For Love employs a wide array of instrumentation--guitar, bass, synth, organ, trombone, vibraphone, live and programmed drums, zither, vocals--to present songs that are simple-sounding in execution, but deceptively complex. For every foray into lounge funk, there's an off-kilter psychedelic freak-out; in combination with Sadier's spirituality and collectivism, it makes for an album that you can deeply explore as much as you can vibe to.

Tuesday, Sadier, on stage alone, pointed to her synthesizer and joked, "This is the band...It's the same every night." In a way, playing to recordings and samples seems to occupy its own, different level of difficulty, as you can't as easily improvise your way out of messing up. Thankfully, Sadier not only nailed it, but employed a looper and processed her scraggly guitar playing to build up and tear down her compositions, adding unexpected chaos for those in the crowd who had voraciously consumed the new record. "Protéïformunité" featured washy noise and a drum beat, Sadier immersing herself in the music to the point of dancing, as she sang mantras like "L’objectif est de limoger l’ignorance, d’interrompre le cycle sans fin de la souffrance,” or, "The goal is to remove ignorance, to interrupt the endless cycle of suffering." Again, as with Stereolab, Sadier showed that visionary ideas can sound, simply, pleasant.

Of course, while you wouldn't describe Sadier as a realist, she's also certainly unafraid to confront, and Tuesday, she performed the two most provocative tracks from Rooting For Love. "Don't Forget You're Mine", co-written with Veronique Vincent (of Belgian avant-rock band Aksak Maboul), tells the story of an academic couple whose more-successful husband is threatened by his wife's sudden success to the point where he torments her with psychological and physical abuse. It was here where Sadier warped her beatific guitar playing into something more fuzzy, as if to emphasize the skin-crawling nature of what she was singing about, contrasting the lovely timbre of her voice. On the studio version, she repeats, from the point of view of the abuser, "Get up, babe!" over siren-like instrumentation, like a plea to society to eliminate internal and external toxicity. "Cloud 6", meanwhile, started with chopping and screwing her operatic vocals, her trombone pulsating on the off-beat of the arpeggiated synth line, before turning more clear. Sadier waxed about how the process of fear encapsulates a wholesale turning away from humanity; "How can you be seen and known and loved when you have your armor on," she asked? The song ended with her most frank declaration: "This armor is keeping you from the gifts I've given you / I'm not fucking around / You're halfway dead." In the context of not only Sadier's songs that decry capitalism and war, but the world today in general, "Cloud 6" was a call to wake up.

Radio Outernational's Aaron Shapiro, Kenthaney Redmond, Hunter Diamond, & Wayne Montana

Opening for Sadier was local quintet Radio Outernational, who features three current members of funk-punk heroes The Eternals. While Radio Outernational haven't released any recorded music, they've been playing around town since last year, clear in their chemistry. Flutist and saxophonist Hunter Diamond and flutist Kenthaney Redmond effectively harmonized, one often trailing the other, especially on the songs that employed dual flute. Guitarist Aaron Shapiro offered funky licks rife with swirling wah wahs and prickly stabs. The rhythm section, bassist Wayne Montana and drummer Areif Sless-Kitain, propelled the slinky tunes, providing a bed for the other three players to flourish. Radio Outernational was a wholly appropriate opener for Sadier, as it was almost like they were the physical manifestation of the type of cosmic cooperation she sings and dreams about.

[chorusfm]

Dave Grohl Performs “Play” Live

Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters performed “Play” live for an upcoming concert film. The upcoming release of 'The Benefit Concert Volume 20' by Warren Haynes includes a spectacular highlight: the first-ever--and only to date--performance of Dave Grohl’s 23-minute instrumental epic, "Play," which extends to an extraordinary 36 minutes in its live rendition. This live performance is now available, offering fans the opportunity to witness “Play” being brought to life on that unforgettable evening.   Originally composed and performed entirely by Grohl on every instrument, “Play” is an expansive journey through Grohl's musical prowess and creativity. The video release captures the energy and intensity of “Play” as rendered by Grohl and a veritable murderers row of musical accomplices including Greg Kurstin (keys), guitarists Jason Falkner, Alain Johannes and Barrett Jones, Chris Chaney (bass) and Drew Hester (percussion). The performance's distinctiveness was further elevated by the rhythmic artistry of Abby the Spoon Lady, a prominent Asheville-based busker and advocate for street performance, whose unique spoon-playing skill brought an unexpected and captivating dimension to “Play.” Delivering a blend of visual and auditory artistry, this one and only live version of “Play” is a key highlight of 'The Benefit Concert Volume 20'. The Benefit Concert Volume 20' is a collection of standout performances from Warren Haynes’ 30th Annual Christmas Jam, bringing together a diverse group of artists. The album, as well as the event itself, serve not only as a musical spectacle but also as a philanthropic endeavor, with all proceeds being donated to the Asheville Area Habitat for Humanity. In addition to Haynes and Grohl, other featured artists on the forthcoming set include Eric Church, Joe Bonamassa, Gov’t Mule, Mike Gordon, Marco Benevento, Jamey Johnson, Edwin McCain, Kevn Kinney, Tyler Ramsey, Scott Murawski, and Ron Holloway, along with Machan Taylor, Mini Carlsson, Mike Barnes, and Ray Sisk sitting in with Gov’t Mule. Recorded on December 7th and 8th, 2018, in Asheville, North Carolina, the concert was not just a musical feat but also a significant charitable event, raising over $2.8 million for the Asheville Area Habitat for Humanity.   ‘The Benefit Concert Volume 20’ will be available physically on four different double vinyl volumes (in different colors: purple, orange, blue, red), 2-CD + DVD set, and 3-CD + 2 Blu-ray set, along with a digital-only format. Bundles are also available now to pre-order. Starting in December of 1988, Warren Haynes launched what would become a cherished tradition in his hometown of Asheville, North Carolina. Despite its name, the "Christmas Jam" was less about festive tunes and more about gathering local musicians to celebrate the holidays and give back to the community. Over 30 years later, this humble event transformed into a nationally recognized spectacle, raising over $2.8 million for Asheville Area Habitat for Humanity and the construction of over 50 homes in the region. Reflecting on its growth, Haynes notes, “As an Ashevillean, it's heartening to see the progress Asheville has witnessed over these three decades. In many ways, Christmas Jam mirrors this city's vibrant spirit."   ‘The Benefit Concert Volume 20’ stands out not only as a testament to three decades of musical celebrations, but also the enduring spirit of Christmas Jams. Throughout the years, it's the impromptu collaborations (often times between artists and musicians meeting backstage or on stage), the unwavering commitment of all participants, and the unity in music that truly define this legacy.   “Although Christmas Jam, the main event, is traditionally a one-night event, there have been three occasions where we felt the need to make it two nights — the 20th, 25th, and 30th Anniversaries, each of which featured extraordinary line-ups,” Haynes adds. “The performances being represented in this package are culled from the 30th Anniversary in 2018, which was in itself… https://chorus.fm/news/dave-grohl-performs-play-live/

[karenpulferfocht]

Folk Alliance International Conference 2023 Highlights

MEMPHIS WAS THE FIRST “CITY OF HONOR”

https://folk.org/announcing-our-first-city-of-honor-memphis-tennessee/

By Michael Sangiacomo

KANSAS CITY, MO — The folk music old guard that dominated the Folk Alliance International conferences for the past 35 years has passed the guitar to a new generation that is younger, energized, and mostly female and non-white.

And the kids are all right.

In the BC years (before covid), the annual five-day conference that draws more than 1,000 musicians from around the world was largely the province of aging performers and music lovers.

This year, the beat has changed. Most of the performers were young, female, and non-white lending a whole new energy to the event that was held this past weekend in Kansas City. The LGBTQI community was also well-represented.

Memphis was everywhere, chosen as the “First City of Honor” with Memphis-oriented workshops, speakers, and a slew of talented performers including Amy LaVere, Bailey Biggers, Talibah Safiya, Yella P of Memphisissippi Sound, violinist Alice Hasen and the brilliant Aquarian Blood.

Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, poet, and actor Valerie June astounded with her keynote speech that said love and hope can defeat hate and fear.

As she spoke about the global crisis, the “technological hacking of the human mind and body” and nuclear war, she abruptly stopped and flashed her trademark smile. She walked to center stage, picked up a banjo, and played a delicate version of “What A Wonderful World” in defiance of the doomsayers.

Wherever she walked she was treated like royalty. Women and children rushed up and hugged her.

She now lives in Brooklyn but said she would always consider Memphis her home.

Like the rest of us, June went from concert to concert to hear the young artists.

The annual gathering is designed to allow music critics, agents, disc jockeys, and concert and festival bookers to get up close and personal with new artists and discover new talent.

It’s also a chance for singers and musicians to strut their stuff in the smaller, intimate venues of the Westin Hotel and gather new fans. There are organized workshops and concerts during the day and evening, though much of the action started at 10:30 p.m. and continued almost to daybreak in hundreds of hotel rooms converted into makeshift music spots. Sometimes a performer played for just one or two people, a memorable experience.

There were a few older performers here, like Tom Paxton and Janis Ian, who acted in more of a non-performing, advisory capacity. Ian received a well-deserved lifetime achievement award. Paxton said he was just there to be inspired by the young people.

Instead of the usual performances by folk icons like Livingston Taylor, John McCutcheon and Eliza Gilkyson, visitors chose between blues singers from Memphis, storytellers from Ireland, brash bands from Australia, and new Americana voices from everywhere,

The toughest challenge is choosing who to see since every concert choice means missing hundreds of other mini-concerts going on elsewhere.

In one, Josh White Jr. seemed a little baffled when his co-performer, 92-year-old jazz genius, composer, and orchestra conductor David Amram asked him to play “House of the Rising Sun” a second time. But he smiled and acquiesced.

Amram impulsively invited young musicians he just met hours earlier to join them. Violinist Rahel-Liis Aasrand of Estonia and percussionist Natalia Miranda from Guatemala nervously joined Amram and White in an impromptu jazz number, as if they had played together for years.

Amy Lavere has a voice much larger than her lithe frame which was dwarfed by the stand-up bass she played. Her voice is at once sweet and powerful and her accompanying guitarist and violinist could not have been better.

Alice Hasen and showed just how versatile the violin could be, switching gears from classical to folk to almost hip-hop.

There was music around every corner. In one room, Brit Shane Hennessey played an instrumental tribute to Chet Atkins. In another, the laid-back Aquarian Blood’s J.B. Horrell played the guitar upright between his knees while his wife, Laurel, sang along.

And the talent goes on and on, stretching out through the halls and into the early morning hours as it expands the definition of folk music far, far beyond the notion of a guy with a guitar.

For more information on the Folk Alliance and how to attend next year’s conference, go to www.folk.org.

[stu-evans]

Bush - The Art Of Survival

Nine albums in, Gavin Rossdale and co are more than surviving, they are thriving with their best album in decades 

I’ve always been fascinated by the career of Bush. They are a band that, when you mention them to most British folk, will meet with raised eyebrows and possibly a mention of “doesn’t the lead singer have a daughter who’s a model or something” Mention them to rock loving Americans however and it is a completely different story. Why then, are Bush so revered in the US? Maybe this album can explain that? 

“Heavy Is The Ocean", the opening track, kicks off with trademark ‘Bushness’ (yes, I’ve created a new word) low bass, drums that hang in the air and a proper grunge riff. Rossdale’s coarse vocal slowly growing and growling. It’s a song I can imagine listening to at full volume driving down Sunset Boulevard, top down, heads nodding along. Not sure it would work as well on the M6 Birmingham toll road mind you. 

“Slow Me” is another slice of classic Bush, a giant chorus, a we run refrain and a mention of America. You’ve got a nod to Stone Temple Pilots via lead guitarist Chris Traynor’s riffs and chords. It is a song that would sit comfortably on Razorblade Suitcase, in fact it would compliment it brilliantly.  

Want more riffs? “Human Sand” is full of them, and does that thing that Pearl Jam does so well, drops the guitar at points and leaves the bass to be king for a bridge or two. Glorious stuff. “Kiss Me I’m Dead” is a song born for stadiums, it has a Linkin Park feel to it, I guarantee you Hybrid Theory was on rotation in the bands studio when they were recording the album.  

“Identity” is another heavy hitting track, proper full on post-grunge goodness, it swirls around the room and has that almost whispering chorus that bands of Bush’s ilk love so much. You can’t kill the American dream sings Rossdale, yes another nod to the US of A. 

If you know this bands work then you’re probably wondering by now why I haven’t mentioned a trade-mark ballad. Fear not, dear reader, “Creatures Of The Fire” is, can you guess? A beautiful ballad. It is a love song that slows the record down to a delicate tempo, a modern version of Glycerine if you will. 

“Judas Is A Riot” and “Gunfight” bring the noise back to the table, Judas... has a riff lifted from Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness (the algorithm actually played a Smashing Pumpkins song after the album had finished) whist Gunfight discusses gun violence and the questioning of God. America anyone? 

Closing track “1000 Years” brings the record and tone down, like a hazy sunset it slowly fades but remains pretty beautiful. “I wish we could sleep for a thousand years” sings Rossdale, “we’re sinking” there’s clearly some heartache and loss fuelling this song, something we can all relate to at some point in our lives I’m sure. 

The Art Of Survival isn’t going to win over any new fans, it isn’t trendy, it won’t make tik-tok or go viral. It will, however, appeal to those who know the band and those who might dip their ear into the void of latter day rock. And it is definitely American!

  8/10

[theunderestimator-2]

Legendary UK d-beat/hc band Discharge, hardcore royalty at the time, performing at Olympic Auditorium, LA, Dec. 9th, 1983, in epic shots by Alison Braun (check out the link for more of her brilliant photos and her book “IN THE PIT ~  Photography by Alison Braun 1981-1990″)

"At first, Discharge didn’t stand out from the legions of punk bands that sprang up in the wake of the Sex Pistols’ incendiary 1977 debut (...) The first wave of punk burnt out quickly...

Abandoning its Pistols-worship, Discharge began forging its own path. In the process, the band helped kick off punk’s second wave. Discharge’s revamped version of punk bore little resemblance to anything that had come before. It was faster, harsher, and often almost entirely lacking in melody. The riffs were generally three-chord affairs, but they were played at warp speed, accompanied by a rumbling bass and a merciless, galloping drumbeat.

Soon, Discharge was topping the UK’s independent charts and making waves across the globe. Even reviewers who hated the music couldn’t help but admire the band’s uncompromising attack. “I certainly never wish to listen to this record again when I’ve completed this review,” a critic wrote in Sounds magazine. “And yet Discharge are the very best of their kind. Their energy, as we used to say in ’77, is amazing.” 

A short video shot in Toronto in 1983 captures the band’s live show in its heyday (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSf9PMLcaqM) . Cal, sporting a soaped-up mohawk, stalks the stage like an apex predator, swinging the microphone and hanging over the stage’s edge to bait the crowd. His neck veins bulge as he screams. Pooch, the guitarist, and Rainy, the bassist, stand stock-still to either side of Cal, spike-haired golems, while the strobes flash behind them. Garry anchors the attack, pounding out a racing, relentless drumbeat. The camera cuts frequently to the crowd, which in its writhing resembles a human storm pattern.

At this point in its career, Discharge was hardcore royalty, the keeper of punk’s true flame. It was a dangerous place to be..."

theappendix.net

(via)

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

HALESTORM And THE PRETTY RECKLESS Announce Summer 2022 U.S. Tour; BLABBERMOUTH.NET Presale

Grammy-winning hard rock band HALESTORM has announced its summer 2022 tour featuring special guests THE PRETTY RECKLESS, THE WARNING and LILITH CZAR on select dates. Produced by Live Nation, the 16-city trek kicks off on July 8 at Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre at Freedom Hill in Detroit, making stops across the U.S. in Boston, Charlotte, Phoenix and more before wrapping up in Portsmouth at Atlantic Union Bank Pavilion on August 12.

A special BLABBERMOUTH.NET presale will begin on Thursday, March 31 at 10:00 a.m. local time and end on Thursday, March 31 at 10:00 p.m. local time. When prompted, type in the presale code "BACKFROMTHEDEAD" to access tickets before the general public. General on-sale will be Friday, April 1 at 10 a.m. local time. Check back here on Thursday for ticketing links to individual shows.

Last month, HALESTORM premiered their video for "The Steeple", the second single to be released from "Back From The Dead" now making its way up rock radio charts. To lead singer Lzzy Hale, the video, like the song itself, is "a reflection of the human connection music brings us."

In honor of Record Store Day, HALESTORM will release a limited-edition seven-inch die-cut version of the song "Back From The Dead" in the shape of a tombstone. Look for it at your favorite independent record store.

"Back From The Dead", HALESTORM's newest full-length album, produced by Nick Raskulinecz (FOO FIGHTERS, MASTODON, ALICE IN CHAINS) with co-production by Scott Stevens (SHINEDOWN, DAUGHTRY, NEW YEARS DAY), will be available everywhere May 6. The band began writing the album pre-pandemic, but continued throughout lockdown, and the result "is the story of me carving myself out of that abyss," said Lzzy. "It is a journey of navigating mental health, debauchery, survival, redemption, rediscovery, and still maintaining faith in humanity."

HALESTORM has grown from a childhood dream of siblings Lzzy and Arejay Hale into one of the most celebrated rock bands of the last two decades. HALESTORM's music has surpassed a billion streams worldwide. Called a "muscular, adventurous, and especially relevant rock record" by Rolling Stone, "Vicious" earned the band their second Grammy nomination, for "Best Hard Rock Performance" for the song "Uncomfortable", the band's fourth No. 1 at rock radio, and led Loudwire to name HALESTORM "Rock Artist of the Decade" in 2019. Fronted by Lzzy with Arejay, guitarist Joe Hottinger, and bass player Josh Smith, HALESTORM has earned a reputation as a powerful live music force, headlining sold-out shows and topping festival bills around the world, and sharing the stage with icons including HEAVEN & HELL, ALICE COOPER and Joan Jett.

THE PRETTY RECKLESS's latest album, "Death By Rock And Roll", was made available in February 2021 via Fearless Records in the U.S. and Century Media Records in the rest of the world.

Upon release, "Death By Rock And Roll" topped multiple sales charts — including Billboard's Top Albums, Rock, Hard Music, and Digital Charts. The record also yielded three back-to-back No. 1 singles — "Death By Rock And Roll", "And So It Went" (featuring Tom Morello of RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE) and "Only Love Can Save Me Now" (featuring Kim Thayil and Matt Cameron of SOUNDGARDEN). The band has tallied seven No. 1 singles at the rock format throughout its career.

"Death By Rock And Roll" is THE PRETTY RECKLESS's first album to be made without longtime producer Kato Khandwala, who died in April 2018 from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident.

[zosonils-art]

Do you have a robot master OC (of the eight plus Drum) that you’d say is your favorite? If you haven’t done an infodump for them yet then you should do that one next

i couldn't choose a favourite if i tried, i love them all, but since you mentioned drum i thought i'd give her some new art and a proper dedicated post too! infodrump [ayyy] under the cut

drum, serial number SWN-002, is my take on the popular [????? i'm still a bit of a mega man fandom newbie i don't know hjdfn] 'wily equivalent to roll' oc template! she keeps things running at the various castles and fortresses and hideouts and whatever else her dad holes up in, whether that's by doing housework, planning schemes, or dodging taxes. whenever wily is trying to take over the world, drum acts as his second-in-command, ensuring that everything goes according to plan and ordering around the latest group of robot masters

she's every bit the edgy mid-00s teenager she looks: sarcastic, apathetic, and always talking back to her dad. she's more obedient than bass is, but she doesn't care for her job at all and will resort to any flimsy excuse or act of malicious compliance she can come up with to slack off. due to her purpose as an organiser and commander, she's a bossy control freak who's quick to anger when things don't go exactly her way, although when she's off work the worst of these traits recede in favour of more conventional teenage apathy. she sees herself as above the time and effort it takes to go out of her way to be mean to people like wily and bass tend to do, but she's equally uninterested in being nice on purpose and her default attitude is squarely on the nastier side

when she doesn't have work to focus on - and sometimes when she does anyway - drum is the lead vocalist and guitarist in a garage band, of which she is [currently - a friend's ocs get involved later, but that's a whole different post] the only member. i'm not good with music terms but she's into whatever genre stuff like wake me up inside and crawling in my skin is [i know those aren't the names hdfjf it's just the words i know people will recognise]. the sort with the crunchy guitar and the very loud lyrics about being sad and/or angry. playing or blasting music helps her to calm down when she's in a bad mood, which is pretty much all the time. the first warning sign of a new wily plot is a spike in search popularity for my chemical romance

i haven't gotten around to designing it, but drum has a non-armoured form like most of the other more explicitly kid-like robots, which she mostly uses for loitering around malls when she has an excuse to not be at home. she rarely buys anything, just hangs out and radiates an aura that makes suburban white women hurry their three kids into the next shop. drum often ends up hanging out with like-minded teens in the same vague area of the goth/punk/emo venn diagram she occupies, and makes a bit of a game out of seeing how honest she can be about her life without revealing that she's one of the world's most wanted robots. she tells herself that it's just something she does out of boredom and curiosity towards humans, but it mostly stems from loneliness and the desire to have literally any friends that aren't her brother's dog

as a sort of contrast to the healthy and positive relationship between their lightbot counterparts, drum and bass absolutely DESPISE each other and make no secret of it. each of them thinks of the other as an insufferable prick and they'll get into petty arguments over just about anything, from whose turn it is on the xbox to who treble loves more. [for the record, it's drum. she lets him hang out in the kitchen while she's cooking and sneaks him food scraps when bass isn't looking. he's the only family member she has an even remotely positive relationship with.] pretty much the only thing that can get them to stop fighting is mutual hatred of a bigger prick, and so far the only person to consistently get them to put their differences aside like this is wily himself - as much as the wily kids hate each other, they hate their dad just a little more, and have a history of teaming up just to mess with him. sometimes mega man can spark that spiteful cooperation, but drum's total apathy towards the light-wily family rivalry means she usually sees him as not worth her time and just finds bass' obsession with beating him even more annoying

drum wasn't made for combat, and as such she doesn't have a signature weapon or any fancy tricks like the copy chip. usually she just orders other robots to do the fighting for her. however, she is equipped with a standard arm-mounted buster, and can hold her own in battle with a 'fight smarter, not harder' approach if she has to. she's also outfitted with the same treble adapter that bass has, so if she's backed into a corner she can call on him for a power boost. treble is capable of supporting both adapters simultaneously, so as an absolute last resort they can all combine into treble-boosted drum & bass, who theoretically has all the combat power of bass plus the strategic thinking from drum and the boost in power from treble. in practice, though, drum and bass are so at odds with each other that they can barely hold together in the same body without either fighting for control or outright splitting apart to argue harder. again, it takes a lot of spite to get them to work together, but if something draws their combined ire and convinces them to cooperate they're an utterly terrifying force to be reckoned with

the game idea i vaguely have in my mind would feature drum as the final-not-final boss before wily reveals he was the mastermind behind it all and surprises absolutely nobody. she was put in charge of the latest world domination attempt, probably as the result of a 'why don't YOU take over the world if you're so smart' conversation, and in true drum fashion she follows a standard wily plot outline to the letter - including the blatant flaws, like all eight of her chosen robot masters forming a rock-paper-scissors wheel just begging to be exploited by the copy chip, and making a clear path from just outside the death fortress to her base of operations. after she's defeated in combat, she sarcasically wonders aloud how mega man could have possibly bested her plan and then helpfully points rock directly to wily's castle. she didn't wanna do the stupid scheme in the first place

again, i love all my ocs too much to possibly choose a favourite, but i'd say drum was the most fun to come up with if only because i had the help of some mates in a discord server. someone was like 'hey if there's bass is there a roll equivalent called drum or something lol' and i SPRINTED to microsoft paint to rough out a character design and the next entire day was just a constant stream of all of us bouncing ideas off each other and creating the meanest girl in the universe. her design changed a little bit from the initial sketch, most notably she used to have the half-shaved hairstyle that every gay person tries at some point before that changed to a midpoint between phoenix wright and sonic the hedgehog, but overall everything about her as a character flowed really well from the start. while she's fallen mostly into my hands since the initial brainstorm, she absolutely wouldn't exist without those friends' input and i feel that that's important to mention!

i'm very tired and i've been working on this on and off for the past day so i'm gonna call the infodrump finished here - thanks for giving me the excuse to talk about her! unfiltered and transparent versions of the art below as always

[votava-records]

"Big Energy" • PACHYMAN

As a young, university-trained musician looking to find his way in this tropical space, Pachy García (a/k/a Pachyman) became obsessed with old Jamaican dub records like the ones from King Tubby and Scientist and is determined to re-create the vibe in his own way. “The recordings of the early roots stuff really got to me, the raw-ness of the sound and how the distortion and the drive that come out of these recordings come out sounding like the root of the sound,” said García. “They were kind of like the old Delta blues recordings, like super-raw, people and their instruments rehearse this song and it sounds so perfect.” Garcia is perhaps best known as the drummer/vocalist for the L.A.-based band Prettiest Eyes, a unique pop-noise project that reflects his other formative interest, synth punk. He thinks of his new recording, called The Return of Pachyman, the way King Tubby would, an “x-ray” of reggae music, breaking it down to its bare bones. Originally a guitarist, he moved to Los Angeles in the early 2010s and developed his passion for dub. From there, he started recording bass, drums, and piano and collecting recording equipment in his basement studio, which he calls 333 House. As a teenager, García was drawn to guitar as a fan of bands like Nirvana, hardcore Dischord label bands, and Puerto Rican hardcore pioneers Tropiezo and Juventud Crasa. Yet he was also busily imbibing electronic dance music, drum and bass, and, at Universidad Interamericana, jazz, fusion, and Wes Montgomery. “At the same time, I was discovering the Wailers, The Easy All Stars from New York—when they did that Dub Side of the Moon Thing [dub versions of Pink Floyd classics] it was a big thing for me,” said García. In the early 2000s, Cultura Profética was the dominant force in Puerto Rican reggae, and García was drawn like a moth to the flame. “When their third record came, it was a live one, and it was all over the radio,” said García. After moving to LA, García found a niche group called Dub Club and started crate-diving classic records, old microphones and reel-to-reel tape machines in his quest to achieve an old-school reggae sound. With The Return of Pachyman, García wants to show how the Caribbean flow is transnational, a vibe that resounds from Jamaica to San Juan to Southern California. “With this project, I was looking to make positive music and radiate good energy; something to kinda disconnect from the negative things that were happening at the moment,” Garcia explains. “I am trying to make this project a service for humanity in the sense that I just wanted to shine a positive light.” Pachyman’s planet is a world between worlds, where exiled multi-instrument basement studio composers stand and deliver.                                                                                                                                released August 13, 2021