WEEZER – Pinkerton (Part 3)

Brandon briefly thinks about writing with structure a skill, then decides, “Eh, screw it,” and just scribbles out a list of thoughts. Brilliant thoughts, obviously. Things covered include Matt Sharp = Jay Bennet. Pinkerton = Vs. Music Videos = Murderers of Rock Stars.

From: Brandon Hall
To: Greg Schmidt

Greg, you brought up a lot of really good points and I fear this format is not perfectly suited to our ends because I want to touch briefly on a lot of things you said and it may feel a bit like a list, so bear with me.

In fact, I’m just going to make a list.

1. My first girlfriend also lived 30 minutes away! It was maybe even closer to an hour. And while she was no where near as cool as your GF – she did absolutely nothing by way of turning me on to music – the drive to and from her house did drastically deepen my appreciation for Outkast, The Roots, and Queen, the three artists I think I was into that summer. I think Queen made the rotation because my mother had just bought their Greatest Hits or something. Anyway, car time was, and remains, great music time. Do you miss it? You ride your bike exclusively, now, so when do you imbibe in sweet dulcet melodies?

2. Unabashed honesty can be good and fresh and rewarding so long as it isn’t purple and clichéd, which I think much of Pinkerton is. It’s what makes “emo” music so gag-worthy. So, yes, the album probably has a lot in common with Dashboard Confessional, though I find a lot of early Beatles and Beach Boys tracks to be at least a little more clever with their lyrics and arrangements, even on something as straightforwardly cheesy as “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.” Also, I think they were, as artists, more calculating than Cuomo and Weezer. I’m not sure Rivers was trying to nail the preteen demo in the same way The Beatles, The Beach Boys, or, like we mentioned in our last Crate Digger, Green Day with Dookie.

I think Cuomo was absolutely writing from the heart. And I think he showed himself to be kind of a lousy poet, which is actually surprising because their debut had a lot of great, fun songs that featured such a clever mix of wit, confession, and nostalgic imagery. Cuomo wrote a lot of Pinkerton on the influence of painkillers, so maybe there’s that. Of course, Matt Sharp sued for writing credit on 9 of the 10 songs and won a settlement out of court, so is he to blame, as well, or should we give him the lions share of credit for the kick-ass music?

3. Matt Sharp leaving after Pinkerton and Weezer’s subsequent fall from rock grace feels a whole lot like Jay Bennet’s involvement with Wilco and his departure after their seminal Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Both bands featured front men who take all the credit, but the quality and creativity of both fell off after their “lesser” disgruntled members left the band. Perhaps losing Matt Sharp has as much to do with the decline of Weezer as the public reception to Pinkerton.

4. Also, I wonder if you’d care to tackle the similarities between Pinkerton and Pearl Jam’s Vs. Of course, both albums follow huge debut successes, Blue Album and Ten. Both have black and white covers. Both bands rejected commercialization of their albums, especially in the form of music videos, though Pearl Jam had much more clout to be able to do so. After the video for “Jeremy” became such a hit, they refused to do any videos for Vs. wanting people to focus on the music, not the video. Weezer, similarly, rejected Spike Jonze’s treatment for “El Scorcho,” then argued with Mark Romanek so much that he quit, leaving them to finish production and editing of the video themselves. And it kind of sucks. For their next single, “The Good Life,” they upped the ante significantly to try to salvage the album’s plummeting sales but the damage seemed to have been done.

It is interesting to think about the frustration and conflicted feelings that a musician must have had at the heyday of music videos, in which their music frequently became a score for a director’s short film. Weezer’s “Buddy Holly” will forever be remembered for its Happy Days video. When you think of the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage,” one thing comes to mind. How can you think about Jamiroquai without seeing a man in a big fur hat walking around on a conveyor belt floor?

Here’s my last question for you and it’s a little off topic re: Pinkerton. How do you feel about music videos and their place in the dissemination and proliferation of music, especially now that the videos have moved to the internet and seem so much less prolific, or at least relevant, in today’s environment? Did they, as Weezer and Pearl Jam asserted, detract from or change the perception of the music? And if Weezer had played along, had played the game, had “sold out” so to speak, would Pinkerton have suffered a different fate?

“Shaking booty, making sweet love all the night,”

Brandon