On August 31st, 2000 my Rock’N Roll life changed it was on that night that I and my buddy Jason were lucky enough to get tickets to Weezer’s comeback Tour. The show here in Toronto was at the Phoenix Night Club. The Phoneix holds around 700 to 1000 so it is nice and intimate.
The openers that night were Dynamite Hack who was coming off a pretty big radio single with Boyz in The hood. They got the evening perfectly going with their crunchy pop-rock.
I remember waiting for Weezer to come on and the anticipation was building. In the couple years the band took off Pinkerton had become a cult classic with a huge following. Its raw emotion spoke to a bunch of outsiders at the time and was responsible for a movement in music which brought us bands like Something Corporate and Dashboard Confessional
Weezer at the time was using the ESPN intro to come out on the stage. With all the lights in the venue out then came the huge flying =w= sign all lite up I was blown away without a chord hitting a guitar. That night began what has been an unhealthy obsession with this band. Over 30 shows later I am here to write about some interesting things about Rivers Cuomo and the band:
- Rivers Cuomo Struggles with Anxiety and up until recently would always look straight down when playing. It wasn’t until touring with Foo Fighters during make-believe that he started to become more comfortable playing in front of people
- Rivers has had an interesting ( to say the least) relationship with his fans. At one point he called his fans “Little Bitches” in a Guitar World article. Since that point, he has made up with his fans with such things as Weezer cruises and using social media to connect ( sometimes will post under the nickname ACE)
- Rivers is said to be sitting on hundreds of Demos. The Singer is notorious for starting projects only to shelve them. He has recently been diving back into his past demos to rework them for recent albums.
- Rivers was upset that the Blue Album was considered more of a joke album which is why he wanted a darker second album with Pinkerton. He was devasted by the lack of positive response on the album.
- Rivers Cuomo and Weezer were supposed to be featured on the Sound City soundtrack. Dave Grohl wanted them to work with Barry Manilow but they could never get the time to record together.
- Matt Sharpe the former bassist and Rivers Cuomo got into an ugly lawsuit over royalties. They later made up and played a live gig together which can be found on Youtube.
- Weezer was no5thappy off with David Geffen and started to release demos on their website prior to the release of the album Maladroit
- Weezer tried to cover up a sponsorship The with Hurley clothing company by putting Hurley from Lost on the cover of said album
- Rivers Cuomo graduated from Harvard. He took classes and lived in the Dorms after his success in Weezer.
- Rivers credits much of his recent success thanks to Rick Rubin who introduced him to Vipassana a form of Mediation
- A popular folk tale is that Rivers Cuomo is really Kurt Cobain
- Rivers recorded many songs with the Canadian Rock Band Sloan when Rivers needed a backing band.
- Rivers has had success with writing songs for other artists including Avalanches, B.OB amongst others
- Weezer had a hit single with a cover of TOTO’s Africa after an online campaign from a young girl in 2018. This lead to a whole covers album called the Teal Album.
- The band Cold left an opening slot with the band after Weezer fans kept booing them right off the stage each night
Weezer rarely repeats themselves and each album is like a bold new experiment. In 2020 they were supposed to hit the road for a stadium tour with Green Day and Fall Out Boy let’s hope COVID settles and get some more stories from one of the more interesting bands in Rock.